Facing Crossroads

PROLOGUE

SHANE

No matter how hard we hold on to something, eventually, it would come to an end. Someone once told me that there was beauty in endings. That it was a portal to begin again, like a sequel to a great book. As for me, I hated the idea of something I love to reach its end.

Looking around, I watched as my father’s friends circled me in, all of them wearing black suits and black bowties, their faces painted grief and mourning. They all carried a long-stemmed white rose and started to line up to toss it to his coffin that was now lowered to the ground.

I blinked back my tears, lost in this reality, remembering the newspaper’s headline the day I learned what had happened to my father. That was in the morning of July the first. Maybe it was the biggest news this year. The 2012’s ‘Most Wanted Man’ was finally dead.

“Alleged Mob Boss Enrico Javier found dead in his car.”

Everyone was sorry. Everyone felt the need to say that what happened to him was too much. That only a devil could do such heinous crime and my father didn’t deserve it. He had so much trusted friends and I think that got him killed.

They got him.

And maybe they would get me too.

He held the biggest part of my heart and his death made a void that couldn’t be filled by his friend’s empathy or by my mother’s assurance that everything would return back to normal. Because it wouldn’t.

His death changed everything. That was the thing about death. It was a dead end, a point of no return. That was what happened to my father— he was now in a point where he could never go back to me. And it f*****g pissed me off because I wasn’t ready to deal with it yet.

But like what most people say, s**t happens.

Now I had to deal with what was left of me. My mother dragged me out of my father’s house to live with her and her new family. She wanted to reconnect, to take care of me and to make things right.

I’m just not sure how she’s gonna do that.