I reached for my machete.
“Save your energy for the people who actually ruined our morning,” he said coldly.
I glared but put my hand down, crossing my arms, trying to understand this stupidity. “These people must truly be stupid. They shoot up your house, and they didn’t even use armor-piercing bullets? They barely put a dent in the glass. A low-level cartel.”
“That’s right, I didn’t tell you,” he muttered, slowing slightly as we went past another cop.
My eyes narrowed. “Tell me what?”
“You might have noticed the uptick in police and security in the city, correct?”
“Yes, I might have. Only a blind moron wouldn’t.”
“The day your grandfather came, I killed the governor, the mayor, the police commissioner, and the fire chief,” he casually confessed.
My eyes widened as I replayed that in my mind.
“What the fuck, Ethan?” I hollered at him, nearly gasping. I looked back over the city. “You can’t take out all the major heads of a state and a city at the same time. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and every other goddamn abbreviation is going to consider it an act of terrorism and swarm the city. We will be under a national emergency order. How did I not notice? Goddamn, I took one day off! Please tell me it was all at different locations—”
“No, I hung them from their toes, upside down and naked, from the Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge.”
My mouth dropped open as I stared at my once-thought soulmate. But he couldn’t be my Ethan. My Ethan was smart. And I liked him smart.
“When did you become an idiot?”
“They hurt my little brother,” he replied in amusement. “If I took them out one at a time, they would have seen it coming and hid or tried something stupid—”
“You’ve hurt your little brother! You don’t give a fuck! But let’s ignore that, even if you wanted to make a point, a coordinated hit and kill across the state would have been better than hanging them under a goddamn bridge!” I snapped. “Did you fucking sign your name under them, too? Or did you just say, sincerely, the mafia as you slip into the 1950s, Al Capone.”
“Al Capone died before the ‘50s.”
“Not my fucking point, Ethan!”
“I figured you didn’t know—”
“Of course, I didn’t know. My daughter was gone. They could have nuked the state, and I still wouldn’t have noticed. If I had noticed, I wouldn’t have spent my morning making jelly donuts!”
“They looked very well done—”
“Ethan!”
“What? Are you going to listen to my reasoning? Or would you like to yell a bit more.”
“No, I want to yell a bit more,” I yelled again. “It’s my first fucking official day back in Chicago, not even a full day. And so far, I’ve been shot at—”
“It was more the house than you—”
“And a city that has always been fucked, has been double fucked by you,” I went on, ignoring him. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, trying to think. “This why you were hesitating…you knew it would be harder to move since you already infected the city with cops.”
He was silent, allowing me to rant.
As I did, I slowly put everything together.
Opening my eyes, I sat up straighter. Why were these people shooting at his house now? They shouldn’t want to get caught by cops either…they were doing it to prove they control the city and they would only think to do it if they felt they had the power.
“You blamed the killings on the Rocha cartel,” I whispered.
Again, he didn’t say anything.