It was a very important job, Tristan had been told enough times. Which was why his mother always left him out in the garden to play and never let him in the house. The two times he’d sneaked in, he’d just roamed around the large halls and escaped back, scared someone would see him and complain.
Tristan was old enough to know that if the complaint ever reached the Boss, he would be in big trouble. The Boss didn’t kill little boys, or so he’d heard, but he did punish them as he saw fit. Tristan didn’t want to be punished.
Though he’d sneaked in before, it had been a very long time since he’d entered the house. He really should leave, but his feet remained glued as he watched the hall. At first, his break-ins had been out of curiosity. This time though, it was for information.
Nobody told him anything since he wasn’t old enough to be told adult things. That didn’t mean he didn’t know.
He knew.
He saw.
He heard.
He felt.
So much pain. So much guilt.
His baby sister was gone and it was his fault. Her protection had been his duty; her safety his responsibility. It had been seventeen days and not a clue about her.
Tristan still remembered the night so clearly it was a vivid picture in his head. He remembered tickling his little Luna as she giggled in that sweetest voice, laughing with him in her white pajamas with red hearts on them. He remembered her big green eyes, looking up at him with such innocent love, such devotion it always made him feel funny in his chest. He remembered checking under her bed and hugging her good night, remembered that soft baby smell of hers as she gripped his hair in a tiny fist.
She was the most beautiful baby sister in the world. Tristan had vowed the first moment he had seen her pink scrunched face and held her tiny body in his thin arms that he would always keep her safe. He was her big brother, after all. That’s what big brothers did. They protected their baby sisters at any cost.
Yet, that night, he had failed. He didn’t know how, but somehow he had.
Her windows had been locked – he’d locked them himself. And the only way to enter her room was through his. Not even his mother could get through the door without him waking up to check on his sister.
That night he’d hugged her good night like any other night.
And in the morning, her bed had been empty.
The windows had been locked. He hadn’t woken up once during the night. It was as though she’d vanished without a trace, and somehow, he’d slept when she’d needed her big brother. He had failed her.
The hole of her absence was eating at him. He just wanted her back. He wanted to smell that baby smell on her skin and hear her giggles and just hold her. He missed her so much.
Tristan wiped the tears that fell down his cheeks quietly with his long white sleeves. His father had taught him to never cry. He was a big boy and if he wanted to be powerful, he could never cry.
Tristan tried. He tried really hard not to.
But every night he would look at the small empty bed across his room, and the tears would come down. Every night he would hear his father shouting accusations and screaming at his mother in pain, and the tears would come down. Every night he would hear his mother try and calm his father down with so much hurt in her own voice, and the tears would come down.
Everyone was crying these days. He just made sure his parents never knew he did too. He washed away all evidence in the morning and was really quiet about it.
No one knew he closed his eyes and whispered prayers every night for his little sister. He prayed for her to come back. He prayed for her to be safe and warm and fed. He prayed for her not to miss him too much.
He prayed so much, and he was so tired of praying.
The need to do something, anything, pushed at him.
And while no one told him anything, he had sharp ears. He’d heard his father shout at his mother last night, about some conspiracy that had taken away Luna and many other baby girls from the city. It had made him angry, to realize that there were other big brothers feeling the way he was, helpless and hurt. Tristan had listened to it all, looking at the rain outside the window, remembering how happy it had made Luna.
He had hoped for her happiness again.
But seventeen days was a long time without a word, and while he would never consider the possibility of anything bad happening to her, he knew his parents did.
And then his father had mentioned the girl - the girl who’d been found.
The only girl to have come home.
That was why Tristan had sneaked in.
Tristan had come to see the girl. He had come to see the one who had come back while his Luna was still lost. He just wanted to see her, maybe learn something about what had happened to his sister. He wanted to know if she had been with her; if she’d seen Luna.
As Tristan lurked behind the pillar, he let his eyes roam around the hall, watching the people, observing them. There were ten men in total, including the guards and one woman.
His father had always told him to remember faces. Faces in their business, he’d taught little Tristan, were secrets. And secrets were weapons that could be used someday.
His mother had always told him to read eyes. Eyes, she’d said, were windows to the soul. That was why Tristan knew that his baby sister had the purest soul of anyone he’d ever met. That was how Tristan knew his father’s soul was getting blacker each day Luna wasn’t found. That was how Tristan knew his mother’s soul was dying under the weight of all the pain.
Tristan took his time, watching both faces and eyes of the people around the table, not looking at the security that flanked all around the circular room. His eyes went straight to his father.
David Caine stood beside the chair of the Boss, a tall, lean man with his hands clasped behind his back – hands that Tristan knew were shaking. They’d been shaking for a long time, and it had only gotten worse in the past few days. Not allowing that thought to bother him, he let his eyes drift down to the Boss.
The Boss – his actual name was Lorenzo Maroni but Tristan’s father called him Boss – sat at the head of the table on one side. He wore the black suit everyone in the family wore, his face covered in beard and head covered with short hair, his eyes dark.
Tristan remembered the first time he’d met the man. He’d been sitting outside in the garden while his mother had been organizing another dinner when the Boss had walked out. Tristan hadn’t known who he’d been at the time. He’d just looked at the tall, big man, at his dark eyes and a hard face, and he’d disliked him in an instant.
The Boss had held his gaze. “I eat people for looking at me like that, boy.”
Tristan hadn’t said anything, just disliked him even more for it.
The man had smiled then, a bad smile. “You’re not like other little boys, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” Tristan had said, narrowing his eyes.
The man had observed him closely, then walked away after that and Tristan had run back to his bench, never to meet the Boss again since then. He’d never understood why his father worked for a man with dark eyes and a hard face.
Tristan studied the man now, as he smoked a cigar, a gun sitting on the table before him, the metal glinting in the bright lights of the room. A few other men had their guns out as well.
That didn’t bother Tristan. Guns never had. His father had taught him how to hold a gun, and though he’d never fired one, Tristan liked guns. He liked the feel of it in his hands. One day, he was going to have his father train him in shooting them properly and he would own a collection of them.