Page 68 of Mind Pucked

I nod as I follow him to an ally where a car is parked. He slides into the driver’s seat, and I slide into the passenger. He doesn’t get a key out to drive or anything, we just sit in the car for the longest time before he speaks again. I don’t know if the car even runs, if it’s his, or if this is where he has been living.

“I need to know why you’ve been missing for two years, Preston. It’s not fair,” I say. “I pretty much stopped my life until recently looking for you…or at least looking for a body to go along with the announcement that you were pronounced dead. Do you know how hard it is to mourn for someone who’s dead, but there’s no body to bury?”

“I can’t imagine what you went through…have been going through,” he adds as he turns in the seat to face me. “I get why you’re upset, I would be too.”

“I just don’t understand.” I begin to cry, but I hate the fact that I am. “How could you stay away, Pres?”

I want to cry and run away. I feel like I’m looking at a ghost, one that didn’t want to be found. I would have never known he was alive if I hadn’t come here with Jackson…and he has the audacity to wonder why I’m with Jackson.

“Ami,” he says, using the name he called me all the time. “You’re not going to want to believe me at first, but it’s important that you listen to everything, ask questions if you have them, and know that none of this was meant to hurt you at all.”

I hesitate to say anything to him. What could he have to say to me that’s going to make me not believe him?

I think about getting out of the car and just going back to Jackson. His parents will want to go to dinner tonight, and surely by now he’s told them about us. We have plans. I want to be with them. I feel somewhere in the pit of my stomach that I’m not going to like what my brother has to say to me.

“Go ahead,” I say, motioning for him to carry on quickly.

“It turns out that your father put a hit out for my death,” he says, and already I’m having to pick my jaw up off the ground.

“What in the hell are you talking about?” I say with heat in my voice. “What do you meanmy father? We have the same parents, Pres.”

“We have the same mother,” he admits, as if what he’s about to say isn’t going to change everything. “It turns out that we don’t have the same dad.”

I shake my head in disbelief. Even if this is true…why would my father put a hit out on my brother. A hit? What exactly does that mean?

“I don’t know that I fully understand. Why would our father…myfather…put a hit out on you. That means he tried to kill you, right? How would he even know how to do that? Did he kill Lyla? Why would he have done that? Why were you with her?” I ramble, trying to find some puzzle piece that makes sense.

“Well, let me start with one thing at a time.” He smiles a little. “Our mom, when she and your father were first together, had an affair with another man and got pregnant with me.”

“I don’t believe she would do that, Pres.” I frown at him.

“Listen, Mom has been dead since you were little, you don’t know her as well as I do. While I don’t think she was a bad person, I do know that your father cheated on her at every turn, so I don’t rightfully blame her for cheating too,” he admits. “As for the hit…yes, he would know how to do that, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Lyla plays a key role in all this because, Ami…she was my sister too.”

“What?” I breathe, suddenly thinking about Jackson and the part I thought he played in all this, but boy was I wrong.

“Yes,” he says. “Her father is my father. I found out when I did a genealogy thing a few years ago. We came up as a match, as siblings, and they gave us the contact information of the other participants. I found out she was my half sister, and in doing so found out the truth. Working with Jackson only made it easier to be around Lyla more, although…I don’t think she’d told him yet that I was her brother—she was worried about his reaction given our rivalry. She was planning on telling him, after she and I met up a few times to do some digging into our father, and that’s why I was with her the day the hit came through. I don’t know if it was meant for her too, or just me, but when I got out of that car, she was unconscious, and I could tell there was nothing I could do for her. I called to make sure an ambulance was on the way, but then I had to get out of there if I wanted to live.”

“What about me?” I wonder with heat in my cheeks. “You could have figured out how to let me know you were alive.” Our eyes meet across the space in the car.

Hot tears and anger course through me, and I wish that anger could be replaced with something less painful. I don’t know who to be angry at, but I need to be mad.

“I didn’t want to risk your father figuring out that you knew. I didn’t want you involved in all of this,” he says. “I didn’t want Lyla involved in any of this either, but that was unavoidable.”

“I still don’t get why or how all this has happened,” I say. “He’s just a businessman.” At least, up until now, that’s all I’ve ever known my father to be.

He’s made a great deal of money through the years, and I’ve enjoyed the life he gave us. I spent some time abroad, and it was all thanks to him. How am I supposed to believe he’s some kind of monster? Is he a monster?

“When I was younger, your father—who I thought was mine at the time—told me things…secrets. I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone…not even you,” he says softly, as if someone might hear us. “Being not only the oldest child, but the oldest son, he expected me to take over for him at some point.”

“Take over what?” I ask him, and for some reason, I feel like I should know what he’s talking about.

It’s almost like what he’s trying to say, or rather not say, is sitting at the edge of my mind. I don’t want to believe it, so I discount the idea right away. Things like this don’t actually happen in real life, do they?

“Ami…” Preston pauses and looks me over before he continues. “Your father is one of the most notorious criminals in the greater Chicago area, and in the United States. He’s a Mafia don and expected me to take over for him when the time was right.”

I sit dumbfounded, not knowing what to say.The Mafia?These things only happen in books and movies, right?

I think about my dad and who he is to me. He’s always been a teddy bear. Sure, he makes me treat our stepmother like my own mom, but I was so little when our mother died that I barely remember her. My mind flashes through everything Preston has said. What’s sad is that if this is all true, Dad told me to come home and stop looking because already knew that Preston wasn’t dead…there was no body.

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