Page 18 of These Shattered Memories

Chapter Nine: Rowan

O n Saturday afternoon, I find myself back at my parents’ house. Anxiety prickles at my skin when I make my way upstairs. It’s not the house or my parents’ summon that has me on edge. It’s not my lack of adequate sleep or Haze either. It’s Alex and that damned tattoo.

And no matter how hard I try, I can’t figure out why he would do that, why he’d immortalise the one day I always thought we both wanted to forget.

After fleeing Alex’s apartment, I dreamt of him again. This time it wasn’t a dream, more a memory, and somehow that made me wake up more pissed off than usual.

It was December, six months after we met. Alex had pulled me into the freezing night air, the riverside alive with holiday cheer. He’d pointed to a tattoo shop under the bridge, eyes bright with mischief. “We should get tattoos,” he’d said.

“Of what?” I asked.

Alex shrugged. “Whatever we want. Something to remember this by.”

I should have walked away when he said that. I should have snapped back to reality and shot him dead, but instead, I pulled him in, grabbing the nape of his neck in my hand. “Maybe I should tattoo my name on your ass.”

His smile turned watery, moisture dancing in his eyes. “You should,” he whispered before pulling me into a deep kiss like somehow he got his oxygen from me. But I knew this couldn’t last.

This wasn’t my destiny.

My destiny was The Snake.

Blood. Power. Death.

Not love. Especially not with him.

I haven’t thought about that night in a long time, but seeing Alex’s chest, the XIX VI scrolled in black ink has me convinced I’m about to lose my mind completely. I shouldn’t be thinking about it or him, but the memory is like a ghost I can’t shake.

I grit my teeth, pushing him out of my mind for now and knock on the office door, taking a deep breath when I hear her clipped ‘ enter’ .

I pause at the threshold when I see her because she’s not alone.

My father is here too, standing beside her, his expression pinched in a way that takes me back to when I was a little boy.

“Rowan,” my mother says first. “Come in.”

I walk through the office. The walls are flanked by bookshelves stacked with old volumes of classic novels, motivational self-help books and old accounts of the history of The Snake. I know them all by heart.

“You wanted to see me?” I say, my eyes falling on the matriarch of The Snake.

“Where are you on finding out what happened to that man in the warehouse?” she asks.

I swallow, not sure what to tell her exactly, especially after the raid.

She watches me for a moment before realising I’m not going to give her what she wants. “Must not be very far if I’m hearing the police were at Summit.”

And there it is.

My smile is easy to pull off. I shrug. “It’s nothing to worry about. I have it handled.”

She glares at me. “I only told you about this because I thought you could prove yourself,” she says. “But for the first time in years, the police are in our business again, and guess who the common factor is?”

The thing about my mother is that she never shouts. Her tone is always level, like she’s talking about the weather or something equally mundane, not the potential implosion of our entire clan.

But I keep my face neutral. “Like I said, it’s handled. Nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure about that, Rowan?” My father speaks up for the first time. His voice is deceptively gentle, playing the good cop when my mother was always the bad one, but I’m not falling for it. I know who he is just as well as I know who she is, and I’d be an idiot to fall for his smiles.

“I just said it’s handled.”

They may be my parents, but we all play a game here. Never show weakness. That’s at least one thing they taught me. That and how to kill swiftly.

“I hear you haven’t been sleeping at your apartment recently,” my father continues, coming round the desk and leaning against it. He’s dressed in a well-fitting suit, the buttons of his shirt popped open. “Perhaps you’re distracted?”

“Are you keeping tabs on me now?” I lift an eyebrow, a smile dancing on my lips. “You haven’t done that since I was fifteen. Would you prefer I move back in?”

His smile is as icy as the look in my mother’s eyes. “Wouldn’t have to if you knew how to manage yourself. Maybe we should not have been so lenient with you.”

I curl my fists at my sides because they were anything but lenient. He was anything but lenient. The sound of a sharp whip rings in my ears, but before I can respond, my mother speaks.

“I don’t care who any of you occupy your time with.

I do, however, care when it gets in the way of business.

You can tell Xander I said that too. His reputation and his tastes have begun to proceed him.

No one wants an incompetent heir nor a sadistic one.

Hayden is not much better either, but at least he’s discreet in his shortcomings. ”

My muscles tense. “Is that all?”

“Make this go away, Rowan,” she says sharply. “No blood of mine fails. You’ve already had one chance—this is your last.”

I hear the veiled threat loud and clear. My eyes fall to my father, but he only looks back at me, no hint of sympathy behind his eyes. I’m not sure what I was expecting.

I nod. “Understood,” I say, then turn on my heel to get out of there, not bothering to wait for my mother’s dismissal like the good soldier she wants me to be.

As I make my way downstairs, my phone vibrates in my pocket, and I see Xander’s face light up my screen.

“What?” I answer curtly.

“That’s not very polite,” he says on the other end.

“I’m not in the mood, Xan,” I say.

“Fine,” he says. “Guess you don’t want to know about one of our guys selling Haze.”

“What?”

“Told you I could help,” he says smugly on the other end.

“Where are you?”

“Sying,” he says.

I let out a quiet breath, the tension building behind my eyes. “Okay, see you in twenty.”

“Looking forward to it.”

When I get to the warehouse, it is full of men and women carting off piles of boxes from one end to another, packing them into trucks and then doing it again. They all move aside, wide-eyed when they spot me, doing well to stay out of my way.

Sying Peak is one of the warehouses we run The Snake business out of.

Unlike Summit or The Serpentine where the men in suits frequent, Sying is where we smuggle all of sorts of products—weapons, cigarettes, alcohol, stolen art and precious jewels—you name it.

It’s where Xander’s foot soldiers mostly work out of too, tattooed men and women brandishing bats, guns, chains, knives, whatever weapons they deem fit to make sure the northern side of Senna remains in the hands of The Snake.

I walk up a metal flight of stairs, several men bowing their chins in greeting and moving aside quickly like I’m some terrifying animal. But I’m not paying attention to them. My mind keeps drifting to my conversation with my parents.

I’ve never held any desires for them to treat me like a son. Unlike Hayden, I’ve never believed they needed to love us in the same way most parents love their children. That’s not why we were born. But my mother has the power to take away everything I’ve ever wanted, and it makes my stomach roll.

Someone pulls open a metal door and the first thing I see is a man seated on a metal chair; his hands bound behind his back with hemp rope. Fluorescent white light beams over the empty room that smells of wet cement and gravel.

A trail of blood runs down his pale face, one eye swollen and black. Xander is leaning against the far wall, his arms crossed, showing off his arms covered in tattoos. There’s a swatch of blood on his cheek and his knuckles are raw and marred with crimson slashes.

“Hey Ro.” He waves, a knife in hand and an angelic smile dancing on his lips. “So happy you could join us.”

I look back at the man in his chair, who is shivering violently in his seat, his one open eye tracking me warily. “Please,” he whispers, “Please you have to help me. I haven’t done anything wrong. Please .”

I ignore him, looking back at Xander in question. He gazes back at me, that fake innocent smile on his face. “Meet Key. He sold a few pills to our dead guy a few days ago. As you can see, I’ve tried to question him but he’s not budging. I thought you might want to take a crack at it.”

“Please,” Key says again, keeping his functioning eye on me. “This isn’t … This isn’t…” But he can’t finish his sentence because he hunches over and coughs out a glob of blood mixed with saliva. It lands on the floor with a splat.

Xander makes a dramatic gagging sound from where he stands. I wrinkle my nose, crouching slightly so Key can see me clearly. “Hello, Key. My name is Rowan,” I say, although he already knows that. “Before we start, can I get you anything?”

Distrust flashes through his eyes. He looks at me, then at Xander, his split lip quivering.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, trying my best to sound reassuring, but we both know it’s false. Nothing is okay and Key probably won’t survive the night. “Tell me what you need. I’ll make sure you get it.”

His gaze meets my eyes again and swallows loudly. “Water. Please—water.”

I nod at one of the guys standing in the corner and he rushes out of the room without a word. I look back at Key and smile. “Let’s get these ties off you, shall we?”

“Really?” Xander chimes in from his corner.

I ignore him as someone else springs into action, coming over to cut the rope around Key’s wrists.

His arms fall to his sides, his entire body going slack.

A plastic cup halfway filled with water is thrust between us.

Key hungrily reaches for it. It scrunches in his fist as he downs it in a second and hunches over to breathe heavily.

“Thank you,” he says after a long coughing fit.

“Of course,” I say. I need him to trust me, or at least trust me enough to tell me more than he’s told Xander. “I’ve done something nice for you, Key. Can you return the favour?”

His Adam’s apple bobs, his dark eyes that are almost black sheened over with tears. He has a snake tattoo that covers the side of his neck, showing his allegiance to The Snake—to my family.

It’s unfortunate he’s ended up like this.

“Okay,” he says after a second.

“Do you know what happened to the guy you sold Haze to?” I ask. “He died a few days ago alone in this warehouse. His body swelled and bloated, and his family had to buy him an expensive coffin because he was so big by the time they buried him.”

Key is already shaking his head. “I promise I didn’t know it would kill him. It wasn’t supposed to do that.”

“This is easy,” I tell him, because it is. Whilst torture is Xander’s preferred method of compulsion, it’s not mine. I much prefer to charm and flirt my way through life. “I just need a name. I just want to know who is supplying it.”

All he does is continue to shake his head, averting his eyes from mine. I sigh and stand straight. “Haze is causing quite a panic around Senna, so I really need you to be honest with me.”

He mumbles something under his breath before his eyes meet mine again. “I don’t know,” he says, this time a little louder.

“Are you lying to me?”

“They’ll kill me,” he says. “They’ll kill me if I tell you.”

“So, you’d rather die here then?”

“I didn’t know.” He shakes his head so quickly it might snap. “I just needed the money, okay? It wasn’t supposed to do that.”

“Someone is dead, Key,” I say. “And you know what happens to those who kill a fellow Snake.”

Killing a fellow associate within The Snake, no matter the circumstances, is strictly forbidden. It keeps everyone in check and avoids scuffles in the neighbourhoods that can lead to unrest and mistrust among the general population. Violence is always the last resort.

“Please. I didn’t kill him.”

I shake my head, suddenly feeling exhausted. “I’m in a really bad mood today,” I say. “And if I let you go, you know what everyone around here will think. They’ll think I’m soft or worse, showing favouritism.”

“Please.” He shakes his head, tears spilling from his eyes now. I wish I felt bad. “They’ll kill me. I’ve seen what they can do.”

There’s that word again. They .

Key knows something, but whatever it is, he’s too afraid to tell it tonight. He needs a little longer to stew alone with his thoughts, to realise just how fucked he is.

I glance at Xander who seems to read my mind, pulling out a pistol from the waist band of his jeans. It’s silver-plated, with a snake etched onto the barrel. I take it and by the weight of it, I can tell it’s unloaded. Perfect.

“Unfortunately for you,” I say, making a show of checking the magazine and pushing it back in. “Rules are rules.”

“No,” he cries. “Please. No.”

I walk up to him, pushing the end of the silver gun against his thin, pale lips, sliding a hand through his greasy hair and forcing him to look up at me.

“Open,” I instruct.

He shakes his head, tears mixed with snot and blood spilling onto the barrel of the gun. “You can’t do this.”

I smile, forcing the barrel past his lips and deep into his mouth.

I watch his eyes widen before he begins to thrash, violently shaking, but my grip keeps him in place.

He continues to fight but someone comes up behind him, holding his arms back as he lets out a muffled scream.

Adrenaline rushes through me as I watch the fear and then defeat cloud his eyes.

Finally, he winces, shutting his eyes because he knows this is how it ends.

I grin and pull the trigger.

There is a dead quiet around the room for just a moment where everyone waits to see Key’s brain matter fly everywhere, but that moment doesn’t come.

“I’m not going to kill you tonight,” I tell him.

He opens his eyes, and they are drowning in tears. I smile down at him, pulling out the gun from his mouth and tapping his cheek. He sags in his chair, his shirt soaked through with sweat.

I’m not going to kill Key tonight because something has clicked in my head. Key is afraid of someone who is close enough to know it if he told me the truth. He can’t tell me because that person is everywhere.

They are everywhere.

Suddenly it clicks.

The words twist in my mind, fitting together like jagged shards of glass. The person behind this belongs to The Snake and Key is going to help me find them.