Her face scrunches up, like something I said could possibly have been strange. I bet it’s because she hasn’t met Jackson and only gets to hang around these men whose pecs she could motorboat.
I hear footsteps as a man wearing a suit walks down the hallway. His hands are in his pockets and he’s wearing a warm smile on his face while he strolls up to greet us.
It instantly makes me suspicious.
“The infamous Sandman at my door. Come, come. Let him have his weapons. He’s not a prisoner here, for heaven’s sake. Although… I feel like a grenade launcher might be a tad much.”
“The last guy who fucked me over agrees,” I say.
He chuckles and I find that I already like this man more than Sophia.
“I’m pleased to finally get to meet you,” he says as he leads us down the long hallway. “My name is Teo Barlow. I’m Raul Barlow’s son.”
“I would say it’s a pleasure, but it’s not.”
We move past many doors to the farthest point of the house and into a room with some couches.
“Please, have a seat,” he says with a gesture.
He sits down across from me and leans forward, hands clasped as his men hover behind me and Sophia except for two who take a spot behind Teo. “I never thought I’d get this opportunity. We’re about the same age and I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I was sitting at a table with my father while he met with this absolutely dreadful man. The man was going on and on about these drugs he was planning to implement to keep his prostitutes working for minimal pay. He was a trafficker who was dragging women and men in for work or sex, and then using addiction to keep them quiet and from trying to run.
“And as I sat there, my father was mesmerized by everything he had to say. I was old enough to understand what he was doing and young enough to question why, but of course I couldn’t say anything. No, not when my father was raising me to take his place. But I remember all I wanted to do was leave. My friends were playing basketball and then they were going shopping tocheck out these new jerseys. They were caught up in the life of a normal teenager, and I was left watching my father fantasize about the prospect of humans coerced into sex work. I’m sure he wondered how he could use it on his killers to keep them in line. I had opened my mouth to say something—I’m not even sure if I knew what I was going to say—but before I could ‘shame’ my father by speaking, the man’s head snapped to the side and blood sprayed out. It coated my father and splattered across my face.
“My father grabbed me and tore me to the ground. His guards latched on to me, dragging me back and shielding me with their bodies as that man lay slumped in his chair, blood draining from the holeyouhad created in his head.”
I watch Teo, wondering why he took so much interest in this. As a child who grew up in the Barlow family, it couldn’t have been his introduction to violence. I wouldn’t be surprised if he already knew how to shoot a gun himself and had watched countless others die by that age. Hell, his father was in charge of numerous killers. So what made that shot I took so important to him? Unless…
“I became obsessed with trying to figure out who took that shot. It didn’t take long because your handler, Lucas, was more than eager to satisfy my hunger for knowledge. He even let me meet you, although I still don’t know why. I feel like everything that man did was like some kind of riddle I was never smart enough to figure out. Do you remember me?”
I don’t. I remember the shot that killed the man he was talking about, but I don’t remember meeting him. Honestly, I paid attention to very little when I was younger. I focused on my job and that was it. The people who Lucas introduced me to were usually of no consequence.
“You see, Sandman, when you took that shot, I envisioned my father being the one in that chair. I thought about what mylife would have been like if you’d slid that gun over mere inches and shot the wrong target. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop wishing for it.”
“Even now… after all this time, that is what you want?” I ask. “That’s why you dragged me here?”
“It is. I want you to kill my father.”
He has some wild delusion that I could end all of his problems just because of a single shot I took many years ago. “Your father is surrounded by countless men and women who are highly trained to protect him,” I say, realizing that this is why he hired someone from outside the family to go after Waylon and Cam.
“Yes, and what a shame it would be if they all failed,” he replies. “I will give you the kid and let all three of you walk away if you do such a simple thing for me.”
“Simple, eh?”
He smiles at me. “Very.”
“You have plenty of men yourself. Why don’t you do it?”
“Because my father has built up an empire, and if people hear that I was the one who usurped him, they really wouldn’t look at me too kindly. You see, these people worship the ground my father walks on. Oddly, I seem to be the only one who hates him.”
“I see,” I say. “The problem is that I’m retired.”
“Not if you want to leave this place alive with that woman and her son.”
I grin as I lean forward, matching his position. “You have four guns pointed at my head right at this moment. They’re staying back and trying to hide the position the guns are in because you want to try to fool me into thinking that this is a safe place for me. That this is an easygoing talk where I will willingly agree with whatever you throw at me. Do you think I’ve gotten this far in life by following the whims of men like you?”
His warm smile is starting to stiffen a bit. “I don’t mean to make it seem like we don’t trust you. They merely have weapons ready on the off chance you turned out to be… unmanageable.”
“Oh, I’m definitely unmanageable,” I say. “I’m just shocked you think I made it this far doing anything on the whims of others. I have no relationship to this woman or her son.”
