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These people thought everyone was under their thumb.
“After we make the rounds, maybe,” my father said, and with a hand on my lower back, he added, “We’ll talk later.” And then he pulled me away from them, guiding me around them.
Through the crowd we went. I lost track of how many people I met, how many hands I refused to shake. The more I refused to touch, the harder the vein in my father’s head popped out. Oh, I was making him furious, I knew. Too damn bad. I could only act like the perfect daughter for so long.
I met a few of the other hopefuls who all said their sons were upstairs with the others, but I didn’t really pay much attention—mostly because my eyes had spotted someone who shouldn’t be here. Someone wearing all black, save for a bit of white around his neck.I was momentarily struck by the thought that Father Charlie was here.
But it wasn’t Father Charlie.
What in the hell was a priest doing here?
I took a sip from my glass as we neared the priest. It looked like he was talking to someone who was important, a man who wore an all-black suit—yes, even the undershirt and the tie were black. A man in his forties, with pitch-black hair and striking green eyes. A man that could give my father a run for his money.
“Atticus,” my father called his name. “There you are. I was beginning to suspect you weren’t here.”
Atticus Jameson, the man who was considered the head of the Black Hand, even though the members of the Hand were on the same level. It was Atticus, my father had told me, who had the most respect. Atticus who would do anything to keep the Black Hand going, even though criminal empires like that were a dying breed in this day and age.
“Miguel,” Atticus said, smiling. “Good to see you.” Those emerald eyes fixated on me, and I was momentarily struck at how handsome the man was. He might be my father’s age, but he was a kind of gorgeous most men just weren’t. Mature, attractive, the kind of man that made me wish I wasn’t as broken as I was. “Is this your daughter?”
“Yes. Atticus, this is Giselle. Giselle, this is Atticus Jameson,” my father rattled off.
Just like everyone else, Atticus offered me his hand. My eyes fell to it, and I wanted to take it. I wanted to shake off the anxious feeling residing deep within my gut and act like it was nothing to shake a stranger’s hand, but I couldn’t. I could do a lot of things… but I just couldn’t do that.
“Ah, shy, are you? That’s all right,” Atticus spoke with a twinkle in his eye, but then his gaze moved to my father. “We could all use a breath of fresh air in here.” I wasn’t sure if he meant in general, or here in this room, or on the Black Hand. I couldn’t imagine any of the other heirs being shy.
I wasn’t shy, though. I just didn’t see the point in all this needless touching. If you knew each other, fine. If you were friends, fine. But strangers? Literally, what was the point? No stranger, no man, had ever earned the right to touch me—and yet it had happened, anyway.
“Ah,” Atticus said, as if suddenly remembering he wasn’t alone. He stepped aside, allowing my father and me to see the man he’d been speaking to before. “Have you met Father Ezekiel yet? He’s at the church down on First Street. He’s been a staunch supporter of the Black Hand for years now.”
The church on First Street. That was the church my father had suggested I go to after we’d unpacked. So it had been more of a selfish wish than selfless—just what I expected when it came to my father. He only suggested that particular church because its priest was close to Atticus Jameson and the rest of the Hand.
I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I was the least surprised person here.
“Father Ezekiel,” my father said, unlike me, having no qualms in offering his hand for a good, manly shake. “How long have you been a man of the cloth? You don’t look old enough to be a priest. All the ones I’ve ever met had at least twenty or thirty years on you.”
I looked to the side, missing the actual handshake between my father and the priest. My heart hurt. Everything in me hurt when I thought about Father Charlie. How flippant my own father could sound while talking about those who were dead. It really wasn’t fair.
The men who deserved the world never got it. The vile, evil men this society had created stole everything right out from under them.
“I’m older than I look, I assure you,” the priest, Father Ezekiel, spoke. “And if it’s easier for you, you can call me Zek, at least while we aren’t in the church.”
I held in a scoffing sound. Father Charlie never would’ve said anything like that. My eyes lifted, meeting the priest in question and his gaze—finding that particular gaze was on me, not my father. He stared at me with an expression I couldn’t read, and I was momentarily struck by how right my father had been.
Father Ezekiel was young. Too young to be a priest, certainly. In his late twenties, maybe. Or early thirties, at the latest. He said he was older than he looked, and he certainly didn’t look that old, even wearing the priest garb. His hair was as black as you could get, its length combed back. Eyes that were a shade too bright and too blue stared at me, a pretty hue, a startling color, given his complexion. He had to have some Hispanic blood in him.
“My late wife was very religious,” my father was saying, unaware that the priest currently stared at me as if I was the only one in the room. “Giselle is, too. I told her she should visit the church, but I don’t think she has, yet.” He looked to me for confirmation.
“I’ve been busy,” I lied, and the lie tasted weird on my tongue. Maybe because I said it to a priest, or maybe because I couldn’t place Father Charlie in line with this new priest standing before me. They just didn’t go together. They might be two sides of the same coin, but you didn’t see them side by side, ever.
Ezekiel—I couldn’t call him Father Ezekiel, because it felt wrong—finally blinked. I think that was the first time he’d blinked this whole freaking time. If anyone had an uncanny stare, it was him. “You should come by,” he said. “I always make time for people like you.” He glanced to Atticus, saying, “Excuse me.” He said nothing else as he walked away from us, which left me to wonder just what the hell he’d meant by that.
People like me? He didn’t know me. He didn’t know me at all. How dare he lump me in with all these people. The indignation inside me only grew as I watched him walk away, feeling the strange urge to follow him and demand an explanation.
“He is… not what I expected,” my father said.
“Yes, he has a unique personality, certainly,” Atticus replied. “He has to, to handle a church in this city. Our crime rate is nothing to laugh at, sadly.” At that, I resisted my urge to roll my eyes again—talking about their crime rate, as if they didn’t have a hand in it themselves.
Gag me.
