He pulled on his coat. “I’ve got something I need to take care of. Please don’t leave for the hospital until I get back. I don’t want Clare here alone.”

“Aidan… What are you going to do?”

“Something that should’ve been done a year ago.”

On the way to Colin’s house, he worked on getting his rage under control. Of all the people Brandon could’ve pinned into a corner in a drunken stupor, why did it have to be Clare? And just when she was starting to make some progress in putting the past behind her. Aidan banged his sore hand on the steering wheel in frustration. His knuckles were black and blue from where he’d connected with his brother’s face.

He walked into Colin’s house through a back door that was never locked. Colin had been the first of them to buy his own house, a six-room cottage with a view of Oyster Pond that had been falling down when he found it. Aidan didn’t stop on this morning to admire the gleaming hardwood floors or comfortable furnishings. He was a man on a mission.

In the spare bedroom, he found Brandon sleeping facedown wearing the same clothes he’d had on yesterday. Aidan punched his brother in the ribs.

“What the fuck?” Brandon said with a groan.

“Get up.”

“What do you want?”

Aidan grabbed Brandon’s shirt. “Get on your feet. Right now.”

Holding his head in his hands, Brandon slowly sat up to face his seething brother. “What crawled up your ass and died?”

Taking in the double shiner and the crusted blood on his brother’s face, Aidan realized Brandon had no memory of what’d happened the night before.

Colin came into the room.

“He doesn’t remember,” Aidan said to Colin.

“He never does.”

“Remember what?” Brandon sounded like his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He touched his nose and winced.

Aidan grabbed his brother’s shirt and pulled him to his feet. “Let me give you an update, little brother. Last night you stumbled into Mum’s kitchen and backed the woman I love into a corner, where you scared her so badly that she shook for two hours afterward.”

Brandon gasped. “What?”

“It might also interest you to know that she’s already been raped once in her life, so I’ll see you or any man dead before that happens to her again, you got me?”

“Jesus Christ,” Colin muttered.