1. Kai
Present Day
Leaning back in my chair, Emerson draws a knife across the man’s ribs, and blood seeps from the cut. He screams into the gag in his mouth as he hangs from chains, and I sigh. They always squeal like pigs. What happened to take it like a man?
Me and my brothers don’t enjoy doing this…maybe except for Liam. He seems to enjoy pushing the envelope. Regardless, it is a necessity. These guys don’t talk unless you make them.
It always makes me wonder, though, how far you can push a man to break his loyalty under the threat of death. If I’ve learned anything, we all have different limits. Loyalty is in the mind, not the body. So it’s harder to break, harder to get them to talk. Usually, we push until we know they’re done talking, then end it with a bullet to the head. It’s simpler that way.
But this one won’t be so lucky. We want to make him hurt. He approached our mother while she was shopping the other day. He knocked out Clarence, her bodyguard, and cornered her. No one survives that. We wouldn’t allow it.
“Who sent you?” Liam asks, his tone firm with a quiet coldness. The sound of it would send chills down my spine if it were directed at me. Liam is a ladies’ man, full of charm and comfortable in any room. But when we have to do this, all of us become different.
Emerson socks him in the face, and I wince. I’m pretty sure the guy lost teeth, and he will probably choke on them at the rate we’re going. We’re colder and meaner because we have to be. Otherwise, we’ll all end up in unmarked graves the Costa’s already have dug for us. It’s been fourteen years since we ran, and it’s been quiet for the most part. But Mom knew it wouldn’t last forever. There would come a day when he wanted us back. The only reason he has left us alone this long was because it worked for him. He and the Costa mob have a good racket going. But the balance was disturbed, his seat in Congress is being threatened by an opponent for the first time in five terms. We’re under the impression that he’s nervous about the sudden competition. The status quo has changed, and he is a prideful man who thrives on using others as his pawns. By sending this goon after our mother, Fred Coldwell is reminding us who’s in control, and he’s still a part of our lives.
Leaving couldn’t have been easy for Mom when we were teens. She saved our lives. Now, it’s our turn to protect her by any means necessary. The time of tentative peace is over.
Our captive screams again, and I’m getting tired of this because we’re not getting anything. I suspect he’s just a soldier and doesn’t know what his boss wants. He only does what he’s told.
Liam grabs his hair and yanks his head back while Emerson leans over him with a menacing glare. “This is your last chance, asshole. If you don’t start talking, I will knock your lights out—for good, Gregory.“ The man’s eyes widen, knowing he’s closer to death than he was twenty-four hours ago. He dug his own grave, and we are the executioners.
“His name is John,” I mutter.
“Why should I care?” Liam quips.
I send him a dirty look. “I don’t think he’s going to give us anything, One. He’s a soldier.”
“He had enough details to find Clarence, knock him out, and corner Mom,” Emerson says, glaring at John.
“Come on, we can push him, Kai. For some reason, he’s more scared of them than he is of us, and yet, we are the ones who will end up putting a bullet in his head,” Liam says.
John jerks his chains in a pathetic attempt to free himself.
“There’s no point. He won’t talk, and we’re wasting our time. We need to figure out a plan for Mom. We might have to take turns looking out for her. I don’t care if she has extra security,” I say, and Emerson grunts in agreement.
“That’s fine, but he has to know something. I’m sure he’s seen something, and he just didn’t know it,“ Liam says.
I wave, gesturing for him to proceed. Liam grabs a knife off the table and holds it to the man’s kidney. “He might start talking when I cut out his kidney,” he says, looking a bit too excited at the prospect.
“Liam, the excitement is a little disconcerting. Let’s dial it back a bit,” I mutter.
John looks at me and nods rapidly.
“See? Look at that. Give him an option, and he will take it.” I look him in the eye, blood dripping from his sides. “Are you ready to talk? This is your last chance.” He dips his head. I pull the gag from his mouth, and he takes a deep breath. “You don’t have much time, John. Talk, or I’ll let Liam loose, and trust me, it doesn’t happen often. He’s itching for it,” I taunt. Liam hasn’t gone that far before, but with the odd look in his eye, I’m not so sure that’s the case anymore.
Maybe getting the phone call from Emerson did something to Liam. He had to sit on a plane for over ten hours, hoping Mom was okay. He’s been traveling to Indonesia, South Africa, and a bunch of other places I can’t keep up with. He likes it on the other side of the ocean, but when things happen, he has a long trek home. I have a feeling he’ll be making that trip more often than he thinks. It feels like everything is about to change. Mom does, too. Fred Coldwell is about to make his move. This is just the beginning of the end.
“Look, I really don’t know much,” John finally says. “But they told me to go after her, hoping it would draw you three out. It looks like it did. But the boss was hired by someone. I don’t know who it was. All I know is this was a job.”
I glance at Emerson, and he nods. We know precisely who hired the mob because our father works with them, but John doesn’t know that.
Bang!
We spent about fourteen years preparing for the worst, hoping to one day have some semblance of a normal life. Well, as normal as normal can be for a family like ours. We never had the playing football, basketball, or baseball, going to a normal school, dating girls, getting in trouble kind of lives. We had to live under the radar for a long time. To keep us safe, we were homeschooled with multiple tutors. We had extensive education in math and learned different languages, and our reading levels were far above average. We didn’t have many friends—we still don’t. We have military combat training, even though we’ve never been in the military. Mom took no chances as her teenage sons became men. But we have each other, and that’s all that matters. Protecting each other has been the only goal since we left that night.
“I’ll have the funeral home send his body back to where it belongs,” Emerson says as he wipes off the blood from his hands.
There is a lower level in Mom’s house that is similar to a basement. Part of the house is built into the rock, and it’s where we usually bring our guests. I haven’t been home to Steel Creek in Northern California for a while. I’m usually at my place, about twenty minutes from Mom’s, or on the road, competing in races and freestyle with the team.
I’m a motocross rider, competing in both motocross and freestyle competitions—like backward handstands while in the air. Liam is a professional world champion surfer and a free soloist, climbing anything he can get his hands on. He says climbing without the rope makes it better, even if he’s two hundred feet up in the air. Emerson is a professional middleweight boxer. In the ring, it’s one of the few ways he feels anything, in an official and unofficial capacity. Underground fighting has no rules, and he craves the lack of boundaries.
We were raised in a home with an evil father and a mother who would die to save us. I’ve always wondered if we seek these thrills in an attempt to feel something other than paranoia. Constantly looking over your shoulder can get to you because the peace could be shattered at any moment. It can eat at the soul because it keeps you from trusting anyone, even someone whose only motive is to be your friend.
“Are you guys going to stay the night?” I ask my brothers. They both shrug, and Emerson grabs a body bag. “I’ll make the call,” I tell him.
Liam follows me upstairs as I call our funeral home contact. He does favors for us when bodies need to disappear. We try to use him sparingly, but I bet we’ll call him more often.
I need to get back to Arizona before the competition. We all need to get back. Well, except for Liam, I think as he grabs a paper towel and wipes the remaining blood off his cheek.
“This is going to get worse, isn’t it?” he asks me. His eyes are tired, and a rock settles in my gut. The things he was saying to John were just for added effect, I hope. I don’t think he was going to do those things, but I’m afraid to ask.
“Yeah, I think it is. We will increase Mom’s security detail. We will have to do a rotation or something, show up at random times, and stay with her. I don’t want them to think there’s a routine they can follow to get to her.”
“Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I’ll go first. I haven’t seen her in a few months, and I need some time away from the shore.”
I grin, pulling three bourbon glasses out and setting them on the counter. “Is the sun starting to bake your brain?”
Liam’s a flirt, and he wields it with the ladies.
He smiles and pours each of us a glass. “No, it’s more like a girl I was seeing temporarily, thought it wasn’t temporary. So I figure if I disappear for a month or two, she’ll eventually move on.”
I chuckle, shaking my head. For all the things that make my brothers and I similar, we are also very different. I make a point of avoiding relationships like Emerson. The last thing I want to do is to bring an unsuspecting woman into this mess and inadvertently put her in danger. It’s not fair. Liam doesn’t want that, either, which explains why everything is temporary for him. He usually makes that clear, but according to him, they get a little sticky with him, and then he has to dip—his words, not mine.
I’ve given up all hope for a life that doesn’t include having to worry about someone being hired to kill us. The only reason my brothers and I have been able to go pro is because Mom agreed to a full-time security team. All three of us refused to leave unless she did. Being in the public eye as a winning boxer, world record-setting surfer and climber, and world motocross champion three times over has protected us in some respects. Fred’s less likely to come after public figures, making the Coldwell name look good. Though it doesn’t negate the fact he will try to make us his pawns again. We aren’t na?ve—we knew this was coming.