Page 55 of Prodigal Son

Abe held up a hand, palm-out. “You have nine children. I will say no more.”

“Whoa,” Evan breathed. “Nine?”

Eden muttered, “It’s a long, very sordid story.”

Fox shot her an unappreciative look, and she shrugged. He turned back to Abe. “Dad said Morgan went dark. After he told me that Morgan existed. Jesus.” He shook his head. “And Pseudonym came after Dad. We think they’re going to try to neutralize anyone who knows what happened with Project Emerald. We came here to warn you.”

Abe said, “You could have rung me on the phone.”

That stung. Swift and sharp. Fox was surprised that it did, so little did these days – but Abe wasn’t just another asshole in his adult life of spying, and killing, and travelling from chapter-to-chapter, doing their dirty work. Abe was from his childhood, those fragile, formative years in which he’d known his own father didn’t love him, but wasn’t old enough to understand why. Coming to Abe in person was a kindness…but maybe Abe didn’t want that.

“I could have,” he said, holding that measuring, inscrutable gaze. “But all you’ve got is that ancient landline. Who knows who might be listening.”

Abe blinked slow, like even that movement was something he could control. He was the stillest person Fox had ever met. “What’s with the girl?”

Eden made a quiet sound of affront, but when Fox glanced her way, she looked relaxed, sipping her tea and rolling her eyes.

“Eden was working for Pseudonym to track down Dad,” Fox said, keeping to the facts. “When they turned on her, she fell in with us. We can trust her.”

Devin snorted. “These two used to shag back in the day.”

“Christ, old man…”

“Used to work for the Crown, but she’s a good egg. Yeah, we can trust her.”

Abe’s brows lifted a fraction. “Shag?”

“Oh my God,” Evan murmured, awed. “This is like being in a movie.I’min a movie.”

Fox looked down into his tea, and then looked toward the cabinets above the old avocado-colored stove. “You got anything to drink besides tea?”

~*~

Charlie was thirteen, and he hated what he saw every time he looked in the mirror. Head-and-shoulders shorter than Billy Craddock and his rugby-playing ilk, nothing but knobs and spindles, and untamable hair falling in eyes with girl-long lashes. His eyes were the only thing pretty about him, and Charlie desperately didn’t want to bepretty. He wanted to be tall and stacked with muscle. Bull-necked, and ham-fisted, and capable, and adored by girls with eyelashes longer than his.

“That’s bollox,” Abe said. “That’s not what you want.”

“Yes, it is!”

“It’s what you think you want,” Abe said, even and sure. Charlie had never heard him shout…he’d never heard him act anythingbesidescalm. His laughter sounded like a lone wheeze, and his smiles were rare, fleeting things. Steady as the tides, infuriating as trying to conquer an entire ocean. Sometimes, after their training sessions – the ones his poor dumb mother thought were actually study sessions at the library – Charlie went home and flung himself down on his bed without dinner, and screamed into his pillow until there were tears building hot behind his closed eyelids.

“You think,” Abe went on, pacing a slow circle around Charlie’s ready stance, “that you want to be big, and fat like those boys you go to school with.”

“They’re not fat, they’re muscular. There’s a difference.”

Abe shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Either way, you don’t want that.”

Fuck you, Charlie thought, but didn’t dare say. He might have been an insolent little shit, as Dad liked to point out (and Mum, too), but he knew when he should hold his tongue.

“What you want,” Abe said, coming to a standstill in front of him, arms folded. “Is to be able to beat the shite out of them.”

Charlie’s anger halted…and then dissipated. “Um…yeah. Yeah, that’s what I want. But.” He flexed his scrawny arms. There wasn’t a better demonstration for his uselessness.

Abe only smirked. He looked back over his shoulder. “Len!”

The boys working in the ring stopped and glanced over. One, the bigger of the two, tugged off his foam ear protector and ducked under the ropes; jogged over. “Yes, sensei?” He was huge, muscles stacked on top of muscles, but unfailingly polite.

“Take off those gloves,” Abe instructed, turning toward him. “I want to give this doubter a demonstration.”

---