My mother is in a cemetery.
I stand there, absorbing it without swaying, without even a muscle in me twitching. I’m motionless, while at the same time, there’s a nuclear destruction within me. Here it is. The answer to why I could never find her.
My mother. Is dead.
The death certificate is dated several years ago. Around the time I left the Underground to look for her. She was on an island, a private island. That’s where she died. Natural causes, the autopsy reads. My mother died, alone, on some sort of secret island that will now belong to me.
My mother is dead.
My father is dead.
And my girlfriend is . . .
The thought of her in that hospital bed sends a fulminating, raging pain through me. The way I found her, unconscious, her skull banged, bleeding to death, her body small and pale and lifeless.
MY. FUCKING. GIRL.
Barely a pulse beating in her throat.
Pale and motionless on the ground when all I wanted was to lift her in my arms.
I stalk toward the bar and yell as I slam my fist into the wall.
? ? ?
I WAKE UP to an eerie silence and dozens of bottles are scattered across the floor. This shithole can’t be my room. The fucking mess can’t be where I slept.
I groan as I push myself up and the pounding in my head rolls to expand across my entire skull. I blink and take in my surroundings while instinctively pulling out my gun from under my pillow. I cock it as I stand and kick aside a fallen pillow. The place looks destroyed, like some motherfucker didn’t have the intention of anything in here surviving.
“You alive, man?”
I groan and tuck my gun back as I spot C.C. Apparently one thing survived, the one the motherfucker didn’t want to: me.
“You have anything else to break in here?” he asks me.
“So I did do this?”
So I destroyed my place. Great.
I’m so fucking proud of myself.
“Hell, it could be worse. Bro, you’re a fucking legend, the king of the Underground, rich as fuck . . .”
“My mother is dead. My mother is dead and my girl is . . .”
I can’t say it. My heart rips open at the thought of her. I put my head in my hands.
“I’m sorry, Z. I’m fucking sorry we didn’t reach her in time.”
“She was coming back to me, C.C. She was coming back to me even with this . . .” I spread my arms out and look around at the mess I look like—I finally look the part of the criminal I was born to be. “I may be revered in our own little dark world, but out there I’m shit. Out there there’s something very wrong with us, C.C. And a girl like her can do much, much better than me. And she was coming. Back. To me.”
He’s silent.
I start picking up my knives from where they lay scattered all over. “If I’m doing this, C.C., if the Underground is mine to deal with . . . things are going to change.”
“What do I do about Wyatt?”
“Jail him. Pin everything wrong there is with the Underground and my father on him. We start with a clean slate.” I look at him. “C.C., I want to be the man she wants. The man she needs. The man I could be.”
“Z, she may never wake up. She could stay like this for months until her family decides it’s time to turn off the artificial . . .”
I grab him by the shirt and warn, “Don’t fucking finish that sentence!”
C.C. quiets, and I start putting all my weapons aside.
“Grey, the Underground will fucking thrive with you. Your father was weighing it down. You can take it to another level. You can give our fighters more, our clients more.”
“I’ll take care of things. I’ll take care of things like I always do, but not now. Not now. I can’t now.” I start packing some stuff.
“Dude, where are you going to sleep?”
“For now, at the hospital.”
He signals to the box, my mother’s box, on my bed.
“Aren’t you going to open it before you leave?”
It’s a steel box, rather large. I stare at it for a long time, haunted by the sight of it. I rub the top and wish I could talk to her. I’m sorry I failed you. I’m so fucking sorry I failed you.
I failed proving to her that I could be good and tempered when I shot a man. I failed finding her in time. I became the thing she had been running away from for as long as I can remember. She died thinking I was a killer and probably never wanted to see her. She died thinking me a criminal just like the man she hated, my father. The reason I lost my mother is the same reason I lost the woman I loved. The Underground.
C.C. leaves, and I fist my hand around the key and eye the slot. The box is old, larger than a shoe box, made of steel.
“Fuck this.” I force myself to shove the key into the slot and crack it open. I peel open the lid, and it’s heavy, creaking. Then I stare inside. There’s a pendant with a diamond I remember her wearing. So simple. The scent of her lingers somehow. I pull out a set of pictures of me. Age fifteen? Check. Age eighteen? Check. Age twenty? Check. In all of them, I’m training with my knives or at a shooting range—unaware of the camera. Fuck me. What a way to say hello to your mother.
Next I find a bundle of letters tied in a white sash. Hand delivered, maybe. No addresses. Just her name on them. I open all three and immediately recognize my father’s handwriting.
Lana,
I’ve been told you’ve been uncooperative as of late. Let me assure you how cooperative I will personally be if you stop trying to leave the island . . .
J
Lana,
He’s doing well. How else would you expect a son of mine to do? He thrives under pressure and he’s thriving now. If you mean to ask me if he’s been asking about you? He has. I’ve assured him you’re all right. Don’t make me a liar.
I cannot guarantee I’ll let you see him and risk all the work I’ve done so far, but it’s in both his and your best interests that you get on my good side.
J
P.S. There’s a cook on the island for a reason. Eat.