8. FRANKIE

Everything I did, I did for Cal. It hadn't always been that way. I was selfish, incredibly so. I never gave anyone a moment of my time, the closest anyone ever got to me was when someone threw themselves at me for sex. And I took those opportunities whenever I could. I was a man, and I could get hard at the change of a stiff breeze. It wasn't until Cal came into my life that everything changed.

He needed me to survive. I watched him go through all that pain, just for him to break down again and again. It was the first time I'd ever thought of myself as human. I had been unbreakable. I could go into a crack den, blow holes through five skulls and come out without even a graze. Now, I'd end up taking twice as long and getting caught off-guard with a punch to the face.

Cal knew how special he was to me, but that didn't mean I was ever soft on him. He didn't need someone to coo around walking on eggshells like he was damaged goods. He was far from damaged. He'd been reborn stronger, and I wasn't going to let him slip by allowing him to buy that sugar-loaded cereal.

He pushed the shopping cart down the aisle, stopping by the things he'd asked for on his list. Each time, I made him check the label, and each time, he told me how bad it was for him. I wasn't trying to give him a complex, I was just making sure he knew exactly what it was he was putting in his body. I was a killing machine, or so they called me, and he wanted to be just like me. He'd told me so himself. He could only get there with discipline, and every single day was a teaching day.

"What about these yogurts?" he asked. "Look. They're natural, and no added sugars. They have a strawberry one. Oh. And raspberry. That's your favorite flavor."

I looked him up and down, wondering who he was trying to con. "I love raspberries, the berries not the flavored yogurts."

"Thank you," he said, before I could finish, placing the yogurt cartons in the cart. "C'mon. It's just one thing."

I tried to keep my face stern, looking at him. "It's actually six things."

"No, no, you're looking at them all wrong," he said. "You buy them as one."

"But there are six of them. Well, twelve. Six strawberry and six raspberry."

He smirked. "I knew you could count," he said. "Those people lied when they said you didn't know how. I'm sorry I ever doubted you."

Catching me off-guard, I let out a chuckle. "Fine," I said. "But only one a day. Anymore and I'll take your cell off you."

We only came to the grocery store at the mall for a couple of things, like the yogurts and the frozen smoothie blends they had all prepared and packed with protein. Everything else was sourced from the local butcher, bakery, and the fruit and veg stand all at the end of the block.

Once we had our groceries and put those into the trunk of the car, we went back for the main order of business. There was a jeweler inside, they made nice gold bracelets. Cal's eyes lit up, looking at the sales assistant as she showed him their collection. He eventually made up his mind, got it sized, and then freaked before he could put it on. But that was fine. I'd calmed him down and bought the bracelet for us to try again when we were back home. But before that, we needed a new coffee table. While Cal headed back to the car and waited, I went to make furniture decisions alone.

I came back with a trolley, three boxes, and a large monstera plant on top. Once I saw the table I liked, there were matching end tables for the sofa too. They came in a set of two. And then I was shown to ornamental chess set, so I grabbed a set of them. I didn't let Cal know, but I'd been panic buying, just trying to fill the part of him that had freaked out, and I knew a project like fixing up a coffee table would help. It was better than trying to fuck away the issues, like we usually did.

Loading the boxes and plant into the back of the car, Cal turned to me with a big smile on his face. "Can we grab a Starbucks on the way back?"

"No," I said, knowing full well he'd ask again, and I'd agree. "Fine. But no extra shots. And I want you to help me set these tables up."

"Yes, Daddy," he chuckled.

He knew that did things to me. It was a term I'd found funny at first, like I'm not a father, but I could dominate you like a Daddy. And almost what we founded our entire relationship on, me taking the control, and Cal doing everything he was told to do.

In the apartment, Cal tried helping, but all he was doing more to getting in my way rather than actually help. So, he got on his laptop to check in with Sutton.

Sutton was both a good and a bad influence over Cal. When I met Cal, he had some anger issues, naturally, he'd been through a lot, but when Sutton came into the picture, that anger turned to him having these quick-witted answers to everything.

I found it better that I got to work on the table alone. Everything was in order, and structured in a way that meant none of the steps were muddled. I liked a good instruction manual; it reminded me of some of my earlier hit jobs. I would go through them in my mind first, and then step-by-step and shot-by-shot, people fell, and I got praise.

"Sutton says there's some shit going down in New Jersey," Cal announced. "I'm not sure if it's directly related to what your brothers were talking about, but it could be something, right?"

"Get more information from him," I said, focused on attaching the leg of the table.

My brothers were purposefully vague when it came to the business. I only knew what I was allowed to know, and that meant only information required to carry a hit out on someone. It never stopped me from doing my own research, it just made it difficult.

"Ok," Cal said. "Port authority seized a whole bunch of drugs, but then those drugs went missing. Like a lot of drugs. He's saying it was mostly coke, but there's a list. Some of this stuff I've never even heard of. What's mephedrone?"

I came away from the work to look at him. "They won't have had that shipped in," I said. "It's a mix of different drugs, like speed, coke, and ecstasy."

"Oh. Right. Sutton says it could have been used for mephedrone."

I nodded. "It sure could've been. It depends on if the coke was cut with anything else, the last thing a dealer wants to be caught selling is something with very little purity. The highs don't last as long, and the people who buy can turn violent quick." A smile touched my lips. "I suppose that does my job for me, but the dealers on the street are just one part of it."

"You say that like you want to get rid of drugs from the street," he said. I caught him roll his eyes.

My family's business was in drug smuggling and selling, it wasn't a practice I got involved in, and the one time I tried drugs, my father beat me up and chained me in the basement of the house for forty-eight hours to teach me a lesson. I never touched them again.

"What I want and what the family want are very different things," I told him. "I want to find a match to the sample and see where it leads. My family wants the drugs to sell, to make more money, and to keep the family strong." Of course, I also benefited from that, but it wasn't like I had any moral high ground to take. I also knew that it was a trigger for Cal, he'd been forced to inhale coke and amphetamines, probably even Viagra with the way he'd described feeling. "You know, we should think about taking a trip to visit Sutton." I always tried to steer the subject away when we got too deep.

"I was going to invite him here," Cal said. "Obviously, if you want to, we can visit him. And I know that means also going to New Jersey."

I clicked my tongue and winked at him. "How about tonight?"

"Tonight?" he scoffed. "We just bought groceries."

"Babe. I have a gut feeling we're onto something."

His shoulders hunched and he closed his laptop. "Aren't you going to ask your family for permission?"

It was probably best if they didn't know. "I can do whatever I want," I told him. And I also needed to get to the bottom of what happened last night. In fact, a splintered headache of an image came to mind as I thought on it. Clutching my head in my hands and lowering it, it felt like a hot poker to the eye.

"Frankie," Cal jumped to my aide. "What's going on?"

Last night wasn't the only time I'd been set up with an ambush. The night of Sandro's birthday, those men were sent to antagonize me. But I couldn't recall who it was. It was clearly someone comfortable enough to pull that kinda shit in our territory.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I said, getting gruffer.

"Don't fucking complain then," he said. "Now, you either want my help, or you'll suffer alone."

"You're an asshole," I said, finding the funny side to it. I'd said that phrase to him several times. "And it was, you're gonna get my help, or you're gonna suffer alone, and if you're doing it alone, you can leave."

Cal wrapped his arms around me. "And you'll never see the last of me," he said, kissing my face. "Now, how many days are we going for? Or is it just an overnight bag situation."

"It's a floorboard situation," I told him.

He gasped, giddy with excitement.

"You go get the box. I'll finish this damn table."

Inside the box under the bedroom floorboard, there was a sniper rifle. It came equipped with night vision and a scope. I didn't like to get it out, it was more of a memento from my past work. I was less of a distance rooftop shooter and more of an in-person combat shooter.

Cal was having fun playing with the scope of the rifle. "Everything looks so funky in this," he said. "It's all blurry. I'm gonna look at how far it goes." He stood at the window, screwing one eye shut while looking out of the other. I didn't know what he was looking at, but I could see all the funny faces he was pulling in the reflection of the window.

"You've got to adjust the scope," I told him. "But don't break it. Please, don't break it."

He held it out in his hand, examining the object. "It's just like a telescope, but small, or a pair of binoculars. And—well, this one has a little mark in it. You should think about getting that cleaned before you use it."

Sometimes, the cluelessness made me all warm. "You mean the crosshairs, that's calibrated to the rifle, the crosshairs tell me where the shot is going to hit. It's important you don't try and clean that."

"Oh." He looked back through it. "So, are we gonna go see the port in New Jersey and then go to New York, or—"

"Well, we have to drive through there to get to New York, so yeah," I told him. "But I'll be leaving you with your friend and going back. Just so you know. You can't come with me on this one."

It was my own protocol to do some recon before I went into anything, the only exceptions to that were on rushed jobs, and every moment counted with those. Especially like last night.

There were a couple of moving parts at play with this. One part would be securing the drugs and taking them back to the family and earning forgiveness for the vase incident and the fight. And another part was about seeing who had taken the drugs, and if there was any connection to what had happened to Cal. Either way, it was a win, but New Jersey was a hub, and we had to tread carefully there.

"Sutton said we can stay at his place, but he only has a sofa for us," Cal said. "I think we should get a hotel. Maybe one with a pool or a steam room." He sat on my lap as I screwed in the last leg of the coffee table. "And—maybe then we can—y'know, get a little hot."