Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham, #1)

by Benjamin Stevenson

One day you’ll realize family isn’t about whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.”

I had to listen to Marcelo gently defend himself against Lucy’s latest investment opportunity pitch, some harebrained scheme that was so multilevel it needed an elevator. I used to make fun of her for it, until I’d realized that these companies prey on women by weaponizing certain feminist ideals—namely independence, both financial and in business—to fabricate a sense of self-worth.

If you’re wondering about my choice of words, most of my breakfasts are uneventful; I have simply never found meals with that much milk involved to be dramatic.

But it wasn’t the spark that was the problem. It was the lighter, the flint, the matches. And they weren’t lost, they were taken. It wasn’t that we lost our spark, it was that we didn’t have the tools to make it anymore.

But we’d reached the point where, in even being together, we were doing something to each other.

“You sound like your father.” She shook her head. It was not a compliment.

“Oh, I get it. You write books about how to write books that you’ve never written, bought by people who will never write one.”

I hope, when I go, I get the chance to rage against my death.