Lucas, four years ago…
After he was certain that Marcus had settled down enough to talk things through to the point they could start working together, he called up three of his guys to come to the auto shop after dark and clean up the mess of bodies left behind.
The moment they showed up and laid eyes on Marcus, one of them asked, “Who the hell is this guy?”
“Do you remember that one kid I talked about recruiting, Marcus?”
“Yeah, that him?”
Lucas nodded as he said, “Yeah, that’s him. That’s The Enderman.”
When those last three words left his mouth, the blood drained from the faces of all three men as they stared at him, which caused him to stare at them back.
Annoyed by their reaction, Marcus spat back at them, “What the fuck do you three stooges want, huh? A cookie?”
Lucas put up his hand and said, “Just chill out, let me handle this.”
Marcus looked at him with a doubtful expression, looked back at the three men, then looked at him again before saying, “Whatever you say man…”
He then walked off as he went to the bathroom, and as soon as the door closed behind him, one of the guys walked up to Lucas and said, “Are you insane?!”
“What are you freaking out about?! I thought we went over this already,” Lucas said as he tried to dismiss the issue.
“No! We didn’t! You told us his name was Marcus, that much we knew. You never told us that he was the Enderman! That he was the one you were going to bring in. I mean, look around you! Look at the bodies he left, torn apart and mangled. He definitely doesn’t look stable.”
“Robert, let me tell you something about this kid okay? Yes, he’s the Enderman. He is that guy, but I know him, or at least enough to know that so long as we do right by him, he won’t snap on us. Believe me, if you do anything to piss him off enough that he wants to kill you, you better pray to God he never finds you, because he will kill you,” Lucas said, getting in Robert’s face to emphasize the point.
One of the other men by the name of Nathan, said to him, “Even if we do right by him, how can you promise he’ll do the same for us? Why do you trust him enough to defend him like this?”
“Look, I’ll admit, I barely know him. The most I know is that he found out the man he’d been working for his whole life killed his mother, and this…? All the shit you see here? This was how he reacted. Look at me with a straight face and tell me you wouldn’t react the same way.”
All three of them tried to meet his eyes but eventually they all looked away, shaking their heads, but accepting the truth of the matter.
“I’m gonna tell you this right now, he scares the shit out of me, but I’m not about to let this go to waste because I couldn’t stomach to see a little blood. All four of us served in Hell just like this with our brothers, didn’t we? Now him? He’s just a kid, but he’s been fighting in this shit longer than all of us, here on our home front. I’m not gonna abandon him, I’m gonna fight with him and clear out our streets of this same filth. Of course, that was the whole plan all along, but now we have their worst nightmare on our side. So stop being such a pussy and accept the cards we’ve been dealt,” he said, to which the three of them sighed as they got to work cleaning up the bodies.
Lucas then nodded, thankful that they got the message, as he turned around and went to the bathroom. He knocked on the door as he heard the bathroom sink running.
“Hey man…, we’ll have this mess cleaned up, but right after, we’ll need to head out to our operations and-” before he could finish, the door opened and Marcus stepped out, looking up at him with his face cleaned up.
“You want me to head there with you now? Like, right now?”
“That’s the idea.”
“No. Not yet. We can’t start this yet until I’m sure that Thalia’s out of danger first,” he said as he walked out of the bathroom.
Lucas struggled to figure out what to say if only to keep him calm as he followed him, “W-Wait, hold on! I’m certain we can move your sister somewhere safe while everything’s taking place. We have plenty of safe houses available and-”
Marcus turned around and looked Lucas over for a moment and stared at him in confusion, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I...I don’t know what you mean.”
“You look like shit. Like you just saw a ghost or your walking on shattered glass, trying not to cut your feet. I don’t need a babysitter, or someone to tip toe around their words to make sure I won’t blow up on them. Just say what you need to say, you’re an adult. Act like it! Take this seriously!” he said, which was throwing Lucas for a loop.
How could Marcus change his behavior so quickly from that mentally broken mess that he was before, to this no nonsense, pure business attitude that he had now? It was almost like he was a different person.
“Alright, whatever. You said you need to get Thalia to safety right? Do you have a place in mind?” Lucas asked him.
“I do. With all due respect, I don’t trust your men to protect her, but even if I did, it would be a strain on the resources we have available. Now I can arrange to have Thalia out in the next couple of days, fast. During that time, I can set up our first plans of action,” he said but Lucas was having trouble following along.
“Plans of action? I haven’t even introduced you to everyone yet, but you want to take action right now?” Lucas exclaimed.
“Romano has no idea I’m even here, or that I’ve spoken to you and met with you like this, but he’s smart enough that he would catch on eventually, or someone else will. We need to strike while the iron is hot, when they are at their most vulnerable, and that time is now when they feel safe. For all the protection they have, for all the security they have, it’ll mean jack shit once accusations get thrown around and they start blaming each other. Already Romano doesn’t trust the Castellanos. He sees them as weak compared to the Moronis and already there is a shaky relationship with them. No doubt he’s been planning to have me wipe them out later down the line,” Marcus explained, speaking so fast that Lucas could barely keep up.
“Okay okay okay, but even if we start right now, we’re ill prepared to predict how things will take off! We can’t just charge in blind and hope that things will work out!”
“We won’t be, because I’ll be there at the center of it. Look, I’ll meet with the rest of you in two days after I finish talking things out with Thalia, put her on a plane on a brief vacation, convince everything that things are just fine. I need to make it seem like nothing has changed so that everything goes smoothly. Just keep in mind, no matter how much we plan ahead, we won’t be able to predict what will happen when things get chaotic, we’ll just have to adapt and fight like hell,” he said, and although Lucas was starting to get his bearings on how to handle Marcus, he still felt a bit concerned about how fast things were going.
“Look, I know you’re going through some shit right now, and you need a way to work through that, but jumping into this right away could put not just yourself, but everyone involved at risk. You know that right?”
Hearing that, Marcus stared at him and Lucas could see the gears turning in his head as he had been listening to every word he said and not just waiting to respond.
Eventually he sighed, looked down at the ground, and said, “Yeah...I get it, but I don’t have that luxury right now. None of us do. I want these people dead and gone, but that won’t happen unless we act too fast for them to respond. Just...trust me.”
“That’s all I can do right now man,” Lucas responded but nodded and waved for Marcus to head out.
With that, the two parted ways and he went to go help the other three guys finish cleaning up.
Marcus…
Before heading back to the estate, he rented out a room at a hotel and cleaned himself up.
He couldn’t come back to his sister smelling like death if he was going to send her off for a little while.
After he finished washing all the blood, torn skin, and ripped hair off of him, he stood in front of the fogged up mirror and swept the steam away.
In his reflection, he couldn’t recognize himself.
He saw only a haunted and broken man trying to take what little pieces remained of his life and rebuild it into something new.
He wondered about whether he was right about what he was planning to do, whether there was any other choice after everything he’s done.
Most of all, he wondered what his mother would say to him. How she would react to the kind of person he had become.
He doubted she would look at him with pride, or any great amount of affection at the monster he was now, but still…
He’d give everything just to be held in her arms one more time as she rubbed his hair and told him everything would be alright.
But she was dead now and no amount of words would make everything alright.
Only actions mattered.
“Thalia...Yukino...please be patient a little while longer. I’ll...I’ll make everything alright,” he said aloud, though with no one to hear him.
In truth, he was only assuring himself.
When he was finished, he paid the man at the front desk and returned home.
As soon as he made it back to the Romano estate, he went into his room and looked around for Thalia only to realize that it would still be about an hour before she came back from school.
While he waited, he went to Romano’s office and knocked the door.
“Come in.”
He opened the door and as he walked in and laid eyes on the man, it took all of his self control not to lunge at the man, cut open his throat, spill out his innards, flay his skin, rip out his spine, cut out his tongue to make him choke on his own blood, spoon out his eyeballs, scalp him, snap his limbs-
“You need something?” he asked as he stared at Marcus in confusion, waiting for him to speak.
“Uh...yeah. I want to ask a favor from you,” he said through his red tinted vision.
“Well alright. Lets hear it.”
“I...want to take a break for a moment. Though, I’m not saying I want to just stop. I’ll see our deal through, but...I want to take a vacation with my sister to make it up to her. Even after I first showed back up, I haven’t exactly been close with her. I want some time with her to fix that, if you don’t mind,” he asked.
“How long are you thinking?”
“A couple weeks, maybe a month if you can work that out,” Marcus offered.
Romano blinked and said, “T-That’s it? You’re fine with just a month?”
“I didn’t want to push my luck.”
Romano let out a sigh of exasperation before rubbing his eyes and said, “Look...why don’t you take her and head out for about three months, get yourself a nice summer vacation, go out into the woods, go to the beach, do whatever you think you need to. You’ve already been working yourself to death, more than I’ve expected of you to reach the end of our agreement. I can...settle with this for now.”
“I appreciate it…,” Marcus said as he turned around and was ready to head out the door when he heard Romano call on him again.
“Oh hey, one more thing before you go,” he said, which made him freeze up.
Marcus didn’t respond and simply turned his head to look at the man one more time.
“Get some sleep before you go. You look exhausted.”
“I...I will,” he said before he closed the door behind him.
He stumbled back to his room as he started to hear ringing in his ears from the blood rushing to his head.
When he collapsed into his own bed, he didn’t bother waiting to greet Thalia when she got back and simply stared at the ceiling of his room until she stepped inside and greeted him herself.
“Hey big brother…,” she said quietly, as if wondering if he were sleeping.
He turned his head slowly to look at her and smiled as he said, “Hey sis. How was school?”
Her eyes lit up as she was excited to have him show interest in her school life for the first time in months that she began ranting for nearly half an hour while he listened to every word silently.
When she was close to reaching the end of her story, she finally stopped and said, “I’m...probably talking your ear off right now, huh?”
“No… No no, no you’re not. Don’t worry about that but… I have something I want to talk about with you for a moment,” he said as he sat up straight in his own bed.
“Oh, okay. What’s going on?” Thalia said as she jumped up onto her own bed and started swinging her legs over the edge.
“Its been a while since you and I spent some time to ourselves and really just...talked. There’s some things that I’ve wanted to share with you for a long while but never found the time,” he said, and Thalia stopped swinging her legs as she must have realized the matter was serious.
“W-What kind of things?”
“Things about mom. What she was like. What life was like with her before The Bronx,” he said, to which Thalia jumped off her bed and rushed towards him.
“Do you mean it? You’ll finally tell me about mom? You never ever talk about her!”
“I know, and I’m sorry about that, but I think now, more than ever, is the best time for that. Which is why, I’m scheduling a vacation for just the two of us,” he said.
“Really? When?”
“Two days from now,” he said, to which she started stammering.
“B-But I have to go to school. Isn’t this a bit too soon?”
“Nonsense. You’re smarter than ninety percent of your grade and easily three months ahead of everyone else’s school work, which would be more than enough time for us to spend together. Besides, I can help you get back up to speed on your school work when we get back.”
Thalia went speechless for a few minutes before she shook her head and said, “O-okay. This is great. W-where would we be going?”
“Back to Nebraska where I was born. There’s a farm house out in the country that I still own which has all the old pictures, furniture, and memories of when I grew up there. We’ll spend some time there and have some fun,” he said, to which Thalia seemed a bit disappointed.
“Isn’t Nebraska just a flyover state?”
“Hey! That place was more my home than this one. Treat it with respect.”
She folded her arms and said, “Alright…”
“Now get done whatever homework you have and I’ll have dinner ready. I’ll be setting up the plane tickets and everything real soon. I promise, now get to work!” he said as he shooed her away.
“Alright! I’ll go start on it now!” she said excitedly as she reached into her backpack and pulled out various papers of homework and started on them.
All the while, Marcus felt guilty for lying to her face the entire time, because while almost everything he said about the vacation was true, the only thing that wasn’t was that he was going with her.
In the time leading up to the flight to Nebraska, he had paid an old associate to escort her to the farmhouse and take care of her for a few months.
A man by the name of Julio Fernandez was going to watch after her. When Marcus met him, he acted like a gang banger just to get people off of his back while supporting his sickly brother who had cancer and couldn’t afford the treatment.
So Marcus made a deal with him to pay for his treatment in exchange for a favor one day, no matter what it was, no questions asked.
He agreed right away and even said that whatever he needed beyond that, he was happy to provide as he owed him his life for saving his brother.
At this very time, he cashed out that favor so that he could watch over Thalia while he got to work.
Lucas, who he had informed about all this, was waiting in the airport to escort Marcus away.
Thalia, who was not just heartbroken that he had lied, but furious, wouldn’t even look at him.
“I know you’re angry with me, and by all means you should be, and for that I’m sorry. I would have gone with you if something hadn’t come up last minute, but you should know that this is the first and last time I will ever lie to you. I swear it. I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. I can’t explain why I’m doing this just yet, but some day I will and it will all make sense eventually,” he said, and he knew that she was listening to every word, because although she would not look him in the eye, she was shaking from crying.
“Thalia, look me in the eyes,” he told her, and she turned around slowly, with tears streaming down her cheeks.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and said, “When you come back, you and I will have a home all to ourselves. We’ll have a better life that you could be proud of. I’ll hang the pictures of mom in the country house up in the hallways and all across the walls. Then later, you and I can take pictures of just the two of us and leave no spaces on the walls untouched. We’ll have all our favorite movies, games, foods, and everything else we could think of. I only ask that you wait until then and familiarize yourself with the memories of mom left behind in that house while I’m gone. Can you do that for me?”
She was silent for a moment as she contemplated his words before sniffling and said, “Yeah. I can do that. Just promise you’ll never lie to me again.”
“I promise.”