Glory.

6

My father turned me into a perfectionist workaholic. I was his only son, and he was a County Sheriff. I'll always remember the impact of the law enforcement life as early as 10 years old. As first it was cool, because I got to see my dad in action—he was my hero but as time went on, I began to see his true colors.

Angry, drunk, adulterer and abuser.

Eventually, I realized that my father would never accept any other interests I had if it didn't involve me being in law enforcement. One instance I remember, I was building a garden plot for my mother. It had a square of cement blocks, then a row of stone and was going to be filled in with soil and a few flower bushes. I spent five or six hours moving all the cinder blocks and most of the stone before my dad decided that it didn't look right and made me take it all apart after I mentioned that architecture was my favorite thing to do.

He had that attitude in every facet of my life. School, work, athletics. No matter what I did or the honors I got—there was always something wrong if my mind wasn't where he felt it should be. I never stopped thinking about my work because of that—I was terrified that I'd missed a step or forgotten something. I had to stop myself from micromanaging my colleagues when I was younger, because I was never fully confident in the quality of their work.

I remember hating when I looked in the mirror and saw my father's facial features—so much that I was considering plastic surgery. That's how awful my father was—he made home a prison and I was always the inmate in solitary. In his mind, I was a dog. A dog that always needed proper training.

I rolled out of bed around noon and stumbled toward the kitchen. I had only three hours of sleep—my head was on the verge of exploding.

It was Sunday morning. I glanced at the sticky notes that covered my refrigerator and sighed. Reaching into the pocket of my robe, I pulled out my phone. With a glance at the basic lock screen, my vision blurred from my excruciating headache—for some reason, my fingers got the best of me as I scrolled through the contacts anyway.

Victoria

Even the slight mention of her name sent a chill down my spine like no other. I was a mess. She was a mess too, but she used to be my mess. If I had even called Victoria, what would I say? How would I explain the past? Why did I want to call her?

She won't talk to me anyway, I reasoned with myself.

I calmed by half-witted thoughts with a cold shower and cup of black coffee. It was actually a beautiful morning. I watched as two little boys rode their bikes down the street, a moving van parked in front of the building, and the landlady was speaking to the new tenant. Since I was off, I planned to workout and avoid the outside world as much as possible.

But, I think I jinxed myself. A call from Blu interrupted my set of pushups. "Hello?" I exasperated. Calls on the weekend weren't good and the tension between us was still at an all time high. We hadn't spoke much after he abandoned me at that damn place—only when we needed to. But it was still mainly us snarling at eachother like rabid dogs anyway.

"We have a body." He spoke loud. He was trying to speak over multiple people which means he was already at the crime scene—and it was a crowd. "Make it fast." He gave me the address. With much annoyance, I quickly threw on my clothes and sped my way to the scene.

We now had another murder on our hands. Case #2—not fucking good.

"You look like you had a hot date last night?" He chuckled, trying to make conversation. Blu met me at my car and helped navigate our way through the crowd. I gritted my teeth at his sudden kindness.

"Ha," I said, making it obvious that his statement wasn't funny to me.

"Your fly's open."

"Oh, shit." I turned around. "What's the situation?" I asked Blu after zipping up the slacks. I turned back, slightly embarrassed.

"Body of a woman in the stairwell. We've just got wind that the perps are held up inside that apartment." Blu was pointing at a second-floor apartment. He looked at me before speaking again. "The woman we'd found in the stairwell had been hit with a stun gun over twenty times. And get this... her legs were covered with duct tape." He said, figuring I'd already sense the connection. Who the fuck had the time to stun someone that many times? Again?

"And the perps are in the building?" I questioned. This was too good to be true. Nothing ever came this easy.

"Supposedly." We eyed the empty window. "Yeah, before you showed up, some lady yelled from that window, there, saying that they didn't do it. She said that the woman in the stairwell was dead when they found her." Fuck. "But she's armed."

The negotiator who stood beside us shouted through the bullhorn. "To the woman inside of apartment 2C: The building is surrounded. You will not be harmed if you come out now!" He turned to Blu with a little hesitance, "My team is ready to move in." Then a single shot rang out—ten seconds later, another. My hand instinctively went to my gun, ducking around just as my partner was doing.

The door to the Response Vehicle swung open, and heavily armed men jumped out to join the rest of their team. I heard the battering ram slamming against a door, then gunfire from an automatic weapon erupted.