Sparrow's Flight

Chapter 9

Never been good enough for him. All my decisions were undermined and questioned by him. I grew up with no childhood. Raised in his perfect image of a mafioso soldier and then leader. People grow up with controlling parents and lives planned out for them. People grow up with physical and emotional neglect and abuse, but expected to wake up when the sun does, eat, regimented exercise, school (with straight As required), and then our business till the sun goes down. No time for friends except business ones and no love shown. Love shown is wasted energy according to my father.

When I was 8, my father shoved my brother and I into a room and locked us in. He expected us to fight to death to prove ourselves as a leader. My twin, McHale had good left in him that I knew my father was close to stomping out, I knew when I saw his teary eyes I had to win. I couldn't let the light fade out of him like it had me. I saw all the possible hope and light in that moment, I didn't communicate it to McHale. I fought him to the near death just like my father wanted and I proved myself. McHale hated me for that because my father showed me all of his attention for the rest of our lives. He recently told me he felt that I won intentionally in order to get father to love me and stole the love and attention he always wanted from father. I told him, everything he has seen father do is exactly what father had/has done to me. I got nothing extra from him except brutality and I couldn't allow him to be subjected to that. We have come to a deep understanding and even deeper loathing for our father since that talk.

Prick clears his throat in warning and I steel myself for the footsteps coming from outside the building. The financial man is back with the deed and hands it off to Prick before leaving without a word. We exit the building and I thank Ms. Patton for the tour and transaction. She leaves in her car and I look at the deed from over Prick's shoulder. The expansion can happen on time now. I make the call and Prick makes a series of calls himself. We wait outside the building for our people. The clouds from today are fading into the sun as it lowers in the sky. My hands are empty and that feels unsettling. I slide my knife out of its holster and flip it in the air. Prick pulls out a smoke and lights it. We lean against the building in silence.

The knife flies around in the air before I catch it in the same hand. The knife facing up in the air, I twirl it around my fingers, getting lost in my thoughts. It has been a long day and it's going to be a long night. The leaders of the 5 families are going to meet tonight at McHale and I's house to discuss the many moving parts of our ever prosperous organization. I took over as leader of the Brighton family almost 4 years ago and promoted my brother to being the underboss for our organization. McHale and I grew closer and closer as the years went by and now I could definitely say he is the closest brother I have. I don't have any more blood brothers but I consider Reed, Princeton, and Liam to all be equal brothers in my family. They always were my best friends growing up but as the responsibilities grew, they were the only ones that understood the pressure and commitment this job needed from me. I twisted the knife around my fingers making little cuts in the skin of my knuckles and smiling as the tiny cuts led to blood on my hands. There has never been a more accurate metaphor to describe my livelihood. I'm the one in the family responsible for torture and boy do I love it. Besides all the art that I do in my limited free time, torture makes me feel alive. Extracting information may not be my strongest suit but I sure know when someone is lying to me.

An exhale of smoke interrupts my darker inclinations as Prick sways beside me on the wall. I move away to get out of the smoke and circle back to my thoughts. McHale was out today scouting new areas of Oakhill for our organization to target. He came back at lunch to deliver his news about who runs what corners and where we can send more of our supply. I picked the most fortified corner of his scouting mission to find a newer base of operations. It was up to me to make the bigger decisions on where everything should go, who should be assigned to the area, and how much risk is too much risk. Fighting with my financial advisor aside, the job went pretty smoothly and now owning the property behind us brings us one step closer to the expansion I had in mind. In my mind, we need to start building a nice big operations center on this side of our territory to prepare for the expansion I was planning for our businesses. We had more and more customers by the day as the economy went into the toilet and inflation rose. By McHale's estimates we would be bordering cartel territory by November and that was the roughest estimate we decided to have in mind. I sheathed the knife in my hand and turned my wrist to my face watching the minutes tick by on my watch waiting for the first crews to arrive to assemble the new center.