Page 6 of Prodigal

He refrained from rolling his eyes. She always did that. The pizza place was just at the corner and the best ever. He couldn’t say no, especially when she turned those big innocent eyes on him. “Yeah, we can have pizza, but you still have to do the dishes when we get home.”

She groaned, dropping her head back and frowning up at the sky that was getting darker by the minute.

He tugged on one of her braids with a chuckle. “Keep that up and I’m taking away your phone, then you can explain to what’s-her-face why you didn’t make your eight o’clock call.”

She gasped. “You can’t do that!”

She had a new girlfriend, this one lasting longer than the previous—or the boyfriend before that—but they were still in the talk on the phone until late into the night phase. He’d had to yell at her to hang up and go to bed more times than he could count. “I can and I will, so watch yourself.” He bent and kissed her forehead even though they were in public and she hated when he did that. When he lifted his head and stepped back, color was splashed on her cheeks and her eyes were shooting daggers at him. He grinned. “Let’s go, brat.”

He kept stride with her as they made their way over to the pizza shop. Once they’d gotten their food, they continued on home, which wasn’t too far away. His mother had owned the building, and after adopting Jules, she’d renovated it so it’d be perfect for Jules’s needs. Once inside, Jules grabbed a slice of pizza and held it in her mouth as she wheeled herself to her room.

André watched her go, shaking his head with a bemused smile. “Make sure you don’t forget the dishes!” His sister was something else, but it was thanks to her that he hadn’t lost his mind after everything that transpired since their mother’s sudden death. He piled two slices of the meat lover’s pizza onto his plate after washing his hands, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, then made his way to his bedroom. Jules was on the opposite side of the house from him, but they had an intercom system if they needed each other.

In his room, the TV was tuned to a random serial crime drama that he ignored as he shoved pizza into his mouth with one hand while trying to undress with the other. There’d been a lot of rules to follow when his mother had been alive. Chief among them? No eating in the bedrooms. She was gone now, but sometimes he could still hear her scolding him for doing something he shouldn’t, back when he’d been rebellious and eager to test her limits.

When she died, he began understanding why there were so many things he couldn’t do. Why she’d kept him sheltered and isolated. He’d understood, too, how it was that she stayed home with him all day and never had a job, but they still managed to have a privileged life.

She’d been bought. Kept. By the man who wanted nothing to do with André—his own father. The man who bought and paid for André with fifty thousand dollars every month, the same way he'd bought and paid for André’s mother.

He could no longer taste the pizza, so he guzzled some water and then put the plate down on the nearby dresser before wiping his hands with the wet wipes he kept near his bed. When he was done, he reached into his drawer and pulled out the letter. It’d been among his mother’s things, five whole pages, written in her hand as she explained who she’d been, what she’d done, and the shit she was leaving behind for him to figure out.

The letter said a lot of things, but it didn’t tell him that the man who’d fathered him would reject him. It didn’t explain the anger André would feel standing over his mother’s casket. It didn’t give a hint that he’d wake up from nightmares of his father issuing orders for someone to‘throw him in the trash’while pointing a gun at André’s head.

She asked for forgiveness in that letter, for not telling him before. He’d been nineteen then; he was twenty-seven now, and it still hurt just as bad. He swore he’d forgiven her, but there were times…

Lying on his stomach on the bed, he smoothed out the letter. It was getting faded, some words smudged, and what looked like an oil stain dotted the bottom right of all five pages. He flipped to the last page. It was on that last page, the last line, where she told him his father’s name, then issued a warning.

“Your father’s name is Ennis Canto. Whatever you do, son,do notgo looking for him.Do notdraw his attention. You won’t like what you find.”

She’d been right.

Members of The Councilsurrounded Gideon in the not-big-enough overflow room beyond the main conference area. He tuned out the questions and demands they threw at him as if he answered to them and not the other way around. Instead, he watched them.

Studied them closely.

He didn’t know if they’d all been in on it. Or if it’d just been a few. It didn’t matter. They were all on his shit list and he would kill every single one of them. No, he still didn’t know who’d taken his mother from him and shot him, but he was getting closer.

Ennis Canto was the only one out of all of the members who wasn’t bombarding Gideon with questions. He sat back, doing the same thing Gideon was doing: studying, taking notes. He was the analytical type, Gideon knew. And he’d been the one to sponsor the new council member.

The now-dead council member.

Gideon held up a hand and the room quieted, though scowls creased their faces when they realized how easily they’d followed where he led. Fuckers. They hadn’t seen anything yet. Leaning forward, elbows on his knees, he smiled. “We have so much to discuss, but let me just put your minds at ease; I am who I say I am and I’m here to stay.”

“You haven’t shown us any proof as yet,” Ennis Canto said, tone mild, head cocked and expression just a little bit mocking. “As of right now, you’re an imposter and a child, playing in a sandbox you have no business in.”

He was nearing fifty, but Ennis was apparently one of the most eligible bachelors around. He was tall and well-built, with smooth brown skin, dark hair streaked with silver, and assessing brown eyes that locked on Gideon and stayed. The salt-and-pepper scruff on his jaw gave him an alluring appearance, something Gideon could objectively acknowledge. But Ennis was the cold type, more concerned with business than anything else.

Gideon got to his feet with a smirk. Samir stood at the door, and at Gideon’s nod, he stepped inside just far enough to press a button on the TV mounted to the wall. They’d already preloaded the video Gideon’s father had made for this very purpose.

As Gideon and the others looked on, Aldo laid out every detail of how he’d kept Gideon hidden away and all the things he’d done to ensure his son’s safety. Gideon watched him with a knot in his throat. In the video, Aldo sat at his desk in his office. Gideon had wanted him to make the video from his bed, but Aldo refused. He hadn’t wanted the others to see any kind of weakness in him. He came across just as strong as ever on the screen, commanding, powerful. But Gideon had been off to the side during the filming, witness to his father’s coughing fits, his breathlessness, his shaking. Aldo had collapsed in his arms the minute they stopped recording, too weak to make it back to his bedroom without assistance.

He’d held on for Gideon.

For this day.

“My son remains my proxy, as is his right,” Aldo said in the video. “My seat is his. My responsibilities are his. All the power I had, they now belong to Gideon.” He smiled then, and it took a while, but it crept up to his eyes. Pride. Love. And the bit of sadness Gideon hoped only he caught before it disappeared. “As is also the right of the Winters’s seat, Gideon has the deciding vote and control of the purse.”

The video ended, and everyone stared from the blank screen to Gideon. The heaviest tension filled the room, putting him on alert. Samir must have felt it, too, because he relaxed his stance at the door, hands hanging loosely at his sides, gaze casting about, searching out threats. Gideon could’ve told him they didn’t have anything to worry about. Not yet. Whoever it was in the room that wanted him dead wouldn’t make their move now. No, they’d strike from the shadows, under the cover of darkness, as was the way of cowards.

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