In These Streets

Chapter 1

I had just finished unpacking my last box of belongings, my favorite books, putting them neatly on the bookshelf in my room when I heard my brother's quiet sobs.

I stopped to listen in case I'd misheard, but I knew my ears weren't playing tricks on me when I heard sniffling a few seconds later.

Sighing, I stood up from my crouched position in front of the bookshelf and tiptoed to my brother's new bedroom door, right beside mine. I peeked in and saw my ten year old brother, Tadeus, sitting on his bed in the corner with his head bowed, crying quietly into his lap.

My heart constricted, something I was used to these days, and I slowly entered and took the few steps across his tiny bedroom to sit beside him and comfort him. The bed creaked as I sat, but Tadeus didn't look up, and sympathy washed over me as I wrapped my arms around his tiny body. He nestled his head of black curls against my chest.

"I miss Papa," he whispered, his breath hitching on a sob.

"I miss him too."

"Why did he have to be taken away from us?"

Pain and anger tore at my chest as I held him tighter. I couldn't tell my little brother Tadeus the full story. I didn't even know the full story myself. He knew our father was put in prison, that he had done illegal things with his business, and the courts had put him away for it.

I knew a child at the age of ten wouldn't understand the complexity of how my father had been caught trafficking millions of dollars worth of drugs inside furniture from the successful furniture business he had owned.

"Papa broke the law. They found out so he was punished, but he isn't a bad person, he just made a very bad mistake. Every mistake has consequences, you know that."

It was an automatic response, one that my mother instructed me to tell Tadeus whenever he asked, which he'd done every single day since my father's sentence hearing a month before.

Tadeus nodded his head against my chest.

"I still don't understand why Mama made us move from Salt Lake. We don't know anybody. I don't like it here," he said between sniffles.

"Papa is going to be away for a long time, Mama thought it would be best if we moved somewhere else, started fresh in a new place. Besides, this place isn't so bad. There's palm trees everywhere, it's warm and sunny. It's like we're on a permanent vacation," I replied in a cheery voice.

I felt bad for lying to Tadeus but I didn't have much choice. Even if my mother hadn't ordered me to never tell Tadeus the real reason we had moved I wouldn't have anyway. I could only imagine the terror and confusion a little kid would feel knowing his family basically fled from gangsters. It was terrifying even to me, and I was twenty.

None of us had suspected my father would ever get involved in any sort of crime, and it had been the most devastating thing when he was busted and we all found out.

I still didn't know the details, just that my father had gotten involved in shady business at some point with some men and had gotten caught and arrested before the men got their large share of the profits.

He wouldn't snitch on the men, not even for a plea bargain. He was too terrified of them retaliating, knowing someone would come and teach him and his family a lesson. Yet these drug lords were known to be unpredictable if they were cheated out of their money in any way.

My father had warned my mother he couldn't tell the police about these men and since he would be in prison the next fifteen years, he was also worried at the possibility they might end up wanting compensation for the losses and would come after us for it regardless out of revenge of a botched job.