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13

DANTE

Athick layer of dust rises from the ground with the heavy thump of my boots as I trudge down the stairs, ducking my head to avoid hitting it on the low beam. One of these days, we’d get that fixed. We haven’t used this basement in so long, and I’m irritated that no one has cleaned it of the dust floating around. Even though there is no plan to use it permanently, there is a quaint charm in keeping a neat house. Pietro has moved in, occupying a room upstairs where he has set up his computers and routers and surveillance equipment, wiring the house to be monitored at all times for intrusions. It is only a matter of time before the Murray clan retaliates in a bid to reclaim what is theirs, of that I have no doubt. We have to anticipate each and every move on their part and plan accordingly.

I walk down the hallway, passing various empty cells as I go, until I reach the last one at the end of the hall where the boy has made himself comfortable. I nod at the guard, sending him off duty. He seems relieved to be leaving the cavernous dungeon. I face the cell where the boy sits, his hat perched low over his eyes, obliterating my view of his face. He wears ridiculously dark glasses that are too big for his face, a scarf around his neck like he is trying to hide a scar, and he’s swimming in his oversized clothing.

The cell he sits in is large, if not comfortable, with a portable screen off to one side behind which hides a toilet and basin, the basic essentials to ensure our guest has a comfortable stay. I may be a criminal, but I still believe in human rights for all.

“Hey, lunch is here,” I say, pushing the tray through the service slot.

The boy lifts his head slightly but says nothing, turning to face me with barely veiled animosity.

“So, what’s your name?”

He is still silent, opting instead to stare straight ahead rather than give me the time of day.

“You know, we can do this either one of two ways,” I say, making it sound like this is the simplest equation in the world. I lift my hand to my face and look at my nails casually, as though I have all the time in the world. That’s bound to set him off-kilter. “You can tell me what I want to know, or I can bring in your number two and peel off nail after nail until he gives me what I want.”

There is a subtle change in the boy’s demeanor – he straightens his back in nervous tension, then lifts his head in defiance to cover up his discomfort, before facing the wall again. I’ve struck a chord; I blow at my nails like I have just won a marathon.

“One way or another, I’m going to get the answers I want. Whichever way that is, the choice is yours. You are responsible and accountable for any circumstances that may arise – just remember that.”

I turn to walk away, leaving the tray and wondering how long it will take before he breaks.

* * *

“He seemsmighty fond of that fedora,” Marco sighs, blowing cigar smoke into the air around us. “And what’s with those hideous glasses?”

“The boy has a certain sense of style,” I say, and the men around me break out in heady laughter. The Murray boy is colorful, if nothing else. They have already taken bets on how long it will be before he collapses and spills his guts. I’m not convinced he’ll be anything other than useless.

“The get up is probably his safety. Strip it away, I think he’ll sing like a canary,” Pietro remarks. I frown, giving his words some thought. I had heard stories about people hiding their secrets, their traumas, their burdens behind a mask. What was to say that the Murray boy wasn’t doing the same? His uncoordinated efforts were probably his comfort zone. Strip that all away, and he’d probably be a mess. I didn’t know how ethical it was, what I was thinking. I had never had the need to resort to such tactics, but if that was the one weakness this boy had, then we definitely needed to exploit it. It was the only thing standing between us and the docks.

“No one even knows what he looks like,” Marco points out. “We sure we even have the right boy?”

“The fact that we snatched him from Tate’s lap means we have the right boy,” I tell him. “He’s good at taking orders, not giving them.”

“We should’ve brought him in with the boy.”

I shake my head and look at Marco thoughtfully. I always take their opinions on board, but on some things, we just can’t agree. “No. He’s useless to us. The boy is key to us getting what we want.”

14

DANTE

“Lower your glasses.”

Instead of a reaction, the boy continues to stare straight ahead, the concrete wall of his prison his current and only best friend. There is something off about the boy, I realize. Something oddly familiar, but at the same time peculiar. There is something familiar in his stubborn defiance, in the way he turns his head or at times angles it curiously. I wonder if it is because of my memories of Maddog when I was younger; was I projecting my own memories of Maddog, and that’s why I found the boy so oddly familiar?

Odder even is the fact that he sleeps in his get up. I’d checked the camera feed – he’d merely lifted his feet onto the bed and curled them under him, laying on his side, the glasses firmly fixed in place, the fedora almost glued to his scalp. That had confused me even more than anything else, and I had started to wonder if the boy was suffering from some invisible ailment. He hadn’t said a word since he’d arrived; gave no indication that he heard me when I spoke to him. There is definitely something off about him.

So when Marco comes charging through the hallway with shopping bags swinging from both arms, I step aside and let him do his thing. There are some lines even I won’t cross, but this charade has gone on too long.

“Okay buddy,” Marco quips, setting the bags down at the boy’s feet. “You’ve been eating, sleeping and shitting in the same clothes for three days. The smell’s not doing anything positive for my men, so you’re going to need to shower and change. Look, I even got you another hat!”

Marco pulls out a fedora similar to the one the boy is wearing from one of the bags. It’s red.

For the first time since we’d taken him, we got a reaction out of the boy. For even though his eyes are still framed by those huge dark shades, I can see by the quiver of his bottom lip when he turns to me that he is suddenly afraid of something. A whimper escapes his lips, the first noise to come from his direction, and his furrowed eyebrows disappear beneath the frame of his sunglasses. Nervous tension seeps out of every one of his pores as he sits on the edge of the bed like a statue. He watches Marco as he deftly pulls items out of the bags, trying to entice the boy with the designer labels he has selected. The boy shakes his head in defiance, throwing off the shirt that Marco throws at him as though it’s a hot coal searing his body.