Elliott Miller is your average 23 year-old, only with a lost father and a resentful mother. When he goes back to his hometown to make amends, he inadvertently gets dragged into the activities of an illicit criminal group.
Enter Marcel Nixon, 25, wh...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I watched Elliott sleep, his face serene and his breathing soft and even. He looked so vulnerable and so at ease, a stark contrast to the dark persona I knew he could be. The memory of his raw anger at the warehouse or the deadly intensity in his eyes kept flashing through my mind like the scenes of an action thriller. I knew he was okay now, and even if push came to shove he could handle himself; the only thing keeping both the conflicted sides of my mind together to focus on what I had to do next.
With a heavy sigh, I eased myself out of bed, careful not to disturb him. I looked at my phone and checked the time- 6:30 a.m. I still had some time.
Moving with a practiced silence, a skill honed by years of covert operations, I retrieved my clothes from the armchair, the soft rustle of fabric amplified in the pre-dawn stillness. My fingers fumbled with the buttons of my shirt, my mind already racing.
I glanced back at Elliott, his face still peaceful. A pang of something foreign, yet strangely familiar twisted in my gut; a dull sort-of ache. I wanted to stay, to hold him close, to make up for lost time, to gain back his trust, to make him mine and to become his...
But time wasn't a luxury I could afford. I half-heartedly grabbed my phone and wallet, then paused, my gaze lingering on a notepad. I did have the time, after all and it seemed necessary to convince him to wait for me until I could offer a quantifiable explanation.
So I grabbed a few sheets of paper and a pen, drawing the curtain ever so slightly to allow enough light to enter and illuminate the space in front of me enough to write intelligibly. My pen scratched the surface of the paper, the sound resonating with the weight of omission. I explained that an urgent assignment had come through, something requiring my immediate attention back in the city. I emphasized its importance, the sensitive nature of the work, hoping he would understand the need for my abrupt departure.
~
Elliott,
Please forgive my sudden and frustrating departure. A situation has arisen at HQ, demanding my immediate and personal attention. It's an assignment with complexities I can't fully detail in this note so I implore you to wait for me to explain everything at a more convenient time and place.
There are intricate matters at play that necessitate discretion for the time being, and all I can ask is for your trust. Until I can be with you again, please don't worry.
Yours,
Marcel
~
I glanced over the page once, hoping with everything I had that this would suffice for the time being, before folding it and placing it on the nightstand.
With a decisive movement, I reached over and silenced my phone, plunging the room back into a deeper quiet. Slipping out into the quiet driveway, my duffel bag slung over my shoulder, I my car, the cool morning air a stark contrast to the warmth I was leaving behind. The engine started with a low rumble, and I pulled away from the house.
The lie of omission felt like a betrayal, each carefully chosen word a calculated deception. How could I tell him his father, a man he believed to be long gone, might be alive, held captive in frozen wastelands by the very people who had threatened his own life? The shock, the potential danger... it was too much, too soon. Mr. Grey's instructions had been clear: proceed with extreme caution, divulge only what was absolutely necessary.
As I entered the highway, a barrage of thoughts began flooding my mind. The full weight of this assignment only began to sink in, filling me with a foreign sense of anxiety. Every operation or mission we'd conducted never had a personal element to it, and even if it did, I'd learnt to detach my emotions from work.
But this was different. This was personal to Elliott, and so it became personal to me. I couldn't afford to mess anything up.
From there on out, I mechanically navigated the route to JFK, occasionally tuning into the radio station. As arranged, one of my aides was waiting at the entrance, with a duffel bag full of clothes and a briefcase containing cash, my flight ticket and some other documents.
The familiar, slightly stale air of JFK's domestic terminal swirled around me as I moved with a focused stride. The rhythmic squeak of luggage wheels, the insistent announcements about gate changes, the general hum of hurried travelers – it was the soundtrack of countless departures, my own adding to the hustle and bustle all around.
I made quick work of finding my gate and boarding the plane, getting settled in for my six and a half hour long flight.
What followed was a blur of sterile cabin air and the murmurs of low conversation, occasionally pierced by the cry of someone's infant. I stared out of the window at the patchwork of landscapes below, however unable to fully appreciate the view.
Despite it being only about 10 o' clock in the morning, I felt a wave of drowsiness, mostly due to the face that the previous night and many nights before consisted of me doing some things that definitely didn't count as sleeping. More specifically, Elliott...
Let me explain.
Turns out that Elliott conveniently had his own place upstate, and so he convinced me to come stay with him after the warehouse altercation, till we returned to the city. The incident with Julian and the cartel only brought us closer, opening up parts of each other that we'd never traversed before. Vivien also introduced us to her boyfriend, Phoenix, whom Elliott made sure to thoroughly scrutinize before being satisfied with him dating her; something I found pretty funny.
What felt like mere days of laughter, fun and intimacy turned out to be a whole month before I knew it, and I was missing it already.
The potential impact of this trip on Elliott wasn't unbeknownst to me. It was a fragile opening up of the past, intertwined with the risk of further heartbreak. I had to tread carefully, to be perceptive and strategic, lest I do something that would blow the whole plan up.
I was awoken by a flight attendant when it was time to land, feeling refreshed and full of energy to tackle the rest of the day.
Stepping off the plane at LAX, the California sunshine felt almost jarring after the cool, grey tones of New York. The air was different, carrying a hint of something floral and dry. I navigated the bustling terminal, collected my rental car, a nondescript silver sedan, and soon the sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles unfolded before me.
Palm trees swayed rhythmically along the boulevards, a constant visual reminder that I was a long way from the crisp air of upstate New York. I kept a watchful eye on the GPS, the digital voice guiding me to the hotel booked for me. The fact that it was located in a more residential area gave me the impression that anonymity was the objective here.
The hotel was a low-slung building with terracotta roofing, nestled amongst lush greenery. It had a quiet, unassuming air, far removed from the glitz and glamour associated with the City of Angels. The cool-air conditioned lobby offered a welcome respite from the afternoon heat.
Once in my room, I drew the curtains against the sunlight and took off my suit jacket. The immediate priority was to center myself, to shift gears from the hurried departure to the delicate task ahead. I unpacked my laptop and pulled out a slim file containing the limited information Mr. Grey had compiled on Atlas and Ivetta Miller. Faded documents, snippets of old addresses and a timeline that abruptly went cold a dew decades, along with what Elliott had told me were all I had to convince his mother to reunite with his father.
