That's When The Trouble Started

John watched the world rush by, his mind still occupied with the woman he had just killed. Mango. She was beautiful. He wished she had actually liked him. Now, he was just horny and bleeding.

Thanks to his CIA training, he had spotted her in time. And when he saw Lea, he knew something was up. Her sleight of hand had been the signal, and he had played it cool.

But it was his mafia upbringing that had saved his life. The CIA’s training was solid, but he had spent his entire childhood in real street fights. His father despised weakness and had made sure of it—paying schoolboys to jump him at least three times a week. When he stopped coming home with bruises, his father called them off.

The car rolled to a stop behind an old Jamaican restaurant. The lights were off, and the place was dead silent. Still, John got out carefully, gripping the knife embedded deep in his side. Lea came around from the front, and he threw an arm over her shoulder as she helped him to the door.

She keyed a code into the padlock, and they stepped into the small, home-style kitchen in the back.

Unsurprisingly, four red dots appeared on their bodies—laser sights extending from somewhere in the darkness.

“It’s us, Dennis,” Lea said. “Check your pager.”

The lasers vanished, and the lights flicked on, revealing four men in black tactical gear, armed to the teeth. One lifted his night vision goggles and pulled down his face mask.

“My bad, Lea,” he said. “Who’s this?”

“This is John. He’s one of our economic analysts.”

“What? How the hell did a desk jockey get stabbed?”

“Can we speed this up?” John asked. “I’m not gonna die from this, but I am getting sore.”

“Right,” Dennis said.

The other men stepped aside as Dennis led John and Lea to a door labeled MAINTENANCE CLOSET. When it swung open, the inside revealed something completely different—a fully equipped operating room.

Advanced medical equipment surrounded a brown operating table, already prepped with fresh paper. The walls were lined with metal cabinets, each filled with medical supplies.

Inside the room, a man dressed in white was reading. As soon as they entered, he looked up and set his book down. Without a word, he motioned toward the table, and John laid down on the cold surface.

The doctor pulled a pair of blue gloves from his pocket and slid them on as John began to undress.

“Don’t,” the doctor said. “I have to cut the shirt off anyway.”

John sucked his teeth and laid back. He really liked this suit.

“It hasn’t even been 24 hours since the funeral, and you’re already bleeding out on a table,” Lea said. “Up to you how the next 24 hours play out.”

As the doctor got to work, John’s mind drifted back to two weeks ago—when this whole mess had started.

***

Two weeks ago, John was showering in his apartment. Just as he was scrubbing shampoo into his hair, his phone rang from the counter.

Blinded by the soap, he fumbled around for it, water streaming down his face. Through the stinging suds, he managed to grab the phone and answer it.

“You’re calling me at 11 p.m., so whoever this is, it better be important,” he said, already irritated.

“Bimbo?” came a soft female voice from the other end.

John’s eyes widened, and his heart plummeted. Suddenly, he didn’t feel the stinging soap or the water cascading down his body. All he felt was the weight in his stomach and the chill in his veins.

No one—absolutely no one—knew he was Italian. Outside of his boss and Lea, as far as anyone in America was concerned, there were no such things as Black Italians. He was born in Boston and had worked hard to strip away any trace of his accent, perfecting a neutral American tone. There wasn’t a single paper trail linking him to anything outside of Boston during his childhood.

And yet, this voice was calling him baby in Italian. That could only mean one thing.

He steadied his voice.

“Hello, Ma,” he said sternly. “I didn’t know you had this number.”

“Your sister found it for me,” she said. “You sound so grown up.”

“What do you want?” he asked, his tone cold.

“That’s no way to talk to me! I didn’t do anything.”

“You didn’t stop anything, either.”

Silence. Every second felt like a lifetime.

It had been three years since he’d heard his mother’s voice. Six since he had seen her. He had left home at 16. Now, at 22, he was a different person to her. He doubted she would even recognize him.

“I know you’re going to hang up when I say this,” she said, “so promise me you’ll stay on for two more minutes.”

“Why?”

“Promise me.”

Despite everything, saying no to his mother had always been difficult.

“Fine,” he muttered. He wiped his face with a nearby towel and stepped out of the shower, leaving the water running.

There was some shuffling on the other end of the line. Then, a deep, rough male voice spoke.

“Hello?”

John froze.

“...What?”

“It’s been years, and that’s how you talk to your father?” the man said, his voice breaking into a harsh cough. He sounded awful—nasty, even.

“You have a minute and a half left.”

“Alright, alright,” his father grumbled. “I’m dying.”

“Good.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“You told me I should never lie.”

“Yeah, well… that was a lie.” Another cough. “But this isn’t. I’m going very soon. I can feel it.”

“Fifty-eight seconds.”

“I want you at my funeral. And at my will reading.”

John frowned, caught off guard by the request. His father had banished him after their fight six years ago. He never imagined the old man would ask for him now.

John absently traced lines on the fogged-up bathroom mirror.

“Why?” he asked. “We’re not exactly friends.”

“But we are family.”

“I’m nothing like you,” John snapped. “Not now, not ever.”

“And yet, when you turned fed, you never ratted.”

John’s throat tightened.

When he had joined the CIA, the first thing they had wanted was intel on his father’s criminal dealings. If he had talked, his career would’ve skyrocketed. But he refused. He hadn’t helped his father—but he hadn’t betrayed him, either.

Instead, he got a desk job. Economic analysis.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t helping either,” he muttered.

“Who else but you could’ve taken down the Danes?”

That hit John hard. The Danes case was how he got into the CIA. They were a rival family. And John knew they hadn’t paid their taxes.

“What do Jade and Pete think?” he asked.

“It don’t matter what they think!” his father barked, then coughed violently. “This is what I want! … I won’t beg, but I’m… strongly pleading. You won’t have to see or talk to me. Unless you like talking to weeds.”

John exhaled slowly.

“They’ll want me to wear a wire,” he said finally. “I’ll have to if I want to keep my job.”

A long, rasping laugh came through the phone, followed by a few sharp coughs.

“Sure you will, Johnny boy… Well, I tried. Probably should’ve done that a few more times over the years.”

Click.

The line went dead.

John stared at the happy face he had drawn on the mirror. Water collected in the wiped-away streaks, and soon, thin streams dripped from the eyes, mouth, and head.

He sighed heavily and shut off the shower.