The consequences of that day playing out with a heady mixture of cruelty and greed.
Looking around us now, it was hard to remember the young man I’d been. Impossible to recall those feelings of innocence. Of trust. A part of me wanting to yell out into the dusk to reach the younger version of me.
Run!
Escape into the marshland. Don’t listen to him—to Glassman. Don’t carry his threat back to my family. Don’t let him have that power over you.
A blue heron waded amongst the abundance of greenery. Beneath the water, unseen creatures lurked. The aliveness a symphony of song. Continuing through, I took pleasure in pointing out egrets and pelicans. Suppressing a lazy smile when Anya flinched—she’d seen the alligator not that far away, bathing on a leafy bank.
She wrapped her arms around herself in a hug. “Why have you brought me to the worst place on earth?”
I shot her a glare. “Don’t be quick to judge. Swamps are critical. We need them. They protect us from storm surges. Filter waste. What you’re seeing is the way nature purifies.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” I swept my hand across the water. “This place provides the balance we need to exist. It saves us, really. From ourselves.”
As the deadliest predators upon this earth. Humans.
An evening song of crickets accompanied us as we went farther into the murkiness. The high-pitched cry of the male insects wooing their mates in an unceasing chirping.
Anya shivered in anticipation or perhaps it was that small voice inside warning danger was nearby. I couldn’t blame her reluctance. She’d been brought here by a man like me and that alone should elicit fear.
She jumped when our boat knocked against something unseen. She reached out and gripped the sides of the boat, her focus on me as she tried to gauge my mood and guess what the hell we were doing here.
Turning off the engine, I let us drift with the slipstream. The scenery moved around us in a continuous portrait of the colors of life.
“Cassius?”
I wanted to make sure she was comfortable at least. “Warm enough?”
She nodded and hugged her knees. Dark locks of hair fell over her delicate features, making her look vulnerable. Even as I’d gotten to know her strength. Her ability to endure without hardening her heart. There would be a time when she came to see me as the man I really was. Soon, the truth would curl like a giant wave and crash against the sands of time that I’d somehow been able to hold back.
Until now.
Soon, she would be ruined forever because of it.
Just like all those years ago when my innocence shattered. It would be no different.
“I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this,” I said. “But your father is an arms dealer.”
Horror flashed across her face, her eyes blinking as though to shut out the words. “You’re sure?”
My expression gave her the answer she didn’t want.
“Oh, God.”
“Maybe knowing that will somehow help explain how you and I came to know each other.”
“Why you took me?”
“Yes.”
“What would an arms dealer want with your family?”
“More than we could deliver.” I raised my hand to stop her questions. I would share everything with her soon.
Although I was hurting her, this felt like it was me who carried the burden of grief as if we were already, in some way, intrinsically connected by something more.
“It was here,” I began quietly.
Anya’s attention zeroed in on me, as did the stillness of the moment.
She nodded for me to go on, offering a kind smile to coax me into the inevitable.
“I was fourteen. I’d flown in from New York on my father’s jet. Taking a break in my semester. Only it wasn’t my father’s men who collected me from the airport.” The memory of that SUV gliding down the runway into view was a stark and real and agonizing memory filling me with regret for allowing myself to be ushered inside Stephen’s car.
“When I refused to get in, Stephen gave the order for his men to encourage me to join him in the back seat.” I tilted my head to impress upon the fact there had been no way to resist them. “Then he drove me to this place. This swamp. Brought me out on a boat. Just the two of us. Alone.”
“Why?” She was breathless.
“He wanted my father to know he could get to him. Or at least his children. He wanted my dad to know my life had been in his hands.”
A pair of reptilian eyes peeked above the water, glassy and sinister.
“Cassius?” Anya drew my focus back to her.
“We were in a boat very much like this one. I couldn’t go anywhere. Knew well enough not to leap into the water and wade to the bank.” Exhaling, I tried to say the words so deeply engrained in my soul. The catalyst of evil that had seeped into my DNA, weaving it into something new. Forming a double helix of evil, twisting throughout my being and changing me, mutating me on the cellular level into a monster.
The cruelty with which Stephen’s message was spoken so calmly, so precisely. His threat began a war against my father. One that endured today, but with his son, with me.
“Stephen told me to advise my father that if he didn’t allow him to place weapons on one of his ships docked in the New York Harbor—the Santa Marina, he would kill him. What he was trying to do was straight-up piracy. Apparently, my father had refused him once. My dad kept this from the rest of the family. Even Ridley’s father didn’t know. Dad had tried to handle it but clearly had failed to impress upon Stephen it wasn’t going to happen. Dad had told him not on one of his fleet of ships. Not ever.”
“What did my dad say?”
“Stephen warned that if I gave this message to anyone other than my dad, he would find me and kill my sister and me.”
Anya’s eyes widened with horror.
“When Stephen finally let me go, and his car dropped me off outside my home, I was badly shaken. I didn’t want to tell my mom what happened because I didn’t want to worry her. Plus, I knew she was with my sister, and probably didn’t even realize I was home late. I tried to get to my dad to give him the message, but he was busy taking back-to-back meetings.”
“Your dad wouldn’t see you?”
“His men sent me away.” More precisely, it had been Ridley’s father who’d refused to let me in that room. A fact she didn’t need to hear. His son had more than carried the burden of guilt for well over a decade. Perhaps the only reason he’d stayed around long enough to watch me throw my life away.
A mosquito launched its proboscis into my forearm. I slapped it dead. “They wouldn’t let me see him. They told me he was too busy. I thought I had time. Thought that once the evening came around, his men would filter out like they always did, and my father would see me. And then I’d tell him what happened.” Wiping away a streak of sweat off my neck, I willed myself to go on. “I should have fought my way into his office. Fought anyone who tried to stop me. Instead, I was the well-mannered son who asked for permission to speak with my own father.” I cleared my throat. “I failed to warn him Stephen was coming.”
Anya looked horrified.
“They swept through the house like a plague, killing everyone in their wake. My mother died in my arms in the garden.”