Mallicks_Back to the Beginning

by Jessica Gadziala

  The years had peppered gray into his dark hair, which only managed to make him look distinguished, not old. Prison had given him plenty of time to work on his body, filling it out a little more firmly than it had been when I had known him. And dressed in an expensive gray suit, he looked like a businessman, like someone Shane had seen at the house countless times before.

  He likely thought he was just here to see his dad.

  "Shane, bub," I said carefully, watching as he straightened. "Why don't you go in your room. See where Daddy is. Tell him Michael is visiting."

  He rushed off, skirting out of touch of Michael, as if he suddenly sensed a problem.

  "You stay the fuck away from my sons," I snapped, calculating how many steps I'd have to take to reach my butcher block full of knives.

  "You robbed me of the opportunity to have my own."

  I snorted at that, shaking my head, taking my time, knowing that each second that passed was a chance for Charlie to get closer to home. "Monsters don't procreate. They crawl out of the primordial ooze."

  "After what you've done, you really think we are that different?"

  "I protected myself against a man who killed our mother. Then the woman who acted as my mother with her absence. And countless others I don't even know about, I'm sure."

  "And me?" he asked, angling his head up, chin raised higher than the rest of his face, something our father had always done, something that made my blood turn cold.

  "You," I snorted. "I heard all about the terrible things you had done. What did I do to you? Get you in a cage you had belonged in for years before I put you there."

  "You took away twenty years of my life!" he roared, rising up off the chair, slamming the cup down so hard on the table that it shattered, black coffee pooling, dripping down onto my floor.

  "You should leave."

  That was Shane.

  My youngest.

  But big for his age.

  Six foot already, wide as a linebacker. He would be a mammoth of a man someday. As it was, he outweighed the man who was technically his uncle.

  And in full-on protection mode, he was a fearsome sight to behold.

  "Shane, go back to your room," I demanded, shuffling a few feet into the room. Closer to the knives. Closer to my son who was almost within arm's reach of Michael.

  Unlike Shane, I had no doubts that Michael had a gun on him. And would happily use it to hurt me by hurting him.

  "Like hell," he shot back, hands balled into fists. "Do I need to show you the door?" he asked, channeling his father. And it was maybe the first time I had ever really seen his future.

  He was going to take over the family business.

  I didn't see it much in the others, despite their penchant for beating each other's asses, getting into scuffles with others. Ryan, I figured, would take over the business end of things, seeming to actually like the books. Eli, I guessed his only contribution to the family business would be designing logos or menus for the legit businesses. Hunt and Mark were yet to be seen.

  But Shane?

  Shane was going to enforce.

  As soon as his father would allow him.

  The idea filled me with equal parts pride and terror.

  Michael's gaze left me, moving toward my son, looking at him as though it was the first time, sizing him up not as a boy, but as the man he would be, the asset he would be to our family.

  And me, well, I seized the opportunity.

  I threw myself toward the counter, reaching for the knives.

  My hand brushed the handle, cold and reassuring, when I suddenly felt my hair snagged, then my body slamming forward, my head cracking off the overhead cabinet.

  The pain was a blunt and blinding thing, blanking out my vision for a long moment.

  There was a roar and the hand left my hair, the sharp pain easing instantly.

  The slam and grunts broke through the fog of pain, making me turn on my heel, looking down toward the ground.

  But not seeing Shane.

  Oh, no.

  Eli was dropped down on Michael, rearranging his facial features with this tunnel vision of bloodthirst you never could have convinced me he was capable had I not seen it with my own eyes.

  "Fuck," Charlie's voice broke into the scene, charging forward, grabbing Eli up by under his arms, dragging the still-swinging kid off of Michael, shoving him back against the counter. "Shut it down," he snapped, shoving Eli in the shoulders, hard, hard enough that pain must have shot through his back and head from where he collided with the cabinets and counter.

  "Charlie..."

  "We got to get him the fuck out of here," Charlie told me, moving toward the unconscious body of my brother, blood a halo around him, soaking his expensive suit thoroughly.

  "Pops..." Eli said, voice sounding haunted, hands shaking as he raised them to look at the blood.

  "There's no time for that now. Go get cleaned up. Throw those clothes in the wash," Charlie demanded, all business. "Shane, make sure he does it," he added, reaching down to snag the prone body. "Helen," he called, voice steel, making me snap out of the concern for Eli's mental health.

  There were bigger things to worry about.

  Like him not going to jail for assault.

  I dropped down, grabbing Michael's feet, lifting them as Charlie lifted his upper body. "His car," he told me. "Trunk," he specified. "I'm gonna drive him somewhere. Follow me in my car, so I can have a ride back."

  "Charlie..."

  "I know. We need to think and talk. But now isn't the time. Now is the time to get a bloodied body out of our house."

  Seeing the logic there, I helped him throw the body into the trunk, jumped in his still-running car, and followed him as we drove Michael right back into Alberry Park, leaving him even as he started grunting in the trunk.

  My heart was frantic as I threw myself into the passenger seat, letting Charlie drive back toward Navesink Bank.

  "Eli..." I started.

  "Never saw that coming," he agreed, reaching over to grab my knee, giving it a squeeze, leaving a bloody handprint on the light jean material. "Figured if anyone would take him down, it would be Shane."

  "It was like he had no control over himself," I told him, my stomach twisting at the memory of the way he was still attacking an unconscious man.

  "I'm gonna assume your black eye was from that fuck."

  "I was going for a knife. He slammed me into the cabinet."

  "So Eli acted. To protect his mother. Can't complain about that."

  "I hadn't even heard him come in. He came out of nowhere."

  "He was on his way home. Boss let him go early. I had just talked to him before Shane called. Shane feels guilty," he added. "For letting him in. Bet that is amplified now," he said, stopping at a red light, reaching to grab my chin, stroking his thumb across my cheek, the tip just touching under my eye where I imagined it must have been a pretty shade of blue by then.

  "He has nothing to be guilty about. He couldn't have known. And had Eli not come like a bat out of hell, I know he would have done something."

  "What did he want?" Charlie asked, turning down our street.

  "I don't even know really. Everything about him felt like a threat, but he never laid any out there."

  "I'm gonna bet we will hear one now after this."

  It wasn't comforting.

  It wasn't meant to be.

  Charlie knew better than to sugarcoat things with me. Not important things. Dangerous things. It was stupid. For both our parts. And the boys.

  Oh, God.

  The boys.

  What the hell were we supposed to tell them? The truth?

  Even after all this, the thought of that made my spit taste bitter when I tried to swallow.

  "He's an enemy. Case closed. Michael. Michael the drug dealer. Has a bone to pick with me from the old days. That can be the story."

  And so it was.

  Though Ryan had watched me with disbelieving eyes, Shane had openly called
us out on it, and the others seemed more confused than anything.

  But they went along with it, sticking to a strict - and absurd given their ages - buddy-system when they went to work or even when they went out anywhere. Charlie handed them off pocket knives thinking I wouldn't see.

  And unless at least two of the boys were home with me, I was at Chaz's.

  We were on bated breath for a week, expecting an ambush, a move, a threat, something.

  But nothing came.

  Nothing came for a week.

  Then another.

  Then a third.

  We had been walking into Chaz's before opening to wash some of the money from Charlie's other business through the money from the cash register before the drop to the bank when business officially opened, me tagging along because Charlie still refused to have me out of sight, as ridiculous as that was.

  I had just flicked on the light to illuminate the dark space.

  It took everything in me to hold back a yelp, though there was nothing I could do about the way my body started.

  Charlie, however, just stiffened.

  Because there was Michael.

  Sitting at our first table, hand holding one of our rocks tumblers, amber liquid half-filling it. Whiskey from one of our bottles. He was leaned back casually in his charcoal suit, reminding me so much of our father that it was chilling. Goosebumps actually rose up over my skin as Charlie's hand reached for mine, gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  "Been waiting for you," Charlie spoke first, cutting through the bullshit.

  "I noticed. Did you think the buddy-system idea would protect your boys?"

  My stomach dropped at the idea that he had gotten to them before I reminded myself that they were all home together with Colt and three other kids whose names I barely knew from the area, but all tall, wide, strong teenaged guys capable of ganging up and taking down a threat if one popped up.

  So long as that threat wasn't a drive-by with an automatic weapon, peppering holes into our home and our children. The boys who were not related to us mere collateral damage in some bigger war they didn't even know about.

  I said a silent prayer, reminding myself that if Michael wanted to talk to us, there was no way I was getting out of here to go call my kids.

  "We figured you were low enough to come at us through our children," I spoke when Charlie didn't.

  "Well, Pudge, you aren't wrong about that," he agreed, eyes smiling even as his lips stayed pressed into a straight line, somehow knowing that such a stupid nickname still did manage to get my hackles to rise. But if he was looking for some kind of outward reaction, he clearly did not know me anymore.

  "Aren't wrong about what? Cut the fucking movie villain routine, and get on with the threat, Eames," Charlie demanded, tone deceptively impatient.

  "What do you want with us?"

  "What you tried to give me," he told us, shrugging a shoulder, but I still knew him well enough to know there was nothing calm or unaffected about him like he wanted to portray to us. No, he was seething, scheming.

  "And what did I try to give to you?" I asked, impatient.

  "A life sentence," he shot back just as quickly.

  "What, exactly, are you trying to do? Frame us for something?"

  "Nah. Don't think a cage would steal as much from you as it did from me."

  I felt my eyes rolling at his arrogance, at his attempt to drag this out, make it as suspenseful as possible.

  But I was no longer little Pudge who didn't speak her mind.

  "Spit it out, Michael. I have better things to do than stand here listening to your spiel."

  "What? A cake in the oven?" he asked, thinking throwing my chosen path of wife and mother in my face would somehow injure me.

  The idiot.

  "A cake in the oven would definitely take precedence over you."

  "I'm not giving you a life sentence. It's not good enough. Won't hurt you enough. I'm giving one to your sons."

  He'd done it.

  Found my weak spot.

  Exploited the one thing he could to get me to agree to whatever he wanted if he left my boys alone.

  "What do you want with them?" Charlie asked, tone still steel, but I heard something underneath it that I wasn't sure I had ever truly heard there, not in almost twenty years together.

  "I want you to make them suffer."

  My brows knitted, my head shaking. "What?"

  "You love your kids. Think you are so superior to the crimes that gave you the lifestyle you enjoy so much. Figure you want good things for them. Especially those more sensitive two."

  I didn't have to ask who he meant.

  Eli and Hunter.

  What surprised me most was that he had picked up on such things. Especially after the brutal beating he had taken at the former's hands.

  He'd been watching us.

  For how long, I had no idea.

  But often and close.

  Enough to know the personalities of our kids, what they were and were not suited for, what we as their parents wanted for them.

  "And?" Charlie asked, his hand nearly crushing mine.

  "And I think they need a little push into the family business."

  "What?" I asked, brows drawing down. "That's their decision." One Ryan and Shane had practically made already. But the others, they had their own fates to decide.

  "Not anymore. Now it's mine. And through you."

  "And if we say no?" Charlie asked.

  "If you say no, if one of them opts out, they all take a bullet. And you get to live to bury them into the ground."

  I knew better than to ask if he was serious, if there was another option. Michael was not the sort to bend.

  "And you will be employing Leon here," Michael went on, actually snapping his damn fingers, making a man walk in from the back, tall, strong in his black suit, with dead brown eyes, and an asinine goatee.

  "As?" Charlie asked, voice rough. Because he knew we were fucked. Because it didn't matter how much of a reputation Charlie had built over the years, his was a small operation. From the sounds of things, Michael was amassing an army that would put our father's to shame.

  We stood no chance moving against him.

  We knew that.

  And, worse yet, he knew that we knew that.

  This was grating on Charlie.

  It had to hurt his pride.

  As a businessman.

  As a man in general.

  As a father who had no way to protect his children against this bastard.

  "An enforcer, of course. To make sure everything is done to standard."

  To standard.

  Even I knew what that meant.

  The boys would get no special treatment.

  They were expected to be ruled by an iron fist.

  And, worse yet, he expected Charlie to partake in the ugliest practice in the criminal underbelly.

  A beat-in.

  He wanted us to beat-in our own goddamn children.

  What's worse... we had no choice.

  Charlie - 28 years

  It shook out.

  Eventually.

  The guilt slipped away as the boys began to flourish, made names for themselves, eventually started using their money to invest in legitimate businesses that took up a lot of their time, the loansharking becoming only a part of their lives, not the whole thing like it had to be for me for a while at the beginning.

  Leon had been a constant, annoying presence that I could never turn my back on, could never trip up in front of.

  All the while, Michael just kept amassing his fortune, his army.

  But he kept his distance. Just using his spy to make sure we kept up our end of the deal.

  Everything was fine.

  Until Hunt disappeared.

  We'd been sick at first, unable to get in touch with him, not sure if we had done something that had pissed off Michael after all, that he was making good on his threats.

  It wasn't until we went to his place
to find his closets empty that we finally understood.

  He'd had enough.

  Never having been meant for the lifestyle, he was drowning, suffocating, losing himself.

  And he had finally had it.

  And ran off.

  "Charlie..." Helen's voice called, airy and thick somehow at the same time, giving me a gut-punch.

  Because we were both thinking the same thing.

  If Hunt was gone, Michael would think we were fucking with the deal.

  He would put a bullet in Ryan, Eli, Mark, and Shane's heads for it.

  "I know, baby," I said, wrapping an arm around her, pulling her close. "We'll play this close to the vest. Have the boys try to find him. Tell Leon he's sick or out of town on a job."

  "If we don't find him quickly..."

  "I know," I agreed, sucking in a breath. "I think it's time to tell the boys."

  "About Leon?"

  "About it all. It's time they knew. It's their lives that are at stake, after all."

  I knew she didn't want them to know.

  It was the only thing she had truly put her foot down about in our marriage, uncompromising, unwilling to listen to opposing arguments.

  She was terrified of the boys thinking differently of her. For killing her father. For framing her brother. Then for lying about it.

  "I know," she agreed, exhaling so hard it could only be called a sigh as she tucked her head in under my chin.

  "They aren't going to think of you any differently," I promised, even though I had no idea if that was true.

  Helen - a few months later

  They hadn't thought any differently of me, these men who frequently had blood under their fingernails.

  But I thought differently of me.

  Not right at first, enveloped in the loving embrace of sons who finally understood me, my roots, my motivations in life.

  But when Shane found Hunt.

  When he found him and dragged him home.

  When we were forced by the ever-present presence of Leon to have him beat for thinking he could leave, made our sons beat the shit out of a brother they loved.

  When he told us how unhappy he had been, how much he had resented being forced into a lifestyle that didn't suit him, how he had found love.

  A part of my heart crumbled.