Flirting With Fire ✅

45 - My Would be Murderer

Ivy

I woke up to darkness. Darkness and pain. My body felt frozen on top of the lumpy while also hard mattress. My eyes open wide as I recall the flashback of two strangers attacking me. Two strangers in Luke's private quarters.

I should have been safe. No one would have dared to infiltrate the boss's own personal space. And yet, I woke up to two strangers, two people I'd never seen before.

I quickly tried to stand. But found one of my wrists bound, handcuffed to the bedpost, making me stumble back and end up where I was initially. The metal cuff stings a little but overall, I didn't feel any other pain.

Opening my eyes again, I try my best to regain all my faculties, I looked around me and realized I'm in a dark room with only the moonlight illuminating the space. Iron bars on the dirty windows only help to stress the dire circumstances of my reality.

I pulled at my bound hand, this time with a bit more care, trying to struggle myself free from my confines but it was clear that I wasn't going to have access to my hand anytime soon.

"You're awake. Good." A voice spoke from beyond the shadows. Squinting my eyes, I could make out a figure sitting on a chair in one dark corner.

"Who's there?"

The voice chuckled. Finding amusement in my confusion.

"Do you not recognize your own cousin, cousin?" The voice asked me back before leaning forward, revealing his face, and I gasped softly.

Johnathan David Greyson.

Also known as, my cousin Johnny.

The son my father never had.

It all still seems so bizarre. How could he have done this? Murder attempt? We're family.

Cousin Johnny's father, my uncle, was my father's younger brother. He passed when Johnny was just five years old. Ever since then, my dad had unofficially taken him in and treated him like his own son. And up to the time when his mother remarried, both of them had taken residence in our family home.

The number of times that I had envied the bond he shared with my father was endless. I wished I was the one invited to tag along when dad had to go off on some out of state work. But obviously, he had to ask Johnny before the notion that I might have even been interested ever crosses his mind.

So why would cousin Johnny see fit to plan an assassination on little ole me?

Did I wrong him in some way?

Is this something to do with Luke? It's no secret that he is one of the more vocal members who dislike the Lombardis.

No, his first strike was when my plane went down, and I hadn't met Luke yet at the time. So it can't be about him.

Growing up, dad would always take cousin Johnny to one of his meetings. I was always an afterthought. He would be the first one dad thought about whenever he wanted company. The first one he would take on as his apprentice, while I stand in the shadows, watching, waiting, hoping.

So why would he do this? How could he hurt me? How could he hurt my dad like this?

Did I hurt him in some way? What would he gain from my death?

I've always believed family meant something in this life. We are a bunch of rule breakers, but there is one rule we do not touch. Family. It is the one thing that kept us from becoming animals. Psychopaths whose life is only fueled by the blood lust. Family is everything in the mafia. Without it, it's every man for himself.