by Sweet, Izzy
“Same time the priest asked to see my no-no spot.”
“James Alexander Po—” Father Coss exclaims before being cut off.
“You finish that sentence, Father, and I’ll nail your bits to the alter like I did the last priest,” James says with a laugh as he walks past the priest and heads to his car.
“What do you want, Coss?” I ask as I watch James make the lucky getaway.
“I came to speak with you now that you’re out of that damnable prison. Simon kindly told me where to find you, since I highly doubted I’d be able to get you into the church just yet,” he says almost fucking magnanimously, as if I seek his fucking forgiveness.
“I’ll make sure to shoot Simon in the leg,” I say as I reach down to grab Meghan’s hand.
“Gabriel, what happened ten years ago… We need to talk about that day… Perhaps we could have Miss Meghan give us a moment to talk,” he suggests, and I can see he desperately wants to do this alone.
He wants to do this in private, where his fucking past sins don’t have to be brought out into the light of day.
“Nah, she stays by my side, Coss. I met her in a church, if that helps any, but as James said… Sins to commit and nothing to atone for.”
Pulling Meghan with me, I start to pass Coss before he reaches out and grabs at my arm.
“I was there that day too, dammit!” he growls.
“Yeah, you got sent to the fucking priesthood. I got ten years in a supermax. You committed the sins just as much as I did. Don’t fucking think for a moment I owe you a thing,” I snarl before ripping my arm away from him. “Just because you wear the costume doesn’t mean you’re forgivable.”
Yanking Meghan along beside me, I pull us quickly to the truck. Helping her get in, I shut her door before heading back to the priest who stares at me with something akin to fear in his eyes.
Standing before me, the old man is a shell of his former glory, but he sure thinks he’s bigger than me now.
“You pulled the trigger on how many of your brothers that day?” I ask before going on. “I’ve killed a lot of men in the name of Lucifer, and I don’t for one fucking moment forget that. You should remember all your past fucking sins sometime, Father.”
“I’ve come to terms with what I’ve done, Gabriel,” he says as he pushes a finger into my chest. “And I’ve tried to bring each one of you back into the light. It’s been too damn long for you men to go on this way.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a way to go,” I say, smacking his hand away from me. “And if I remember correctly, Dad, you took the cloth as soon as it was offered. The bodies hadn’t even cooled before you went straight into the priesthood.”
“I did this as a way to show penance for my misdeeds—” he tries to tell me before I burst out laughing in his face.
“You took the cloth because it was that or death. You didn’t give two shits about your past misdeeds,” I say.
“You damnable cuss. I’m not too old to put you in your place,” he growls as he straightens to his full height.
“Just like you did to Simon and me after Miriam died? I’ve still got the scars from the coat hangers. Simon’s got them all over his back from laying on top of me, trying to shield me from your righteous anger. Our drunk mother even took a couple of those blows in the early days... Before she drank herself to death and put a bullet in her brains to end her suffering,” I say with a growl.
Scars are all over our backs because of this shithead’s rage. Because he couldn’t fucking deal with being a parent anymore. Because he wanted us to grow up as hard me.
“I…” he stutters.
“Get fucked, Father Coss,” I say to him, using the name he chose to start his life over with.
* * *
Pushing the call button on my phone, I wait for Simon to pick up.
“What is it, Gabriel?”
“Fuck you. Next time you set me up for seeing, Coss, I’ll break your fucking spine.”
“Tsk, Tsk. Keeping talking to me like that and I’ll—” Simon tries to respond.
“Fuck off. Is that Russian restaurant over in Bethlehem still a front for their laundering services?” I ask.
“To an extent. It’s fallen to mostly old men regaling each other with stories from their former glory days,” he says.
“They do any business there?” I ask.
“Yes, it still launders about a million every three months,” he says, and I can hear the tapping of a keyboard.
“Good. Do me a favor and turn off all the traffic and surrounding cameras around the restaurant. I’ll probably need a change of license plates this afternoon,” I say.
His voice is slow and careful as he says, “I can do both. What do you have planned?”
“If they’ve got inside security feeds, get yourself into them and you’ll see,” I say and then disconnect the phone.
* * *
When I’ve had a moment to bring my simmering anger down a notch, I get into the truck and take a look at Meghan. She’s far too beautiful, so much so it makes my tongue feel thick with unsure feelings for her.
“What was that about?” Meghan asks as I pull out of the cemetery.
“My asshole brother set us up for that little fucking visit,” I growl out as we pull onto the main road.
James hightailed it pretty damn fast out of there. No chance in catching up with his ass.
“Why and who was he? I mean I know he was a priest… but why is he coming to talk to you guys?” Meghan asks.
When I don’t immediately answer her, she pokes my arm with her slender fingers. “What was that about? I thought you said we’re in this together?”
“Coss was a power behind the throne when it came to the family business. He stood just to the right side of Lucifer’s father,” I say as I get us onto the highway heading towards Bethlehem.
“You mean Lucifer’s father had a priest working for him?”
“No. He was one of Lucifer’s father’s men, one of the best hitmen around. Lucifer gave him the choice of the church or the graveyard,” I say and try to ease the fucking tension in my shoulders.
It’s been a long fucking time since I saw that fucker, and he still makes me want to commit violent fucking murder. I want to wrap my calloused hands around his old, weathered fucking throat.
That motherfucker stayed out of the grave and prison, while I spent ten long fucking years inside a cement fucking block. I’m not fucking mad at Lucifer, Simon, or any of the other guys. They had their lives stretching before them like a beautiful sunrise. I was in my sunset. I’d killed too many men to clear the way for the family.
To clear the way for Lucifer to take over as the unmitigated leader.
Father Coss, that fucker was left alive for appearance’s sake. At least that’s how he got Lucifer to spare him. He did some of the dirty work with me and in return he got to live. It also kept the status quo with the surrounding families. He was kept around to guide Lucifer…
Like that would have ever truly fucking happened. Lucifer took full control the day he smothered his fucking father, and I put a bullet in anyone who objected. I killed eleven men that day for Lucifer. Father Coss killed two. Might as well have killed me, or so I thought. Wouldn’t have been much to kill off a son of his.
The wheel groans again as I start trying to bend it into something beyond the circular shape it’s supposed to be.
“Gabriel. Stop,” Meghan says quietly, her small fingers tracing the popping veins of my arms. “Stop for me.”
Slowly I pry my fingers off the steering wheel. I don’t know if I could truly bend the fucker in half like I want to, but I’m willing to bet it wouldn’t be good for the car if I did.
“You’re going to have a heart attack before you’re forty…” she says quietly. “Which reminds me, exactly how old are you?”
“Thirty-one,” I grunt as I shift in my seat.
Meghan has a way of bringing me out of my rage, even if I still want to fucking kill
Coss. That high-horsed motherfucker thinks of us as fallen soldiers, and we probably are. But him trying to fucking redeem us is a fucking joke. He’s got more than enough blood on his hands.
“Shit, I robbed the retirement home!” Meghan groans loudly. “You’re going to keel over any year now from old age. Do we need to get one of those stair-escalator things? You know, the ones the old people sit in to ride up a flight of stairs…”
“I’d fucking break one of those things just by sitting on it,” I growl out as I latch my hand onto her inner thigh. “Besides, I didn’t see your young ass caring about me being so old last night.”
“Oh…” she murmurs as I start to stroke her thigh. “What… What about family? Brothers or sisters?”
My hand stops roaming so I can grab the steering wheel again with it.
“Simon… That asshole you’ve met already is my brother. Had a sister, but she died very young to an infection that wasn’t caught in time,” I say.
“Gabriel… I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright,” I say.
But it’s not really. I think back to then and I don’t remember as much as I used to. It fucking hurts somewhere in my stomach that I can’t remember the last time I allowed myself to think of Miriam.
Simon was about ten when she died, old enough I guess to know that his little sister was gone forever, but not old enough to know why. I think that’s where he got his obsession with being clean from. All he was told was that it was an infection that killed her. Some bug. He started washing his hands at the funeral and couldn’t stop. My parents weren’t any help, the death of Miriam broke something deep in them.
I had to take control of Simon after that. A six-year-old who just lost his twin sister taking care of a ten-year-old who was getting fucked in the head…
“You don’t look like it’s alright,” Meghan says softly.
“I don’t much think of her. No use in remembering someone like that. She was the good one, the white to my black,” I say ,and I can feel the anger rising up in my throat.
It’s like a fucking sickness trying to crawl its way up and be unleashed.
“You sound like you were really close to her?” she asks.
“She was my fraternal twin. Thank whatever god for that. I can’t imagine she would have been very happy looking like me as a chick,” I say with a chuckle. “She was the bigger one in the womb, from what my mom said. I was the runt.”
“Fuck me, I can’t imagine trying to push out two babies,” she says.
“Only child then?” I ask.
“Yeah, just me. My parents tried for more, but I’m the only one.”
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, where’s your mom?” I ask, and I can see instantly it’s not going to be a good answer.
“She… died… in a… a car bomb,” she says, and looks away from me like it’s some dirty little secret.
“When was that?” I ask.
This time it’s me taking her hand. Shit like that sucks to relive.
“Five years ago. My dad says it was the Italians from Garden City trying to take over more space,” she whispers.
Why the fuck would they even try that, is my first thought.
Killing off a wife isn’t a good idea, not when it comes to wars. You don’t kill the spouses or kids, not if you don’t have to.
“Fuck, that sucks, Meghan. I’m sorry.”
“It was pretty hard after that. I don’t have any siblings… So my dad became a bit of a nightmare. Very overprotective. I barely talked him into letting me go out to California for school.”
“I went out there once, had to do a job there. I stayed for a couple of weeks, waiting around. Lots of sun and beaches out there,” I say.
Lots of sun, beaches, and blood, is more like it though. I had to track one of Lucifer’s father’s debtors. It sucked. Too many damn people around, too many damn distractions.
Then again, I got to see the shitty underbelly of Hollywood. That was fucking eye-opening. There were more sleezy scumbags than I could believe. Fuck, everywhere I looked I saw drugs, prostitutes, and thieves.
I thought Garden City was bad, but Hollywood was worse. It seemed like the higher someone was in the social circles, the dirtier they played. Too many of those men and women out there thought they owned the world. It wouldn’t be a picnic trying to keep that fucking city under control.
“I can just imagine you laying on a beach, drinking piña coladas,” Meghan says with a chuckle.
“Nah, that shit tastes foul. I tried my hand at surfing though, for about a week. It was interesting trying to find a board big enough for me,” I say with a laugh at the memory.
“You, surfing?” She snorts.
“Yeah, I wasn’t too bad at it. I spent a week after my job just sitting in the ocean from dawn to dusk. First time in my life I found my hands clean from dirt and blood. Saltwater washed a lot of shit off me,” I say.
Those fucking waves out there… it was peaceful. I’d just sit on the board and watch the swells coming in. Take in the horizon. Two months later, I was in prison. It was fucking hell being shoved into a six-by-eight-foot cell after seeing the ocean.
Being in prison… it was like living on pure adrenaline for years. But… fucking Meghan… She walks over all those deep-seated instincts and touches me with no fear. I touch her now just to make sure she’s real, that she isn’t some figment of my fucked-up imagination.
“Wow,” she says as she looks over to me in something akin to surprise.
“What?”
“I never pegged you as the surfer boy type.”
Chuckling, I say, “I’m not.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I know you’ve got a rep to protect.”
“So, what were you going to college for?” I ask.
“I was pursuing a degree in Business Administration. It was the only path my father would permit me to take.”
“What did you want to take?” I ask as we begin to pull off the interstate, taking the Bethlehem exit.
“I don’t really know. With my mom’s death shaking my whole world up, I wanted to do something that wasn’t related to the family. But my father had plans for me, regardless of what I wanted. Alexei being the prime example,” she says with some heat in her voice.
I think she’s been bottling her shit up for some time now. It was just the icing on the cake when her father tried to force her into a marriage she didn’t want. I have no clue how the fuck what I did was any different. Then again, she’s tried to kill me since then… Maybe she gets off on the violence just as much as I do.
She sure fucked like it last night.
“Well, we’ll be doing something with him as soon as I find the little dick bastard,” I grin as I look at her.
She smiles, but it’s not exactly a warm one.
“I just want to see how he fucking responds to being drugged up while someone pushes his ass around.”
“I doubt I’ll be doing much pushing. I’ve got a feeling my fists will be doing most of the work.”
We travel through the city in silence. This city is a lot like Garden city, except smaller and a little poorer. Lots of vice, though. I think at one time there were plans on taking over this city like Lucifer did with Garden, but I’m guessing the Russians are fucking that up.
“So, being Callahan’s daughter… Besides the whole Russian pricks coming into the city, what else has been happening?” I ask.
Shrugging her shoulders, she says, “I don’t know much. I know that a Mexican cartel has been pissing my father off because the uneasy truce with the Heralds of Hell seems to be breaking down…”
“They’re still around?” I ask. “The Heralds of Hell? I remember they were having issues before I went to prison.”
“Yeah, they’ve been operating on the fringes for some time now, but they offered help to my father when the Italians bombed us. He took them up on it, but with the Mexican cartel trying to take over all the drug trade in the city, it�
�s put a strain on him. The Heralds want more guns and manpower to fight with, and the Irish have been struggling to keep what property they can to themselves. Then you have the Russians pushing their way into the mix. It’s a powder keg, one match and this whole city will be at war.”
Well, fuck me running. She’s knows more than I thought she did.
Looking around the street I’m on, I spot a parking spot close to the Russian restaurant The Little Bear.
“Gonna need you to take over driving in a minute,” I say as I reverse the truck into the parking spot.
Directly ahead of us the sleepy little restaurant sits. It’s a small building, thankfully nothing on either side of it.
“What? Why?” Meghan asks.
“I need to go say hello to some friends, and I need you at the wheel,” I say as I pull the black bag from the backseat up to my lap.
“I thought we did everything together,” she says with a frown.
“We do, so that means you need to get us out of here as soon as I get in the truck,” I say and pull out four sticks of C-4.
Grabbing the bag of ball-bearings, I hand Meghan two sticks of the explosive.
Setting the bearings bag between us, I grab a handful and start pushing them into the explosive, trying to give it a good covering.
“Can you do those two sticks?” I ask as I start on my second bar of the grayish plastic explosive.
“What exactly are we doing?” she asks as she takes a handful of bearings and starts pressing them into the explosive.
“Collateral damage. I want to make sure this place doesn’t get rebuilt.”
“Oh.”
Looking over the four long bars of C-4, I grin as I stuff them into a small black bag. After thinking for a moment, I end up pushing the rest of the metal ball bearings into the bag with it. Pushing detonators into each stick, I set them to blow from the little receiver I have in my pocket.
“Be right back, keep the engine running,” I say.
Jumping out of the truck, I look back and see Meghan climbing into the driver’s seat with a pensive look on her face. She’s more than likely questioning what exactly she signed up for. She’s about to see. I haven’t exactly killed anyone in front of her eyes yet, or had her kill anyone, but it’s only a matter of time before it happens.