Charlie implying he was my father to Julio was tantamount to telling every criminal organization on the western seaboard. And if Charlie’s boys believe I was his son, and the heads of countless drug-running, arms-dealing, skin-trading gangs believe the same thing, then there’s undoubtedly a price on my head. The only way to let these people know I’m not interested in Charlie’s empire is to make a stand. Prove a point. Make it very clear I don’t give a shit who takes over from the mad English bastard.

I drive out to Hunt’s Point, not thinking about Lacey. Not thinking about Michael and Sloane slowly positioning my sister into a restful pose so that she could be buried. Not thinking about the dirt that I had to scrape out from underneath my nails, the scalding hot water of the shower stripping layers of skin from my back as I tried to wash away the memory of the last twenty-four hours. Because I don’t want to. Remember, that is. I want to forget Lacey ever showed up on my doorstep eight months ago, and I want to forget I ever had a living blood relative. I’ve found blocking her out, banishing her from my head, is the only way I can recall how to breathe without feeling like my rage is going to eat me alive.

I pull up outside Charlie’s old place around mid-afternoon. The building looks abandoned, but you can bet your ass there are people watching it. Charlie bought the place in cash thirty years ago before there were such strict money laundering checks when purchasing property. Since no one is going to announce Charlie’s dead and no bank has an interest in his sprawling mansion, it won’t be long before someone else moves in. Just takes over the place, like the change in ownership doesn’t need to be recorded. Possession, famously, is nine-tenths of the law, after all.

There’s no one inside the place to buzz open the gates, so I park the crapped-out Volvo I’ve legitimately borrowed from The Regency Rooms on the street, and I vault over the fence to the side of the property. Brings back memories of when I was a kid, sneaking back in after a night out partying. I’m taller now, so the fence poses no problems whatsoever. I don’t have keys to get into the main building, but who the fuck needs keys when you have a pair of size eleven boots and you’re in a seriously shitty mood?

Splinters of wood explode everywhere as I kick the door in. Inside, the house is quiet. Deserted. I don’t waste any time in carrying out the task I came here for. I find the gasoline in the garage, canisters of it stacked up against the wall so Charlie would never have to lower himself to going to an actual gas station and deal with the unwashed masses. Ironically, I know he visited one recently, since that’s where he picked up that poor girl he poisoned.

He always did have a flair for the dramatic.

And right now I’m feeling a little fucking dramatic myself.

I collect two cans, one in either hand; I pop the caps, and then I proceed to walk through the house, sloshing the pungent liquid over the carpets, up the walls, into the beds upstairs. The last room I enter is the one I slept in as a kid. Or rather, the one I was tormented in. Everything looks exactly the same as it did when I hightailed it out of here as an eighteen-year-old. The comics I used to read are still stacked on the shelf, all dog-eared and tatty, which is weird because I took extremely good care of them when I was younger. I know they’re falling apart now because Charlie…Charlie would have come in here a lot, I think. He would have sat on the edge of my old bed, thumbing roughly through my comics and the rest of my possessions, reliving the shit he did to me inside these four walls. The shit he tried to do to me.

Even though he was bigger, even though he was stronger, he never won. He was always drunk. High. Something. I never let him win. In hindsight, I think that’s probably what pissed him off the most. I pour healthy splashes of gasoline all over the room, drenching the duvet, the carpet, the curtains, everything. I stand there, taking the place in, finally facing what happened here, and suddenly I realize I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. Charlie’s dead. This house will soon be ash. He can’t touch me anymore. Once more, he will never win.

I head downstairs and do one last thing: I walk through to the back of the house where Charlie’s study is located. His safe, a huge fucking thing cemented into the ground, is hidden underneath a Persian rug. I flip it back and I don’t hesitate—I enter my mother’s date of birth, Christmas day, into the keypad, and the fucking thing clicks open. I feel fucking sick. He said he hated her after she refused him, but he obviously clearly loved her, too. Sick, delusional fuck.

I take every last bundle of cash from Charlie Holsan’s safe, stuffing it into carryalls, and then I leave the house. I give myself permission to leave behind the stress and trauma of everything that happened here, too. Outside, I strike a match and toss it, watching to make sure it hits the puddled fuel on the tiles inside the hall.

Flames rise like fingers from the floor, orange and yellow and blue, and then the house is claimed. I turn away, hearing the subtle whoompf as the fire spreads, and I do not look back.

******

Lacey used to launder money for me. Back before all this shit went down and Sloane came back into my life, Charlie actually used to pay me pretty fucking well, and Lacey used to clean the money for me. She’d gamble with it—surprisingly good at that—or she’d make large purchases and return them, essentially, just trading my money for someone else’s. That didn’t necessarily give me a solid paper trail to prove where the money came from, but it was enough for me. And sometimes, when there was just too much to handle at once, the two of us would head out together and bury stashes of money. I’ve never dealt with a bank. I’ve never had anything so administrative as a checking account. Cash was always king in Charlie Holsan’s world, and I was very much a part of Charlie’s world. But now I’m making my own world, and things have got to change.