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"You're not coming to New York." I deadpan as I catch up with Remi in the hallway. She continues walking but her short strides are nothing on mine. Taking a gentle grasp of her wrist, I turn her to look at me.
She rolls her eyes, "Luca, I love you and I love that you love me and want to take care of me but I need to go with you."
I shake my head, "It was no in the meeting, it's no now." Taking her face into my grasp, I urge her to meet my eyes, "I love you with every bone in my body and I don't know what I would do if something happened to you."
"Most of my life, people have been making decisions for me. I lost my son to someone else's decision, I had my mind and body fucked over so many times because of someone else's decisions." She sniffles, "Please let me decide my own fate."
"You lost your son but you got him back," I try to talk sense into her, "How do you think he would feel if he lost his mother?"
Her head falls as she tries to keep her tears at bay but judging by the wet droplet that falls on my hand, she failed.
A moment passes.
"Luca, I'm tired of feeling like this."
"I know." I kiss her head and pull her into my arms. "Lo so, tesoro (I know, sweetheart)."
As her tears soak my shirt, I place a hand to the back of her head and kiss the top of her head again.
"I know." I repeat, "But I'm not letting you put your life at risk when you have a son here with you."
She twists her mouth, "Then what do I do, Luca?"
"You wait." I offer, "You wait for us to come back with him. Wait for your chance to make decisions for him."
•••
T H I R D P E R S O N N E W Y O R K
"We got another house down, boss." The voice that enters the room belongs to a short black boy, eye twitching continuously from the stress of his job.
The man he relays the information to is standing by a table chock-full of weapons — preparation for a war he could see coming. It's the last of them, but he doesn't know that yet.
His brow is slit, the left side of his face and neck covered in tally marks to signify his kills. Some are faded, some new.
His voice is gruff when he speaks, outing the blunt that he was smoking. With a short glance to the framed photograph on his wall, he turns to his employee. "Which one?"
"Staten Island." He says shortly, tone low as he tries to hide his nervousness. "Makes number four."
Ghost chuckles menacingly, eyes narrowing as he stares at the photograph. In it — his girlfriend and his son, back when they were happy together. They were obedient, stayed out of his way as far as work but at the end of the day, whenever he went home, she'd be there to take care of him. Relieve the stress he'd built up from the day.
But she just had to fuck around and get disobedient. He's still convinced she called the cops on him all those years ago. He spent years plotting how he would kill her — he'd wrap his hands around her little neck and squeeze the life out of her.
He got out, killed the bitch that tried to keep him and Remi apart and got his son back in the process.
He couldn't give a fuck about his son's joy at that point. He wanted to see his father's downfall too — the kid is fucking crazy like that, Ghost thinks to himself.
He wants to kill them both. They deserve it for betraying me.
"You find out who took the kid?" Ghost squints.
The teenage boy glances down at the file in his hand, "Yes boss. His, uh, we can't find his name but we have a picture that we recovered from the damaged cameras."
With that, he plants the photograph on the pile of guns.
A buzzed head is scrutinized under Ghost's glare. Tattooed fingers burned into Ghost's memory.
"He wanna fight," His lips lift in an evil smirk, "We gon' fight then."
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