That's When The Trouble Started [updated 6/23]

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 off. Her sleight of hand had been the signal, and he had played it cool.

But it wasn’t CIA training that saved him, it was the mafia in his bones.

The Feds taught him to think. But his family had taught him to survive. His father had made sure of that, paying schoolboys to jump him at least three times a week. When John stopped coming home with bruises, the beatings stopped. That was the test.

The car rolled to a stop behind an old Jamaican restaurant, right next to a dumpster. The lights were off. The place was dead quiet.

Still, John got out carefully, gripping the knife still embedded in his side.

Lea met him at the front and let him lean against her. His arm wrapped around her shoulders as she helped him to the back door.

She kicked some trash aside and moved a rotting plank from the doorway. Beneath it was a dusty old padlock with a keypad. She punched in a code, and the door clicked open.

They stepped into a cramped, dimly lit kitchen.

Then they were hit with red dots. Four of them.

Laser sights crawled across their bodies, humming from somewhere in the dark.

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

The lasers vanished. The lights flicked on.

Four men stood in the room, armored head to toe in tactical gear. Two kneeling. Two standing. One lifted his night vision goggles and pulled down his face mask.

“My bad, Lea,” said Dennis. “Batteries dying. Who’s the guy?”

“This is John,” she replied. “He’s an economic analyst. Like me.”

Dennis scratched his head. “The hell kind of desk jockey gets stabbed?”

John rolled his eyes. “Can we speed this up? I’m not gonna die from this, but I am getting sore. And if I do bleed out, I’m haunting all of you.”

“Right,” Dennis said.

“Damn,” said one of the other soldiers. “Was hoping to get some experience data for my AI.”

“What?” John asked.

Dennis punched the guy in the arm.

“Nothing,” Dennis muttered. “Let’s not let you die out here.”

The men moved aside as Dennis led them to a door labeled MAINTENANCE CLOSET.

But when it opened, it revealed something else entirely: an underground surgical suite.

A pristine medical room, stocked with high-end equipment and soft blue lights. Metal cabinets lined the walls, packed with gauze, syringes, vials. The brown operating table was already prepped with fresh paper.

A man in white sat on a stool reading a book, legs crossed. As they entered, he looked up and set the book aside without a word. He motioned to the table.

Lea and the doctor helped John climb on.

The doctor slipped on a pair of gloves as John reached to undress.

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

“You’re buying me a new one,” John grunted. “This was from—”

“-I’ll make sure you get a stipend.”

John sucked his teeth and laid back. He really liked that suit and the CIA didn’t really pay back people in a timely manner. He’d be lucky to get his money for it within the next three months.

“It hasn’t even been 24 hours since the funeral,” Lea said, folding her arms. “And you’re already bleeding out on a table.”

“Up to you,” she added. “How the next 24 hours play out.”

As the doctor got to work, John’s mind drifted.

Back to two weeks ago.

***

Two weeks earlier, John was in the shower, shampoo lathered into his hair, when his phone buzzed from the counter.

Soap blinded him, but the ring wouldn’t stop. He stumbled out, water streaming down his face, and managed to grab the phone.

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

“Bimbo?” came a soft voice.

Italian. Female.

His stomach dropped. The soap, the water, the steam. All of it disappeared in that instant.

Only two people in the world called him that.

And one of them had just spoken.

John steadied his breath.

“Hello, Ma,” he said. His voice had gone flat. “Didn’t know you had this number.”

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

He had prepared for this moment. Rehearsed it in his head a thousand times. Knew exactly what he’d say if they ever reached out.

All of that vanished.

“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.

Three years since he’d heard her voice. Six since he’d seen her.

He’d left home at 16. At 22, he wasn’t the same boy she remembered. He doubted she’d recognize him now.

“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.”

John sighed. “Fine.”

There was shuffling on the line.

Then another voice.

Low. Gravel. Sick.

“Hello?”

A rock dropped into John’s gut.

“…What?” John said.

“It’s been years, and that’s how you greet your father?” the man said, breaking into a wheezy cough.

“You’ve got a minute and a half.”

“I’m dying.”

“Good.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“You taught me not to lie.”

“That was a lie.” Another cough. “But this isn’t. I’m going soon. I can feel it.”

“Fifty-eight seconds.”

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

John hesitated. His father had banished him, cut him off without a word for six years. Now, suddenly, he wanted him back?

John drew a circle on the fogged-up mirror.

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

“Yeah, but we’re still family.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

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

John’s jaw clenched. The CIA had wanted everything. Names. Deals. Dirt. Who, what and when. He could’ve traded it for promotions, power, an easier life.

But he didn’t. Not for his father’s sake, but for the people he had once loved.

Instead, he became a paper pusher. Economic analyst. Boring. Safe. Like he wanted.

“Yeah, well… I wasn’t helping either,” John said.

“You’re the one who took down the Danes.”

That landed like a punch. The Danes case was how John got in and who he traded instead of ratting on his family. A rival family with sloppy bookkeeping. He didn’t even need wiretaps, just a calculator, 200 dollars worth of gas and a phone that took good pictures.

He knew that the real way to take down any criminal organization was through a bigger criminal organization: the IRS. Same way they got Capone.

“What do Jade and Pete think?” John asked. “Do they even consider me blood anymore?”

“It don’t matter what they think!” his father barked. Then—more coughing. “This is what I want. I won’t beg. But I’m… strongly pleading. You won’t have to see me. Unless you enjoy talking to weeds.”

John stared at the smiley face drawn in the fog. The eyes had started to drip.

“They’ll want me to wear a wire,” he said quietly. “If I go, I’ll have to. That’s policy.”

A low, gravelly laugh.

“Sure you will, Johnny boy… Well, I tried. Should’ve tried more.”

Click.

The line went dead. John stared at the dripping face in the mirror.

He shut off the shower.