Help

thirty

M A S S I M O

"Hey Mo," August calls for me from across the other side of the room. "I am going to head out, I have some business to take care of."

I raise my eyebrow at him, walking over to him. "Business?" I repeat.

He sighs looking fed up. "I promised my lady  back in Montreal I would be home soon." He says.

"Didn't know you had a lady?" I smirk at him folding my arms across my chest.

"Well you know, when you look like this," he gestures to himself, "they come at you left and right."

Scoffing, I shake my head. This cocky mother fucker. "Well then, thank you for all of your help these past few days. Have a safe trip home." I pat his shoulder.

"No problem, anything for family." He says putting heavy emphasis on the word family. I ignore it and shake his hand because this is how he has always been. He loves his younger brother as much as he loves my siblings and myself. I've never actually met his younger brother—my cousin, before. I don't know what happened there.

Anyways, August makes his leave and I head straight for my office. These past few days have been exhausting. There are no hints or clues to whom it may be, but whoever it is, they know something about me, about my family, and about my mafia that even I do not know. Which means we have someone from the inside feeding their gang our information.

On top of everything I can't help feeling guilty for ignoring Florence yesterday and today. I am her guardian and she needs me to keep her healthy and safe, but I get so frustrated when she doesn't take care of herself. I want her to be healthy, and I can only imagine how difficult having type 1 diabetes truly is for her at such a young age, but I can't always be there making sure she eats, making sure she keeps her monitors on and clean, making sure she takes her medicine, I just can't do that. Not when I have an unknown rival gang bombing my warehouses. Not when we are so clearly in a one sided war. So I dealt with my anger and frustration the same way I did when she first came back home to me. I treated her like shit, and ignored her.

I'll make it right to her on the way home. Maybe watch a movie with her and buy her another Squish plushie thing that she seems to adore.

Currently, sitting at my desk I flip through the security cameras around the building. I study the way people are behaving in the main quarters. They all look hard at work, either practicing their sparing, socializing, our working from their laptops. They've been bored since this all started, after the bombing I made a call to avoid any sort of mission or task until the threat is gone. Which means they are bored.

Oh to be bored.

As I flip through the cameras I see August walking around the building. He's carrying his duffel bag. As I watch him almost lurk around the building I feel my stomach constrict with unease. He opens a door inside and the hopeful part of me thinks he just forgot something. But the logical part of me tells me he's doing something not good. He's very suspicious.

I flick away from the screen for a moment, I search every room to see if anything suspicious was placed on the ground. In the main room there is another black duffle bag on an untucked chair near the people who are working on their laptops. In the front foyer there's another black duffle bag next to a fake decorative plant. There is a third one in the hallway, and a fourth in the office area.

Alarm bells firing off, I flick back to the screen I was watching August in. I don't see any sign of him though, instead what sits in the middle and right underneath the large portrait of my father is another black duffle bag. A red light, flashing peaking through a see through mesh.