“I'm not hiding,” Seth answers. This isn't the homecoming he had anticipated.
“You couldn't bother to let your only family know that you were back before going to her? You couldn't really have thought we wouldn't know you were here. We own these streets, every crevice and every alley. Even this one.”
Seth stands his ground. He knows there are guns in the darkness. He wonders what they see —a golden-skinned, shaggy stranger; an impossibly casual, relaxed-fit man who was once a clean-cut youth. “Of course I know that. Are you jealous you weren’t my first stop, Caleb? Are you mad you were number two?” he says. How can he say that the readjustment to his city has been damn-near immobilizing? He can't.
“Uncle Mikie doesn't trust you anymore, Seth.”
All the slack in Seth's frame pulls taught. All of his infuriating grace dies around him as rage racks him like a slug in the flesh. Caleb may be the only one who can dismantle his composure so effortlessly, because he is the only one who knows exactly where all the holes are in Seth's emotional armor.
Seth says, “Why is that, Caleb? I left on Uncle Mikie's bidding. He knew it would be like this.” He steps up to his brother, looks him in the eye. “Has there been a snake in our Uncle's ear?”
Blue eyes go so hard they seem they will shatter. “Things change, little bro. Uncle Mikie's plans have changed. He’s looking into something more Eastern,” Caleb says with an out-of-place languor that has been his infuriating manner since childhood. He is looking down on his sibling.
Seth's brow furrows. He looks the differences age has produced in Caleb as he searches for sense in the conversation that spills from them. Just a few lines at the corners of his eyes, a wide, strong jaw, and an impenetrable mask. He is trim and fit, and mad as hell.
Seth says, “I don't believe you. I think that's your idea. People will die if we cross the alliance we have made, he knows that.” I will die, is what he doesn't say. He feels lightning in his veins. No wonder things have decayed so badly if a main player in this game has turned against his own team.
“Not if everyone's precious prince is already dead,” Caleb says, his expression distorting in a way that Seth recognizes as menacing. There's a blur of movement, merely a twitch, and he feels the end of a gun barrel push against the bottom of his chin. He laughs, and it is so cold, the realization that his brother has drawn arms against him.
This is the culmination of silent and prolonged grievances. Of leaving too soon and staying so long.
Caleb says, “Mikie doesn't trust anyone anymore, but he knows now that you've got some major pull, you'll take everything away just like you always do. And in his eyes, you're the only one who can take everything away from him.”
Hatred runs through Seth colder than the ice around them. His eyes narrow. He is about to snap, he doesn't care if it gets him shot by his own people. He's taken a bullet before. Everything he worked for, the new opportunities for a real stake for his family, all of it has been undermined before it has had a chance. He says, quietly, “Are you saying that our uncle is planning a coup, Caleb? Really? And you really expect me to believe that Mikie wants me dead? We're supposed to work together, not turn against each other. Don't be an idiot about this.” The metal is biting his skin.
He can hardly endure that his brother is holding a gun to his head.
“It's hard to work together when you're in another hemisphere,” Caleb spits. “The family hasn't worked together since Dad died. You're such a self-righteous prick.” He pushes the gun harder, stretching Seth's neck a little.
“I think you're mad that Mikie sent me and not you,” Seth manages through grinding teeth. Just as brothers will do, he goes straight for the jugular, brings up a painful issue that has haunted Caleb. There is a part of him, small and hard, that believes his flesh and blood intends to kill him. “Just like you've always been mad that Dad picked me.”
“Or maybe I've been back here in reality for two fucking years, alone,” says Caleb, bitterness lacing his words. “Maybe I've seen everything fall to shit around me. Maybe I’ve been the one trying to protect the innocents we swore to keep safe. Maybe, for once, I actually know what the fuck I'm talking about.”
Seth seethes as his brother pushes him. Soon, the whole city will melt from the heat of his rage. He has devoted two years of his life to gaining the trust of the syndicate's new business partners. He has been watched by the FBI, the DEA, and who knows what other departments, not to mention the Cubans themselves. He has been cut off from everyone he loves, missing his dead father, who never warned him the reins would be so hard to control. He had always thought it ran naturally through some divine fountain of intuition, but he could not make it seem as simple as his father had. His soul hurts. He locks his stare onto his brother, raises his hands at his shoulders to show that he will not fight, and says, “If you really think you can pull the trigger, our customs say you’ll die right after me. What would Dad say if he saw you right now?”
“Dad's dead!” Caleb screams, drawing back into a swift pistol whip to his brother's jaw. He leans his face in close and softly says, “Your customs are dead. I'm already dead, like you.” As if some silent alarm is triggered, two figures emerge from the end of the alley. They are cousins.
Seth finds himself against the icy pavement, head ringing. The right side of his face goes numb. The slap he has already received seems like a good dream now. He remembers where he is, her apartment. Caleb had always managed to ignore some glaring details that might prove to be obstacles for him. Caleb says, “This whole family is dead, Seth, and it's not about blood anymore, it's about business. It's time for a change, or we'll be extinct because of old customs. All I have to do is twitch my finger, and that change begins. If Dad could see you, bleeding on the pavement upon your triumphant return, playing the victim when you're just a self-centered little fuck. It's pathetic, because it's easy to see, you're still just a fucking child.”
The cousins reach for Seth's arms, but Caleb screams, “Get away! I can do this myself!”
The anger that has been growing for the two longest years of his life breaks at the sight of Seth on his knees, and his body reacts violently. He lands several kicks in Seth's ribs, the impact of each earth-shaking in its magnitude. Caleb has always been violent, but never before has he been so ruthless in an attack; he shows no compassion and doesn't hold back in the least. He says, “You look like Dad, and your face is making me sick,” and points the gun at Seth's forehead.
Seth spits blood at his brother's feet. His insides ache. His head is raging. What was left of his faith in humanity breaks into tiny pieces and pits into his gut. He's dizzy. He searches to the very dregs of his cruelty and whispers, “Dad was right. You are too weak to handle power.” Every word wrenches from his body, each like a brutal stab of red-hot metal.
Caleb delivers another blow to Seth's cheekbone with the butt of his gun. He watches the blood run into Seth's eyes and from his mouth. Seth makes wavering eye contact, despite the fact that it hurts to open his right eye, despite the blood and pain shooting through the side of his face. He is well aware that he is provoking a man who is already well past his threshold, but he is past the point of sense. Both brothers are breaking—he can tell that Caleb is about to cry, and Caleb doesn't cry.
The cousins, distant relations, know too, and they shift uneasily. Nothing good can come of this encounter now. They exchange worried glances as Seth tries to pull away from them and stand. They have been told that Seth is idealistic, and crazy, but at this moment, maybe he's right. The thing about Seth is that he has this personality with the gravitational pull of a star. When he's around, you feel his warmth like you need water; and when he's not, shit gets cold.
Caleb speaks, shakes them all into the moment. “You don't understand, Seth. You never did. I am more like our family than you could ever hope to be, because you are weak.”
Seth's head hangs. Blood and saliva run freely onto the pavement. He hears the mechanical clicks of a
gun. His brother is going to kill him.
“Do it and you're dead,” a voice says, female, familiar.
Another gun has come into play as the elder Morgan crew's attention was diverted. Caleb freezes because he can feel the lifeless chill of a barrel trained on the back of his head. The cousins make for their guns, but fortune has not favored them, and they are too slow. A second gun is immediately on cousin number one, and number two receives a quick kick to the groin.
“Get out of here, you pieces of shit,” she spits, pushing her weight against the gun that is resting against cousin number one's head. His eyes roll to his boss, pleading for the permission to retreat. His knees are buckling under him. Caleb's head barely flicks to the side, and number one is gone down the alley without so much as a glance at his commander. Number two limps behind him. She trains both guns on Caleb.
“Nicolette,” he drawls, “how nice to see you, as always.”
“Why are you here?” she asks flatly. She is all jeans and black sweater now, all pink nose and gun barrels. Her hair is down and still slightly curled. Her expression is violent—no bullshit or you might die.
“Listen, Nic,” he says, raising his hands slightly in innocence.
“Don't 'Nic' me. What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay away. That wasn't conditional.” She walks around him, stands in front of him with guns in his face. “And this—” She nods toward Seth, who has become motionless. “You beat your own brother? I've always known there was something wrong with you, but this is too much.” She leans forward. “Get the fuck out of here, huh?”
He coldly eyes the guns. He’s lost his ground. To stand up to her now would be a move that would leave him alive, but without testicles. “Of course, I was just leaving,” he says, taking several steps backward. She can see a loss of composure seeping into his arrogant eyes. He knows he fucked up, real bad. Caleb bows. “Good night, princess.” Then he turns and leaves, melting into the night. He does not look back.
She looks down at the body that contains both the love of her life and the source of a cold animosity that has been growing for two solid years. For every time she has missed him, she has cursed him, and every time she has despised him for leaving, she has ached for him to be beside her. Shouldn't his blood on the pavement feel justified? Shouldn't she stand with Caleb this time? She sighs her frustration to the bitter night and mutters a string of curses in Spanish that she learned from her mother when her parents fought and bickered. She kneels beside him to assess his condition, and in English adds, “You just have to make everything complicated, don't you?”
At first, his only answer is a groan as he struggles to move. Then, when his attempts fail, he suffices to say in a grunt, “Anything . . . for you.”
The words string together her old pain with some very new pain inside her chest, which feels otherwise empty. Her jaw clenches on the anger that wants to rise. Anything? Anything but be here when you're needed. She settles for silence as she gently pulls him into the best sitting position she can, suffering through his whimpers of pain with saint-like patience and stoicism. “Come on,” she says, just barely above a whisper. “Help me get you inside.”
He tries valiantly to hold the tension in his muscles as she does her damnedest to manipulate him to stand. He slips once, twice, cries out as his body is racked by his recent beating. After much effort that leaves her sweating in the freezing air, she all but drags him into her meager apartment. The place is a far cry from the splendor in which she had been living when he left for his family's business. This place is comprised of a kitchen/living room combo, one bedroom, a bathroom, and no windows. Though the space is clean and neatly decorated, it lacks the elegant charm and warmth of her old apartment, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and every modern comfort one could think to desire. Laying him on the Italian leather couch—a grotesque and cheeky housewarming gift from her father—only serves to remind her of what her life has become.
“Don't move,” she tells him, then crosses to her freezer. At least this place is hers, with no ties to her dad's bank and mother's overbearing tendency to try to rule her decisions. Yes, this is her hovel, her life. She plucks an ice pack from the freezer. This is her life now, her opportunity to choose her own way—yet here he is, on the coattails of agony. “Fuck!” she says into the freezer. She can see her breath.
The thick blood oozing down his face highlights the ways in which he has suddenly disrupted the world she has painstakingly built. The stark red casts his sun-browned features into the realm of the shadowy undefined, and the frosted glass lamp on the nearby end table is not quite strong enough to drive away the darkness that rests along his lines. His right eye is swollen mostly closed, so she deposits the ice pack there. His left eye flies open, and he jerks several inches back into the pillow, as if he can escape the sudden pressure and cold. His vision wavers on her for mere moments, then he gives up the fight and his eyelid flutters closed. Her only comfort is that he is too disoriented to comprehend her conflict.
“I said don't move,” she says, much more solidly, as she begins to wipe the blood from his skin. How many of his injuries has she personally treated over the years? How many times has she been the one uttering soft assurances after he and Caleb had brotherly disagreements? This, though, this is different;—more vicious. She has never seen such rage in Caleb's eyes. She missed the argument that led them to blows, but she could never forget the resentment that drove Caleb's boot into Seth's ribs. And now she has pitted herself into the internal family business of the Morgans . . . again.
He lifts a shaky hand toward her, despite her direction not to move. He winces the whole way, and after only inches, he leaves his hand hanging in the air. He cannot defeat the pain. He can move no farther. Why did she intervene? Because she could not watch the only love of her life get his brains splattered on the ground in front of her door. She gently takes his hand to push it back onto the couch. Her life is so far from that love-struck princess of the black market banking industry, who was poised to make union with the beloved prince of one of the most powerful crime syndicates on the east coast. When he left, she had ample time to realize that if she wanted a name and place, she couldn't rely on a man to give it to her. She would have to take it herself, and that was exactly what she had been doing. She had quietly convinced herself that he would not come back, that he would fall in love with the Latin grandeur into which he had been adopted. Or perhaps, he would fall in love with some dark-skinned, deep-accented beauty who would steal away his soul so that he could never leave. That's what she had told herself.
He groans, shifts, and the ice pack inches farther down his face. This time, his other eye remains closed. She deposits a bloody rag onto the coffee table and stands quickly. She has to get away from him. She turns her back on him, rushes to the island that separates the kitchen from the rest of the room. Her muscles are rigid, and her anger is a molten torrent in her veins. Tears fight against her to rise, a flash flood of emotion for which she is unprepared. Now, she is shaking. Her fingers inch around the grip of one of her pistols that she left there in favor of transporting Seth. She slides the safety off before she realizes what she's doing. The tears spill onto her cheeks. Then, she freezes. What is she doing?
With the certainty of a lifetime’s worth of familiarity, she can feel him watching her. She turns back to him, gun at the ready, but not aimed. She's right. His left eye is half-cocked, so brown, like a fall evening, like a heart break;—for that is exactly what she sees there in his expression. His brother just shoved a gun in his face, had almost pulled the trigger, and now he sees her, with her piece in her hand and no one else around. She drops the gun to her side and says, “You shouldn't have come here, Seth.”
She can't be sure he heard the rest of her words, because when she says his name, his eye drifts closed and his tension soothes. He lets go of her image, forgets about her gun. Perhaps he no longer cares if she does unload lead into him. Perhaps the night has become too much
. He whispers, “I had to see you.” Like a ghost. “I love you.”
“Just shut up,” she snaps. “Goddammit.” Only those words dressed in his voice could weaken her resolve now. She leaves the gun on the island with its twin and extracts her phone from her purse. There's really only one logical course of action that she can see from here, one that will cement her place in the middle of it. For a long moment, she just stares at the piece of plastic, and Seth's blood on her hands. Maybe it was just a brotherly spat that got a little out of hand. Would Caleb really make that final move? There is no way to know for sure. Can she still back out? Seth groans again. No, it's out of her hands.
Her fingers find her speed dial by muscle memory, and she holds down the button until the call connects. There is no turning back from here. She waits for the gruff voice on the other end. It says, “Yeah?”
“Mikie,” she answers in a steady tone that belies the storm within her, “I apologize for calling so late, but there's someone at my apartment that I think you might need to see.”
Chapter 2
Morgan Estates, New York City. January 21st.
It's the quiet that pulls him into waking. It's a huge void, so wrong in this city of perpetual noise. He has been lingering in a half-conscious state, stuck between lucid dreams and blurred memories. But the silence pries his eyes open.
The space in front of him is smudged at first. Even through the haze, he knows he is not near the ground. He is in one of the family's places, a medically equipped penthouse somewhere high above the city. He's alone with only the hiss of the room's temperature control.
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