Page 5 of Mafia Scars

I couldn’t eat and could barely focus. I was sure the two were intertwined, but I didn’t care.

Every day felt worse, and there were all these strange men around I didn’t know.

Saturday came, and I decided to eat. It was after dinner time. I made myself a sandwich, which I gobbled down, and another, which I ate just as fast.

The doorbell rang, and I left the kitchen to answer it.

A dark-haired man stood outside.

“Hi, I’m Agent Peterson with the FBI. I’m looking for—” He didn’t even get the words out of his mouth properly before one of the men I’d seen work with my father grabbed him.

Where did he come from so fast?I never saw him.

I screamed and jumped back when the two men stumbled into the house.

Dad came rushing out of his office at the sound of my scream and the squabble.

His face when he saw agent Peterson contorted into something dark and deadly, a look I’d never seen before. Instantly, I recalled what he’d said the other night.

That he’d cut off agent Peterson’s head himself for his carelessness.

“You have a nerve and some balls showing up here,” Dad screamed.

The man holding agent Peterson released him and shoved him toward Dad.

“Dad,” I cried.

Dad looked at me and scowled but quickly returned his focus to the agent, who was now panting.

“You need to come clean. Tag is after me,” Agent Peterson winced.

Dad snarled. “How dare you come here! You messed everything up. I heard your bullet killed my wife.”

I looked to Agent Peterson unable to believe what was happening. He’d killed my mother.

“It was an accident. Raphael, what was she doing at the docks? No one saw her coming. It was like she was suddenly there, and it was too late. Bullets were firing everywhere. It was all a mess. Tag’s men were armed and fired first. We had to defend ourselves, and Eloise got caught in the mix. She came out of nowhere. Now my job is in question for what happened, and Tag wants my family dead.”

“What do you think I should do? Seriously, tell me.”

“I don’t know what else to do. I have kids. I have kids,” he pleaded.

Dad threw a fist in his face. Bones cracked, and Agent Peterson stumbled backwards into the arms of the man who’d jumped him at the door.

I moved back into the wall that backed to the kitchen, holding my breath, holding my heart. Holding on to my sanity. When did my normal, mundane home turn into this?

One thing was for damn sure. My father had done a very good job at keeping this from me. This way of life. He switched so effortlessly into the monster I saw before me.

Right there in front of me, he pulled a gun from his back pocket and fired two shots into Agent Peterson’s legs. I screamed.

“I have a kid too. What do you think Tag will do to me?” Dad snarled and fired another shot. “I have a family to protect, and a name. Take him.”

Agent Peterson was screaming and flapping around on the ground. Blood was everywhere.

Two more men came to help and took hold of him, carrying him off.

“Brutus, stay with my daughter. If this fool talked, there could be trouble,” Dad said to the taller man. He wasn’t even bothering to hide the anger in his voice or hide who he was. “Watch her.” He looked from him to me, me cowering in the corner, pressing into the wall as if I willed it to swallow me.

I wished it would. I wished it would suck me straight into an alternate dimension and keep me there until the world that I knew came back.