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There wasn’t anything in the way of a criminal record, meaning he simply hadn’t been caught yet. Given that he dealt drugs to a rich clientele probably afforded him some protection, or it meant he was smart enough to stay off of the police’s radar. Based on our brief but informative interaction, my guess was on the latter. I supposed he had a right to be cocky, then. For his sake, I hoped it didn’t cost him in the end.
I took what little I knew about Marek and compared it to the paltry amount of information we’d collected from the other dealers. A few names, a couple of dates, and the occasional location. None of it matched. They were all selling Nirvana and yet that was the only connection I could find between the dealers.
Valery was right about one thing, though. The quality of Marek’s drugs versus the others was much higher, meaning he was directly involved with whoever was running the mysterious new enterprise and, thus, he operated on a different level from the dealers we’d been questioning.
The calculating part of my brain said I should track Marek down and get more information out of him by whatever means necessary, either personally or by letting Valery have at him like he was itching to. That way I could honestly say I’d exhausted every lead available.
But there was another part that was inexplicably defensive of him, for reasons I wasn’t entirely sure of. Maybe his difficult upbringing pulled at my heart. Or maybe it was the look in his eyes during our conversation. Buried under all of that defiance and bravado, I saw anger and just a glimpse of fear, someone resigned to fighting the world on their own. I recognized that look. It was the same thing I saw in myself long ago.
Whatever his thoughts were about me, that shared feeling made me want to prove Marek wrong. Despite his assumptions, I was nothing like the men he was used to dealing with. Rich, yes, but I’d fought tooth and nail for everything I had, just like him. If I could climb to the top, he could too, so long as he learned to cooperate before his stubbornness killed us both.
4
MAREK
As soon asI stepped out of the Uber, I immediately wished I hadn’t. The rundown blue house glared at me as I glared back at it. I hated this fucking house. This shitty neighborhood. The whole village. All of it.
Colomb, my hometown. Like “Colombia,” but the founder said “Fuck it” and didn’t bother with the last two letters. Kinda like how life didn’t bother with this village. In reality, it was named for some German guy who set up camp in the late 1800s and recruited a bunch of other Germans and Poles to settle the area. But over the past couple of decades, any sense of community shriveled up and died, along with things like business and opportunity and hope. The people here were a mishmash of races, ethnicities, religions—you name it—and the only thing that connected us was fucking abject misery.
Landlocked by other shitty towns and dying industrial centers, Colomb was close enough to Chicago to see what a normal lifecouldbe if we weren’t stuck in this wasteland. On the wrong side of the city limits, good things were continually out of reach for plebs like us. We might as well have been on a different planet.
I couldn’t help but shudder and it wasn’t from the autumn breeze. Memories of mice and roaches made me want to rip my skin right off to get rid of them, but it didn’t change the fact I had to go inside that house.
Adjusting my grip on the bags of groceries, I forced myself to move up the crumbling walkway, purposely crushing weeds underfoot where they had managed to push up through the cement cracks. If the people couldn’t thrive in Colomb, why should the fucking weeds?
I didn’t even have to knock. I’d stepped one foot on the slanted, rotting porch and the front door flew open. Brianna rushed out, throwing her arms around my waist.
“Marek! I knew it was you! But I didn’t know you were coming today. Why didn’t you text us?”
“Hey, Bri.” I kissed her head and nodded toward the house, ignoring her question because I didn’t want to admit the trip was spur of the moment, brought on by pure guilt. When I realized it had been over a week since I’d last visited my siblings, I ran to the grocery store and got what I could afford, hoping they hadn’t completely starved in my absence. “Let’s get inside. It’s starting to get cold.” Enough heat already leaked out of the shitty, broken windows, it didn’t need to come rushing out the door either. At least it wasn’t winter yet. September nights were cold, but not ice-forming-inside-your-room cold. That came in December/January.
Bri grabbed the gallon of milk from the crook of my arm and took one of the bags, darting into the house with them, yelling into the dim interior. “Marek’s here!”
Ezra came tearing around the corner and launched himself at me with a warrior yell. I had enough time to set the groceries down to catch him before we both toppled over. God knew I didn’t want to touch that floor with anything other than my shoes.
“Oh my God! You’re getting tall. What are you? Ten feet now?” I swung him in a circle before setting him down and ruffling his dark hair. He promptly dove into the groceries, rooting around for the fruit snacks I always tried to bring. “Where’s Axel?” I asked Brianna, glancing around warily.
“His room,” she answered, rolling her eyes. “He’s always in his room these days. I feel like we see him about as much as we seeher.”
“Yeah? She at least pass out here on occasion?”
Brianna looked away, chewing her bottom lip.
I didn’t like that fucking look and I knew the answer before I pressed for further. “Bri…?”
“She left last week and hasn’t been back. I called the usual people but no one has seen her. I don’t know where she is,” she mumbled, disappearing into the kitchen.
God-fucking-damn it…
“Buddy, can you help Bri with the groceries?” I asked Ezra with a smile.
He nodded, crammed an entire handful of fruit snacks into his mouth, and lugged a bag into the kitchen. Since he was so short, he ended up dragging most of it along the ground. God willing, the bag didn’t catch on the torn linoleum and rip. I wouldn’t let a dog eat anything off that floor, let alone my siblings. The only good thing was that particular bag had all of the canned goods; if something did happen to fall out, Bri could bleach the hell out of it.
Once Ezra was gone, I stormed up the narrow, squeaky stairs and barged into the boys’ bedroom.
A haze of smoke and the distinct skunk odor greeted me before Axel screamed, “Get the fuck out!”
I stalked over to his bed and ripped the joint out of his hand. Breaking it in half, I chucked it out the open window along with the heat and money I didn’t fucking have. I slammed it shut so hard the glass rattled and whirled on him. When he tried to get up from his bed, I shoved him down again and slapped him upside the head as hard as I could. “The fuck is wrong with you? Huh?!”
