Blood on Blood

TWENTY-SIX

Mick

Rage.

I’ve heard about it. Thought I’d felt it. When I took the fall for Al and Harris, I spent time inside the jail at County. They put me in isolation to keep the other inmates from attacking me because I’d been a cop. I stewed in there, wishing revenge on those two, but knowing I’d done most of the damage to myself. I thought that was rage.

It wasn’t even close.

I knelt in the columbarium, drawing shallow ragged breaths and staring at the scattered ashes that used to be my mother.

And for the first time in my life, I knew rage.

The thing is, after Jerzy left the room with the diamonds, most of the hot rush I’d experienced subsided. My rage wasn’t red and intoxicating. It was white and calculating. And fearless.

I didn’t care about consequences any more. I cared about results. I was going to kill that motherfucker. The diamonds didn’t matter nearly as much as his existence leaving this earth.

But how? My advantage with him was speed, and he’d taken that away when he cracked my ribs. He was bigger and probably stronger. He had the edge.

Then I realized that he didn’t. Not anymore. I had the edge because I didn’t care what happened to me. Jerzy was a classic narcissistic sociopath. He always wanted to win, but survive. My goal wasn’t survival, it was to kill him. If I could strap a bomb to my chest and blow us both up right now, I would.

But where? That was the more important question. Where in the hell did he go? And how could I find-

“Good Lord, my son! What have you done?”

I looked up to see the young priest staring at me, shocked.

“Father,” I started to say, but he interrupted.

“Have you no respect for the departed?” he asked me.

“I didn’t do this,” I said.

“You’re covered in the remains of that poor soul,” the priest said, incredulous. “How can you kneel there and lie to me? Here, in the house of God?”

I swallowed thickly. “My brother did this, father. Not me.”

“For what purpose?”

I hesitated, then shook my head. “It’s too complicated to explain.”

“Most things are, until you break them down.” He shook his head at me and pointed. “But I think you’d better explain, before I decide to call the police. Disturbing the dead, even the cremated once interred, is a felony.”

I almost laughed at him then. A felony? He was full of shit, but that wasn’t the funny part. How many felonies had I committed in the last week? All that time I spent over the last few years trying to live a right life, and in the end, it doesn’t really matter, does it?

Instead, I said, “Father, my brother is an evil man. He hated my mother because our dad loved her more than his mother. And because dad wanted to be beside her after he died.”

I pointed to the shelf where Gar’s urn stood. The priest followed my gaze, then looked back at me. His expression was flat, but he was listening.

“The old man’s death pushed him over the edge,” I continued, the partial lie spilling out easily. “He couldn’t deal with the anger. He knew Gar left an item with my mom. He took it.”

“What did he leave her?”

“A trinket. A small piece of jewelry. It matched the cross that he leaned against her urn.”

The priest nodded. “Aye, I remember the little cross.”

“I have to get it back, father,” I said earnestly.

The priest was quiet for a moment. Then, he said in a whisper. “Yes, I suppose you do, lad. I suppose you do.”

“Will you help me?”

He cocked his head at me curiously. “How can I help?”

“Do you have a car, father?”

“I do, but-”

“Can I borrow it?”

He hesitated. I waited. Then he shrugged. “Aye. If it be God’s will.”

As soon as I was away from the church, I took out my phone and called Ania. She answered and I could immediately feel the tension crackling across the connection.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“Jerzy has the diamonds.”

“Oh, God.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m…I’m at the Holiday Inn Express. Damen and Armitage.”

“What room?”

“Three forty.”

“Is that Jerzy’s room?”

She hesitated, and I knew it was.

“Get out of there,” I said. “He’s probably coming there now.”

“I…I can’t,” she said. “Even if I run, he’ll find me. I can’t hide from him my whole life.”

“If you leave Chicago-”

“Mick, you have to help me.” Her voice was breathless and bordering on panic. “You have to save me. Come to the hotel.”

“I’m already on the way.”

“Thank you,” she gushed.

I’m not coming for you, I started to say. But then I knew it wasn’t entirely true. I was coming for it all. Revenge on Jerzy. A fuck you to the old man. The diamonds. Ania. All of it.

A new life.

“Keep him talking,” I told her, “until I get there.”

“Hurry,” she said, and I could tell she was crying. “I’m so scared, Mick. I never should have taken up with someone like him. I should have-”

“It’ll be all right,” I told her. “Just keep him talking.”

“I will. But hurry, Mick. Please hurry.”

The connection broke, and I drove faster.