Page 91 of The Killer Card

“What’s your location?”

“My house. You know the address.”

“On my way.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Sean pulls me away from the wall, shoving me toward his front door. When we’re far enough away from Sonya he leans in, growling in my ear. “I don’t give a shit who you are, you stay the fuck away from my wife and the fuck away from this house. You understand me, buddy? Swear it and I won’t press charges—”

“She’s my goddamn sister—”

“And she told me you were dead the last seventeen years.” He yanks the door open just as a cop car is pulling up to the curb. “So why don’t you do us all a favor and go back to being dead?”

A few words are exchanged between Sean and the officer and then I’m being shoved into the back of the patrol vehicle. Sonya is standing on the front stoop, her arms wrapped around herself as she watches her husband give the officer his statement. Pictures are taken of what I did to his face, then of mine. I want to tell them to go take pictures of hers too. Of her wrists.

I don’t know why I don’t. I don’t know why I keep my mouth shut, watching as Sean heads back to the house, wrapping an arm around my sister and kissing her temple once before leading her back inside. As if he actually loves her. As if people like him are even capable of love.

But I don’t say a word, watching as my sister disappears in a rearview mirror for the second time in my life. Not knowing, just like the last time, if I’ll ever see her again.

23 Years Ago

Chapter Thirty

Graham

The clip Grandfather gave me only held two bullets.

That’s how easy he’d expected the job to be. Two bullets, a quick job. Now those two bullets resided in Andrei’s shoulder and my grandfather’s brain, respectively. So, when I pulled the trigger, finally hoping to end it- all the misery and pain that had become my wretched life- there was nothing but a disappointing click.

Kira is at my side before I can even lower the weapon, ripping it from my hand and tossing it across the room. She cups my face, looks at the bruising around my neck, the teeth marks on my back, the blood drying on my skin and she pulls me into a hug so fierce I break down into gut wrenching sobs. She holds me in her arms for so long we lose track of time and place. She holds me until Sonya starts screaming, until there are red and blue lights outside the windows and cops breaking down the door.

A neighbor had called the cops when they heard the gunshots. Kira holds me while they search the house and tries to hold on as they take all of us into custody, even Sonya.

Down at the station the two security guards who lived on the premises tell the cops it was me- that I’d apparently been plotting to murder my grandfather for months- and I’m booked as a juvenile, mugshot and all. The staff admit everything they know, and the police believe them when they say they only worked in the house and had nothing to do with the drugs or the trafficking or the weapons. They believe Sonya was a victim despite there not being a scratch on her, and eventually- after several long interviews with Kira and the paramedics and a social worker- they finally believe that the murders I committed tonight were in self-defense.

The state of me helps that argument easily.

The paramedics assess the cuts on my body gently and then a social worker is speaking to Kira- who is released following her own testimony against her employer- regarding my parents and my sister and where I’m supposed to go still weeks away from turning eighteen. Kira offers to keep me but because she’s not my blood, was just arrested at the scene of my crime, and has questionable legal status the social worker tells it’s unlikely the state will allow her to take me in. She was brought here on a special visa twenty-five years ago, which expired within a year. No one ever looked into it because my grandfather was very good at making certain people not exist. I’m hyper aware that the only reason that’s been discovered is because of me and my actions tonight.

When Sonya- who is already twenty-one- is asked to take me, she profusely refuses. “I will have nothing to do with him! He’s taken everything from me! Can you not see all that I have lost?! I am twenty-one I cannot take care of him! He is troubled!” No one understands her Russian, but Kira politely translates that the answer is a firm no.

It’s hours- maybe even days- before the scene at the house is cleared and I’m being let out of a cell and put into the back of an SUV. My cuts are clean and bandaged and a fresh shirt on my back. Sonya is also released being led away from me to another vehicle, and not by a public officer. A private car arrives for her, and my pulse rockets when I realize who might have sent it. Pulling away from the social worker I reach for her arm. She pulls away with a disgusted sneer.

“Don’t touch me—”

“Don’t marry him,” I warn her. My eyes are wide, pleading, and she must see it because she doesn’t walk away. “Please, Yaya… Anyone but him…”

She looks me over, her gaze catching on the bandage on my neck. Her throat works to swallow, her jaw tight. Finally, she says, “I believe you have ruined that prospect for me anyway. God only knows where I will end up now.”

Then she leaves, and I’m taken to a boys’ home for the next six weeks while they wait for me to turn eighteen. It’s the last time I see my sister for over twenty years.

I see Kira one last time before she returns to her family in Serbia. She leaves me an envelope of cash to get by once I’m on my own, but more importantly she gives me my father’s name- Graham Alejandro Rosales. His family is still in Venezuela, and eventually I’ll reach out to my aunt and get to know them. But for now, I hold onto his name, keep it close to my heart, and intend to take it the first legal chance I get. I’ll change all of it, I’ll leave my old life behind and become something better.

Someone worth dying for.

I end up back in jail six months later and spend a year in prison for dealing narcotics. It’s my first offense as an adult- my fourth overall- and I’m let out on good behavior, but any hopes of getting a respectable job, of being better than I was shaped to be in that house, are gone the moment those cuffs lock around my wrists.

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