It All Started With Hate

lock | part 1 (e)

I never thought I'd see it, again.

Yet, here it was.

The fear made my limbs go stiff as I felt him observe me over. His eyes did enough. Even without voicing it, I could tell at least one of his many intentions for me.

I could vow one thing. I wouldn't let it happen. I would have a hole in my fucking chest, before I let it happen, again.

He had been in jail for a decade, now, and I could see that not much had changed. Physically.

Emotionally, though, the build of the anger in him made him appear older.

His body appeared thinner than I remembered, which would have pleased me under different circumstances, as it suggested he hadn't been properly nourished. A jagged, aging scar traced a path along his long face, starting from the underside of his chin and ending in the middle of his left jaw. It was barely noticeable beneath the long, dark stubble on his face, which almost resembled a goatee. His brown, nearly black hair had been buzzed short, making his receding hairline more pronounced. His dark eyes, coal-black and soulless, were rimmed with red streaks, undoubtedly a result of his years of drug and alcohol use.

Those same eyes jerked up to mine, and it nearly startled me back into hell before I pushed it back down.

Despite how terrified I was, I couldn't let it show in my actions, nor in my words. I forced my quivering lips still. Marked my expression with nothingness, and remained quiet.

Never again. Even in death, I would never let him think that he won, or that he took something else away from me.

He was the first to break our eye contact, diverting his gaze to his beer as he delved into thought. "That young man, shit, what was his name..." he began to mutter a series of guesses before dismissing it. "I can't remember, but he's William Ryder's boy. Kade, I think. Jesus, he's all William whined about when we were cellmates, always bitching and crying about him never answering his letters or visiting. I should have known better than to trust the soft son of a bitch, because the moment I was told by an old friend that one of the guards heard talk from William that his son reached out to him after a decade? After all of the shit William did to that boy and his mother and brother? And, after I find out that you somehow made close friends with three of the most wealthiest men in this city, and one of those men just so happens to be Kade Ryder, the best friend of the man you've been fucking for the past couple of months? I knew something was up."

My expression crumbled as the pieces of realization slowly fell into place, revealing the puzzle my father had been crafting all along.

"I have to give it to him, though," he mused, glancing over his gun with a sigh. "Whoever he hired was pretty good at finding me, but not good enough, apparently." At the lost of color in my face, his smile grew from ear to ear. "They got the wrong man. One of my men, actually, which was a lost on my side, but better him than me." Shrugging, he added, "I slipped away just in time. I won't bore you with the rest of the details, but just know: money makes the world go round for a reason. It even helped me fake my death with the mayor's help. It only made it even easier to lie and discard of the body, too, because the one that was killed, the wrong one? It's been a pile of ashes for months, now. Who would check identification for that, especially after Ryan Vaudest demands otherwise?"

My mind was spinning. Everything had changed so quickly, yet it all seemed to be moving to the speed of a snail.

The man that Luke and Kade hired got the wrong man. My father and Luke's father had been working together, for only god knows how long. Probably since the beginning of Luke and I's relationship, maybe even during our friendship, if I could guess.