Page 18 of Bought
I promised myself that no one else would die because of me.
There’s only one thing I can do now. I climb into my discreet car, the American-made one with the rattling muffler.
The Porsche would stand out where I’m going. I peel away from the building.
It’s time to shift my focus back where it belongs. No matter how much I want her, work needs to come first. Head before heart.
Always.
I drive past the low-lying buildings that border Brooklyn and Queens. The area is rundown and often floods. It’s nicknamed the Lost Neighborhood. Our boys call it the Wild West of theWest Side. It’s temporary. The Morettis will find out we’re here soon enough, but for now, it’s home.
After the Morettis orchestrated the firebombing of Bachman Enterprises, hidden in our once-beloved Village, our entire operation was forced to move. The original headquarters still stands there as a burned-out shell. Part of the facade remains, but the inside is gutted. Every desk, server, and shred of paper has turned to ash.
There is no way to link the crime to the Morettis.
We’re stuck in a hopeless stalemate.
We can't rebuild on our land until the insurance company handling our claim proves that we did not intentionally destroy our home. We evacuated the city after the Village was bombed, but we needed a team to stay behind.
Blaze and I, along with a ragtag group of bachelors, were the first to volunteer. Along with a star-studded team of Bachman lawyers living on the West End, except for Blaze, it’s Peter Pan types, who would never settle down and have no ties outside the brotherhood. Our job is to hold what’s left of the fort.
At the time I offered to stay, I didn’t have any ties. Didn’t want them.
Then she showed up at my door.
Now I’m thinking we put a memorable plaque where the Village used to stand, and I take her somewhere safe, where she could never be a target.
But my blood runs Bachman, and we’ve led this city for a century; my pride, my ego, our legacy holds me back.
We currently operate from a single warehouse, known as The Hole. It’s a bleak, functional space with corrugated metal walls and drafty, uninsulated rafters that creak in the wind. The air smells of diesel, with pools of old stains visible on the cold concrete floors. Every time a truck drives by outside, the walls shake.
These buildings were intended for the temporary storage of shipping pallets. Our main ‘conference room’ is no longer the elegant space with a bay of windows we were used to, but a converted loading dock filled with mismatched folding chairs, a battered desk, and a whiteboard still displaying the faded outline of a long-forgotten inventory list.
My mind drifts back to Erin. She haunts me like a song I can’t get out of my head.
Ever since the Village was destroyed and the majority of the Bachmans evacuated New York, I’ve been on edge.
I travel through the city like someone who’s been told there’s a sniper on every roof, and for all I know, there might be.
They’re no longer only after our turf. They’re set on bankrupting our American businesses. They want us off New York soil, and with their tech, they’re doing their best.
They’ve also begun sending packages first to our businesses, before they bombed them.
When the family evacuated, the enemy expanded their targets to the private homes of Bachman-friendlies. With the Morettis’ direct threats, they’re becoming fewer and farther between.
Handwritten notes, bottles filled with gasoline, graphic photos of what will happen to anyone who doesn’t disassociate fromus. Sometimes the packages contain pieces of animal carcasses. Occasionally, they’re human.
Sometimes I can’t tell the difference.
Every day involves negotiating territory. Every hour is a struggle for leverage.
There's no such thing as a safe moment, not even inside this makeshift office that we don’t think they’ve discovered yet. I’m sitting at the only proper desk in the place, a gun taped to the underside. Blaze claimed his spot in the corner, a milk crate for his chair.
He’s the only one who doesn’t seem bothered by the change. Having grown up in government housing in the Bronx, I suspect he feels more comfortable here than he did in Manhattan.
Blaze pulls up his crate to my desk, ready to argue some sense into me. We’ve been disagreeing for days.
“You ready to talk?” I ask.
