12
“What the fuck did you do?” Leon repeated the question, glaring at the direction his sister had run past. “Ivon said you are a fucking tutor so why are you forcing her to eat when she clearly doesn’t want to?”
“Were you planning to feed her cereal for the rest of her life?” She asked calmly – too calmly, stoking a raging fire inside of me. “Yes, I was hired to teach your sister, but learning doesn’t start and end in the four walls of a chosen classroom.”
“I don’t care about any of that!” Leon barked, “She was going to eat a bowl of cereal later, that’s how this goes, we’re easing her slowly into the concept of solid food.”
She arched a long brow, lifting the tablet out of the milky mess on the table. “Pray tell, has she ever eaten any solids you offered her? Has she requested for solids on her own? Or did you set up a system you believed was working.”
“Excuse me?” Leon threw his chair back, towering over Carys even with a table between them. “You don’t get to come in here and tell us how to raise our sister, we’ve been doing just fine without people like you telling us what to do.”
“People like me?” Carys actually smiled. “People who actually care about the wellbeing of your sister? People who want her to grow and be independent? People who want to find different ways to communicate with her?”
Leon scoffed. “You’ve known her for two minutes, why do you have to flip a house on its roof without trying to test the foundation? You could have watched how we handle her for a few weeks-”
“And then what? Fall into your yearlong pattern?” Carys gave Leon a ‘know it all’ look, “Valerie doesn’t need change, she needs structure, and yours is filled with so many cracks. Pampering her is not going to help her.”
“You don’t understand, Valerie needs things done a certain way, and-” His words died out when Valerie walked back in and stood in front of Carys, fiddling her thumbs.
Carys handed her the tab when she made a writing motion, waiting patiently as she scribbled something and handed it back.
“Can I have another glass of milk? I’m sorry I ran away” Carys read out loud, smiling brightly from ear to ear. “Of course you can, will you tell me if there’s anything you don’t like? We can skip veggies if you don’t like them, but they’ll be coming back in the nearest future.”
Valerie scrunched up her nose at the mention of veggies, climbing back into her chair.
Leon watched the interaction, numb, excited, and angry all in one. Twice in one night, this outsider had beaten him, laying his deepest struggles bare. Had they been wrong all this time?
Ivon watched them too, rigid as a rock. Unlike Leon, he knew how to hide his emotions well, tucking them neatly under his unbreakable straight face, but Leon watched his left eye twitch ever so slightly, a tiny flaw only he knew about.
“I have to attend to something” Leon found himself spitting out lies. “Valerie, I’ll be back before you go to bed to give you a kiss, don’t bother your nanny too much.”
He walked round the table to his sister, kneeling in front of her. “The sky is filled with stars, but you’re my little star.” Her little arms wrapped around his neck and squeezed.
Leon cleared his throat, looking away from Carys’ soft gaze. Untangling her arms, he pressed a kiss to her head, nodded at his brother and walked away. There were only so many hits a man could take, and Leon had taken his hits for the evening.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he grunted at the text notification, immediately calling the number.
“Boss-”
“How many times have I told you to call me and not text me?” Leon snarled into the phone. “Do I have to write a book about how to place a phone call? I don’t care if it’s unimportant or urgent, call me!”
“Sorry boss, but- uh- it’s kinda urgent.” Leon recognized the voice as one of their new recruits, and he cracked his brain trying to remember his name. “We found Albert’s body on the edge of our territory”
Albert was also one of the new recruits who had gone missing a few weeks ago, initially Leon thought he was a spy from one of our rival gangs and put ears to the ground, waiting for him to surface, but Albert wasn’t hiding, he disappeared off the face of the fucking earth.
“Where’s Shadow?”
“He’s here, he’s the one who asked me to reach out to you.”
“What’s the address?” Leon held the phone to the car speaker, hoping it picked up his fast words, thankfully it did. He was two hours away. “I’ll be there soon.”
Throwing the phone to the passenger’s seat, he listened absently to the voice still drifting through the speaker and shook his head, ending the call. He needed to have a serious conversation with Shadow, his second-in-command about these power hungry, naïve boys he had been picking from the streets.
Leon rolled his glass down, enjoying the natural evening breeze, and rolled it back up as he got closer to the city, he wasn’t that stupid to catch a flying bullet meant for him in a kingdom he ruled.
Past light traffic, getting a little or a lot lost, Leon finally made it to one of the warehouse owned by his grandfather, what the hell was Shadow thinking bringing a dead body here?
The man guarding the door bowed and opened it for him to walk through. Seeking out his second, Leon found him and the rookie in the space that had been designed for a medical team.
“Did you become a doctor when I wasn’t looking?” Shadow turned his head slightly, letting Leon see the beads of sweat on his forehead. “Care to explain what’s going on?”
Shadow groaned, “My hands are kind of busy here boss, who knew keeping them inside someone’s body was too much work.”
Leon walked deeper into the room, and looked past Shadow’s shoulder, right into the eyes of his grandfather. “I didn’t know you were here, nonno”
Luis’ eyes were the only things peeking over the mask on his face. “I heard about this little birdie, and only came in when I saw the criss-cross stitches on his chest.”
He watched his grandfather work, saving his questions for later. Minutes after, a small pouch was retrieved from the lungs. Luis left the body, peeling off his gloves.
“I’m very impressed with whoever sowed this into him. The stitches were almost perfect, and I’ll admit it took me a while to find the right parts to cut.”
Luis Valachi, former patriarch of the family, and former surgeon. He had retired years before Leon and his brother was born, but Leon had watched him cut, dissect and stitch up a lot of men.
He loosened the mouth of the pouch, turned it upside down and shook it, and a piece of paper fell out.
Leon picked the paper, and handed to his grandfather who read and sighed, deepening the wrinkles on the side of his eyes.
“What does it say?” Leon asked cautiously, looking into the dead eyes of Albert.
“I am your worst nightmare. I am coming for you. Conan was just the beginning.” Luis squeezed the paper and tossed it into the bin. “I thought Conan fell into the wrong hands, one of our rivals who we never caught.”
“It could still be one of our rivals playing fast ball” Leon said, “We have too many enemies, but I want to find whoever killed Conan”
Luis scratched his bushy beard, “I think whoever got Conan is closer than we think, it’s not a rival. I had my suspicions but kept them to myself. I thought whoever killed him would strike at our family again.”
“Conan died four months ago.” Leon closed Albert’s eyes, hating that he had suffered in his last moments. “Albert was taken a few weeks ago, what’s the relationship here?”
“Our family is the only relationship.” His grandfather said, “Albert works for us, and someone went to great lengths to pass this bloody message to us. I checked every inch of his body for a fingerprint or anything at all, he was squeaky clean”
Leon shook his head, “I still believe this is the work of someone with a grudge against our family.”
“I believe that too. Whoever they are, they went after Conan first.” Luis paused, and sighed a second time. “The note clarifies how personal this new threat is, and I need you to promise to take it seriously.”
Leon hadn’t read the bloody note, so he didn’t know what it said. “What gave that away?”
Luis repeated the content, completing it. “I am your worst nightmare. I am coming for you. Conan was just the beginning. Valerie is next”