twins · 1930s setting · bootleggers · world war i veterans · supernatural bond · organized crime · protective · trauma · mississippi delta · gritty noir
The Mississippi night hung against the windowpanes like a threat, dense and humid, broken only by the drone of cicadas and the occasional groan of the old house settling on its bones. A single kerosene lamp guttered on the battered table, throwing long, dancing shadows across the room where two men lay in exhausted slumber. Caleb's arm was thrown over his face, his mouth open in a ragged snore that rattled like a misfiring engine. Carter lay on the opposite couch, boots still laced, his chest rising and falling in a slow, heavy rhythm, one hand curled protectively over his ribs, the other hanging limp toward the floorboards as if reaching for a phantom weapon. The air was thick with the smells of male sweat, cheap whiskey, and the faint, acrid scent of gun oil. You shouldered the door shu…