mother’s new condo, and he’d be able to stealthily observe, study, and discover the secrets of the game. For his eighth birthday, his mother gave him a camera and he had realized a new way to get the power he had been dreaming of.
But soon it was over. By the time he finished his freshman year of high school, his mother had grown older and had been tossed aside. At the end of that year, the principal had approached him in the private school’s library and told him he wouldn't be able to continue in the fall. His scholarship was no longer being funded.
His classmates had laughed as he ran out of the school that day. They all knew who he was and why he was there. But now that he no longer had the governor’s protection, he was fair game. They had cursed him and called his mother names as he packed up his locker.
His mother had saved money for his college, which he thought he could use to finish high school. But before the next school year started, she became depressed. She felt weak and helpless. Her youth and beauty had been her identity and now it was gone. She slowly turned to drugs and by August, the money was gone and his mother was lost to heroin.
He had begged the school for a scholarship, but they said no. They had admitted him as a favor in the first place, and now no money would be coming his way. It was then he decided to take the power away from those who had hurt his mother. He had hurried home and had opened the small suitcase he’d hidden under his bed. Opening it up, he’d stared at the pictures he had taken over the years. The first had been his most powerful—his mother and the vice president having sex.
They hadn’t even known he was there. He was supposed to have been at chess practice but had skipped it. He knew it had been wrong to take the pictures, but he had been compelled. He had sneaked past Secret Service agents sitting in the lobby of the condo building while he pretended to be a Russian spy. He was on a mission to get the
Looking at it now he felt the power in it. The vice president was running for the presidency, and this photo would destroy him. With a smile, he put the picture in his backpack and hopped on the bus for the nation's capital.
That had been the beginning of his career. It had only grown since then. Every time he brought one more person of power down to their knees, he thought about those boys who had bullied him when he had been told to leave school.
When he was sixteen, his mother had died from a drug overdose. While he had tried to save her, she was too far lost in the haze of drugs. Instead of going to live with some aunt he had never met, he used his skills to follow street dealers until he identified mid-level management in the local drug trade. He used them to track down the head of the area’s cartel. He gathered evidence and turned it all over to the police. When the ring began to collapse, he stepped in and quickly took over.
The street thugs vying for the head job were just too stupid to run it so he made a deal with the toughest thug. The thug would use the physical force necessary for the takeover, just like Sergei was doing for him now. When college started two years later, he handed over power to the thug for a steady twenty percent of all profit.
In college, he fell in love with art and discovered the very profitable side of the black market. After graduating, he’d mastered theft, forgery, weapons, and more. He used his connections to gather evidence and then blackmailed his way to the top. He’d been untouched, unthwarted, and unscathed for all this time—until his dog-fighting ring in Keeneston, Kentucky, was busted last year.
Now he couldn’t sleep. He could hear those boys from high school taunting him when he closed his eyes at night. He feared losing the power and control he’d worked so hard to gain. He cursed and realized he’d zoned out again. He’d been doing that a lot since he stopped sleeping. His men had just botched an assignment and that meant they were in trouble, he thought as he unbuttoned his suit coat to expose the .38 at his waist.
“The flash drives appear to be full of notes, but nothing of importance to you. Research on a corrupt Washington senator taking bribes from lobbyists, some coverage from the Iraq war, a bunch of notes on the political upheaval and human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo . . . nothing about guns or sex or anyone associated with you,” the young man told him as he held his breath and tried to keep his eyes on the boss. But, his fear was visible every time he glanced away from him.
“Are you sure this woman has anything to do with us?”
The boss felt his heart squeeze as his man questioned him. It was hard to breathe as the mocking voices of his classmates filled his head. He whipped around, shot the man who dared question him, and then breathed as the voices quieted. “I know she has info on us. Go back to her apartment and search again,” he yelled. The room cleared and he was left alone with a dead man and his thoughts, once again.
Gemma sat back down on the sofa to wait. She closed her eyes as images of Gia and herself as kids floated into view. She smiled as she remembered their secret hiding place in the attic where they'd go to play and speak in twin. It was their special world.
Gemma’s eyes popped open and she sat up so fast Fred almost fell off her lap. “The box!” Frantically Gemma started looking around. Had she seen it when she walked through the apartment? No, she hadn’t.
“It’s got to be here,” she mumbled excitedly as she started pushing aside books and looking in drawers. She felt her blood rushing through her body, suddenly knowing she had to find that box.
She stopped in the middle of the apartment and looked around desperately. It was here, but where? Gemma wandered around again with her head held back, looking at the ceiling and into every nook and cranny. She screamed for joy when she found what she was looking for in the hallway coat closet.
An unseen force urged her to hurry as Gemma grabbed coats and threw them to the ground. She scrambled into the back of the tight closet and ran her hand along the wall. Hidden in the far back corner behind the coats was a small panel painted the same color as the rest of the closet. She pried it open with her nails, not caring when they broke off in her quest.
She tossed the panel to the ground, reached inside the dark space, and pulled out the faded box with Gia and Gemma written on each side of the purple flower. Under the box were three notebooks with a symbol on the bottom of them that she recognized.
Carrying them quickly to the couch, Gemma set everything down on the coffee table and stared at the box. She reached a shaky hand toward the flimsy clasp but froze when she heard a key being inserted into the door. Fred began to growl and she scooped him up along with the box and notebooks, shoving them both into the bag. Police officers didn’t have a key to the apartment, but the person who killed her sister did and she wasn't going to be next.
Her eyes were frantically searching for a way out when they landed on the window behind the desk. The doorknob turned and the door opened a couple of inches before the security chain engaged.
“What the . . .” she heard a man’s voice curse.
Gemma leaped onto the desk, turned the bolt, and threw open the window as the man put his shoulder to the door. She heard the chain pop as she clambered onto the fire escape. She didn’t wait to see who came through the door. In her mind she knew she should get a description for the police, but her fight-or-flight instincts took over and screamed at her to run.
She heard the men yell and jump onto her sister’s desk as she gripped the rails and raced down the tiny metal stairs. Windows started opening as she beat her way downward. The men were gaining and when she glanced up, she saw they were able to take the stairs two at a time.
Neighbors yelled and threatened to call the police. Gemma was concentrating so much on the steep stairs she couldn’t yell for help. In actuality, she was so scared she didn’t think she could form words to call for help. Her only hope was that the police were nearby.
She rounded the third floor and looked frantically around for more stairs. She glanced behind her and saw the feet of two men above her. The stairs ended but she saw the sign to pull the lever for the emergency ladder. With a loud
