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I guess that’s the case with everyone, though...
You always think there’s more time.
Another phone call.
Another lunch date.
Another day.
And then it’s gone.
No more.
Nothing.
Alone.
The Flaming Cherry lightens my mood, but I’m still a bitter bitch with no way to blow off steam unless I make another move against Estrada. We’re not ready for that yet, and I’d be too sloppy.
Two days have passed since I talked to my parents, and I can’t stop the frustration coursing through me. My dad wants me to assist in his suicide and make it look like I’m the actual killer. He intends to force my hand in the most gentle yet violent way ever.
And I’m angry about it.
I don’t know how to work out my feelings about the situation. I know what they are... Rage, sadness, heartache... But that doesn’t help me.
How do you cope with the death of a loved one before it happens?
Especially when you know it has to be your hand that wields the weapon.
Echo refills the whiskey in my glass, cutting her wise eyes at me. She’s waiting for me to pop, to start a fight or stab someone.
“Stop watching me like I’m going to kill a customer when you turn your back.”
“I’m not,” she drawls, her southern accent brimming with sarcasm. “I’m worried about you, in a gentleman’s club before noon, drinking yourself into a stupor. You gonna tell me what’s eating at you? Or you want me to guess?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I grumble.
She may know who I am, but I don’t want to delve into cartel politics with her, or how I’ve got to kill my dad to get what I want.
“Your mouth says one thing, but your eyes say another.”
“I’ll be fine, Echo. I’m just processing some news I got the other day.”
“Who died?” she asks, making the blunt question somehow sound tender.
“No one,” I tell her. “Yet.”
Echo studies me for a moment. It’s the same look she’d given me after I helped her hide from her demons without judgment. Like she sees me for me, and she’s just waiting for me to come clean and stop pretending. We have more in common than either of us would like to admit. Blood on our hands, a hidden identity, a shady past. The fucking works.
When I refuse to elaborate, she scoots down the bar to her other customers. Gabriel barges into her space from the stockroom, carrying a stack of boxes to refill the bar, but he stops when he sees me, too.
Maybe The Cherry wasn’t the right call.
Gabe is a towering man, seven years younger than me. He’s the same age as my cousin, Aloysius. But he grew up in the ghetto of Crimson Bay with an addict for a father. He was always on the corner, looking like he was up to no good… And he definitely wasn’t.
That’s how he stumbled across my first kill. Gabe was seven when he saw me pull the trigger, ending a man’s life in the alley behind the Yang’s laundromat. I started keeping tabs on him after that. As he got older, I offered him odd jobs, getting in and out of places I couldn’t go. No one ever paid attention to the kid in the room, so he heard all kinds of useful information.
It wasn’t until he was sixteen that I realized the scrawny kid had grown on me. I found him on his usual corner after a couple of kids had beaten him up. He told me they weren’t from around the Bay, and when I went to leave, to go after them… Gabe stopped me, saying he wasn’t worth the trouble.
