Secrets, Deals and Lies

Part 1. Chapter 1 - Daniel ~ Picture of Daniel

9 years later ~

After I eat breakfast I walk outside to put the milk carton in the recycling bin. Just as I go to walk back inside I stumble across some blithering idiot: he kept talking about Nick, my dad, and how he works for some really bad criminals and bad people, I don’t know. 

I wondered how he got here; because this was the first person I’ve met face to face that actually isn’t a man in a black suit with a golden ring and a gun in their pocket. I think Nick works for them. They come like every day and they kinda scare me, usually all they do is stand there and walk around the house, whisper to each other and talk to Nick in his office downstairs which is forbidden at all times to me.

I don’t like the way they treat us (Nick and I of course) they’re bossy and act like they own the place or some­thing. And the first time I met them they kept telling me to shut up and then shoved Nick and I into a black car. I was 6 and didn’t really understand what was happening.

Anyway, after the blithering idiot finished talking just about as I was going to open my mouth to say something one of the men in the black suit with a golden ring and a gun comes outside. I shut my mouth and just as the blithering idiot tries to turn and run the man in the black suit grabs his arm, tight, and tells him not to say anything. The guy turns to look at me a silver light shimmering across his eyes and then gives me that look to get back into the house with no questions whatsoever, and for some reason, I did – knowing that fighting back wouldn’t get me anywhere.

I watched from a window upstairs; the man in the black suit walking into the forests with the poor blithering idiot trying so hard to struggle free from the man in black.

After I couldn’t see them I walk into my room and sat on my bed, grabbing a book I was currently reading and flipped about the pages, eyes and brain unfocused on the words that seemed to dance. A moment later there was a loud noise somewhere in the forest, something as loud as a gun. I rush to the window and see a flock of birds flying out of the trees somewhere in the distance. It couldn’t have been the man in black no one can get that far in just five minutes. Poacher maybe, hunter?

I walk to the second floor and look around if the man in black came back yet – no, that’s good. I knock on Nick’s door to see what hap­pened, no one answers so I turn around and all of a sudden the man in black was there.

He had short, dark brown hair and looked older than me but not by much, and he was about a head and a bit taller. He was close; a bit too close. I look up until I see a pair of soft grey-green eyes staring right at me, staring as if he could see right through me.

By now it’s uncomfortable and no one moves, not even me, mainly because I was leaning on the door until my back straightened against it, my breathing laboured as my heart started to pound. We stood there awkwardly and all of a sudden the door opens making me fall backwards and hitting my head before falling unconscious.

I wake up finding myself in my room with a pack of frozen peas on my head; I look around and see Nick on the foot of my bed. ‘You okay kiddo?’

‘I’m 15 and yes, thanks for asking.’ I force smile and take the peas off, sit up and look at him looking at me. ‘Okay,’ he gets up and leaves; just like that.

I suspect he’s going back to his office. I get out of bed following him from a few meters away my head spinning and making me walk even slower, but instead he goes to the kitchen tells me to sit down before making me hot chocolate, something he hasn’t done for years, he then sits down across of me on the little round table.

We have a short conversation – or whatever you could call questions followed by mini-syllables – until that man in black from before comes. He looks at Nick and before I know it Nick tells me to go upstairs. I sat there for a bit looking around the table starting to feel a bit defeated as the both of them stare at me waiting, not glaring but waiting, eyes boring down on me. I take one look at Nick once more before finally giving up and walking off.

As I was going up the stairs I hear Nick say, ‘what now Daniel?’ then the words just mumble as I keep walking up the stairs oblivious to whatever they were talking about.

So now I know his name – Daniel… Daniel. I say it in my head few more times before falling asleep.