only a year younger than me, though I would’ve sworn by his physical appearance and the way he acted that he was no older than ten. After a few minutes of us eating, he rested back in his seat with a huge grin on his face.
“Did you enjoy that?” I asked.
“Yup!” He nodded enthusiastically. “You want to know why?”
“Why?”
“Because it tastes like victory.”
Chapter 3
Jackson doesn’t offer small talk or even a greeting when I show up at the station the next morning. He leads me to the same room as the night before and motions for me to sit down. Then he removes his jacket, takes a seat, and pushes a picture under my nose. “Nate DeLuca,” he says.
I lift the picture for closer inspection. It isn’t a mug shot; it’s a surveillance shot, and from what I can see, there’s absolutely nothing remarkable about the guy. Dark hair displayed under his ball cap, average build, around the same age as me—maybe a couple years older. That’s basically all I can make out. “And?” I ask.
“And he’s who you need to get close to. He runs the fights, but like I said, we suspect it’s a cover-up for the drugs. You need to get to know him. You need to live and breathe him. And if you can do that—get in his circle, get in his head—then it can lead us to the people responsible for Steve–” He cuts himself off and looks down at the table, realizing the mistake he was about to make. “For the deaths…” he corrects himself.
“And what do you get out of it?”
“Justice.”
The fights, Jackson told me, are held in basements of bars throughout Philly. You can buy your way in with a five grand VIP membership. The memberships were limited to two hundred. You show up and act like a dick, your membership’s revoked.
The venues are announced to a maximum of only sixty people, chosen randomly via text message two hours before fight night begins. In order to get into the basements, you needed to meet somewhere off-site first, show the message on your phone, text it back to a number, and they mark it off a list.
Obviously, Jackson had prepared all of this in the few days since I’d agreed to The Deal.
I did everything that was asked of me, and now I find myself standing in the basement of a bar I’d never stepped foot in before. The place is exactly how I imagined—tiny room with barely enough space to move. The crowd’s rowdy but obviously interested enough in the fights that they’d fork out five grand just to watch.
I don’t watch the fights. I watch the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of a man I’ve never met before. The man whose life I’m about to ruin. His name—Nate DeLuca—repeats in my head over and over, playing hostage in my mind. I have to live and breathe him; that’s what Jax said. And that’s what I plan to do.
Because Jax isn’t just some newbie detective.
He isn’t even an old friend.
Jax is my brother.
Ky: Age Fifteen
Mayhem ensued in my house while I sat on the roof, again. I’d been in bed for over an hour before finally throwing the covers off and accepting that sleep would be impossible. Holding my arm close to my chest, I maneuvered my bedroom window open and climbed out onto the roof, ignoring the sudden outbreak of goosebumps pricking my skin. I wondered for a moment if he’d managed to dislocate my shoulder this time or just separate it. Tonight’s reason for my beating—Dad was drunk. That was it. There were also people over. Him, combined with alcohol plus an audience, always made for a good time for everyone.
Everyone but me.
Even though I was big for my age, I was no competition for him. Give it a year, it might have been a different story. But even if I could’ve taken him, I sure as shit wouldn’t try. It’d make me just as bad as him, and the last thing I ever wanted to is to become him.
Sitting down slowly, I rested my arms on my bent knees and looked up at the stars.
“I wish I may, I wish I might,” I whispered, then laughed. “Fuck your wish.”
“Ky!” Jackson was half hanging out his window, his hand waving from side to side.
“What’s up?” I asked, not lifting my head. I didn’t want him to see the freshly swelled bruises around my eyes. Or the cut on my jaw.