.
“I need to do this, Janson. I need it for my daughter. One day you might just understand.” He smiled at me, the new look in his eye something I couldn’t ready distinguish. I’d never seen him look that way before.
I honestly hoped he was right. I hoped one day I would understand.
“I have a feeling I already do,” I said truthfully. I could only imagine the things I’d do for Kathryn, but if she had a baby… hell, I’d obliterate the whole world if I could.
We pulled up to the house, out in the suburbs of Millersville, and I knew as soon as the men outside saw us that we were in trouble.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked. My first priority was to take orders, but I still had my own instinct of self-preservation. I reached for my gun but Greyson held his hand up, motioning for me to stand down.
“We talk, Janson. Right now. We talk,” he said as he looked me in the eyes. He was so very serious. In the past year, he’d turned into a totally different person. His anger, his cynical nature, it was all gone. Transformed through love, as corny as it sounded to me.
I was beginning to understand exactly what that meant.
Greyson got out of the car and raised his hands over his head, looking at the men. “We’re here on parley, boys. Not to f*ck
anyone over. As you can see, we are laying down our weapons. We just want to talk.” He motioned to me with his eyes to get out of the car. I knew he wanted me to do the same. So, I stood and laid down my weapons.
All but my knife.
No one would even notice it hidden there, in a false pocket in my pants. I could feel it, but no one else would.
I was confident of it. As long as I felt like I could protect us, I knew that it would be all right. Or I would go down trying.
“What do you want?” the beefy guard on the right said to Greyson. He’d certainly gotten his attention.
Not to mention the fact that no one wanted a shootout in a sleepy suburb outside of Baltimore.
“I want to talk to your boss and his brother. We have some news. Some good news.” Greyson didn’t back down. He didn’t turn and run. He never would. That man was a born leader and it was my job to be his muscle. Always at his side.
Even now. Especially now.
“Let them in,” a voice bellowed from the inside of the home. It was a beautiful McMansion, the kind I’d expect to see upper-level management in, not a damn mob boss. But then again, the same could probably be said for Greyson’s father…
None of them looked like what they were. They were older, wrinkled, overweight. They didn’t have the muscle and handsome looks of their youth.
I wondered if we would turn into that as we grew older.
I followed Greyson as we stood and walked towards the inside.
“Stop,” Beefy said as soon as we entered. We stood in our tracks and looked around. The place was nice but it wasn’t anything special. That wasn’t what I was looking at, though. I was looking at the exits, the number of men stationed. I was getting a feel for the layout in the event we needed to get the f*ck
out of there.
“You need to be frisked.” He put his hands over Greyson and then turned to me.
A little part of me was nervous, just like it was every time someone did this, but it was foolproof.
He did a quick frisk and then it was over. “They’re clean.”
I let out a sigh of relief I didn’t know I held.
“You may come in.” Dennis stood at the edge of what looked to be a study and invited us in. “What is it you’d like to discuss?”
“The birth of your niece’s daughter,” Greyson said. He stood tall.
“Now, that is a good thing. Congratulations.” Dennis smiled. “Scotch?”
“Thank you.” Greyson nodded.
“So, you have a daughter. And I have a new niece. What do you want from me?” he asked. “Last I checked, we were at war.”
“I want an end to it. I want an end to it all.”
“A sit down? With your old man?”
“For the sake of my child,” Greyson said as he bent forward towards Dennis. He was appealing to his sense of legacy.
I could see Dennis’s eye sparkle with greed. He was hoping for something like this. “I think something can be arranged. When do you want this little tete-a-tete to happen?”
“Soon.”
But first, we had to approach his father with the idea.
Kathryn
I’d been waiting for this day since Joanna got out of the hospital. The day she brought Jessica to the house for everyone to see. I hadn’t been alone in the house. Not for one moment. It was gigs and meetings and sneaking around to see Janson. And every spare moment, one of my sisters or my mother or even my father was there.
And their eyes were always on me.