5. Messiah

Like every Saturday for the last eight months, I make my way up to Van Buren Street to see my sister. The girl took a charge for me when a job went wrong. I didn't ask her too, she did it of her own volition – much to my dismay. Given that there wasn't a whole lot of evidence pointing her toward the crime, but she was the only one openly admitting to doing it, she was given a three year prison sentence. She is the only family I really have, and she saved my life for taking the fall because of my mistakes. As such, I do whatever I can to try and help her time pass quicker.

Constance wasn't a straight arrow before this. She was just as much in the life as I was. She was a bottom girl for the top pimp in our neighborhood. We had gotten into drugs young, but we had both worked through rehab together to get off them. Problem is, when you have a history of petty theft and drug related intakes, the straight and narrow life doesn't come easy. As such, we worked our way up through the slums. Now, I was an assassin for the mob. She was likely going to return to her position once she was released. I didn't like to think about my sister being on the streets, running around doing God knows what with God knew who. But she had earned enough of her pimps" trust to stay off the streets for the most part, and I was going to make sure once she was released that she wasn't going to be walking them again.

"You look distracted," she tells me.

She has been trying to make conversation with me for five minutes, but I can't focus.

"Big job right now," I tell her through the phone, glancing at the other visitors in the booths beside me.

"Some mystery," she says, wiggling her eyebrows. "A bit of excitement. At least you are getting some. The most exciting thing that happened here lately was some new intake ate one of her shower shoes. We told the guards she needed to be up on the psych floor."

"Did they take her there?"

"Hell no."

We both chuckle and I lean closer to the plastic window that separates us.

"Need money on your books?" I ask.

"Always."

"I'll take care of that today."

"Thank you, Boopie."

I shake my head, glad that none of the visitors on my side can hear what she is saying. I am older by four years, but she has called me Boopie since either of us could remember. It was likely because she hadn't wanted to make the effort to say my actual name when she was young enough to just start forming words.

"So, other than work, what is going on? Still crashing on the couch? Have you met a girl? You should get a girl."

A vague look must come over me, because the first thing I can think of is my mystery girl at Gold Standard. Her snarky attitude hadn't left my mind since I saw her. I fucking hated mysteries. But Angel – there was something there. It was an itch I hadn't quite been able to scratch yet.

"There is a girl." She leans closer to the plastic window and smirks. "Who is she?"

"No fucking idea," I answer honestly. "And it shouldn't matter. She doesn't like me. I don't think she likes anyone."

"Where did you meet her?"

"She refused to suck my dick."

"Too much information!" she groans, leaning back in her seat.

"You wanted to know."

I push aside thoughts of Angel as I drive back to my apartment. Charles wants to know who is behind these hits before another one happens. I still don't have a real connection though. Both victims were Disciples for Charles's faction here in Chicago. The murders were obviously a retaliation against something. Has someone in Charles's gang pissed off another faction? That would be a mess. I make some calls to figure out if there was a bad shipment that might have pissed off a middleman somewhere. As far as the suppliers can tell, nothing has come in recently that might cause some hurt feelings.

Fuck.

The feeling that the next guy is about to get taken out haunts me through the rest of the day. If a third body appears, Mark is going to get annoyed. Murder is pretty common in Chicago, but there are still people in the police department that are going to make connections. These victims have families lurking somewhere and all it is going to take is one missing person's report to alert the authorities to start snooping.

The victims were part of a peddler group. There are four men left, but I have no idea which one could be next. Deciding not to leave it up to chance, I dig up their information and decide it is time to hit the streets.