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17
ADRIANA
Everything that happened up to this point was weighing on me, including how I treated Brody. I was used to treating weak boyfriends poorly, but a man like Brody…I was embarrassed by how I handled his absence at my doctor's appointment. The hormones, geez….
Part of me was also torn because I felt like he shouldn’t have missed it, no matter what.Unless he’s trying to keep you and your father alive…
Over the next few weeks I noticed an increased surveillance around me, and Brody had to reassure me several times that it was his men. Some of my father’s men were around too, though some were a bit nervous because of the destruction of his compound.
Worse was the fact that Brody was never around. In the past, when a boyfriend wasn’t around, I would quickly dump him and move on. This was the first time I ever felt like I had to hold on to the man I loved.
I would call him if he worked long hours and hadn’t texted me.
“When are you coming back?” I would ask. Sometimes, he would be brusque.
“I need to get everything in order,” he told me.
“Why can’t I be a part of it and help you?” It bothered me to no end that he wouldn’t let me contribute to the cause. After all, keeping my father and I alive meant that we had to be aware of everything too.
Brody gave me some details, but I suspected he wasn’t telling me everything.
“Adriana, you need to be able to recognize the Reed’s calling card so they don’t get you. Stay away from Englewood, North Lawndale, and Grand Crossing. They’ll never attack in public though.”
“Where will they attack?” I asked.
Brody was silent for a moment. It felt like maybe he wasn’t telling me because he didn’t know.
“The Reeds are…getting greedy,” he said. “I’ve had Carlo find their weaknesses but they only seem to be getting stronger.” He sounded like he was trying to avoid telling me something.
“What is it? I asked. “Out with it.”
“Your father’s gang is weak,” Brody finally said.
I couldn’t believe him. “My father is the best there is,” I said, though I knew that was a lie. If anything, I knew that my father was brash, and that too many of his men had been killed in the attack on his compound.
Additionally, the Reeds seemed to be finding more and more of his safe houses. The truth was hurting me, and I didn’t want to admit it.
“Come on, Adriana,” Brody said. “We both know that the only way things will get better is if your father recovers.”
This too bothered me. “You mean WHEN my father recovers,” I said. The doctor had said that he should be fully functional in a few weeks if he got some rest, but my father was a bull, and he was making things worse by trying to prove he was ready now.
During one incident, when I visited him at his home, he offered to arm wrestle one of his guards. The guard had a wide-eyed look of fear when my dad asked him to a match, and it was because he didn’t want to.
They sat down at the table, and my dad was still pale from having lost so much blood. He had also lost a lot of weight, and the guard would have won, had he been stupid.
Throwing his arms up, my father said, “Put her there.”
I could think of several inappropriate things that the guard could have said, but, again, the guard wasn’t stupid. He placed his arm on the table to wrestle my father.What else could he do?
Losing to my father proved harder than I thought it would have for the guard. Brody was right. My father had gotten much weaker since the attack, and it was definitely messing with his psyche.
I watched as I cringed at the sight of the guard, who was significantly bigger than my dad, trying to lose without making it obvious to my father. The guard pretended to exert himself, but my father wasn’t stupid either.
“You’re faking it,” he said. “Come on, give me a real match!”
Out of the corner of his eye, I could see the guard trying to get my attention with his pleading eyes. I had to do something.
“Why don’t you arm wrestle with me?”
