Captivated

We’d only gone back a year, to when she first moved here. The first few entries were pretty much what I’d feared, just the ponderings of an innocent teenage girl.

It was all about what she saw in the city, the many places she’d gone with her sister, and how sad she was that her parents weren’t here to enjoy the places she’d visited with her.

I was beginning to think after three or four pages of this, which covered her first two weeks here that maybe the encryption thing was just something she did for fun, and then I turned the page to about a month after she’d moved here and went stone cold.

‘I overheard them last night…’ Those words alone struck fear in my heart. I kept reading and was out of my chair before I reached the end of the page. I ran to the door with my phone to my ear and barely stopped to grab the keys to my bike. “Dray, where are you?”

“Almost to my house, why what’s up?”

“I’m going after her, meet me there.”

“No Damien, wait for me.” I hung up the phone in his ear. Fuck that! I hopped, jumped, and ran down the stairs and hit the garage at a sprint. My head was fucked up, and I don’t even wanna talk about what was going on inside my cold heart.

A heart that had been half dead since the day they dragged my kid sister out of a ditch. Michele is the first thing that had made me feel anything since then. Even the business that had been in my family for generations don’t mean as much and never got as much of a rise out of me.

What are the fucking odds that the same fuck that had fucked up my sister’s life was now trying to do the same to hers? And what are the odds that she’d fallen under the fucking wheels of my car? Life sure is strange as shit, unless you believe in that six degrees of separation bullshit.

As I hopped on my Ducati, all I could think is that I should’ve killed him years ago. If he touched her, if he even looks at her, I’ll end him. Fuck the fucking FEDs and anyone else who gets in my shit. I have more than enough ways, and there’s no end of places to make him disappear in.

I must’ve done a hundred, and that fuck still got there a few seconds before me. He has no chill whatsoever, or maybe my tone when I made that call had tipped him off to the fact that I was about to shed blood. He pulled up in front of their house, going the wrong way. Way not to alert the cops, asshole.

I turned off the bike and snatched my helmet off as I walked to him. “Wait…” He put his hand in my chest and pushed me back, taking his life in his hands. “The fuck are you doing?”

“Whatever he did, you can’t kill him, not yet. You’ve got too much heat on you right now.”

“He’s not gonna see another sunrise.”

“Then you’re not going in there.”

“You wanna bet?” He pulled his phone while I turned to walk away. “Sir, we have a situation.” Fuck me sideways with a walking stick. This fuck passed me the phone.

“I can’t talk now, gramps; I got a thing.”

“Are you using your head, no rash decisions like we talked about?” His voice was calm and smooth, the way it is when he’s dressing down one of his subordinates.

I gave Dray a look, which he pretended not to see. “Did you hear me, my boy? Have you been reading your Sun Tzu?” He and this old dead fuck must’ve been childhood sweethearts in another life or some fuck as much as he’s always pushing him.

“Gramps seriously, not….”

“Filial piety is the greatest sign of your maturity as a man.” My grandpa is an old Asian woman born in an Italian man’s body. I know I’m not about to win this fight, so I gave him what he wanted… for now. It was more important for me to get her out of there than to kill that fuck right this second.

“Yes, gramps, I’ll be good.” I’m a damn ten-year-old again being scolded for bloodying the neighborhood bully’s nose for being a dumb fuck. “Can I go now?” The people in the house could’ve taken ten trips in the time I spent fucking around with these two.

“You will give the phone back to Drake and wait until I’m through talking to him.” What the fuck now! I gave the phone back to bitch snitch and cooled my heels while the two of them talked in code. “Let’s go.” He hung up the phone and walked up the steps ahead of me.