Page 128 of Bad Seed
The cry doesn’t come from the man about to have his eye skewered, but the woman against my side. She’s shaking. No matter how hard I try to close her ears, she has to hear all of this. What I was.
What I am.
Mr. Oli stops just before slicing through Ato’s cornea. He doesn’t let go of the man, but he turns away. “Is that her?” he asks, pointing the knife at Sadie.
I shift in the way. “Yes.”
“She’s got quite the talent at photography. Low light, no doubt done in a hurry, but even the smallest print was legible. You have my thanks, my dear.”
“You’re…you’re welcome,” she mumbles, pulled into the Brassica web of charisma. Even while watching their atrocities committed with your own two eyes, it’s impossible to respond to their politeness with anything other than more politeness.
“Seems the young woman doesn’t want you to lose your eye, Tom. Lucky for you, I happen to owe her a favor.” Mr. Oli slaps his cheek. “But you don’t need your eyelids to see.”
Her whimpering cries seize control of my body. I don’t feel anything, I don’t hear the thunk or the pull of the hammer. All I know is in one breath, I’m standing up, gun in my hand, aiming it at the head of the Brassica family.
“Stop.”
Mr. Oli stands back, the knife still in his hand. “Talong. Right hand man to the Nightshade gang. Tell me something. I assumed you ran because you either came into a certain amount of money you weren’t supposed to have, or a girl you weren’t allowed to touch.” His sharp eyes cut to Sadie, and I jerk the gun so I’ll take all of his attention.
He smiles at that, then wipes back his eyebrows with his bloodied pinkie. “But that isn’t why, is it? You were there, on the deck of the Phoenix. You saw what your boss did to my men. My family. And it soured your stomach to learn how cruel this man posing as your father can be.” He hefts up Mr. Ato’s head and draws the knife down his jaw, slicing the skin. “Yet, you stop me. Why?”
“I…I can’t let you kill him.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Mr. Oli asks, unruffled by having a gun on him.
I pull that trigger and every Brassica in Nevada will come down on my head. Whatever horrible things I thought Ato would do me, they’d amplify by a hundred and keep me alive for months. I shouldn’t care. Ato made his bed. He was going to hurt Sadie. Kill her.
“He’s still my family,” I cry out, locking my finger against the trigger.
A strange bead of hope flashes in Mr. Ato’s eyes. As if we can all forget this happened and go back to the way things were. I don’t want that. I hate this part of myself that, after every hell he’s put me through, is still loyal to him. It’s a sickness, an addiction. I watched Green fight to the death to save him even after he almost killed his brother. We’re all loyal to the man digging every step to our shallow graves.
Even Po, even knowing his father was going to kill him, wouldn’t flee because he loved him.
“Pull the trigger, son! We can still take them down!” Mr. Ato cries out.
I gulp, certain that’s enough for Mr Oli to stab him. Instead, the man chuckles. “Funny that you should bring up family, Talong. How was it that you came to be pulled to Tom’s bosom?”
“My grandfather—”
“Perished, tragically, in a fire. A fire that happened the same night you were home on leave. And, in an amazing coincidence, there was a fellow nightshade watching the whole thing, offering you a shoulder to cry on. And a new home.”
All the blood pools to my feet.
No. He’s not…
“That’s… What are you saying?” My hand starts to shake, the gun bounding inside my weakening grip. I smell the burning sugar cane and smoke catching in my eyes.
“Tell him,” Mr. Oli commands.
Mr. Ato’s gone silent, his lips shut tight.
“Tell him, you fat fuck!” Mr. Oli jabs the tip of the blade to his throat. “Before you have to drink soup out your neck hole for the rest of your life!”
The face I swore my life to, the eyes that made me promise to do unspeakable things in the name of family, swerve up to me. “Talong, son, I would ne—”
I fire a round into his shin. He collapses, screaming at me, blood pouring from the wound. The door flies open and two of the men race to tackle me. A single nod from Mr. Oli stops them dead while I march toward the man I once thought of as my second father.
“You set the fire.” He was there. Right there. Watching me run into the flames. Grab my grandfather’s lifeless, blackened body, and pull it out of the house. Waiting to stoke my anger, to drive me to kill innocent people. “Say it!” I press the still sizzling gun to his temples. “You killed him!”
