LIBERTY

Chapter V

"Sit still!"

Adam shot Paul a murderous glare. "You try sitting still while having someone repeatedly poke a needle into you."

"Oh so now you lack the balls to handle this stuff, but when it's a tattoo you're taking it like a champ." Paul rolled his eyes and shoved a bottle of whisky in his best friend's hands. "Drink. And shut up before I fuck this up."

Axel, who had been silent as he watched his brother getting stitched up, leaned against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed over his chest. His t-shirt was coated with blood, his brother's blood, but he didn't care enough to get changed yet. This wasn't the first time he had to help get Adam out whatever mess he had landed himself into again.

A vibration against his pants brought his attention down to his phone. His screen lighted up with his twin brother's name. Axel slid his finger over his phone and picked up.

"You guys done yet?"

Axel examined Paul's work on his brother and kissed his teeth. "Almost. Where are you?"

Aaron sighed, leaving a static sound through the receiver. "Uh, at the McDonalds, we just finished up, Libby's already waiting at the car."

"Impatient little cu –," Axel muttered.

"Hey," Aaron scolded. "So can we come home or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, we'll have cleaned up the mess by then."

"Okay, see you," he said before hanging up.

"Son of a bitch," Adam growled through gritted teeth. He took another swig from the bottle, his jaw clenching from the blinding pain. He looked down at his side where Paul was stitching up a large cut that went from his chest down to his navel. He realized that he was lucky the knife didn't actually went all the way into his body but still, the damage was done. His face was covered in cuts, his lip was busted, he was sporting bruises on his chest and he even dislocated a shoulder but Paul had already fixed that one.

"Almost done," Paul mumbled as he finished the last stitches.

Axel walked over to the pair and perched himself on the table next to them. He grabbed the whisky and gulped down the content like it was merely water before addressing his brother. "So, who were does guys anyway? They owe you money or something?"

Adam hissed when the needle punctured his skin again. "More like the other way around."

"Never seen them before." Axel thought of the two strange men fighting his brother, Paul and some other guy he didn't know. He had to admit, he didn't have much time to actually study them. All he remembered is that his brother called him to meet with them for backup. Whenever Adam called for reinforcement, the twins knew that it never was about taking part in the action, it was all about providing the secret weapons – and in this case, Axel's job was to fill a duffel bag with guns that were hidden in their storage unit.

"They were Lambert's men." Adam muttered another curse under his breath when Paul poured some of the whisky on the needle to sterilize it some more.

Axel's eyes widened in recognition. He sat up straighter on the table and perched his feet on the chair his brother was seated in. "Wait, Lambert as in Danny and Lance Lambert? I thought Dad put them in jail."

Paul cleaned the wound before wiping his hands on a rag, leaving blood all over the cloth. "He only got Lance behind bars, Danny had been AWOL for all these years."

"Until now," Axel pointed out the obvious. "What does he want anyway, his business was with Dad, not with us."

Adam winced as he leaned back against his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose as he threw his head back. "He wants revenge for what Dad did to his brother Lance."