That taught me to stand up to bullies. Not all of them responded, but most of them did.
Jude’s mother wasn’t like that. She had her own problems, mostly pills, other drugs too. She didn’t hit Jude, but she didn’t do much of anything else, and Jude found herself growing up too fast. Jude took care of the home, made sure her mother didn’t pass out in vomit and die, cooked dinner, cleaned and did laundry, basically acted like the adult. Her mother went to work, then took pills and stared at the TV, and that was almost as bad as my dad getting drunk and punching me in the face for looking at him the wrong way.
Fucked-up childhoods. Sometimes I wondered if that was why we found each other—like we could sense that the other was just as broken. She understood me in a way nobody else did, and leaving her back then was like ripping off a piece of my body. It hurt like hell, and I hated myself for it, but I had to go. My dad was going to kill me, sooner or later, or maybe I’d kill him. Either way, sticking around that house, waiting for Jude to graduate, it wasn’t an option for me.
It was life or death, so I took the first opportunity to get away.
I could’ve done better. I could’ve reached out to her more, or been more active in calling and emailing and whatever, but those first couple years were culture shock, and I was barely hanging on, working whenever I wasn’t in class, and barely managing to keep up my grades. Jude drifted away in the massive pile of debt and hard work, and I always regretted that, and hated myself for letting it happen.
But now I wanted to make good on all those failures.
“I know you think you have to fight back all the time,” she said softly, and I flinched a little bit. The girl knew me better than anyone, and that hadn’t changed. “But maybe right now, we should be careful. Zeke’s dangerous. You heard Lady Fluke.”
“I heard speculation,” I said. “If this guy’s really in organized crime, I find it hard to believe that he’d try to blackmail us.”
“That’s exactly what he’d try and do,” Jude said. “I mean, five million dollars? That’s got to be more than he normally makes.”
“He’s not getting five million,” I said, and watched a pair of workers carry in several long, steel poles. Beyond them, toward the street, two black sedans pulled into the parking lot and slowed to a crawl before finding spots. “Shit, I think that’s him,” I said.
“What?” Panic settled into Jude’s voice. I stalked off toward the cars and she hurried to catch up with me. “Oh, shit, don’t do something stupid.”
“Relax,” I said. “Since when do I do stupid things?”
She groaned but said nothing as Zeke stepped out of the nearest car. Jakub got out from the driver’s side, and two more men climbed out of the second car, both of them big and dressed in nondescript jeans and dark jackets. One had a full head of curly hair and wore dark sunglasses, and the other was older, with a scruffy beard, square jaw, and a deep scowl.
“Zeke,” I barked, holding out my hands. “What a pleasure. Did you come to check on how construction’s going on our first day?”
Zeke smiled uncertainly at me, and I had a feeling he planned on starting out aggressively—but I disarmed him, at least for the time being.
“That’s not why I’m here,” he said. “I actually came to check on my investment, and it seems as though someone vandalized my property.”
I stopped several feet away from them in the middle of the parking lot. Zeke stood in front of his goons, who assembled behind him like some team of batshit insane organized crime superheroes.
“That’s odd,” I said, “because I’m pretty sure Lady Fluke owns this building, and I’m pretty sure I can do whatever the fuck I want here.”
He grinned at me then and I got the feeling that was how he reacted when threatened—like a monkey showing its teeth in aggression. I felt a strange chill down my spine, and looked up at the men behind Zeke, and realized none of them seemed particularly bothered by the situation. Several workers were standing over near the building and watching intently, and I saw one of them head inside, probably to grab Nicky—and yet the goons didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
That was when I realized these men would fucking kill me without a second thought, and I felt suddenly rooted to the ground.
“You say she does, and yet you don’t even know if she owns the patent on her own product,” Zeke said. “Come on now, Bret. You’re really going to play me like that?”