The Squad

Jason

“I’m gonna go check on Ash and the kids.” My brother pulled his phone from his pocket and pulled up the screen where we could see my sister through the little device in her wedding ring. It wasn’t a clear image, just the outline of her body heat, and I knew he could press another button to hear what was going on around her, but we were in a strange place surrounded by strangers.

“They’re fine, stop worrying about them. She’s been talking to these women on the phone and online for a while now, and we’ve vetted everyone here at least ten times. Besides, you think I’d lead my wife and kids into danger?” He had a point, but still, old habits are hard to break.

For the past ten years, my life has been one that I never could’ve imagined when I was living on the streets, not knowing where my next meal was going to come from. Enduring cold in the winter and fall and unbearable heat in the summer, there were days when I thought my life was going to end on a park bench somewhere. Life on the streets isn’t easy for anyone, not even a boy who’d thought himself tough enough to face anything.

The man standing beside me had changed all that. Just because of my childhood friendship with his wife, and the fact that I’d ended up in my desolate condition because I’d been trying to help her, he’d gone way beyond what anyone else has ever done and made my life damn near princely.

In the first year after I came to them, he’d adopted me and given me his name, making me a legitimate member of his family. But I was always more brother than son, even with the trust fund he’d set up for me on my eighteenth birthday. I thought for sure after I killed my asshole sperm donor that he’d want to get me as far away from his wife as possible, now that I had blood on my hands, but nothing could be further from the truth.

He never held what my old man did against me in any way. Instead, he’d only drawn me in closer and never allowed me to feel a moment’s unease, never made me feel less than or not part of them. I owe him my life, him and my ‘sister,’ his wife. Our family dynamic is all messed up, but it works for us. He’d adopted me, but I’m his little brother. I grew up with her, risked my life for her; she’s my big sister.

Their kids are my nieces and nephews, though, on paper, they’re my brothers and sisters. We’re very clannish, very overprotective of each other. And the few who tried coming between us over the years, those uninformed few who tried claiming that because there was no blood shared between us that meant that we were not each other’s kin, had been sent away wishing they’d never crossed paths with any of us.

I’ve watched him stand between me and danger too many times to count. Hear my sister go to bat for me at the worst times in my life, those times when my past caught up with me, and I wanted to pack it in. She still doesn’t know the worst of it, that I’d ended my old man with my own hands because Gideon had kept that from her, and from the rest of the world.

Only his men knew the truth about what happened that night. Those same men who along with my brother, had taught me how to be a man. Not only how to protect myself and my loved ones physically, but how to be the kind of man they could be proud of. I live my life only to give back to him for everything he’s done for me.

He brought me back from the edge of hell, from imminent despair, and gave me a life of luxury and what’s more, unconditional love. So yeah, even though I’d vetted every man in this room and had seen firsthand the work they’d done so far in bringing home stolen children, something my brother and I care very deeply about, I’m still not willing to risk my little family.

Now, this Mancini guy wants me to hook up with some kid to find someone who’s offing predators. I need more information on that before I give the okay, but since Gideon doesn’t seem to find anything off about it, I’ll keep my cool for now. Usually, I’d be the one taking out the assholes; it’s what I do.

Gideon had wanted me to go into the family business. To keep my nose clean, rake in the dough and live the life of Riley. That just wasn’t for me, though. I’d seen too much by the age of sixteen, both from my time living on the streets and from learning about the shit my old man was into at a very young age.