Shaking my head, I looked back to our father, but now he was looking at us both. I froze for a second, and Ethan stood up straighter.
“Why do we keep these disrespectful brats? Because they are our past and future. I look at my sons, Dentico, and I’m so curious as to who they will become. Did they learn enough? Did I teach them enough? Will they remember this when they’re dealing with their own brats? I have so many questions…but I guess that’s a good thing. It means I know my kids are going to live that long.” He took the second-longest drag of his cigarette. “You aren’t that lucky, however, Dentico.”
He nodded to someone behind us, and we turned around to see a family in a car. There was a woman and three teens inside, their hands zip-tied, mouths gagged. The teens were about the same age as Ethan and me. Tears were in their eyes as they stared at us. Two of the guards suddenly came to Ethan and I, two Colt M4 Commandos in their hands. They handed one to Ethan and then the other to me.
“You see your family’s future ends here, Dentico. Mine, my family’s, my sons, it keeps going. No matter what.” I could hear my father step closer to us as he spoke. “On my mark.”
Automatically, Ethan and I lifted the assault rifles up and aimed at the car—we had been waiting with our hands on the triggers. We heard the man screaming, sobbing through his gag.
Our father flicked his cigarette forward, and both Ethan and I knew that was his mark. I pulled hard on the trigger, letting the bullets fly, moving closer until my magazine was empty. Lifting the barrel back up when I was done, I tried not to smirk.
“Really?” I heard Ethan’s voice behind me.
I turned to him, giving up trying and just full-on smirked. “What? It’s not like I spelt my name.”
“FU is pretty close,” Ethan responded to the bullet holes in the side of the car.
“He gets points for creativity,” my father said as he took his own gun, turned back, and shot Dentico between the eyes. He fell over instantly, his eyes positioned so that it looked like he was looking at his car. Putting the gun away, my father added, “You lose points for being sloppy.”
“What?”
He grabbed the sleeve of my coat, forcing me to look at my hand. The gloves I’d been wearing had somehow gotten snagged on some part of the rifle by my thumb. It ripped a seam on one of the gloves and even nicked me, drawing blood. Though it was a small rip, I didn’t know. I glanced over to Ethan’s gloves. They were still fine.
“Those gloves belonged to your grandfather Orlando, didn’t they?” he asked me, releasing my jacket.
I nodded.
“How many times must I tell you, you don’t bring things you aren’t willing to burn and get rid of later?”
I said nothing, knowing that if I said I didn’t realize we were going to work, that it would be a piss-poor excuse.
He simply shook his head and said nothing more as he walked away. Ethan handed the gun over to one of the guards and tried to walk toward our father, but I stopped him.
“Aren’t you going to say I told you so?”
“I never told you anything,” he replied.
I cracked my jaw to the side, but tried to stay calm. This was my fault, I knew that, but I was still annoyed! How did I not see this was going to happen. “Why didn’t you say anything? How did you know we were going to do this?”
“I didn’t know when we left the house,” he replied simply.
He was lying. “Then you just happen to wear the right pair of gloves and had a spare?”
He shook his head. “I always wear this type of glove just in case, and I always have a spare in case I need a spare.”
He wasn’t lying. What he was saying was that he was always prepared. And that I wasn’t. He said nothing else to me, then walked toward Father, closer to the car, and as he did, the snow started to fall. I watched them both talk, and even though they were close to me, they felt so far away.
“Wyatt…Wyatt.” I looked to the guard who was pointing at the rifle in my hands. For a quick second, I wanted to ask him why he’d called me Wyatt but called Ethan ‘sir.’ I wanted to ask and shoot a bullet right through his face. But I was out of bullets, so I did nothing and gave the rifle back to him.
Next time…I won’t screw up. I’ll be prepared.
WYATT – NOW
Opening my eyes, I looked up at the sunroof, the dark heavy clouds crawling through the sky and covering the moon.
“Why do they call you Monk, Mannix?” I asked, lifting the cigarette I’d been smoking back up to my mouth as I leaned into the seat.
His amber eyes looked back in the mirror at me. “It’s just a nickname, sir—”
“No one just gets a nickname for no reason, especially in our line of work,” I replied, cracking the window slightly, the cold air rushing in as I blew out smoke. “Why do they call you Monk?”
“I’m tall and lanky with the face of a teenager,” he said bitterly, looking in the car’s side mirror. “So, when I was an actual teenager, they called me Monk because they say no woman in her right mind would fuck me and so I’d be better off joining a monastery. When I started to work for your family, most of the other guys already knew me as Monk so the name stuck.”
I sighed, trying not to laugh. “How did I know? I swear, everyone lacks creativity.”
“What’ch you mean, sir?” he questioned, turning back to me. I just shook my head, asking another question instead.
“If
