“Yeah”
‘He’ll be back in the states in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. He’s hired mercs to guard him, so I wouldn’t go in alone, there are about twenty to thirty mercs coming with him.
“Understood,” I say and hang up the phone.
I hand Anson to Asher, “you have to get them to uncle Hemi’s and get help” I tell him once we are at the halfway point to our aunt and uncle’s house.
“Josh, I’m scared, I can’t get them by myself, you have to come with me and help me!” Asher says damn near in hysterics.
“Ash, you are almost there, just go straight and you’ll be there in no time. I’m going back to help dad. I tell him.
“He told you not to go back, you promised him you wouldn’t come back.
“He needs help, Ash and I’m the oldest so it’s my responsibility. You’re responsible to get our baby brothers to our aunt and uncle’s house as the second oldest, I tell him. He looks at me with tears in his eyes, takes Aryan’s hands and starts towards uncle Hemi’s and aunt Bria’s house. I stand there and watch them for a few seconds before I turn back to go back home. I break out in a run, I know my dad is going to be upset but I have to help him. As I get closer to the house I can hear yelling and my mom screaming for help and I wonder where my dad is. I finally reach the door, I reach my hand out and grip the knob and …
“Atlas! Atlas, baby wake up! Please wake up! It’s just a dream, baby please wake up.”
I awake with a start and my face wet with tears. I look at True and she’s crying too. I grab her and hold her so tight she tells me she cannot breathe. She has become my port in a storm without even trying to.
“How long were you trying to wake me up?” I ask her my voice hoarse.
“I don’t know, a while. You were yelling and crying, and I was scared out of my mind. I was just about to go get one of your brothers.
I’m glad she didn’t go get one of them, they think the nightmares stopped years ago.
“I’m ok,” I lie, my heart is racing and my hands are shaking like a junkie.
“Atlas, can’t you tell me why you are having nightmares and why you want to kill Victor? Are they connected? She looks at me with pleading in her eyes but also love and support. She took a chance and told me her past, and no matter what happens I will never love another woman but True.
“One night when I was ten years old my father came into my room with my brother and woke me up. I don’t know exactly what time it was, all I know was it was dark outside. He opened my bedroom window and set us outside with the blanket off my bed and told us to go to our aunt and uncle’s house. He knew our aunt and uncle would be home and would take care of us, but he also knew my uncle would come down to his house, guns blazing.” By this time I am leaning against the headboard and True is sitting crossed-legged in front of me holding my hands. “ He looked at us standing outside the bedroom window and told us he loved us. He also made me promise to not come back to the house. My brothers and I took off to our aunt and uncle's house as fast and our little legs would carry us. Halfway there I handed Anson to Asher and told him to get them to the house. Asher begged me to come with him, to help him get our brothers to the house, he reminded me that I promised our father that I would not come back. I told him that as the oldest it was my responsibility to help our father. After a little convincing he finally took our brother to get to safety and to get help. I watched them for a little while but eventually turned back to our house. I can hear yelling and my mom begging and asking for help, I couldn’t figure out where my dad was. I know that if he was there my mom would not be begging for help. We lived in a pretty big house by ourselves on about an acre or so of land so there weren’t any neighbors to hear or help. I made it to the door and grabbed the knob to open the door but it just swung open on its own. I went into the kitchen to try to call the police but the phone wasn’t working. I grabbed one of my mom’s large kitchen knives and I followed the noises to my parent’s bedroom. I tried to stay quiet and out of sight. When I got close enough I realized the door was ajar and I could see my mother on the bed bloody and crying and there was a guy standing next to the bed.
I ran into the room with the knife raised and stabbed him in the thigh. He backhanded me so hard blood exploded from everywhere on my face, and I landed on my back on the floor. He took the blade out of his thigh, came over to me and cut me across my face from the temple on one side of my face to the neck on the other side. I never knew pain like that existed until I was laying on my parent’s bedroom floor holding my face together as I bled out. As I lay there on the floor I finally saw my father tied to a chair facing the bed and six guys in the room. My father was missing most of his fingers, his arm was hanging in an unnatural position, one of his eyes was missing and both his legs were bleeding from what I now know was gunshot wounds. My mother had been raped and beaten by all the men that were in the bedroom. They didn’t pay much attention to me. I guess they were just going to let me lay there and die. My father couldn’t even speak, he was dying right before my eyes, he eventually locked eyes with me, hurt, worried, but also pissed. I made a promise to him in that very moment I would live and I would kill every last person who was involved with this. In the middle of all this one of the guys got a phone call, and I knew it was their boss they were talking to, they lied and said they killed everyone. They looked for my brothers but of course, they were long gone and I guess they figured we were kids so what were the odds of any of us coming after them. He was pissed because he wanted to use my mom as a way to transport his drugs around the US.
My family’s money comes from the steel industry and we trucked the steel all around the country and their boss wanted to use our trucks to move his drugs. I found out that night that my mother had an affair and they were using this affair to try to pressure her compliance. At first, she agreed, but then she decided this was her children’s legacy and her sister and her children’s legacy and she would not jeopardize it. She told this boss she would not allow him to use her company as a way to transport his drugs. She told him she was going to tell my father about the affair, effectively eliminating the leverage he was using against her. My father was supposed to be on a business trip the night the men came to our house, but my mom was really sick that morning and he postponed the trip to help take care of her and us. The men did not expect my father to be home and he killed three of them before they got the upper hand on him. They were supposed to scare my mother into compliance but my dad fucked their plans up. When the boss called they told him my father killed the three so they killed all of us. My mother was sick because she was pregnant again and had just told my father that day. She also told him about the affair, little did she know he already knew and had forgiven her a long time ago. So much miscommunication, had she not been afraid of my father leaving her she would have come to him and told him about the blackmail and had my father told her he knew he would have never had any leverage to use against my mother. I laid there on that floor listening to all of this listening to my mother be raped repeatedly with my little sister inside of her and my father witnessing this and not being able to help. My mother eventually stopped fighting and begging and just resigned herself to death and my father held on until he watched my mother take her last breath and he took his at the same time. I laid there on that floor and fought for life, I fought for my parents and my brothers who would not grow up with our parents and I fought for vengeance, for a reckoning. By the time Uncle Hemi made it to the house both my parents were dead and I was hanging on by a thread. They rushed me to the hospital and directly into surgery. They told my aunt and uncle my survival didn’t look good but I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I was going to make it. I was in a medically induced coma for a little while and a barrage of plastic surgeries to try to fix my face. After the fourth one, I told my aunt Bria I did not want any more surgeries. My aunt and uncle took us in and I went from having three brothers to having seven. They never treated us differently, I was truly loved not just by them but by cousins, Joshua, Joseph, Jaasiel, and Jabarri. I was an angry child, I acted out, I got pissy drunk, dabbled in drugs and attempted suicide more times than I can count. Josh left for the military two years after we moved in and Joseph left a year later and that made me angrier. Aunt Bria called him home after a series of suicide attempts, and drunken stupors, and drug benders and he got in my ass. He walked in on another attempt and he read me the riot act. I pulled it together and remembered the promise I gave to my father to eliminate every piece of shit involved in his and my mother’s death. My childhood ended in that bedroom that night and my adulthood started the day Joshua told me to get my shit together.
My brothers never knew what happened, I told them I didn’t remember. And all I had to go off of was the names they called each other in that room and their faces. I would NEVER forget those faces. I went into the military to gain skills, I went into the DEA to gain access, and I hunted my whole life to get to the guy who orchestrated my parent’s death and the destruction of my family. A few months ago I got that name…. Victor, the night I found you I was going to finally kill the man who killed my family but I found you instead. He is on his way back from Columbia and I plan on being there at the compound to finally put this shit behind me. Doone called and said he’d be back in the states in a couple of days, and I plan on having a welcome home gift when he touches down. He’s killed so many of his men or they have defected until he has had to hire around twenty to thirty mercs to protect him.
True
I sit there holding Atlas hands, speechless with tears free-flowing down my face. I cry for the little boy who should have never had to lose his parents and the man that has been carrying that around all his life. I knew whatever it was, was going to be fucked up but I would have never guessed it was going to be this fucked up.
“Atlas you can’t go up against that many mercs by yourself and you don’t know if he has any more help here. . Even if we go together we probably wouldn’t make it out alive. I understand how you feel, probably better than anyone. I mean after all, he’s the reason my mother is dead, I’m sterile and I grew up fucked up. But maybe it’s time we let this vendetta go, I found a love in you I would have never dreamed possible. I have done more with you, lived more in the few months we have been together than I have in my entire life. Maybe it’s time we put the past behind us and move forward. If he’s had to hire mercs, I take it you have dismantled his organization. There were nights I woke up to find you gone but you were always back by morning. Please Atlas let this go and let you and I move into our future together.” I beg him.
“You expect me to not kill Victor after what I just told you he caused to happen to my family? After I have worked all my life to take his ass down? After all the money, blood, sweat, and tears I have given? I’ve loved the time we have spent together and all the experiences we have had together that I should have had in my youth, but there is no way I could walk away after getting this close to fulfilling the promise I made to my father.” He looks at me like I told him the sun rotates around the earth.
“Atlas please, I don’t want to lose you and I am not ready to die. At least let your brothers help. I know with them we’d all make it out alive.” I am on my knees holding his face in my hands begging him to not do this.
“I do not want my brothers involved with this True, I would not make it if I lost another person I love. You have to promise me to not tell my brothers anything” He says, grabbing my upper arms in a bruising grip. I wince and he lets me go. “I do not want you coming with me either, I wouldn’t survive if you got hurt or were killed. I want you to stay here at the compound with my brothers.”
“Atlas I will not wait here to see if you come back to me. If you don’t let this go I am not going to be here when you get back,” I say in a last-ditch effort to get him to change his mind. I am hoping he doesn’t call my bluff because I don’t think I could function without him.
“True, don’t give me this ultimatum, you are not going to like the outcome. As much as I love you and I know I will never love anyone else if you leave me, I will not let this go. I will see this through, even if it costs me my life.” He says with steel laced in his voice.
“If you don’t let this go and let’s put the past behind us I will not be here when you get back. I love you too, but I cannot bury you, I won’t do it!” I scramble off the bed.
“You don’t have much faith in me. True, what makes you think I am going to die? He asks me.
“The thirty fucking mercs, Atlas! You won’t let your brothers help or let me help and you are going into Victor's compound alone to face thirty or more hired mercenaries. I won’t sit here and wait for you to die! Why can’t you let this go and come live with me instead.”
“YOU KNOW WHY!” he screams in my face. “Why can’t you support me? Why can’t you wait for me? Understand why I must do this? I’m going True, and I hope that WHEN I get back I will find you here. But if I don’t I’ll learn to live without you” he says as he damn near rips the door off the hinges as he storms out of the room. I want to throw myself on the bed and cry like the female lead in a 1940’s movie. I don’t throw myself on the bed but I do cry, like a baby.