Chapter 2-3
1454 Words
“Fine,” she said. “All right, fine, but you should have told me when this happened. When you were…diagnosed.”
He laughed, but it was a humorless sound. “Yeah, sure, and what would you have done? Rushed home to help the dad who was never there for you? Dropped all your studies for the jerk who couldn’t be bothered to show up for you? Yeah, I don’t think so. You were staying away and making something of yourself. I sure as hell wasn’t going to interrupt.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make.”
“The hell it wasn’t,” Kyle put in. He swung his legs down, disrupting the dog in his lap. “We all made that choice. You were gone and you were doing the best thing you could do.”
Emily shook her head again, but she chose not to say anything. What was there to say to that? They were right. She had left. She had severed ties with them, this whole town and all of the people in it. At the time it had seemed like the best idea. What had been here for her? Nothing, that’s what. Maybe she had been wrong.
“Yeah,” she said slowly, “I guess so. I just…I don’t like that I didn’t know anything. I mean, I still don’t know much. What’s going on? Why me?”
Kyle and Mac exchanged a look. A long conversation was held in that single exchange and Emily felt like an intruder. She had always felt like an outsider where the two of them were concerned. Then again, how could she compete with the son her dad had always wanted?
“Emily, how much do you know about the club?” Mac asked.
Emily blew out a breath. It was an odd question, but she felt a need to answer it. “Not much…too much. I don’t know. I mean, I know other parents were terrified of letting any of my friends come over. Boys who wouldn’t date me because of my ‘badass’ dad.” She rolled her eyes.
Kyle chuckled. “You dated pussies.”
“At least they weren’t criminals,” she shot back.
He leveled a smile at her. “Maybe you needed a little more criminal in your life.”
She rolled her eyes, wondering how she could have ever thought he was going to kiss her. Had that really only been twenty minutes ago? “I had quite enough of that in my life, thank you very much.”
Mac broke in. “Yeah, I know it wasn’t easy for you. I didn’t mean to make life hard, you know.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard.” She tugged her legs to her chest and sighed.
“I wish I could say that it was gonna get easier.” Her father hung his head in an act of shame that she had never seen him display.
How bad was this going to be? Apologies? Shame? Understanding? These were traits she had never known her father to display. What had happened in the past few years to make him so unlike the gruff and distant man she remembered? She glanced at the chair and the tubes of oxygen going to his nose.
“What’s happened?” she finally asked.
Leon cleared his throat and sat forward, speaking for the first time since she started her story. “We are pretty sure the guy who attacked you was one of Gabriel’s men.”
“Gabriel?” she asked. She searched her memories for the mention of the name, she couldn’t recall it. “Who is Gabriel?”
“Drug cartel sicario with dreams of being a lieutenant,” Kyle offered. “Second generation Cuban American, claims he’s got family up in the big leagues. Was well on his way to being taken seriously before—”
“Shut your mouth,” Mac snapped. “She doesn’t need to know everything.”
A sicario was a lieutenant in the cartel’s chain of command. Emily racked her brain to remember what little she knew about loosely organized crime. Sicarios usually lorded over a particular area, and had some men beneath them to carry out orders and get their hands dirty. It was like a chapter president, making him toe-to-toe with her dad.
Emily flopped against the back of the couch hard enough to make it shudder. It was a petulant move, and she knew it. But it was two in the morning and her world was upside down, she had earned the right to a little petulance. “Yeah, because keeping me in the dark helped a lot.”
“Girl’s got a point,” another of the group responded. She didn’t look up, but she was pretty sure it was big grumpy Vinny.
There was a silent council meeting to which Emily was excluded. She let them have it. It gave her enough time to pull her brain back together. A glance at her cell phone told her she had no calls and it was a little after three. While she’d spent plenty of nights seeing the sun come up during finals, she was beginning to sag.
“Emily?” Uncle Leon’s voice called her back. “You need to go lie down, sweetie?”
“No,” she said, “not yet. Not until everything is said and done.”
“Vinny over here was asking you if you could describe your attacker.” Kyle prompted. He was watching her closely, with a small amount of concern.
For a moment she was a teenage girl again and her belly was doing flip-flops. She shook it off. She needed sleep. Her brain wouldn’t be feeding her all these alternating feelings if she got a good eight hours of sleep. “I dunno. I guess.” She sat up in her seat. She must have dozed off since everyone had moved around. “I really don’t know. I remember he was tall, he smelled like cheap liquor and cheaper cigarettes. Wait…he had tattoos.”
She could almost feel the attention sharpen. It was like being caught in a spotlight. Eyes in every available hue turned in her direction and focused. She squirmed. Right now she did not want that attention.
“Better than fingerprints,” Kyle snorted. “What of?”
“Catholic symbolism stuff. Angels and the Virgin Mary.” She shrugged. Her ponytail suddenly felt too tight. With a careless gesture she tugged it free and let her hair tumble down. Her nails scratched listlessly over her scalp. The ache in her head was slowly turning into a migraine. She was so tired. “Pretty similar to what a lot of pious gangsters have.”
“The Virgin, was she done in black and white, or colors?” Mac asked. He navigated his chair forward, stopping right in front of her.
“Black and white,” she explained. Her hand swept over her drooping eyes. “All his tattoos were grayscale.”
“Michael,” the men chorused.
“Michael? Like Gabriel and Michael? Biblical? Really?” Emily rolled her eyes, feeling a fresh wave of weary frustration. “That’s…wow. That’s so not awesome.”
“Pretty sure some of his men have tattoos, but I don’t think he’d trust this kind of attack to one of his lesser guys. It was personal.” Leon offered.
“No s**t,” Mac snorted. “He went after my f*****g daughter. It’s personal. It’s—” His words were swallowed up in a coughing fit. It wasn’t the dry cough of someone who was getting over an illness, but the wet, hacking of a body trying to rid itself of something horrible. His shoulders shook, and the chair squeaked with every jerk of his body. “Gentlemen,” he croaked out, “I appreciate you coming over, but I’d like to speak with my daughter now.”
It was an order, no matter how weakly stated, and everyone knew it. As a unit they got up and tossed their beers into the recycling bin. The clatter of glass on plastic echoed hollowly.
One by one her father’s friends said their goodbyes. There were hugs, and kisses, and promises to keep her safe. She responded, but she didn’t really hear them. The effort to get through the evening had sunk well into her bones and taken away what little energy she had left.
“You take extra good care of yourself, Emily-girl.”
“I’ll try, Uncle Leon.”
“Kyle,” Mac said, “I’d like you to stick around.”
Kyle, who, like a good solider, was following all the others out the garage door, stopped in his tracks. He glanced over his shoulder, looking concerned. Suddenly she saw that the patch on his vest read Vice President. She frowned. That was what Leon’s used to say. When had that switch happened? What had she missed?
“Rocco and I could crash at Leon’s, no big,” Kyle offered. “Or even go back to our own place; it’s been a while since I actually slept in my own bed.”
“This is your home, at least for now,” Mac said, shaking his bald head. “And I gotta lot to say, some of it concerns you.”
“I didn’t move back in permanently, Mac. Just helping out.” Kyle hesitated by the door to the garage. The light from outside cased a long shadow across the floor.
It should have been a surprise that he was living here, but it wasn’t. Her father hadn’t called her when he got sick; he had turned to Kyle. Why wouldn’t he? Kyle was the son Mac Ketchum had always wanted. A dutiful son to follow in his boot steps. She had never been willing to be the kind of daughter he wanted. They were both stubborn.
“You have been here two years, I don’t care if you are still paying mortgage at your other place. I’m not kicking you out tonight. So sit down, shut up.”
“If you’re sure.” Kyle dragged a hand down his face, clearly not wanting to argue. Emily couldn’t blame him.
She wasn’t sure she was okay with it, but no one bothered to ask her. No one ever did.
- Writer
