Well, not thing. Man.
Wade.
I don’t know his last name, no one does – despite me having a dozen men looking for information for the past four years. He’s a ghost but he’s a ghost who wants nothing more than to bring my entire family crumbling to the ground.
Five years ago, right before my father let me and Kortez go off on our own, there was an attempt on my father’s life. A rival family wanted our territory upstate, and while we were able to neutralize the threat within a few days, we lost a lot of good men.
One of those men was Wade’s father, John Baric.
Within a year, our shipments, storage facilities,and even our safehouses began to get hit. It didn’t take long for Wade to own up to the damage, but when we began to look into his identity, we realized we couldn’t find him anywhere. We assume Wade’s last name is his mother’s since we were only able to find correspondence and photos of Wade and John when he was about ten.
Their shortened relationship didn’t make a difference to Wade, though, and John had apparently left him hundreds of files on my family and our organization. A part of me is glad he died when he did, because we haven’t been able to uncover what he planned to do with the information.
Now it’s four years after we learned Wade’s name and each year, he kills more of our men, steals more of our money, and destroys more of our property. I have no doubt he’s who is behind Roman being set up for the murder of our club employees. It reeks of Wade.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, as if thinking of my cousin was a form of telepathy asking him to call me for the hundredth time today. I reach into my jeans and press the button to quit the incessant buzzing as Kortez throws a match onto the gasoline covered bodies.
The smell of rotting flesh immediately overwhelms my nose, and I snap my fingers to get Kor’s attention. “Douse the place and light it, I’ll get the car.”
He sends me a nod, his skull printed balaclava glinting in the moonlight that shines through the warehouse windows. Even from here I can see the spots of dried blood across the white paint. That combined with the dark look in his eyes, the can of gasoline clutched tightly in his hand, and the handle of the gun poking out from his waistband has turned him into a man straight out of the mafia movies.
It’s the complete opposite of who he was.
It’s the complete opposite of who he should be.
Eve wouldn’t even recognize him.
I don’t think she would recognize me, either.
My once bare face is now filled with dark scruff and acts as the inspiration for nightmares instead of daydreams. Right after my father brought us home, he shoved me in the basement for some reflection that included letting his men come in and beat me one by one before he came in a week later with his favorite blade clutched in his hand.
I left that basement with four broken ribs, a fractured jaw, a dislocated ankle and knee, a burn on my chest, and a slash across my face.
My hand comes up to trace the scar as I walk out into the humid night air, fingers trailing from the bottom of my jaw on the left side, across my lips and nose, over my eye, and up my forehead to the right. Even my hair grows differently where the blade continued into my scalp before my father drew it away from my body.
He told me it was a reminder that I belong to him and the family, and love would never be a priority for me.
Valente men cannot afford to love, and now no one could ever love you.
It’s not like it matters. Eve is gone, a ghost in the wind that’s even more elusive than Wade.
Kortez and I went back to Florida the first chance we got, but the mothers at the orphanage said Eve had raced off after graduation and never came back. We packed up a few things the mothers had kept and left Jacksonville behind, but not before stopping by my old warehouse just to check.
It was empty, spotless. Someone had come to cleanthe blood from where I killed the man that knocked Kortez out, angry for Eve that someone would hurt her best friend and scared that he would be subject to the same horrors I came to Florida to get away from.
The only thing to show that I, or Kortez, was ever there, was the burned-out husk of his old Mustang.
I told him I would get him a new one, but he said the car wasn’t meant for him and wouldn’t be the same without her in the passenger seat.
I knew what he meant. It’s the same reason I’d never gotten a new Maserati.
Instead, we decided to get the newest Porsche Taycan, an absolute beauty of a car with all leather interior and an upgraded engine that can hit just under two hundred miles an hour. She’s our new woman.
Kortez walks out of the warehouse as soon as I pull our car around, the engine purring as he opens the door and slides into the seat, bringing the smell of smoke with him. “We’re going to need to air this baby out on the plane.”
He grunts, sliding his mask off and throwing it into the backseat. “Have you heard from Roman again?”
All work and no play, that’s Kortez. I didn’t know him very well before my father took him, but I don’t think this is the man Eve loved – and I know she loved him.
