“I have no relationship with anyone from my mother’s side.”
The man takes off his baseball hat, the only protection he has because they don’t have hard hats here. He fixes his hair and takes out a napkin to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Dirt is trapped under his short fingernails. I can tell he’s uncomfortable, but his hard life is going to push him into confronting me in some way, I’m sure of it. This is why I stayed to talk to him. Maybe I’m a charitable person. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.
“Rumor has it you and your brother never liked your dad.”
“We didn’t care for either of our parents. Good riddance.”
The man doesn’t blink. “Yeah, well, we don’t care about him either. Been living out here on the outskirts since he put a bounty on all our heads. Hunted us like dogs.”
“He’s dead now. Why aren’t you making your way back?”
The man’s eyes brighten. “Why, Declan Crossbow, are you inviting us back?”
I shrug. “Why not?”
“If that’s the case, we would be indebted to you. A whole bunch of us.”
I rub my fresh-shaven jaw. Smooth. Nice. “How many of you are in this bunch?”
“Oh, about seventeen thousand.”
“Come again?”
“Seventeen thousand. Give or take.”
“That’s a…that’s a lot of people.”
“The entire district is over forty thousand people, sir. We have women and children.”
“Are you saying you have seventeen thousand people who could use some of that cargo you stole in a fight?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”
I take out my phone. “What’s your number?”
“No phone, sir.”
Glass gave me a card. Nobody gives cards anymore. I wish I had a business card. With crossbows instead of an hourglass on them. That could be my logo. “Once the city’s clear of garbage, if you know what I mean, Connor, my brother, will come get you.”
The man licks his lips. I can tell it’s a move made by a man who’s bloodthirsty and can almost taste the blood on his tongue. “We can help you clean up. There’s lots of garbage. Much more than two men or even a dozen could handle.”
“You think you know me?” I step closer to him, smell the sweat of a hardworking man. “You have no idea what my brother and I can handle. I’ll go alone with him to the battlefield before I take your seventeen thousand people. You know why? Because Connor is a tried-and-tested warrior. Always on my side. I don’t know you.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt. I hated your father, but you are our blood. With you on the throne, we can come home.”
I step back. “I’ll send word when it’s safe to return.”
“My wife will start packing right away.” He puts on his hat and bids me farewell.
I stare at the man’s retreating figure, thinking how I did the world a great service by getting rid of my father.
The cold hangar is full of crates, but I’m not lost. I walk in the general direction of where I saw the forklift worker dump our closed crates. When I find them, I slice one with my switchblade and peek inside to see neatly stacked hand grenades.
A thought occurs to me. Endo Macarley rarely works randomly. I wonder if he knew that the people Massio Crossbow wronged live around here. I wonder if Endo used them. Probably.
It’s too bad that Anabela Crossbow was a shitty mother. Everyone loved her and felt sorry for her. Connor, I, and my dead dad are the only ones who knew how much she hated him and us. She might’ve been a great person, a woman struck by the misfortune of being the object of my dad’s obsession, but she was a shitty ass fucking mother, and I stand by that.
Her fucking rape babies.
