Page 4 of Pocketful of Us

"Your boy here's not lying to you." The blond one called Lucky flicked his cigarette butt in an ashtray and rubbed his stubbly jaw. "You are up shit's creek without a paddle, fullback."

Drowsy as I felt, I knew I had to be on full alert around this one. There was something very off about him. Much worse than the others. When I looked into his pale-blue eyes, it felt like I was in the presence of death. "I don’t know who you are, or what your motive for helping Presley is, but I've got a girl back home who needs me and I ain't planning on wasting another damn minute with you people."

"Yeah?" He arched a brow. "Then by all means, be my guest and leave, kid. But fair warning: you'll be dead before you reach the state line. Your girlfriend's daddy will make damn sure of that."

I stared hard at Lucky for the longest time before letting my gaze drift around the warehouse.

Crooks and criminals.

Guns and knives.

Drugs and death.

I was surrounded by it all.

"Fuck it," I finally replied, shoulders bunched tight with tension. "I think I'll take my chances."

"This one is as ballsy as you, Bolillo," Gonzalez laughed. "Spine of steel."

"He's a mob baby," Lucky replied with a smirk, like that explained everything.

"Sí." Apparently, it did for Gonzalez whose eyes lit up with interest. "Catalinian." He gave his friend a pointed look. "It could be beneficial for business to keep him."

"Uh, hello? Earth to the criminal masterminds?" Waving his hands around aimlessly, Presley eyeballed the men. "I'm awfully sorry to disappoint you, Mr. G, but you can't keep my mob baby. I'm rather fond of him, and well, he's not for you –"

"I think I know what's happening here," I interrupted, eyes shifting from the grizzly looking gangster to my left back to Presley. "You smoked something with these assholes, didn’t you?" That had to be it. A pained laugh escaped my cracked lips. "Hell, I'll take a hit of whatever he had if it's on offer."

"Contrary to their physical appearance and our current location, they've been perfectly polite hosts – and I haven't been offered any illegal substances." Setting the pool cue down, Presley plucked a leather-bound journal from a nearby table and held it out to me. "Look, just read the journal, Sketch. It'll help you understand. Chris wrote it all down in here –"

"Keep that thing away from me!" I spat, holding a hand up to ward the madness off. "I don’t want to read that shit."

"You have to."

I shook my head, feeling weak to the damn bone. "No."

"Nothing in Pocketful is what it seems," he repeated the words that had been thrown my way more times than I could count. "Chris said it first and then Romi. She's been prattling on about it for months. Now we know why." He winced again, looking a little green. "It's because Pocketful is acoverup, Sketch. It's a mirage, man. An illusion. Your families moved there because it was the one place on earth they could, quite frankly, get away with murder without arousing suspicion. A one-horse town so far off the beaten track that no one would think to look too closely at it. Not the feds or their foes. Easily bought and even more easily conquered. The perfect HQ for an underworld organization. Pocketful was the perfect place to bury their skeletons and keep their secrets hidden." He swallowed deeply before adding, "It was the perfect place to keepyouhidden."

"A place to keep me hidden." I chewed on the words, tasting the poison that dripped from the accusation before shaking my head. "From what?"

"From the truth," he explained. "From who you really are."

"And who am I?"

"Well, you're not Holden Capaldi," he shot back. "That's for damn sure."

"I don’t believe you."

"No, you don’twantto believe me," Presley corrected gently. "And not wanting this to be real doesn’t change the fact that it is."

Numb.

I was so fucking numb.

Presley sighed wearily and scrubbed his face with his hand before saying, "Your real name is Jacob Toretto. It wasyourname that Chris scribbled everywhere before he died. I thought Romi was the key in all of this, but I was wrong. It was you all along. You're the key, Sketch. You're the hidden piece of the jigsaw – hidden in full view. It's genius really, when you think about it." He turned to the other men loitering around the room and waved a hand in the air. "Can someone please get my friend some pants to cover his penis and something to drink for the shock? And I don’t mean sweet-tea!"

Yeah, I had a feeling that I would be needing a lot more than sweet fucking tea to calm my nerves.

Fuck.

---