There’s no room to sit. My spine throbs from standing. My breath fogs the cold steel. Sleep comes in seconds and never stays. Every time I close my eyes, I see my brothers’ faces.
They also reveal their names—Joe, Harrison, Tyler, Trey, Otto, Neal, and Jonathan. I’m not sure if those are their real ones or aliases, but I do know that the man they work for—the man who put this all together—is Rush Banks, my father’s top enemy. A man who has been systematically trying to break apart my father’s hold on the West Coast’s underground long before I was born.
And I know now, more than ever, that I will make all of these men pay. I will make their families suffer, and I will ruin them all like they’ve so easily ruined me.
The day they finally leave,I wait a while before slipping out of the safe room.
The hallway reeks. I gag and stumble into the guest bath, vomiting into the sink. I rinse my mouth, wash my hands twice, and change clothes.
Drawers in the office have been emptied. Furniture flipped. My father’s records are gone—or at least the ones kept in plain sight.
Before making any other moves, before calling 9-1-1, I video-call our closest family friend, Chester.
“Hey there, Ryder!” he smiles. “I’m not due to pick you and your dad up for the big trip for another week, but I’m?—”
“He’s dead.” I cut him off. “Him, my mom, my brothers, my aunts, and all my cousins… They’re dead.”
The smile slides off his face. “Show me.”
I walk into the dining room for the first time, showing him a massacre. Bloodstains cover the walls, the chairs coated in death.
The bodies lie where the killers left them.
I can’t bear to move any closer to see my mother and father, and thankfully, he doesn’t make me.
“I hid in the safe room,” I admit, choking on the guilt that’s been sitting in my throat for days. “Maybe I should’ve gone with them…”
“No. You did what your father would’ve wanted,” he says. “You survived.”
I don’t say anything right away. There’s blood on my hands, and not just figuratively. I don’t feel like a leader. I feel like a boy who hid in a metal box while his family died—while the smell of pasta and blood fought for space in the air.
“Should I call 9-1-1 now?”
“What exactly would they be helping with?”
I hold back a sigh.
“I’m on my way, but you need to call in the syndicate from New York and Miami,” he says. “Tell them you have a cleanup job, and that there’s no need for them to submit their talents to work under Rush Banks.”
“But then who will they?—”
“They work for you.” His voice is firm. “You’re in charge now, Ryder.”
“Of what?”
“Everything.”
End of Episode 8
Folie à Deux
EPISODE 9
Autumn
Mint green, sage green, lime green…
I toss the various Styrofoam balls into their slots at Hobby Lobby.
