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“Boss—” Stewart tries to protest, but my uncle cuts him off.
“Shut the fuck up, Stewart,” Mickey snaps. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re stepping in here. You don’t know who these menare.”
Wondering why he seems so angry and concerned, I ask, “Who are they?”
He’s never given a shit before. Why now?
His expression hardening with a mixture of anger and pain, my uncle looks me dead in the eyes. “They’re the men that killed your father.”
3
Jude
It’s strange to me that every time I’ve found myself back inside the confines of Garden City, I feel this oppressive desire to get back on a plane and leave.
It’s not that I hate this place that I call my home, it’s more that the ties that seem to bind so many of my family simply do not exist for me.
No wife and children await me in the sterile, empty house I’ve been shuttered away in for the last however many months. There’s nothing inside the place beyond my clothing, a laptop, a bed, and an empty refrigerator. No pictures or things to make it my own.
There’s no need to have such things, anyways. I’ll be sent back out into the world soon enough and such trappings would only be in the way.
Staring at the city’s skyline while Thaddeus drives us to Lucifer’s downtown office, I wonder if Garden City has always been this ugly?
Is it the way the sun reflects off the buildings, showing some deep flaw?
Maybe it’s the city’s way of finally showing the deep, infected corruption of its humanity.
Maybe I just need to shut the fuck up.
Looking over to Thaddeus, I frown at him as much as I frown at myself. He’s back here, as well. He’s been pulled from the wild. Pulled from the nomadic life we both live.
We’re the last of the nomads, the last of our family’s wanderers.
The last of the free, if you ask me personally.
Well, we would be free if they let us off our damn leashes and let us do what we do best.
“Has Lucifer or Simon given you any indication on when we’ll be allowed to leave this shitstain of a city?” I ask Thaddeus.
He just shrugs his massive shoulders.
That’s all the answer I’m going to get out of him.
Thaddeus doesn’t talk unless he wants to, and that’s just about never. I’ve known him ten years now, and it’s rare that he answer a question outright, and even more rare for him to start conversation.
When he does, it’s never more than a few words.
Lucifer can get him to talk, sometimes, but even then it’s like talking to a brick wall.
“You want to get back out into the world?” I ask him.
Nodding, he grunts a long sigh at me then returns his full focus to the off-ramp. We’ll be at the office soon, and I’ll be in for another day of tedium.
Meetings about numbers, profits, losses, and ways to spark growth.
I don’t have the mind for these things.
I’m the scalpel of our family. I do the dirty wet work. I’m not meant to watch all the busy little bees going about their daily lives.
