Cade

When I was a kid, my parents used to drill holes in my head doing their best to teach me and my sibling’s right from wrong. They taught us to respect others, treat them the way you wanted to be treated, all the typical things a parent does to raise a decent human.

Regrettably, I’ve been plotting too many years to take their teachings and live by them. It’s an easy decision to make when my brother and the men who did them wrong went about their lives as if they didn’t take them away. It drove an arrow of retaliation into my heart. Charred it coal black, and left me with zero fucks except seeking revenge.

I was the one always getting in trouble, listening to that lecture about duty, honor, and respect when it turns out my brother who never did a goddamn thing wrong killed our family for money.

Greed. The thing that makes our world go round.

Our beautiful mom, who stayed at home, cooked our meals, stroked our egos and worshipped the ground we walked on. A sixteen-year-old sister who loved animals, and dreamed of becoming a cowgirl living on a ranch. A father who sacrificed his life for his family and citizens every day he walked out the door. A cop. Twenty-two years he’d worked for the NYPD busting heads, arresting thieves, rapists, murderers, and he loved it. He never took a bribe, never turned his head. The man walked the straight and narrow and brought it home to his family.

I had plans to be just like him. But life doesn’t always work out according to what we plan. So here I am, on the opposite end of the law. A grown man my father would detest. My life, my family’s lives, would all be different if Drew wouldn’t have done the unthinkable over greed.

The blood money man has a lot of lives he has to atone for. Too damn bad, it won’t be by asking for forgiveness to a priest.

Fucking greed. It not only spins us around, it’s what makes people toxic. The slide of a dirty hand under the table stuffed with cash.

A promise that’s usually broken.

Men who can’t keep their dicks to home and women who spread their legs for someone other than the one who slipped a ring on her finger. There are many definitions of the word. Doesn’t matter how you spin it, you choose to be greedy with me it’s going to cost you.

With your life.

An eye for an eye.

A tooth for a tooth.

A brother for a brother.

Pain shoots up my arm when I look to where my hands are wrapped around the steering wheel of my Suburban. The word vengeance scrawled across the knuckles of both my hands. A black heart on my pinky. Detailed ivy, which most people misconstrue as the plant when in all actuality it’s poison ivy twined around a long-stemmed deep purple tulip. It begins at my wrists and winds up my arms. A deadly reminder of who I am, what I’ve lost, what I’ve become, and the beginning of the end of my nightmare.

The irony has never been lost on me that my brother took the land our parents owned along with three other homes surrounding it, plowed them down and built himself a nice little club, named BURN of all things, right in the middle that seems to be quite popular, loud and lively. Except he didn’t have to demolish our parents’ home, because it was already sitting in a pile of ash and rubble; our families bodies charred to the bone and buried somewhere within.

The filthy little cunt is a big hot shot lawyer. A dirty dealer who has a love-hate relationship with a lot of people. He has no idea how much I’m about to drive an arrow full of hate through his heart.

“Wonder how fast it would take the fire department to get here,” I ask out loud, more to myself than the man sitting next to me. Doubt very long, not with the pull my brother seems to have in this safe suburbia borough of the city. Definitely not as long as it took them to get to our house the night he burned it down.

Pisses me off that the screwed up shit about living in certain areas of New York is, house fires, burglaries, and murders are a dime a dozen. Half of them go unreported, and the other half get swept under dirty-greedy cops dishonored feet. Got the proof that’s what happened with the investigation of my family. Lies, betrayal, and a despicable waste of human space from my brother’s lying mouth caused them to close the case.

Such a vicious scam of a cycle filled with his greed and deceit.

Don’t fucking matter no more, cause at the end of the day, disloyalty due to greediness has made my job a hell of a lot easier for me.

You ain’t the only one with connections in this town, brother.

I’ve mastered my own goddamn web of destruction by becoming a heartless killer. I’ve weaved it so well that there’s no escaping the downfall of the men who brought out the monster in me. You won’t find a man like me in the Yellow Pages or see my face on craigslist if you’re looking to off your cheating spouse. Asking me to kill a woman or child could cost you a bullet in your head. In fact, it’s cost a few dirty dealers already. You want to reach me; you call one man. Roan Diamond. The boss of a Mafia Empire. The man who would take my name to his grave.

Today, and every day since my family died, I’ve been strumming up a plan while I became a sharpshooting lethal weapon to my country. I never miss a target. I’ve perfected it so well that I’d bet a free kill if you measured from one side of the skull to the other, the bullet would be dead even.

My brother Drew St. James, and his friends are going to suffer the same kind of slow and painful death that I’ve suffered every day and night before I end their lives.

As I sit here, I can feel the first kill of vengeance slithering through my veins, the slippery, lethal, harsh vines of death. Years ago, it rooted in my tendons and twisted around the connecting bones. It knotted up my muscles, and not one of them will survive.

A chill runs down my arms and hits my twitchy trigger finger when sleet pelts the windows, my gaze moving up toward my brother's mansion. Outbreaks of shitty winter weather erupt through the fast moving clouds as it progressively makes its way from here to the city.

New York City. The most populated city in the States. Used to love this place along with this time of year. The holiday season. A time for family and celebration. I’ll be celebrating alright; it just won’t be for the reason everyone else does.

It’s early afternoon, but the cold hard sleet turning to snow, the increasing howls of the wind remind me of the night my family died.

Persistent pain eats into my flesh. Recollections so goddamn vivid of our house torched in flames, the heavy curl of smoldering smoke from water hitting fire rattles the cavity in my chest.

It’s been ten years. Ten years I’ve been fighting against the raging beast inside of me. The one who dies a little more each day to get his revenge.

Vengeance.

The word was coming to a boiling point in my head, a steady simmer of punishing those pricks has kept me alive. It holds more meaning for me than any other thing in my life.

“Count your days, motherfuckers. This crafty man you made crazy is coming for you. This city they call Gotham is mine.”

All I need to do is kill my first victim, and then the walls they’ve built will crumble under their own weight once they realize who it is. I'll make them regret the day they placed an invisible rope around my neck, pulling the bitch until I choked.

I wandered the streets for a few days after the night I lost everyone I loved. Pieces of my soul were dropping on the sidewalk with each step I took. I missed them so damn bad I could barely breathe. My mind kept spinning about their funeral. Head and heart kept on about my girlfriend Ivy. I’ve loved that girl ever since the day she moved in across the street a few years before the night that changed my course of life. Black as night hair, eyes shaded as green as dew filled grass. At first, she was shy, a pocket full of sunshine with a smile so wide you couldn’t help but want to drop to your knees.

It didn’t take me long to convince her to go out with me. Didn’t take long for the true her to surface either. The girl was feisty and stubborn. We’d been together since. But I couldn’t go back, not with what raged inside of me.

The money I knew my brother would collect didn’t mean a goddamn thing to me. I wanted him dead. After several days of freezing half to death, pissing, taking a shit, and vomiting next to where I slept, I knew I had to do something.

Couldn’t have been more than an hour later when I walked past a recruiting office. I stood outside that office for all of ten minutes before I strolled in and enlisted. It took a few days to scrounge up enough money to get a copy of my birth certificate. After that, it played out perfectly in my hands.

I thought it was the best fucking decision until halfway through my first tour I was called into my sergeant’s office. I was left with no choice but to tell him the truth about my family when he slid my death certificate across his desk. I told him I ran scared and as messed up as my story was, he let me go with a warning to stay in line. I left with a nod and constant worry he’d turn me in or think I was running from a crime I didn’t commit. Worse, I wasn’t ready for my brother to find me.

But I blocked it out. Busted my ass and trained to kill. Fought against the demons that corroded my brain. Took my vengeance out on the enemy and became one fucked up man set out to be the best. That quench to kill beat out the desire for a cold drink while I sat in the desert sweating my balls off. It made my dick harder than screwing a woman in her tight little ass.

And to this day, I often wonder if my brother knows I’m alive. In a way, I hope he does, because that means he knows I’m coming.

Glancing to the passenger seat, I make eye contact with one of the few men I trust with my life, Chaz Mayhew. Cold-blooded killer. A computer genius. My old sergeant. He investigated my families closed and unsolved murders without my knowledge. Found out I had a brother alive, hacked into his bank account, his investments and put two and two together.

One night he pulled me to the side. Told me what he found out and right there we made a vow that we’d stand by each other's side in and out of the war. All we both had to do was make it back to the States alive.

In his search, he found several people who were willing to give us the low down about my brother and his friend's whereabouts. Over the years, the sneaky bastard has done more than the cops ever did to track down killers. Works for me being that I want to destroy them myself.

It wasn’t until several months later that I found out why he took the information he found about me and dealt with it in his own way. A way to this day I’ll take to my grave.

Chaz, along with, Nick Williams, my lookout man I met on tour, and me, formed an untouchable bond that’s filled with plans and plotting. They both had been dealt a shitty hand in life. Lived through hell before the army saved them. Both with a desire embedded in their bones to seek vengeance. And soon, I’ll be by their sides when they get it.

“You make the phone call?” I finally speak to the poor dude who’s been sitting here with me night after night. I reach for my pipe, pack the tobacco, light up and fill my lungs with the sweet-smelling flavor. My dad used to smoke a pipe. My mom hated it, but there was always something about the aroma I loved, so I tried it. Ended up becoming a habit. It’s the only damn thing I picked up from him. A reminder I feed into my lungs that I’m his son.

“Yeah. Asshole was eager to meet me. Listen, Cade, I know you’re hurting man, but come the hell on. What good is sitting out here doing for you besides torturing you more? Besides, it’s colder than the bitch I banged last night.” I chuckle. Most bitches around here are definitely frigid.

All except one. She’s fire to my ice.

Prying my face from the house in front of me, I ask myself the same question. I’ve been sitting here every night for weeks, hoping I’d get a peek at Ivy. My perfect gift. One close-up that isn’t from a picture, or seeing her from a distance. She’s the icing on my cake of vengeance.

The woman Drew stole from me.

I can’t think of how to answer. Except, awareness sizzles underneath my skin like it always did when she was near me.

Ain’t no different for my cock either. I sit here with him raging like a hungry goddamn beast whose been jacked up for years on an experimental drug that makes you wanna fuck the woman of your dreams, and nothing will tame him until you slide into her slick wet heat. Not even the nameless bitches with a snug cunt will do.

“Don’t know. Whenever I’ve seen her from a distance, it doesn’t make me feel as screwed up in the head. Like maybe there’s a chance she wasn’t part of it. Like there might be something good for me after this is all over.” Doubt if that’s true. For one, she’s the only riddle I haven’t figured out. And two, I’m not sure I can forgive her for marrying my brother.

The one person I’m not sure was part of the plan to kill my family. Plus, whenever I do see her from a distance, she never smiles. Not one damn time.

The idea of my Ivy sleeping in the same bed as Drew, letting him touch her, kiss her, fuck her, and caress her silky smooth skin is enough for me to want to fuck her up right before I kill her. Make me the last face she sees before she slips down the hole of betrayal. Not sure I’ll ever forgive her for marrying him.

The thing is, there’s no proof she was or wasn’t part of Drew’s plan all along. If she was, she's the last person my twitchy finger will murder.