Once again I found myself in front of an operating room staring at doors, barely breathing.
“Boss.”
“Not now, Fedel,” I replied. I couldn’t think.
“You have to see this.” He handed me the tablet, but all I saw was a pixelated image of an alleyway, maybe a street corner.
“What am I looking at?”
“The shooter.” He zoomed in, and the pixels slowly came together until I was staring at none other than…
“Is that—”
“Liling Tàiyáng.” He nodded, and I could see he was shaking, but whether it was from anger or excitement I wasn’t sure. “Yesterday the boss wanted me to look into her and Emilio. She thought there was no way she as just a dimwit heiress, nor would she marry down. No sooner had I put feelers out, trying to get information on her and Emilio, when she goes and shoots the boss. I don’t think Emilio thought she’d catch on to who he was so qui
ckly and panicked trying to get rid of her.”
Mel was right: she was a monster, parading around like everyone else.
“Liam.”
We both looked up to find Mina still in her bloodstained clothes from that morning.
“What is it now?”
She didn’t answer, instead lifting her phone to show a current press conference taking place on the news. A banner scrolled across the screen: NEW MAYOR SPECIALLY ELECTED.
Ladies and gentlemen of Chicago, due to the tragic events that have taken place in our city in the last forty-eight hours, the district attorney and various associates across the city have chosen an interim mayor, as we cannot be a city without a working government. He may be young, but he is the best-qualified person for this position. Please welcome Chicago’s new mayor, Emilio Esteban Cortés…
“The little cunt.” I hissed through my teeth. They had planned all of this. Liling hadn’t just shot Mel out fear, she’d done so to clear the table. Normally in these situations, the governor would appoint the mayor.
“What do you want me to do?” Fedel questioned. “Declan was stopped by Ju-long and was told this was all some sort of misunderstanding.”
If this was a misunderstanding…I wondered what would happen when we finally started to understand each other.
SIXTEEN
“Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can't kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up sometimes, but bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking Rooster. You know what I'm saying?”
~ David Sedaris
ETHAN
10:08 PM
I was good at Italian…when everybody spoke slowly, I could understand. I wanted to know because I hated when people spoke around me and I couldn’t get what they were saying. When the adults did that, spoke in other languages, it was because they didn’t want us to know what they were saying, and if we couldn’t know, it was because it was about us.
Cracking the window open slowly, checking back to make sure Dona and Wyatt didn’t wake up, I crawled out onto the roof, sliding on my stomach until I got to the edge of it, staying low so the men in the yard wouldn’t see me. There were so many, all of them dressed in black, holding big guns, just walking back and forth across the lawn in front of the gate. The men at the gate stood there with dogs. It reminded me of those war movies I saw on the history channel.
“Achoo!” Somebody sneezed under me.
“Salute,” another man with a much deeper voice replied.
“Grazie,” he said back, and I wasn’t sure but I thought he said, “They say it’s bad.”
“Yeah. Hard to believe the boss dying like that. She’s one tough bitch.”
I frowned, not sure who they were talking about. The boss? A bitch? What?