With that one sudden bang, he’s dead.
He’s dead. They killed him, right here, in front of us, and they don’t even know that we have witnessed this attack on our family.
They have no idea that the monarch to the Walsh name is here behind the walls watching as they take out her family. The only living son and now heir has seen them. Watched and witnessed the attack burning their eyes into my mind.
Last words echo inside my head causing my anger to ripple over my spine. A fierce need to protect my father washes over me. He can’t die this way. He’s my father, my mother’s husband. I reach for the handle with no plan in mind, just a blind rage to hurt them like they are hurting us.
Mother’s sharp grip stops me in my tracks. I turn in the small space, my eyes searching hers, my chest caving with pain. My breaths are fast and splitting with a newfound pain.
I stare up at her with questions in my eyes. Shaking my head, knowing I need to do this. They need to die for this attack.
Doesn’t she want me to save my father?
To save us?
She looks broken, so shattered as she stares down at me with wetness coating her cheeks. Long, silver tears roll down from her sad eyes to her cheeks to her neck, finally landing on the pearls father just gave her for being the most beautiful women he had ever seen.
She slowly shakes her head, her hands on my shoulders holding me there mouthing a silent no.
My heart shatters in my chest when I turn back around and watch the rest of the scene unfold. I try so hard not to cry.
To be a man and witness it then take it with me. My big brother was right… I will reign pain upon them.
I have a photographic memory and I will hunt them all.
The men in black that now have my brothers blood coating their faces and clothes laugh as they grab my father, holding him up by his hair as his hands fly to their grip, and he kicks and bucks within their hold.
To no avail though. They grab his arms, pinning them out as they lay him down on his desk. Just then a new guy walks in. Dressed in a midnight blue suit with a gold tie and black snakeskin shoes, he motions for them to lift my father up to his feet holding his arms out as he walks over towards my father.
“Samuel, we meet again. This time it’s me taking over.” His hand finds my father’s face, pulling his cheeks together until my father’s mouth makes an O shape.
My father spits in the man’s face. You can see the pure anger from both him and my father as it bounces around them. The man in blue wipes the saliva from his face as his evil eyes and his haunting laugh echo around the room. Pulling a knife from the inside of his suit jacket he walks around the back of my father. My father’s eyes meet mine and my mother’s. She has one hand on my shoulder, the other over her mouth.
Father mouths, ‘Forever with the sun, moon and stars I will be in love with you.’ He nods at me. I know what he means, he has been training me in secret with my big brother for years. With that the man in blue slices the blade along his neck.
So fast.
Quick.
No time to think.
Just like that.
Blood.
Oh my god, the blood, so much of it.
The sound of pain.
Gurgling.
A slight cough.
Bubbling of blood.
Then nothing.
My father’s powerful blue eyes, now lifeless, are on mother and me inside the closet. I know he can’t see us. He can’t see anyone. His eyes are glazed over, but he’s not at peace. The realization has a silent sob cracking through my chest. I have never felt such pain before in all my life. Mom tries to pull me into her chest to bury my sobs, mixing them with hers as we shake together. Her for a family lost, mine from the pure and utter anger from what I just had to watch. My father and brother killed in front of me and I vowed to the heavens that their deaths wouldn’t go unnoticed. That they will be avenged.
Chapter One
Haunted always Ghosts evoking nightmares.
~ Micha Ragen
I jolt awake with a start and fling upright in bed. Looking around the black of my room my eyes struggling to adjust as my hand reaches for my gun.
Their eyes are bright in my mind’s eye as their voices haunt me.
There’s nothing here though. No men in black. No man in blue. Just ghosts inside my head.
Perspiration clings to my skin, and I wipe it away with my hand. Pushing back the wet sheet, I step from the bed.
My eyes fall toward the digital clock on the nightstand, grinding my teeth.
Fuck sake, it’s only 3:30am. The last time I looked at the clock it was 1:30am. I haven’t even slept long.
It’s something that for years now has evaded me. To sleep requires the ability to relax and let go, and that’s never been something that has come easily. I walk toward the window that overlooks the city of Chicago. The city is vibrant with energy. Bright lights, taxis, random streetwalkers, you fucking name it, they are there. Out and about at this god-awful hour.
Picking up the packet of cigarettes off the end table, I light one. Breathing in deep, the smoke burns down into my lungs. A welcome feeling saying I am alive, and I am here. I try to see the world around me…the people selling drugs under the streetlamp at the entrance of the park, but all I really see is my past. The killing of my family that has led me here to this city, on a mission to take from them what they took from me.
Blood for blood. Sins for sins. Replacing their echoed screams with the ones I seek to remove.
Flicking open the gold Zippo lighter over and over, the smell of gas reaches my nose and brings a welcome memory to the forefront of my tormented mind. My brother. My hero. My blood.
This one thing that belonged to him brings me a stable sense of anchoring.
To him, to his memory, to his life.
I roll my thumb over the ring that belonged to my father, our family crest on the top. A sense of belonging comes from wearing it; a sense of him and pride. I feel him and it comforts me.
Watching a gruesome murder when you’re a kid changes you. It leaves you dark, tainted and unhinged. It completely fucks with your adolescent mind, turning you into a machine of brutal force and hate.
My mother tried to shield me from that life after the death of our family, she couldn’t though. I had already begun training.
I already knew what this life we lived was. It was a life filled with crime and uncertainty. She moved us from one crime family into another.
Hers.
I was already seeking out the crime underground, and I was already walking in my father and brother’s footsteps.
Watching them get taken from me, ripped from my grip and stolen from my mother in such a violent way cemented my place within the criminal underbelly.
This life.
It was in my fucking blood.
It was always going to be my destiny.
As much as I remember my mother stating that I was too special for that life. That I was gifted, too gifted for it to be wasted on violence and crime, I wasn’t.
My father and my brother were part of the Irish mob. The Boston, Massachusetts syndicate. My father rose fast gaining power and members so fast like cotton candy at a nighttime fair. He became the one man all men wanted to be.