3. Emmett
CHAPTER 3
Emmett
A YEAR LATER
A clogged-up chest like a blocked drainage system.
Low body temperature.
A sniffle here and there.
The beeping of the EKG machine that’s been connected to me for months.
And the out-of-sync groaning and straining of the fucked-up organ in my chest.
These are the only sounds in the quiet room, every hour, every minute, and the endless seconds that mean nothing now.
WebMD will never show you this part, where the so-called “illness” becomes more than just diagrams and a few sentences.
They don’t show the suffering in real time… but either way, I take it all.
I don’t move or make a sound when the agony in my chest hits certain highs.
I don’t allow myself the reprieve of complaining or asking for pain meds from the new nurse who took over my medical care a little more than ten months ago, thanks to her idiot of a granddaughter.
But then… why complain and why ask for help?
What’s that going to do?
Will it bring back my mother?
Will it reverse the damage done from almost drowning in freezing water all because I decided to play hero but for the wrong person?
No.
“Dude, are you just going to stay there the entire summer?”
The speaker crackles and I hear Noah Montreal’s loud voice, bringing me back to the present.
“Yeah,” I force myself to say.
“But why? Aren’t you bored?”
I look toward the huge floor-to-ceiling bay windows in my room.
From here, I can see down the estates toward the Montreal mansion. I can also see the huge-ass jumping castle thingy that looks like a haunted clown’s face, blowing in the wind over there.
It’s Noah’s birthday party and only he could make such a sadistic, scary thing look normal for a ten-year-old.
There are several kids there, having the time of their lives… but I’m here, like I’ve been after being discharged from the hospital five months ago.
“No.”
“That’s a lie!” Noah calls me out. “The twins are here. Astraea’s been asking for you.”
I pause. What do I say to that?
“Hey, I know you don’t like to speak and all, but can you at least make an effort to be interested in my birthday?”
I roll my eyes.
If there’s anyone who loves attention and the limelight on them more than anything, it’s this fucker.
“I sent your gift.”
“Yeah, I got the set of vintage-meets-modern-tech crossbow and arrows, dude! Sick gift!” Noah says cheerfully now. “I can’t wait until you get back from fuck knows where you are, so we can get into some mischief together.”
I fall silent again.
To everyone, I’m away in Europe visiting my grandfather like I always do. But the truth is, I’m here in my mansion just next door, cooped up in my room…dying.
“Hey, King says to tell you to reply to his text, email, handwritten letter or whatever it is he sent you, and George said, ‘See you soon,’” Noah relays. “What do you want me to tell Astraea?”
“Nothing,” I mutter, relieved when my stutter isn’t triggered.
Noah blows a breath. “These one-worded responses, dude… is there anyone you ever talk to, like really get inspired to actually open that mean mouth of yours and actually say something that comes from a place of truth?”
“A place of truth?”
“Yeah, Mom says that to me all the time, when she wants me to fess up about my feelings or whatever her shrink tells her to look out for in her sons,” he grumbles with clear annoyance. “Craig says it’s adulting or whatever the fuck.”
An unwanted image of someone pops up in my head.
I shake my head.
“No,” I say in a clipped tone, wanting him to drop it.
The truth is, I envy him.
I envy Alex King, even the twins, George and Astraea Fields.
I envy their carefree, healthy lives.
Even though they’re bound by the secrets and ties of being the Blue families, they still get to be just kids.
They still get to enjoy the next few years with no burdens.
They still have their parents in the picture. Well, most of them anyway.
“Happy birthday,” I finally mutter, ready to end the call. I don’t like talking to Noah for long. He’s nosy.
“Yeah, whatever, just come back soon. This isn’t the same without you.” The line goes dead.
I want to feel something like hope when I hear those words.
Hope that maybe I am useful, and that my life is necessary.
I want to feel something like gratitude that there are people in this world that care for me, but I just don’t.
The simple truth is, the angel of death appeared—and she did what I knew she would.
Unleash a kind of chaos that I never imagined possible.
And now I’m paying for those consequences.
I really should’ve let her jump…rid myself of this…but no, I jumped with her.
A knock sounds from the door to my left, the one Mom had installed in secret, without my father knowing. She went to great lengths just to fire architects and builders so that the final blueprint of the mansion does not show the true schematic of the place.
The door opens noiselessly, and I watch as Kai and Ty walk in stealthily.
When it comes to moving without being seen, these two are not just the best, they are experts.
No one knows that they are here, just as no one knew they were at the cliff that night, in the shadows.
My mother rescued the twins when she was in Columbia, doing the Family’s business.
They’d been trafficked from their mother in Belgium by their Japanese-Colombian father.
Then they were beaten and tortured into submission before they were sold in auction rings to be anything the underbelly required.
When Mom saw them, they’d just fought an entire gang of fifteen men, suffered heavy injuries, but still managed to run away, they were starving and dying on the streets.
She took them in, and quickly flew back home to have them treated by the best doctors.
After that, Kai and Ty gave their complete devotion to my mother and committed their lives to serving and protecting her.
It became obvious to my mother that the part-Dutch, part-Japanese-Colombian twins were well versed in the ways of not just the Mafia, but also the Japanese Yakuza, so Mom kept them secret.
Once they healed, Daphne, as the heiress of the Easton Family, sent the twins for intense training and hazing as new recruits of the Outfit, but they only had one boss and it wasn’t Grandfather.
Being older than me by eleven years, they’ve been my shadows from the time I was old enough to realize two things.
One, my life—healthy or not—has always been a threat for many, which meant my mother’s paranoia for my safety was hundred fucking percent warranted.
And two, they are the only ones whose loyalty I don’t have to question.
After all, this is the first time I’ve seen them in over a year since they went out to look for my missing mother.
“Sir,” Kai speaks, looking at me.
“How did it go?”
“We found nothing from all the funeral parlors and cemeteries. We personally checked all the unidentified persons reported in hospitals both private and government, big and small, and we also checked in the underworld. There’s radio silence about Don Daphne.”
Don Daphne…that’s what they called my mother, these two. Because by birthright, she was the firstborn, but much to Grandfather’s continued stress, she also happened to be a she.
“Is that all?”
“We hunted down the trail of the men who came after you that night, all of them have been eliminated.”
Just as I figured.
My uncles would never leave loose threads…but unfortunately for them, their sister has always been several steps and levels ahead of their barbaric thinking.
“Your uncle Emilio is petitioning against your position as heir,” Ty speaks up for the first time which catches my attention.
Protesting the position of an heir is not a small thing, at least in our Family.
“What’s he standing on?”
“Your health.”
Crap!
Just the one thing my mother feared would one day happen.
Mom was always careful whenever we had Family dinners, meetings, and all that crap that brought the Eastons under one roof a few times in a year.
She was always alert, but she never cowered, nor did she bother showing anyone her fear.
In my memories, she always held her head high.
She was graceful, beautiful, powerful but kind.
She had the ability and power to order the death of a rival with just a nod. The whole Outfit might’ve been wary of her, but they sure as hell respected her.
She was such a fearless woman…until she learned about my fucking condition.
I remember the way she made me promise never to let the secret of my illness be known, especially to Grandfather.
“Everything collapses the day they find out. Tell no one. Promise me!”
There was a lot of chaos, charged by an undercurrent of conspiracy and hostility that I couldn’t see until it was too late.
But now, I see where it all started; the time where Daphne Isabella Easton went above and beyond to fight for my life.
The woman dared to defy reality, biology, medicine, science, everything…she went against it all and dared to keep me alive, and all for what? For her to be gone instead?
Everything started going wrong when she found out how fucking sick and cursed I was.
The anxiety.
The paranoia.
Her insomnia.
The self-blame.
The endless stream of tears running down her face…
She never cried in front of me, though. Instead, she’d be up before dawn, sobbing all by herself until she started hyperventilating while hurdled in the corner of the one place she loved the most. The library.
But somehow, I knew.
I’d hide in the shadows of the bookshelves, trying not to breathe too loud, trying not to move or spook her because I knew if she saw my face—the reminder of her failure—then she’d be devastated and fall apart all over again.
I was the sole cause of her pain.
My mere existence was the reason why she was suffering.
I was the malfunction that derailed her life, an abnormality that came out of nowhere like a freight train.
But that’s the thing about abnormalities. They always go against everything.
Against hope.
Against ambition.
Against the heartbroken tears of a mother that has done nothing but love her child when the world wanted that same child dead.
And now here I am, at a place in time where her absence is imprinted in the silence and shadows of the mansion.
“What does he know?” I demand, my mind racing. I can’t let my mother’s sacrifice go to waste just because an idiot found out I’m sick.
“Not much, which is why he’s bribing his way around the edges of town, going to past workers of the mansion, security guards, neighbors, old acquaintances and anyone he thinks has been in contact with you since…”
Since my mother disappeared.
Which means Emilio will be hungry and so will his other brothers, all of them secretly working to get rid of me.
The thing is, even after Grandfather was made aware that his daughter and the heir to the Family had gone missing, he wasn’t moved.
He didn’t give a damn.
He just carried on as usual and still declared me the heir, according to birthright.
This both cemented my father’s power within the Family he married into.
Hell, Syrus didn’t have any qualms in shedding his own last name to take the Easton name as his. The fact that his wife was missing didn’t matter to him so long as I was still his golden ticket.
Grandfather also had me as a puppet he could control and mold into the caricature that would serve him without a thought of rebellion.
Unfortunately for them, I started with Daphne.
I’m her son and it’s for her that the next decisions I make will destroy them all and comfort her wherever she is, living or dead.
“We’ll let Syrus deal with Emilio for now,” I mutter. After all, my father would do anything to make sure his power stays in effect, even if his power is only through me. “Then we need to dig up the trenches all my dear uncles have worked hard to covered up.”
“For how long?” Kai questions.
“Until it’s time.”
“Yes, sir,” they both answer.
“As for bribing his way across town, how is the nurse?”
“Your father had her entire family of three sign an ironclad NDA after he employed the nurse to take care of you.”
Yes, as penance for the granddaughter’s sin of apparently pushing me over the cliff, Nurse Marie is now bound to secrecy.
That’s how they decided to spin the narrative… for Grandfather’s sake.
If it was exposed how they tried to get rid of the girl, then the question would be why?
If it was revealed that I was the target, then Grandfather would’ve dealt with them severely so all the blame was put on the girl… that she pushed me over the cliff.
Syrus wanted to get rid of them, but I’ve always refused to suffer in vain since I was a toddler, learning how to hold a saber. I didn’t save that girl for nothing.
I want her alive, breathing and thriving until such a time when she will be useful.
“Well, the nurse won’t cause trouble, she takes her job seriously. For now, dig into my father…his history, including before he met my mother. I want to know his level of scheming,” I say, knowing it’s a long shot. After all, Syrus Easton is a wily, clever fox. He even took my mother’s family name as his own, not out of love and devotion, I'm sure.
"Yes, sir," they both reply.
I’ve been lying in a hospital bed for a year, in and out of surgical theaters for just as long, and in all that time, my anger and calm have both been growing simultaneously in a way I can’t explain.
In the anger, I’m regretful and in the calm, I’m calculating.
The only way to make them all pay is for me to remain Grandfather’s heir, which means I’ll have to cooperate with Syrus for now.
I also can’t get rid of my uncles…no, not yet. There will be a time for that soon, since they all swear they didn’t have a hand in my mother’s disappearance.
Good, I want their denial.
“We don’t have much time. The future is not possible for me.”
“Sir–” Kai starts but I cut him off.
“No need. You both already know so instead of useless words of pity, let’s help them.”
“Help them sir?” Ty questions.
Looking directly at the twins, I make my decision clear.
“Yes, let’s help them dig their mass grave.”
I know I don’t have to explain what I mean. The twins already understand.
I’m obviously too young to have this kind of mentality but nothing has ever been normal for me since birth.
When I was four, I could use all kinds of knives to slice limbs.
At six I could handle all types of guns. By eight, I knew everything about the Family business from front to back.
But now, without my mother, I have to do much more than the basics.
My hands will get dirtier, but I don’t care anymore. I’ll go even lower than before just to get them all, one by one.
“Everyone loyal to my mother has to be kept on retainer for now. Let them stay out of notable sight and keep them all on base. I want complete functions within all my uncles’ and grandfather’s businesses.”
As I speak, I watch as both of them perk up.
I know they are both angry at my mother’s disappearance and I know they will do anything for her.
“We need to get ready for the future.”
“Yes, sir.”
“As for here, I’ll handle it. I’ll call you back when it’s time.” I hold their gazes, and they hold mine unflinchingly. “If I do drop dead before it’s time, you have my full authority to deal with them as you see fit.”
They are all I have now.
This will only end one way and if it does end before I get revenge, they are the ones I’m sure without a doubt will complete the task.
“Yes, sir,” Kai and Ty say together and then, they are gone as silently as they came.