Series: Sean Moriarty
Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 113805 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113805 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Salvia fills my mouth and I fear I’m going to puke as he adds Nathaniel’s picture to the others on the coffee table.
There’s so many of them…
All of them rich and obviously powerful.
What would any of them want with me? Even if I want to do this, can I?
“Our final and most important target—Jude Vanderbilt,” Stewart says. “There’s a significant bonus if you can manage to tag him. Our client is the most interested in his whereabouts. It won’t be easy, though. He’s highly unpredictable.”
I look down at the picture. At yet another stupidly handsome man in a suit. “Why?”
Stewart shrugs his shoulders. “It’s personal.”
Staring at Jude’s picture, I wonder what he did to piss off whoever wants this job done.
Out of all the men, he seems… the most dangerous. He doesn’t appear to be as big as Gabriel. That man, even in photographic form, is intimidating as hell. But there’s an edge to Jude, to his appearance, that the others don’t have.
Maybe it’s the ink creeping up his neck from beneath his suit.
Or the look in his eyes.
He has the kind of eyes you only see in the mugshots of serial killers and mass murders.
Intense eyes full of something… wild and unpredictable.
The longer I find myself staring at him, the more I’m determined to avoid him at all costs.
Significant bonus or not.
“You don’t have to do this,” Uncle Mickey says, his tone surprisingly gentle.
Fighting back a shiver, I tear my eyes away from Jude’s picture and look at him.
“Boss—” Stewart tries to protest, but my uncle cuts him off.
“Shut the fuck up, Stewart,” Mickey snaps. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re stepping in here. You don’t know who these men are.”
Wondering why he seems so angry and concerned, I ask, “Who are they?”
He’s never given a shit before. Why now?
His expression hardening with a mixture of anger and pain, my uncle looks me dead in the eyes. “They’re the men that killed your father.”
3
Jude
It’s strange to me that every time I’ve found myself back inside the confines of Garden City, I feel this oppressive desire to get back on a plane and leave.
It’s not that I hate this place that I call my home, it’s more that the ties that seem to bind so many of my family simply do not exist for me.
No wife and children await me in the sterile, empty house I’ve been shuttered away in for the last however many months. There’s nothing inside the place beyond my clothing, a laptop, a bed, and an empty refrigerator. No pictures or things to make it my own.
There’s no need to have such things, anyways. I’ll be sent back out into the world soon enough and such trappings would only be in the way.
Staring at the city’s skyline while Thaddeus drives us to Lucifer’s downtown office, I wonder if Garden City has always been this ugly?
Is it the way the sun reflects off the buildings, showing some deep flaw?
Maybe it’s the city’s way of finally showing the deep, infected corruption of its humanity.
Maybe I just need to shut the fuck up.
Looking over to Thaddeus, I frown at him as much as I frown at myself. He’s back here, as well. He’s been pulled from the wild. Pulled from the nomadic life we both live.
We’re the last of the nomads, the last of our family’s wanderers.
The last of the free, if you ask me personally.
Well, we would be free if they let us off our damn leashes and let us do what we do best.
“Has Lucifer or Simon given you any indication on when we’ll be allowed to leave this shitstain of a city?” I ask Thaddeus.
He just shrugs his massive shoulders.
That’s all the answer I’m going to get out of him.
Thaddeus doesn’t talk unless he wants to, and that’s just about never. I’ve known him ten years now, and it’s rare that he answer a question outright, and even more rare for him to start conversation.
When he does, it’s never more than a few words.
Lucifer can get him to talk, sometimes, but even then it’s like talking to a brick wall.
“You want to get back out into the world?” I ask him.
Nodding, he grunts a long sigh at me then returns his full focus to the off-ramp. We’ll be at the office soon, and I’ll be in for another day of tedium.
Meetings about numbers, profits, losses, and ways to spark growth.
I don’t have the mind for these things.
I’m the scalpel of our family. I do the dirty wet work. I’m not meant to watch all the busy little bees going about their daily lives.
I’m beyond frustrated at this point in my life. If this was one of those mundane nine-to-five jobs, I’d resign or put a bullet in my head.
The little voices inside me wail every day that I’ve been forced to be so bored. They beg me to do something, anything.