Page 7 of Gray Area

I am reaching for the door handle to my car when a loud cracking sound and a grunt pull me back from my thoughts. Iturn back and I see Eddie knocked out on the ground with a gun in his hand. My brother Axel is standing over him, glowering at me.

“You gotta be smarter than that,” Axel chastises seriously, his entire body a rigid statue, just as it always is.

I give Axel a quick nod. He’s right. I know better, but I’d gotten wrapped up in my thoughts. I shouldn’t just turn my back on scum like Eddie—shouldn’t turn my back on anybody. That’s how you get in trouble or killed. And from the look of the gun, Eddie wanted to give me more than trouble.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him as he steps out of the shadows and moves to me.

I consider myself an asshole and a serious motherfucker. That itself usually scares people, gives them a vibe of unease. But compared to my brother Axel, I am a golden retriever. Axel is fucking terrifying. It isn’t just how he looks, with tattoos starting just below his chin and flowing down to his toes, with long hair and a scraggly beard. No, his entire presence makes the air around you cold. His eyes are the same silver color as our mother’s, but Axel’s are housed in a constant glare. He holds himself stiffly and is constantly scanning, looking for any problems.

Axel hasn’t always been this way. I remember him much more relaxed and a big joker when we were kids. But since his time in the service, and whatever happened overseas during that time, he’s been cold, emotionless, and calculating. He’s an angry motherfucker and I am glad I am generally on his good side.

“Dad says to remind you that it’s family meeting night,” Axel grinds out, and then, before I can even nod, he turns back into the shadows to his own vehicle, I presume.

I get in my car just as Eddie is starting to writhe on the ground. I turn my loud, American muscle engine over and peel out fromthe parking lot, sending gravel spraying over the limp, barely moving Eddie and make my way home.

Our family home is a large old Victorian house in the middle of the city, in an area called the Highlands. And next door to it is another old Victorian, but this one had been converted into a tenement house of three apartments, one on each floor. Axel and Slade, one of my other brothers, live there with me.

The tenement is the first property my father bought, and it was a dump. We were just kids when he bought it, so he fixed up the first floor and moved our family in, then fixed up the other floors and rented them out. Then when it came up for sale, he bought the Victorian house next door for us.

Once he was getting income from the apartment rentals, my father bought the bar he had been renting out, and it was the start of his property management business. He started buying up other bars and tenements in the city.

I pull into the driveway between the house and the apartments that we all share and park next to Axel’s restored 80s Ford Bronco. That motherfucker drives fast. I walk inside and the smell of lasagna hits me, and a slight smile tugs at my lips. My dad never calls us home for dinner; he always calls it a “meeting.” It is something my mother used to do—feed us incessantly—and something he has not deviated from.

We all work together taking care of the bars and buildings we own—my dad, my brothers, and me. Well, all of us except for my youngest brother, Roman. He is a huge freeloader, but he is also ten years old. But even though we all work together on the familybusinesses, we don’t get to spend a lot of time together. And so when we do, it is home cooking and family talk.

“Hey Dec! How is class?” Dad asks. He is facing the stove and glances at me quickly over his shoulder, and then returns his attention back to the dish before him.

I raise my eyebrows as I take in my father’s appearance. There he is at the cooktop, wearing oven mitts as well as an apron. Did I mention that the apron has ruffles? All I can do is stare. When I don’t answer, he looks back at me and laughs at my expression. “You ever made lasagna? This shit is fucking messy,” he informs me, taking off his mitts and ditching the apron.

“Uh, yup, sure,” I say. “Class is okay. It went by fast tonight.” I don’t elaborate that the reason it went by so fast is because I was staring like a freak at a woman the whole time.

“Well, that’s good,” my dad replies. “Better than it being dragged out like a fucking trial.”

I nod in agreement. “Hey Dad, I need to talk to you before dinner.”

My father turns to me sharply, his face shuttering down from the carefree chef he was just seconds before into an evaluating businessman. He tosses the oven mitts and apron onto the counter, and motions me to follow him to his office.

I follow him down a short hallway to a room, and once inside, he closes and locks the double pocket doors. Dad goes to his desk and sits behind it, steepling his hands. And just like that, my ruffled apron-wearing, lasagna-making dad is gone. Now he is Jude Falco, street-smart ex-navy sailor turned shrewd business owner.

“Talk,” he commands.

“I was met after class by Eduardo Cruz.”

“Perez’s pet?” My father knows all the players, legal and illegal, in our area.

“The same. He says he’d heard we were allowing dealers into our places.”

I watch my father’s eyes darken. “Over my dead fucking body,” he grits out.

“I communicated that sentiment,” I tell him. When my dad opened his first bar, it wasn’t in the greatest of areas in the city. The clientele that frequented it before he took ownership did whatever the fuck they wanted. So my dad slowly cleaned it up, and he cut most of the bullshit out. And one of the first things he did was stop any sale of drugs. Both he and my mom had grown up really shitty, and drugs had been a big part of the reason why. So while my dad is willing to maybe turn a blind eye to some of it, my mom was a total no. And my father had worshipped my mother.

“And?”

“And the fucker tried to shoot me. Axel stopped him.”

My father takes that in and then studies me. “Why did Axel stop him?”

Here we go, I think. My dad doesn’t miss a thing. “I turned my back—”

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