Chapter 29
Out of town
Declan
Agent Glass is on a stakeout near the port posing as a tourist. He believes that’s where I’ll receive today’s shipment of weapons. I drove past him, professional training allowing me to see right through the ruse.
The Macarleys were the original pirate traders before the governments of various countries figured out how to profit off wars and the demise of their own people.
Since the airport is crawling with authorities like Glass, and Selnoa’s port belongs to the government my dad used to pay off to turn a blind eye to his shipments, Glass thought I would use the port.
Endo sent an airplane that’s already landed, and the men are unloading fresh produce, some of which Mary is bagging to take for the house.
I snatch a case of fresh garden tomatoes from her hands and load it into the back of the SUV. Once done, I clean my hands by rubbing my palms together.
Mary watches me. “You know what I like about you, Declan Crossbow?” Mary asks while picking up a red, ripe tomato. It’s a rhetorical question, so she continues. “You’re not too rich to get your hands dirty.”
What can I say? I like putting my ninja skills to work.
Endo marks the boxes of the actual cargo that matters (weapons) with silly labels and logo designs that aren’t too different from those of major companies promoting their products. This is so nobody suspects anything. However, this cargo label shows a man holding up a crossbow and a tomato.
My uncle is a sarcastic asshole.
The men handle the containers as if they’re all packed with tomatoes, but some containers are open, the others closed. The closed ones get placed on forklifts and deposited in the storage area of the airplane hangar that Mary and I are parked next to.
The man driving the forklift deviates from the route.
“What’s that guy doing?” Mary asks.
Also rhetorical.
He drives the lift loaded with mixed crates, some open, some closed, off to the side, where two men await in a beat-up white pickup truck. They take all the crates, food included.
“They’re stealing,” I say.
“Yeah, did you see the tents and caravans park in the meadows on the way here?”
“Mmhm. They’re taking food because they’re hungry.”
“Are you going to let them?”
“Mmhm.”
“You’re not running a charity,” Mary reminds me.
“You sound like Endo.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment.”
Even if I confronted them, they’re all armed and could take me out.
I don’t suffer from any delusions that I could get out alive if I said anything about the stealing.
Acting on this would be reckless. But Mary is right.
I am not running a charity, and if I allow this without a mention, they will steal the airplane tomorrow.
Once the two men load their white pickup, the forklift guy fills the hangar with closed crates that hold weapons.
Endo sent quite a few. I wish I had that many men, but I could only bring so many without it seeming like a hostile takeover while outnumbered by Ivan’s, or rather, men loyal to my father.
If I can pin Dad’s murder on Ivan, it would solve most, if not all, of my problems. Glass won’t like that, but he can have him once he’s in whichever prison the international judge puts him, because if Ivan survives this ordeal, he sure as hell isn’t getting a local trial.
Even if I take control of the locals, corruption runs so deep here, I lose sleep over which judge will sell me out for more money from Ivan’s treasury, which he will still control in prison.
I mean, a dead Ivan would be the best solution, but right now, I’m needed at the helm, not at the back of the operations, being a useful little ninja turtle, quietly eliminating my enemies.
The pilots start to move the plane away for refueling.
I could board and go back home in Couldermouth to be with my family.
Connor would follow me later today.
Dina wouldn’t.
And that seems to be a problem for me.
“I fucking hate this city,” I mumble.
Mary shakes her head. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Their buildings are nice. Their roads aren’t bad either. And the people aren’t too friendly. There’s no Selnoa’s welcoming committee I have to smile at.”
Once the last man comes out of the hangar, the forklift driver goes to lock up. I slide on my sunglasses and approach him.
“Do you mind if I look around?” I hand him a roll of cash.
He takes the money. “Five minutes.”
“How many cameras are inside?” My brother would know, but he’s busy doing his girly stuff with Dina.
“Two at the front on the left. One in the back right corner.”
“Thanks, man.”
The guy nods. “I know who you are,” he says and spreads his legs wider, his hands relaxed at his sides.
He’s a big man, strong from manual labor.
Jeans, checkered shirt, beard; some would say a stereotypical lumberjack.
There’s a scar on his neck. I’ve seen this type of scar once before, on a man who survived wire strangulation. It cuts deep into the flesh.
Under the sunglasses, he can’t see that I’m staring at his mark. “Who am I?”
“You’re Anabela Yordish’s son.”
I chuckle. “Nobody’s ever called me that.” I’ve always been Declan Crossbow. The Crossbow twin. One of the Crossbow boys. My rape baby.
“You and your brother take after your mother. She was my mother’s cousin. Yeah.” He looks off into the distance as if recalling something. “We are related.”
I check my watch. My family lives in Couldermouth.
“Oh, sorry,” the man says. “I got carried away. Meeting you is like meeting a celebrity. When…when your mother passed away, your father came after all of us. We fled the Tavala district and settled here.”
“I have no relationship with anyone from my mother’s side.”
The man takes off his baseball hat, the only protection he has because they don’t have hard hats here.
He fixes his hair and takes out a napkin to wipe the sweat from his forehead.
Dirt is trapped under his short fingernails.
I can tell he’s uncomfortable, but his hard life is going to push him into confronting me in some way, I’m sure of it.
This is why I stayed to talk to him. Maybe I’m a charitable person. Maybe there’s hope for me yet.
“Rumor has it you and your brother never liked your dad.”
“We didn’t care for either of our parents. Good riddance.”
The man doesn’t blink. “Yeah, well, we don’t care about him either. Been living out here on the outskirts since he put a bounty on all our heads. Hunted us like dogs.”
“He’s dead now. Why aren’t you making your way back?”
The man’s eyes brighten. “Why, Declan Crossbow, are you inviting us back?”
I shrug. “Why not?”
“If that’s the case, we would be indebted to you. A whole bunch of us.”
I rub my fresh-shaven jaw. Smooth. Nice. “How many of you are in this bunch?”
“Oh, about seventeen thousand.”
“Come again?”
“Seventeen thousand. Give or take.”
“That’s a…that’s a lot of people.”
“The entire district is over forty thousand people, sir. We have women and children.”
“Are you saying you have seventeen thousand people who could use some of that cargo you stole in a fight?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.”
I take out my phone. “What’s your number?”
“No phone, sir.”
Glass gave me a card. Nobody gives cards anymore. I wish I had a business card. With crossbows instead of an hourglass on them. That could be my logo. “Once the city’s clear of garbage, if you know what I mean, Connor, my brother, will come get you.”
The man licks his lips. I can tell it’s a move made by a man who’s bloodthirsty and can almost taste the blood on his tongue. “We can help you clean up. There’s lots of garbage. Much more than two men or even a dozen could handle.”
“You think you know me?” I step closer to him, smell the sweat of a hardworking man.
“You have no idea what my brother and I can handle. I’ll go alone with him to the battlefield before I take your seventeen thousand people.
You know why? Because Connor is a tried-and-tested warrior. Always on my side. I don’t know you.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt. I hated your father, but you are our blood. With you on the throne, we can come home.”
I step back. “I’ll send word when it’s safe to return.”
“My wife will start packing right away.” He puts on his hat and bids me farewell.
I stare at the man’s retreating figure, thinking how I did the world a great service by getting rid of my father.
The cold hangar is full of crates, but I’m not lost. I walk in the general direction of where I saw the forklift worker dump our closed crates. When I find them, I slice one with my switchblade and peek inside to see neatly stacked hand grenades.
A thought occurs to me. Endo Macarley rarely works randomly. I wonder if he knew that the people Massio Crossbow wronged live around here. I wonder if Endo used them. Probably.
It’s too bad that Anabela Crossbow was a shitty mother.
Everyone loved her and felt sorry for her.
Connor, I, and my dead dad are the only ones who knew how much she hated him and us.
She might’ve been a great person, a woman struck by the misfortune of being the object of my dad’s obsession, but she was a shitty ass fucking mother, and I stand by that.
Her fucking rape babies.
I spit on the floor and can’t get out of that hangar fast enough.
My relatives? A celebrity? No, thanks. I hate her and him, the city, the whole damn world.
“You okay?” Mary asks once we’re back in the car.
“No. Something is wrong.”
“How do you mean?”
I grip the wheel tightly, knuckles turning white. The car peels away, tires screeching. I can smell the burning rubber as I race toward the stupid-ass city I hate. So much hate. It’s burning a hole in my chest, making me angrier, restless, eager for a kill.
Rage chokes me. “There’s something wrong with my brother.”
“What?”
“I don’t know yet. But he’s angry.”
“When is Connor not angry?”
I shake my head and floor the gas pedal. “Something is wrong.”
“You’re driving too fast.”
The car slides off the narrow road, but I manage to steer it back on the asphalt.
Mary crosses herself and says a prayer. I’m not even a mile out when I look at the mountain above the city and spot a raging fire.
“Mary,” I call out, because I’m driving too fast not to pay attention to the road and the honking cars around us. “Is that my house that’s burning on the hill?”
“I have no idea where the house is from here. Could it be the mansion?”
“Mmhm.”
“Connor isn’t home,” Mary says. “He and Dina are out.” She checks her watch. “Should be arriving at the bridal shower now. I can call him, but he doesn’t usually pick up the phone.”
“Take mine.” I lean back, and Mary takes the phone from my pocket. We don’t use smartphones, so she flips over the burner, and I rattle off his number.
It rings and hangs up. Mary dials again. Same thing.
She closes the phone and stares ahead. We’re quiet for a while. Then, “Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll fix it.”
“I can’t fix a dead Connor.”
And if Connor is dead, what happened to Dina?
The image of my mother’s body bleeding on the floor as my dad carved into her belly flashes before my eyes. Massio should’ve kept us in Couldermouth. Why couldn’t he stay away from our mother? Why did he bring us with him on that trip? She didn’t care. She was never going to love us. Never.
I walk over the blood spilling out of my mom’s belly, leaving tracks in my wake to get to Connor, who’s just standing there, seemingly fascinated with our father’s work.
Yeah. He’s always had a thing for madness. My brother. Not me.
Not me.
I crouch beside her, trying to catch her dead stare. “Hang her from the bridge so they can all see,” I tell my dad. “Take extra rope for yourself too.”
Maybe also me.
An oncoming truck blares its horn.
I jerk the wheel.
Mary screams.