Page 2 of The Heir

She was only seventeen years old, but already a freshman in college. She’d graduated early, and though she was as book smart as they came with her lawyer aspirations, she’d lived under our mother’s rock for every last one of those seventeen years.

My mother drove her to and from the college bookstore each semester. It was the only time she was permitted on campus, unless directed there by an instructor, and even then, my mother transported her personally. All her classes were done online from the sanctuary of our family home.

“Blaze,” my mother scolded, but I threw the door open and jerked at my seatbelt.

She could scold Karlotti. That was fine, she was a teenager, but I was a man. I was twenty-three, and unlike my sister, I had lived on campus. Twenty minutes from my mother’s house, that's all it was, but to hear her tell it, I’d gone to Mars for my education. I’d forgotten how suffocating life with her could be, until I was stuck in a fucking car with her on a trip all the way from Georgia to Illinois.

I finally managed to get the seatbelt off and hopped out.

“Blaze, stop!” she shouted, trying to throw her door open, too.

I was already hauling ass down the highway. I’d known by the impact, the tire had taken some damage, but a mere back glance told me it was shot. It also revealed my mother frantically racing after me.

I huffed and stopped, unwilling to allow my mother to chase after me like some heartbroken hoodrat.

She wrapped her arms around me, and bear hugged me from the side, her face more behind my arm than not.

“You don’t understand,” her voice was so wobbly and weak.

That broken tone killed me. My mother, for all her overprotective bullshit, wasn’t a broken woman.

She was a federal agent.

She’d participated in the case that took down the head of the Chicago mafia seventeen years ago, this wasn’t like her. She had control issues, but she wasn’t overly emotional and prone to outbursts.

“You don’t know what we went through back there, Blaze. You don’t know what you’re walking into… What we’re risking,” she quietly pleaded.

“I was seven.” I reminded her. “I know my father was a Steel Disciple. I know he died on his bike, for the club.”

Her head jerked away from me, and her grip tightened on my shoulder as she tugged and forced me to face her.

“He didn’t die for his patch, Blaze. He died in a war with the mafia.”

I nodded.

“Yeah. Whatever. Stupid, outlaw shit.” I summed up my sentiments about all that street stuff.

I could feel her eyes on me as I studied the tree line on the opposite side of the highway.

“That outlaw shit was what he lived and died for.” Her voice softened further, into a whisper, “It was what a lot of people died for. There was a massacre.”

I nodded again, not wanting to rehash all the ugly events that had dictated my childhood. Some I could recall with clarity, others were twisted in my mind, perhaps due to my youthful comprehension of what was going on in the very grown-up world around me at the time, who knows?

“Yeah, I get it. A lot of people died. It was a massacre. And then you guys went to Chicago, and you killed the son of a bitch.” I knew the story.

“Blaze, you can’t go there like this. You can’t talk like that.” Her voice peaked with that edge of pleading in her tone again.

“Who says so?” I laughed, looking at her. “Is some mobster’s ghost going to come and haunt me?”

She paled and her lips tightened into a thin line.

“It’s complicated,” Oak quietly chimed in from behind me. “Listen, I don’t want Karlotti to hear about this shit. Let’s not talk about the mafia or the war or any of that unpleasant stuff, okay? Don’t talk about–”

“Don’t say his name.” My mother ground out, her eyes shining with hatred.

“The head of that mob– His sister is married to Makaveli. She doesn’t have any more love for her brother than we did, but shewas still his sister and he’s dead… So, be respectful,” Oak advised me.

I stared at him, not believing him at first, but the more I searched my memory, I decided I did recall Makaveli’s having a second wife.