3. Chapter 3
Chapter 3
DECLAN
H er eyes are green. A light green with a golden ring around her pupil. Her face is heart shaped and her skin is the color of creamed coffee, with freckles over her nose. I tried to count them throughout the class but she would move and fidget and I’d lose count. And then I’d have to start all over again.
I know my gawking made her uncomfortable, and that she was purposely ignoring me, and for some reason I like that. I like that I have an effect on her. I have found that women generally react to me in two ways—either they see me as a fun challenge or they fear me. This woman, this Vivian, is neither of these two. She isn’t afraid of me, but she also isn’t going to give in to me. She seems strong-willed. And I like that, a lot.
I am drawn to her. I’ve been unable to stop thinking about her since the last class, and I’d only seen the back of her head and her glossy black hair. Now that I have seen her face, seen her beautiful features, I am obsessed. I can’t explain it. I thought before I’d gotten to class it was curiosity. I’d anticipated that once I had seen her face I would be satiated, my curiosity fed.
Then before I knew it the class was over.
I don’t usually become so fixated that I lose track of time. It disturbs me that it happened. But it is more disturbing the way she practically ran from the classroom. It is then that I know I’ve overstepped. I keep my pace slow as I leave the building, trying to allow her to escape me. But as I exit the building, there she is, staring right back at me from the bus window. I hold her gaze with my own, trapped in place, stopping to give her the space I hadn’t in class.
But this time she doesn’t look away.
I watch the bus leave the stop then look toward the parking lot. That is when I notice the white Mercedes with heavily tinted windows and shiny rims parked next to my black Charger. I heave out a breath and make my way to my car and to my visitor. I can feel the bass of the music coming from the Mercedes as I get closer and then it suddenly stops.
I stand where I am and cross my arms over my chest, waiting. The window rolls down and the face that meets me is the one I am expecting. Eduardo Cruz, errand boy for notorious drug dealer Antonio Perez. Antonio rules the drug market in the area.
“Long time no see, hey Dec?” Eduardo, or Eddie as I’ve always called him, asks me from a small opening in his car window. I don’t answer him. Eddie and I had gone to school together, and he, like many of my classmates, had not been well off. But when he got to high school, he decided to change his fate, and he started dealing at school. The thing is, the administration never knew it was Eddie. He was forgettable. So he moved the stuff quickly and easily, without any hiccups, and was rewarded handsomely. Once out of school, he worked his way up the chain of command to be Perez’s side man.
“Nothing to say to me?” he asks as I just stand there, looking at him.
“You came here,” I remind him. “Do you have something to say to me?”
Eddie laughs, nodding his head. “Yeah, I do.”
I am quickly getting sick of whatever little game Eddie is playing. “Then get out of the fucking car and talk to me like a man,” I demand. I know Eddie is a pussy, but I also know he is most likely well-armed. My father taught me to get people out in the open and assess what harm they could cause. I want Eddie out of that car, and I know watching him get out will let me see if there is anyone else in there with him.
Eddie opens the door, and from my position I am able to see the inside of his vehicle. I scan it quickly, finding all the seats empty. I casually turn my head to see to the floor in both the front and the back, finding those spots clear as well. When I am done, I look at the man before me, and it takes everything I have not to roll my eyes at Eddie.
The Eddie I remember from growing up had clothes either too small or too big, worn out and with holes, often dirty. This Eddie is dressed like every sleazeball drug dealer ever portrayed in any movie. He wears a suit jacket, with a button-down underneath which is open to his stomach. Around his neck, Eddie has so many chains with diamonds it is a wonder he can stand up straight. As he moves his body, the chains sway and catch the light, nearly blinding me from the reflection. To top it all off, his hair is slicked back and appears to have been lathered with petroleum.
Eddie stands with his feet wide and crosses his arms, mimicking my posture, and it pisses me off. “Better?” he asks with sarcasm.
“Talk,” I bark at him, and I’m rewarded as he jumps from my command.
Eddie clears his throat. “Word is you guys are letting people sell at your spots.”
“Word is wrong.”
“I don’t know, Dec,” Eddie says, sounding doubtful at my claims. “My sources say that the Vavito boys have been moving some product out of there. And I have good sources, you know, the best money can buy. Billionaire-level sources.”
“Fuck your sources.”
Eddie shrugs, sending his ridiculous necklaces swinging again. “Or maybe you guys made a deal with someone, someone who doesn’t have support in this area, in which case it’s fair game for anyone-”
I close the gap between us in two strides and pin Eddie to his car with my forearm at his neck. “Are you fucking threatening me, Eddie?”
Instantly Eddie looks panicked. He shakes his head frantically. “No, no,” he chokes out.
“I just fucking told you that there are no drugs being sold out of my family’s places, and you just said you don’t believe me. So either you are calling me a liar or you are threatening me. I don’t fucking like what you were insinuating, whatever it was, understand?” I bite out and give him a final shove with my forearm, knocking his head against the car in the process, then stepping back.
Eddie falls to a heap next to his car, coughing and grabbing his throat. Happy with his status, I turn around and walk to my own vehicle. My mind immediately goes into action. I’ve got to talk to my dad. If people are out there saying we sell stuff at the bars, we need to find out who is starting these rumors and why.
I am reaching for the door handle to my car when a loud cracking sound and a grunt pull me back from my thoughts. I turn back and I see Eddie knocked out on the ground with a gun in his hand. My brother Axel is standing over him, glowering at me.
“You gotta be smarter than that,” Axel chastises seriously, his entire body a rigid statue, just as it always is.
I give Axel a quick nod. He’s right. I know better, but I’d gotten wrapped up in my thoughts. I shouldn’t just turn my back on scum like Eddie—shouldn’t turn my back on anybody. That’s how you get in trouble or killed. And from the look of the gun, Eddie wanted to give me more than trouble.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him as he steps out of the shadows and moves to me.
I consider myself an asshole and a serious motherfucker. That itself usually scares people, gives them a vibe of unease. But compared to my brother Axel, I am a golden retriever. Axel is fucking terrifying. It isn’t just how he looks, with tattoos starting just below his chin and flowing down to his toes, with long hair and a scraggly beard. No, his entire presence makes the air around you cold. His eyes are the same silver color as our mother’s, but Axel’s are housed in a constant glare. He holds himself stiffly and is constantly scanning, looking for any problems.
Axel hasn’t always been this way. I remember him much more relaxed and a big joker when we were kids. But since his time in the service, and whatever happened overseas during that time, he’s been cold, emotionless, and calculating. He’s an angry motherfucker and I am glad I am generally on his good side.
“Dad says to remind you that it’s family meeting night,” Axel grinds out, and then, before I can even nod, he turns back into the shadows to his own vehicle, I presume.
I get in my car just as Eddie is starting to writhe on the ground. I turn my loud, American muscle engine over and peel out from the parking lot, sending gravel spraying over the limp, barely moving Eddie and make my way home.
Our family home is a large old Victorian house in the middle of the city, in an area called the Highlands. And next door to it is another old Victorian, but this one had been converted into a tenement house of three apartments, one on each floor. Axel and Slade, one of my other brothers, live there with me.
The tenement is the first property my father bought, and it was a dump. We were just kids when he bought it, so he fixed up the first floor and moved our family in, then fixed up the other floors and rented them out. Then when it came up for sale, he bought the Victorian house next door for us.
Once he was getting income from the apartment rentals, my father bought the bar he had been renting out, and it was the start of his property management business. He started buying up other bars and tenements in the city.
I pull into the driveway between the house and the apartments that we all share and park next to Axel’s restored 80s Ford Bronco. That motherfucker drives fast. I walk inside and the smell of lasagna hits me, and a slight smile tugs at my lips. My dad never calls us home for dinner; he always calls it a “meeting.” It is something my mother used to do—feed us incessantly—and something he has not deviated from.
We all work together taking care of the bars and buildings we own—my dad, my brothers, and me. Well, all of us except for my youngest brother, Roman. He is a huge freeloader, but he is also ten years old. But even though we all work together on the family businesses, we don’t get to spend a lot of time together. And so when we do, it is home cooking and family talk.
“Hey Dec! How is class?” Dad asks. He is facing the stove and glances at me quickly over his shoulder, and then returns his attention back to the dish before him.
I raise my eyebrows as I take in my father’s appearance. There he is at the cooktop, wearing oven mitts as well as an apron. Did I mention that the apron has ruffles? All I can do is stare. When I don’t answer, he looks back at me and laughs at my expression. “You ever made lasagna? This shit is fucking messy,” he informs me, taking off his mitts and ditching the apron.
“Uh, yup, sure,” I say. “Class is okay. It went by fast tonight.” I don’t elaborate that the reason it went by so fast is because I was staring like a freak at a woman the whole time.
“Well, that’s good,” my dad replies. “Better than it being dragged out like a fucking trial.”
I nod in agreement. “Hey Dad, I need to talk to you before dinner.”
My father turns to me sharply, his face shuttering down from the carefree chef he was just seconds before into an evaluating businessman. He tosses the oven mitts and apron onto the counter, and motions me to follow him to his office.
I follow him down a short hallway to a room, and once inside, he closes and locks the double pocket doors. Dad goes to his desk and sits behind it, steepling his hands. And just like that, my ruffled apron-wearing, lasagna-making dad is gone. Now he is Jude Falco, street-smart ex-navy sailor turned shrewd business owner.
“Talk,” he commands.
“I was met after class by Eduardo Cruz.”
“Perez’s pet?” My father knows all the players, legal and illegal, in our area.
“The same. He says he’d heard we were allowing dealers into our places.”
I watch my father’s eyes darken. “Over my dead fucking body,” he grits out.
“I communicated that sentiment,” I tell him. When my dad opened his first bar, it wasn’t in the greatest of areas in the city. The clientele that frequented it before he took ownership did whatever the fuck they wanted. So my dad slowly cleaned it up, and he cut most of the bullshit out. And one of the first things he did was stop any sale of drugs. Both he and my mom had grown up really shitty, and drugs had been a big part of the reason why. So while my dad is willing to maybe turn a blind eye to some of it, my mom was a total no. And my father had worshipped my mother.
“And?”
“And the fucker tried to shoot me. Axel stopped him.”
My father takes that in and then studies me. “Why did Axel stop him?”
Here we go, I think. My dad doesn’t miss a thing. “I turned my back—”
“Damn it, Declan!” my father shouts, slamming his balled fists into the desk. “What the fuck have I taught you from day one? Huh? Never, ever turn your fucking back on anyone , especially some little pussy like Cruz.”
“I know, Dad. I fucked up—”
“You’re damn right, you fucking did! You could be dead right now if Axel hadn’t shown up!”
I don’t even try to answer; when he is mad like this there is no point. And he is right. We’ve been confrontation-free for a while. Our boundaries and rules are well-known and they aren’t challenged as much as they had been earlier on. Now that all three of us are working with my Dad, people don’t fuck with any of us, knowing they’ll get the whole pack of us. It would appear this has left my senses rusty.
We have to deal with people still, but it has less to do with people trying to push our rules, and more about those trying to cheat the system. Early on, my father started some gambling rings in a few of the bars, and they were crazy lucrative. He quickly paid his debts off and was able to open more locations. Then he got into loans. People frequented his places, and eventually drug dealers offered him money to make them safe spaces to deal.
My mother had turned a blind eye to a lot of what my dad did, mostly because she knew even “legitimate” businesses were generally doing more illegal things than my dad was. But she hated the drug thing. She insisted the money was tainted and would bring us bad luck and told my father to keep that money separate.
When my mom got sick, my dad felt responsible. And so he told the dealers no more, hoping that it would make God spare her life, but in the end she lost the battle and my father was broken. He’d donated all the money he’d ever gotten from dealers over the years, that he’d kept in a separate offshore account like my mother had asked. Made a large donation to the treatment center in her name. It was all he could do at that point.
And so to say that he takes this idea of drugs being sold in the bars seriously is an understatement. Add to that the idea that another family member could have been taken from him, and my father is heated.
Rightfully so. He’d spent years teaching us self-defense as kids and had upped it a notch when my mother died. Dealers hadn’t exactly been excited about my father’s new ban on their business. And so he had us trained, buying a facility for an old navy friend to come and work out of. My brothers and I were trained as he had been trained when he was in the service. We were skilled with hands and weapons. And the first defense I was always taught is to avoid problems. Turning my back on an asshole like Eddie—that had been just asking for a problem.
I stand and take my father’s glare, knowing I earned it. He jumps up, slamming his rolling chair into the wall behind him. I watch as he paces, running his hands over his face and taking ragged breaths. Dropping his hands to his hips, he looks out the window.
“Okay, if there is word out, there may be something happening behind our backs,” my father says, turning, his eyes wild, “and that is fucking unacceptable.”
I give a quick nod.
My dad takes another deep breath. “First, we have family meeting,” he says, his nostrils still flaring.
I clear my throat. “Why don’t I call Joey?” I ask him. “You know he could go round and check things out maybe?”
Joey is one of the guys on my dad’s “crew.” He is the one we send on rounds when one of us can’t make it, and he blends in pretty well. He isn’t the oldest crew member, but he’s been with us a while and is trustworthy.
My dad rubs his chin and mulls this over. “Yeah, okay, yeah. That’s a good idea. Call him. Make it quick,” he orders me and strides to the doors, unlocking and spreading them apart.
“Meeting time!” he hollers out cheerfully, a completely different man from the one who’d just been shut in the room with me. Immediately following the announcement, thundering footsteps can be heard all around.
I take my phone out and cue up Joey’s name, dialing him up.
“Rays.”
“Joey, it’s Dec.”
“What needs to be done?”