Chapter 8
Xander
It was sostrange being back.
Being home.
Home.
Over the last few years I’d had some days where it felt like I’d never return. When I thought about it now, it was clear to me that I’d been on a mission of vengeance that would have carried me to the last days of my life.
Looking for Balthazar Kane and trying to find answers was like digging around a haystack looking for that proverbial needle. It was people like him who gave weight to sayings like that.
Simply because it was difficult.
Difficult but not impossible, but bordering near enough on the impossible.
Seeing Jack now made me see that realistically I’d erred on the side of failure because I couldn’t face him.
After that very emotion-filled reunion that saw me in tears too, we went inside the house. There the bulk of the time was spent tending to Frankie.
Just as I’d thought, Jack knew exactly what to do. The man was medically trained and just the sort of person we needed, who understood why we couldn’t pitch up to the hospital without answering some very important questions that would undoubtedly land us in trouble. More shit.
Jack skillfully removed the bullet from Frankie’s arm, patched him back up, and set him up in a room the way Frankie set me up at his family’s home.
Once we were all packed out with the little we had, I joined Jack for the looming conversation we needed to have.
The conversation that was a combo of two very big matters. The most pressing questions were where I’d been for the last five years and what happened to me. I’d practically returned from the dead.
The next big conversation was Giovanni, Jia and Frankie.
I’d pitched up on Jack’s drive in trouble, just like when I first met him at sixteen years old.
I couldn’t believe that was twenty years ago.
Twenty years ago I snuck into his garage, injured from being beaten up after a job with mobsters went wrong. I’d thought then that I was in the deepest shit of my life. It was my first taste of mafia guys and the last until this recent stint with Giovanni. It was enough however to teach me a damn good lesson.
Twenty years later I was in trouble again. Worse than ever before.
We sat in the kitchen at the breakfast table, opposite each other. It was close to lunchtime and the sun beamed through the window in all its glory.
It seemed brighter to me here, like everything felt more enhanced.
The thought was stupid because like the moon, the sun was the same. Couldn’t really vary in brightness across the states. Maybe across the world in some parts but not the way I was thinking.
“I kept imagining this,” Jack stated. He ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair and gazed across at me with that fatherly warmth I’d always appreciated.
I looked back to him. “That I’d come to you clearly in trouble again?” I might have been going for some element of humor but didn’t manage to pull it off. There was nothing funny or humorous in any of this situation.
He gave me a warm smile and rested his elbows on the table.
“Xander, this is me. I’ve waited years for this and I want you to be real with me. That was the first thing I asked you when we first met. Remember?”
“I remember Sir. Back then I had fewer secrets.”
“It’s not about the amount of secrets you have, son. It’s the content that defines them. Now I’m sitting here looking at a man who I consider my son. I was told he was dead, I even got his dog tags. I buried you, or what they told me was left of you and still I refused to believe it was true.”
His gaze clung to mine and I couldn’t look away.
