Page 26 of All Saints Day
Without thinking, I burst from my bedroom and race down the stairs to the source of my father’s pained cries.
He lies squirming helplessly in a spreading pool of his own blood.
“Dad!” I scream, slipping in the pool of blood, falling hard to my hands and knees on the hard, slick, wood floor.
Panic fills my father’s eyes as he croaks my name, “Francis!”
I reach for him—the bullet holes in his chest and stomach gushing blood.
“Francis Castle—Rooky boy.” My father reaches up and clasps my face with a bloody hand. “You call Rosie—you tell her she’s got to get you out of here. She’ll know what to do.”
I nod numbly, dimly aware that my father is currently dying in my arms.
“I’m sorry, son,” he bites out with a sob. “I told your mother I’d wait until you were a man until I saw her again, but it seems the Lord had other plans,” he chokes on a chain of wet coughs, red seeping up and over his lips.
“Dad—” I whimper, fear choking out my voice.
“We’ll be waiting for you, Frankie,” my father gasps out before he falls silent forever.
I don’t even have time to weep over his body—the door to the condo bursts open, a group of men in dark clothing and one woman in a sharply cut suit with a blond updo and oversized sunglasses are filling the space in a flurry of fluid movement.
I flinch as the men in dark clothes fan out with their guns trained on me and my father’s body.
Thinking of my father as only a body for the first time breaks something loose in me, and suddenly I cry out, tears streaming from my face as I throw my body—between child and man—over my fathers corpse as if to protect him from these men and the icy cold woman who looks down at me.
“Leave the kid to me,” she croons softly, pulling a white handkerchief from her pocket—offering it to me along with an outstretched hand.
Susan Lowry.
Like a baby bird, I imprinted onto her—like some twisted fairy godmother—in that moment.
“Shhh, it’s alright—everything’s going to be alright,” she whispers into my ear as the memory fades into nothingness.
Francis Castle was too soft, too young, too weak to save his father—to protect anyone. Without Patrick himself, Castle Security crumbled into dust.
Susan knew this all too well, so she helped lay the foundation—to build up the walls of the tower—to construct Rook, brick by brick.
She fed me poisoned tales of scientists who had found the key to the next stage of human evolution; super soldiers andfunctional immortality; increased intelligence, superhuman charisma—demigods amongst men.
Susan spoke of fated mates and mysterious chemical weapons that targeted the rarer designations; of the opportunities and wealth that had been stolen from me when the Feds murdered my father in broad daylight. How they got away with it by framing my father’s criminal clientele, finally turning on him.
No matter what horrors she spoke of—it didn’t change the fact that Francis didn’t like hurting people, didn’t like breaking bones or drawing blood to make people talk, to force their cooperation. Later on, Frank could do it when he had to—for the job, when duty demanded it.
Rook savored other’s pain like wine. A true sadist, who took pleasure in the ruination of others. The Windmill, the organization Susan Lowry worked for—that Patrick Castle had died trying to uncover just a few of secrets from…
I can’t tell where I am anymore.
Who I am.
Francis wouldn’t have survived in the Windmill, so I split myself the first time—putting up the first of the warped funhouse mirrors to obfuscate the horrors of my own mind from myself.
I became Rook, the brutal closed fist of the Windmill; violence wrapped in timeless elegance and exquisite hatred.
Then I met Michael, undercover for the Windmill with the FBI.
From the first moment I met him, smelled that scent–balsam, plum brandy, and black pepper–it was all over. I knew right away I’d seen him before—in my dreams, on those cards that day at Rosie Oleary’s—the man with dark brown hair beside the woman with long red hair on The Lover's tarot card, the man in blue plummeting to his death from the crumbling black stone tower.
Fated mates.
