Chapter Text
The weight of the knives in Nathaniel’s palms brings him a fake sense of comfort- something forged out of an instinctual need and the twisted lies he has been convincing himself of for the past twenty two years. They're twin blades, curved and sharpened the day before; the hilt is matte black and the blade twins the colour, except for the way the fading sun catches along the side of it.
“Fifteen minutes, Junior.” A voice crackles through on the other side of his head piece and Nathaniel fights the twitch of a frown. He wants to tell his partner where to shove it, but Charles had already faded off into chuckles at the silence that he is met with.
“I have a watch.” He grits under his breath and Charles sighs heavily. As if Nathaniel’s sour mood isn't entirely his fault. It wasn’t the fact that he didn’t like Charles per say, he was fine to work alongside with and he followed orders. It was the fact Nathaniel didn’t like anyone who was working under his father, especially people who signed over their lives willingly with eager moods and triumph grins when they made their first kill.
Charles was twenty five, and he followed each category swimmingly, as well as topping it off with saying the old nickname that only his father’s closest men use. Fortunately for Nathaniel, he will have his chance to put him in place, soon enough.
“Targets moving Nate.” Charles chirps up again, “We should move in soon.”
For a moment, Nathaniel indulges himself in a fantasy of gutting Charles alive.
"Go. I'm heading in."
He tightens his grip on the twin blades before holstering them alongside his gun. He pulls himself to his feet and begins to leave the roof with a short confirmation from his annoyingly attentive partner. The weight of his weapons rests against his hip in a silent promise as he leans down slightly and starts to pick the lock of the roof’s door, his hands moving quickly as he fiddles with the pins. The door swings open and Nathaniel moves through.
“Where’s the target?” He asks, switching to his black gun, a Glock 22, he was gifted for his sixteenth birthday. He presses his back against the wall and waits for Charles’ response.
“In the office now.” He says, “Are you sure you don’t need me to take out the guards upstairs too?”
This time Nathaniel lets himself frown, “Sorry, trigger happy people aren’t my favourite for a surprise entrance.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Glad you figured that out, how many guards?” Nathaniel interrupts. Making his way quietly against the hallways red walls. One hand dropping to anxiously tap against his knife on his hip as Charles falls silent. Presumably double checking.
“Only two on his floor. Allison and I will take out the ones on the street, everyone will move in downstairs and deal with the others.” Charles says finally, “Be careful.” He adds.
If Nathaniel was a better man, maybe he would return the comment. Instead he rolls his eyes, “Tell me if more come up.”
The building is built to have the cover of a club. The Red Luxury, was famous for its never ending parties, probably because the owner had sold a shit ton of drugs to the guests. Nathaniel can feel the faint vibrations of a heavy bass and the hums of a pop song filtering throughout the floors. In most cases it would almost be convincing if it wasn’t for the sound proof hallways that lead up to the top floor, the entire place is covered with lush velvet walls that make his skin crawl. He was no fashion designer but whoever decided that this was a good idea might just make Nathaniel’s list of people who should be brutally murdered.
The sound of faint voices brings him to a halt. He peers over to see two guards standing post outside a decidedly large black door. One is leaning lazily against it and the other’s face is tight with concentration, his eyes attempting to stay forward but kept shifting back to his useless partner with a sense of exasperation.
Nathaniel glances down at his gun. Even with a silencer it still would be too suspicious. He had to get the guards away from the door without them alerting or radioing anyone. Biting his bottom lip, he moves backwards again, but this time he lets his feet drag slightly on the red carpet underfoot. Sleepy guard wouldn’t notice, alert guard would be on it like a hound - but with his partner not noticing or caring, he would come alone.
“Did you hear that?” Alert guard says abruptly and Nathaniel swallows a smirk when Sleepy guard fires back with a bored:
“You need to chill for once.”
He almost feels bad for having to kill them.
Nathaniel makes his way back to single washroom he saw when coming down from the roof. He guessed it was for the guards when on duty so he shoulders his way in. Making sure to let the sound lightly echo but he doesn’t let the door slam shut.
Sliding to rest out of view from the doorway, Nathaniel presses his ear to the wall and listens to the growing footsteps followed by a pause.
A hesitant knock, then, “Uh hello? This isn’t available to customers.”
Newbie huh?
Nathaniel shuffles slightly, listens to the quiet inhale that was so human before he starts to push the door open. The hesitance gives away that his rank. Nathaniel wonders in the man’s last few moments what he had done to end up guarding a drug lord.
Nathaniel watches the man step into his eyesight. He does not let the man open his mouth as he steps forward and whispers into his ear.
“Ich bedaure.” Before he slits the man’s throat.
He drops the body quietly, he doesn’t let a drop of blood touch his father’s suit before he turns back.
Killing the other guard is simple. Painfully so. His eyes are closed as he leans against the wall. Nathaniel wonders idly if he has ever truly faced an attacker before today.
Either way his body drops to the floor and Nathaniel presses into his earpiece.
“Going in.”
The door splinters under his foot and swings open. His gun is drawn and the woman sitting at her desk snaps to attention. At first she looks annoyed, it seems Nathaniel had interrupted her getting ready. Her dyed red hair was a mess on her head, she dropped the red lipstick when her eyes met his own. She starts moving, either for a weapon or a phone so Nathaniel grabs his knife and throws it. The blade smashes into her phone and skims the tops of her finger.
The thudding sound of the knife imbedding in the wall with the phone dangling from it brings the room to silence.
“Hands up. Now.” His voice is even, he doesn’t add any heat to the words. However the woman still reads the threat clearly enough. She twists to face him and her hands follow his command. “If you so much as twitch, I will kill you.”
“Nathaniel.” She responds with, once she begins to catch her breath again, “Your father sent you I presume.”
Her voice is amused. It makes something curl in his gut that Nathaniel can’t put a name too.
In response he curls his finger around the trigger, “If you are aware of that Ms. Jackson. Then where is your payment.”
Jackson hesitates, her eyes darting to the outside of her doorway, clearly looking for her guards. Her face has paled considerably, her body inclined to bolt. This was always it with the big bosses. Hiding behind their guards, but the moment that fails they are unprepared to defend themselves. They spend the lives of others to protect their own.
A waste. Such a fucking waste.
The thing in his gut grows hotter.
The irony of his thoughts are not lost on Nathaniel.
“We have been experiencing some troubles, your father must understand that.” Her voice is fake, she is playing brave to save face. But her eyes are that of a caged animal.
How amusing, Nathaniel thinks, she still thinks she is getting out of here alive.
“This is far past your second chance. Either you have it or you don’t. We do not like doing business with liars.”
The words are well practiced, he thinks. We. We. We. Fucking we.
“Nathaniel. Please, surely you understand why I did what I did.” She is pleading. Dropping one shoulder slightly and looks at him through lidded eyes. “Your father will get compensation for what he gave me. I promise.”
Her hand dips slightly and she pushes it against her lips. He bites back with, “That was not what was arranged.”
“You are his favourite son, right? His only child. He must care a great deal for you.” She murmurs, her voice dropping. Letting it fall like silk from her lips. Nathaniel almost laughs at her words, his father - caring for something other than power and blood. It was something that did not exist.
“Nathaniel, let me start with you.” She purrs now. She lets the black strap of her dress dip down her shoulder. “You look so much like your father, I cannot help but want you in the way I wanted him.”
The burning in his gut is crawling up his throat. If he wasn’t such a well trained actor, it might have even showed on his face. His finger twitches against the trigger.
“Keep your dignity Jackson.” Nathaniel snaps, before he levels the gun to focus on her chest. “I do not fuck women who have laid with my father.”
He doesn’t dare touch another person. His hands are too sharp. Too cruel.
She laughs, a wicked grin spreading across her face, “Every man and woman in this business wants to sleep with me, you fool,” She thrusts her chin out, in an illusion of calm, he watches the way her body is trembling instead. “Because they know who I am and what I can do.”
The heat curls in his gut, his limbs, his eyes. Rage, it was rage. The realization almost causes him to crack his facade for a moment.
“If you kill me, what are you going to have to do to with all those kids, Junior .”
He wishes briefly that his father would stop fucking horrible people.
Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at that. Because yes, he is aware of what Jackson does. Aware of how she catches young impressionable children and makes them do her dirty work. Aware of how many died at her hands. Aware of how she hides behind their bodies and collects the money from their deaths.
He is also aware that he killed two of them moments before too.
“Do you think using children as drug mules makes you threatening? Teens as bodyguards? You are fucking pathetic.” The anger is slipping past his lips, his father’s rage is moving its course throughout his body.
Jackson clicks her tongue in disapproval, “Careful Nathaniel, you’re slipping.”
“You have ten seconds to give over my father’s pavement or I shoot.”
Jackson rolls her eyes, he lets her place her hand on her desk. He lets her gload as she stares at him. “You stand there wasting time, letting me talk and distract you while my guards are on their way. You are an embarrassment to your father’s name.” She licks her lips, like she’s a lioness and he is merely prey. “Now run along, little rabbit, and tell Daddy that I’ll see him tonight and we will figure it out then. Like adults. We both know you aren't a killer. You may be the son of the Butcher, but you are nothing like him-”
The recoil of the gun barely moves his arms.
Jackson’s eyes are wide as her hands fly to her chest, the bullet buried near her shoulder. Given enough time she would bled out and die but, that wasn’t Nathaniel’s plan for today.
“Times up.” He says.
The rage is gone from his chest as she sputters blood. He knows no one is behind him, he planned the entire sweep, the entire mission, he stuck his best men on the job.
The adults will be killed - this is his father’s order.
The children will not be - this is the order his father does not know he has made.
They would be taken away under Charles' guidance and Allison’s swiftness.
His father will assume he killed them too. Thankfully Nathaniel was good at hiding things from dear old dad.
He steps forward to Jackson’s slumped figure, her nails crawling against her desk as she tries to take in a raspy breath. He reaches down and pulls her up by her hair and moves his blade under her throat and gives her a toothy grin.
His father’s grin had always fit on his face so well.
“And you know what Jackson? You’re right.” He tells her, leaning in so his breath brushes against her ear. “I am nothing like the Butcher. Because Jackson, I am so much worse.”
When he slits her throat, he doesn’t bother to step out of the way when it coats his white undershirt in blood.
Andrew Minyard was already regretting becoming a part of his town's Police department.
Out of all the places in America to move, surely he could have picked somewhere better than Baltimore but yet, here he was. Waving a bright neon stick at traffic so they don’t see the bloody mess being cleaned up behind him.
When another person rolls down their window and starts cursing Andrew out his hand twitches for his tazzer - it wouldn’t kill the person.
“Andrew.” A soft, yet scolding voice says beside him. His partner, Renee Walker holds a large stop sign but has now turned her gaze on him. “Don’t do something I wouldn’t.”
Andrew gives a scoff at that. “I didn’t do anything.”
She gives him a disapproving look and Andrew looks away, his eyes drifting back to the actual crime scene only meters away from him.
The doors to the Red Luxury club are held open and crossed off with police tape. People are swarming and buzzing about. Pens flying on paper, bright flashes from a camera, low and loud whispers and the same frantic energy most crime scenes hold.
“Are there even any bodies?” He asks Renee who has also turned around for a moment when the traffic had slowed. “I haven’t seen any body bags.”
“I’m not sure.” She says, “You’d have to ask Wymack.”
A good idea actually, he thinks briefly.
With that Andrew dropped his stupid fucking glowing stick and began marching towards the looming building. Renee doesn’t protest or argue, she stays quiet like she usually does when Andrew wanted to do something that wouldn't directly fuck up his life. Maybe that was the only reason he actually tolerated her.
“Excuse me.” He snaps when he reaches the door and someone raises a hand to stop him. He looks up and frowns when he sees Dan standing there. Her posture stiff and her face calm, so stupidly professional it made Andrew want to hurl.
“Officer Minyard, you know you cannot go in there. It is an active crime scene.” Her hand never wavering.
Andrew instead of turning around and leaving, jabs a finger at himself and the badge resting on his chest, “Cool. Good thing I’m a cop.”
He shoves past her hand for it to only grab his shoulder and yank him back. His entire body tenses and he has to fight to not swing his fist directly into her gut and snap her neck for even laying a hand on him. But he wasn’t about to throw away six years of education because of stupid instincts he hadn’t seemed to be able to shake.
Instead he settles for gripping her wrist back, just as hard and locking his eyes with her. “Andrew, please just follow the rules this once.”
“Fuck off Dan.” He grips and shoves her hand off of him. “Wymack can bitch at me later. Can I go do my job now?”
Dan opens her mouth to argue, probably to tell him his job was over at the street with Renee but Andrew doesn’t give her the chance as he storms through the doors and takes in the state of the once nightclub in front of him.
Most of the chairs and tables are ransacked, there is spotting of blood covering the walls in gruesome patterns. Knives were used in a fight here, and a murder as well, that Andrew was fairly sure of. For a moment his own arms missed the weight of his knives resting against his skin, but the gun strapped to his hip would have to do for now.
His eyes followed the blood trail along the ground, it kept abruptly ending and starting up somewhere else. Another one was covering the stairs as well, that peaked his interest as he carefully started making his way over.
Like he guessed, no one looked twice as Andrew walked by. Because for one, Andrew was a cop - a cop doing his fucking job ; and for two, no one liked him enough to talk to him unless they needed too.
Sometimes being an asshole had perks. Invisible ones, but perks nonetheless.
“Minyard!” A rough voice shouted behind him and he sighed, his feet inches away from where he actually wanted to go. He considered ignoring the person altogether because there was really only one person it could be but - judging by the already irritated tone - Andrew was skating on thin ice today.
“Chief.” He offered shortly as the older man sided along him. “Now what do I owe the pleasure for?”
“Dan said you refused to stay outside like instructed.” Wymack’s voice was thick with annoyance and exhaustion. Andrew couldn’t really blame him, having an entire police force filled with snitches had to be tiring.
“Figured I’d be more use here.”
“You’d be more use to stay where I fucking instructed you too Minyard. Not waltzing around wherever you please.”
Andrew sighed, moving forward again. If Wymack really wanted to have this conversation he could follow. Carefully side stepping the tape on the floor, he made his way up with a grumbling Chief behind him.
“I don’t want to wave a fucking stick in the air when I can actually be doing something.” He says to him. “Why aren’t there any bodies?”
“There was one.” Wymack responded before cursing himself for the slip and Andrew felt the ghost of a smirk tug on his lips.
“Oh? She killed with a knife?”
Wymack shook his head, before also nodding it, falling into stride beside him. “Gunshot wound and slit throat, my guess is the slit throat is what did her in but the autopsy will confirm it.”
Andrew frowned, “The blood spatter looks like slashing, a lot of it, not just a single cut.”
Wymack hummed in agreement before pausing at a set of doors before him that led into a fairly large office. He pointed his finger in, “This was where we found the body. She never left this room after she was attacked.”
“So someone took the other bodies but left hers? Why?” Andrew muttered, only meant for himself. His eyes jumping from the desk to the room to the hall. He pulled his lips between his fingers in the nervous habit he picked up from Aaron. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Killing a club full of people doesn’t make sense either Andrew, yet here we are.” The older man sighs, “Now as you can see, we are doing just fine here without you. Renee would probably like some help from her partner seeing as you abandoned her-”
Andrew raised his hand to cut him off before stomping down the hallway again, his eyes setting on the door raised from the gross velvet floor into cement. He reached it and shoved it open, the door was unlocked and swung open easily. The moonlight spilled along the roof’s top, making an array feeling grow in his gut. Still he took the step out and glanced around.
He wasn’t sure what he was excepting up here. There wasn’t any blood, or signs of distress. Only the soft breeze and the clear smell of the city hovering in the air. Still, Andrew kept walking.
It reminded him of university. The days that were blurred and fuzzy from medication that sent him flying to the clouds. Begging to be brought down. It reminded him of the late nights he spent on the roof, feeling the heavy thumping in his chest as he told himself over and over again -
I am alive. I am feeling. I am alive. I am feeling.
But with the loom of withdrawal and the need to sleep, Andrew never stayed long.
Now he stands at the edge of a random building that was in the middle of a murder investigation and glanced down to the people moving underneath. He even saw Renee and her large stop sign, someone had taken post beside her. Judging by the height it looked like it was Matt.
“There’s nothing here Minyard!” Wymack shouts, “Now please for the ever loving god get the fuck back outside and go back to what you’re supposed to be doing.”
Andrew rolled his shoulders and gave a silent huff of disappointment as he stepped away from the ledge and started to turn back to Wymack. Deciding to be easier on him today because even this case had him second guessing himself.
But before he fully turned something caught his eyes on the roof’s floor. Deep in the already cracking grey cement, two words were carved just along the stop of it. It had to be fresh, it was so light that to the untrained eye, it would slip past unnoticed.
But Andrew dropped in a crouch, his fingers reaching out to trace the words.
Maybe it was a sign. Or some fucked up irony that he was missing. Because no one else on Wymack’s task force spoke German except for Andrew. He stared at the words numbly, his fingers pausing at the edge of it.
Ich bedaure .
The translation and meaning of the words sparked something inside of Andrew. Something like interest.
I’m sorry.
In English, Ich bedaure translated to, I’m sorry .
Nathaniel watches the blood swirl once around the drain before it slipped away for good. His hands move easily over each other and the rest of his body, letting the evidence of his day wash away with his thoughts.
The burn against his skin is a welcomed pain, as is the way he digs his fingers too harshly into his hair. Scrapping at nothing, letting his nails crawl along rough scars and enjoying the sharp nips of pain he gets from the already ruined skin.
He snaps the water off with a sharp turn of his hands, towelling himself off in silence before leaving the washroom.
Allison is laying, sprawled across his bed with her cellphone in hand. At his entrance her eyes shoot up and she frowns when she sees him already dressed in loose sweatpants and a baggy black tee-shirt.
“You’re no fun.” She says, clicking her phone off and tossing it onto the white sheets. Pulling herself into a sitting position, her look is cheeky but Nathaniel doesn’t miss the slight furrow in her brow.
“Sorry to disappoint.” He offers, rubbing the towel in his hair, trying to dry it off as quickly as possible, “Why are you in my room?”
Allison shrugs, “Maybe I missed you.”
“We just spent the entire day together.” He points out earning him an eye roll as she swings out of his bed. Moving across the floor to stand in front him.
Nathaniel has to tilt his head slightly to meet her eyes, she hadn’t stopped teasing him about that since they were sixteen and she hit another growth spurt. Leaving him in the dust.
“No, I spent the day listening to you kill people through an earpiece.”
Nathaniel frowned at that, “I swore I muted my side.”
“Not the point Nate.” She sighs, and for the first time he spies the dark under circles that line her eyes. He began to wonder if she was actually okay, if she was getting pushed harder than she could handle and he opened his mouth to say something of that standard but was cut off by her sharp hand raising.
“Please, just, let me talk.” Her words are sharp, but he appreciates that she didn’t touch him. After all their years together, she still knew never to touch him on a day where he had spilt blood again.
“Okay.”
She hesitates, and Allison Reynolds never hesitates.
“Why do you keep doing it?”
Nathaniel blinks in surprise, “Doing what?”
“ This, Nate. Don’t tell me you don’t see what this is doing to you. What you are doing to yourself? You keep bowing your head and running to do Daddy’s every command. Keep firing that gun or using those knives in his name. But yet, then you risk your life to save a couple of strangers. Fuck Nate, I can hear your screams from my room every fucking night, you hate this.” Allison snaps, this time, she seems to forget their rule and shoves him in the chest harshly. Neither of them blink when he caves with it, instead of keeping his ground, like they both know he could.
“I don’t have a choice.” He says, more to himself than to her. But judging by how eyes blowing wide in anger, she still heard it.
“You don’t-? Fuck Nate! Drop the bullshit! You aren’t a mindless fucking puppet. You have to know that, I have sat on my ass and watched you for years. Years of avoiding your father’s real goals. Years of finding ways to get people out, years of screaming yourself to sleep because you can’t forget a single face of every person you have killed. I just spend the past month watching figuring out some fucking plan to save those lost causes of kids because you-” She shoves a finger in his chest, “- do not want to be a bad man .”
Nathaniel grinds his teeth together tightly, the words like knives dancing across already ruined skin.
“It isn’t your fault that you grew up under that asshole. You keep acting like you are some big monster but turn your face to me and tell me that I’m a good person. That I am someone worth keeping alive and should strive to live a happy life. That you’ll take that blow for me if I wanted it. And you know what I did to get into this shit? I fucking willingly sighed myself up to organized crime because I was bored. I wanted to piss off my parents and run away, so I became a murder.” She’s shaking, and for the first time, Nathaniel thinks he sees the brimming of tears in her eyes. “If you’re a monster, what does that make me?”
“You were a kid- you had no idea.” He starts but she shakes her head violently.
“I just cleaned up twenty dead bodies today Nate, I helped kill some of them.”
“And who’s orders were you following?” He snaps back.
Her eyes soften slightly as she takes a hesitant step forward and he starts noticing that the room is beginning to feel alot smaller than it should, “What I’m trying to say is that we still have a chance, Nate. You don’t have to be this bad man the world is trying to make you, that you are trying to convince yourself you are.”
Something cracks. Something that Nathaniel has known for too long to be the blood of his father in his veins.
He sees the small step Allison takes back again when he laughs. His hands flying to his face, grabbing up desperately to crawl the growing grin off his mouth.
“Oh fuck off Allison, you know jack shit about me.” He hisses, his eyes snapping to her own. She doesn’t flinch. “I killed two kids today. I don’t give a fuck how old they were, because they weren’t fucking old enough to be slaughtered like pigs. And you know what? I honestly don’t feel that bad for it, because I got His job finished and I got to slit the throat of some bitch who made me a little annoyed.”
“- Annoyed? Nate you-”
“- Do not fucking interrupt me .” His voice has edged onto a growl. He knows he’s speaking how his father would, he knows what voice he is using. Because he has used it time and time again to make someone fear him. Oh how his mother would love to see him now. “I figured a way to get those kids out because I still have some sense in my head that I don’t want more of… of this- ” He stabs a finger at himself, “-To be created.”
Allison crosses her arms, always that never ending fire in her, as she stares him down. “So what? That was just apathy? A cold heartless copy of his Daddy? All of that was supposed to prove me that you don’t give a shit about other people?” She laughs, it’s hoarse and scratchy when it leaves her throat. “Tell that to the hundred other people you’ve saved when working under your father.”
“Get the fuck out of my room.” His body is shaking, part of him wanting to agree with Allison. The other is begging to grab his knife.
For once, Allison listens, but she pauses at the door. She glances over at him for a moment and presses her lips into a thin line. “Your father asked for you. I would get going.”
Nathaniel says nothing.
“And Nate? Don’t let him make you into him.” She keeps her eyes on him, “Stop letting him get into your head, before it’s too late.”
He feels nothing when she shuts the door quietly, because slamming doors make him panic.
He feels nothing when he dresses himself, and nothing when he hears Allison’s sobs from her room as he leaves their shared apartment.
He feels nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing .
-
Nathaniel Wesninski was ten years old when he promised that he would kill his father.
Nathaniel Wesninski was now twenty two years old and still staring at his father in front of him. His father who sat back against his chair, with no tension in his frame. His father, who wasn’t even armed as he called Nathaniel into his office. His father who hadn’t bothered to post guards anywhere in his room when he enters.
How easy it would be to slit his throat.
How easy would it be to watch him bleed to death as he stares in his dimming eyes. How easy it would be for him to make his father know that his own son was the one who stripped him from all his power.
But still, something stopped him every time.
Not yet. Some part of him hissed, freezing his hand before it had the chance to curl around the blade waiting against his hip.
Not yet.
Nathaniel swallowed.
He met matching ice blue eyes as a cruel grin slipped across the familiar features. Nathaniel kept his own expression cold as he raised his head in acknowledgement. The scars under his collared shirt burned when his father moved quickly, shifting, in his seat. But he no longer flinched.
“Junior.” His father says, clasping his hands together before resting his chin on them. “Something new has come to my attention.”
“Something so important you couldn’t phone me, but instead made me drive all the way here?” He asks, because a healthy amount of pushing was needed so his act seemed realistic. The bite back was what kept him alive, it was what kept the people who craved so desperately to hurt him to keep their distance. Or maybe it was because some part of him was still pissed at Allison.
“Yes, Junior, I have a very, very, important task for you.” He taps his finger against a stack of white papers resting beside him. Nathaniel ignores them. “We will consider it your apology.”
Ice coated Nathaniel’s veins, suddenly, through his numb mind, the nothing was disappearing. Replaced for the one thing he never missed. Fear was a powerful thing, but yet, he still didn't let it show in his eyes.
“An apology?” He asked flatly and his father laughed.
“For killing one of my whores.” He replies with. Saying the words like they were easy and carried no serious meaning. But a life of trying to avoid his father’s rage told him something different.
You are being punished.
Instead, Nathaniel raised an eyebrow, “You told me to handle her. To which I did. Be specific next time.”
He doesn’t flinch when his father slams his fists into the desk and lurches forward, his teeth gritted together and the manic gleam takes over his eyes. Snapping so easily, just like Nathaniel had before.
“She was valuable you fool! I told you to scare the bitch. Not fucking gut her.”
“I removed the problem.” Nathaniel snaps, “Get higher standards in the future.”
His father stared at him, the ticking of the clock was starting to feel like a countdown and Nathaniel shifted his grip closer to his knives as another smile started carving itself across the Butcher’s lips.
He’s going to attack, he’s going to attack, he’s going to attack-
“You know, I’ve been telling myself that ever since I fucked your worthless excuse of a mother.”
Red blinds his vision the moment the words hit. His breath leaves him in a hiss and he knows his facade cracks in half when the laughter booms out of his father. There is a knife in his hands before he has time to think about it, posed to strike -
Not yet.
-he doesn’t relish in the sound of it hitting the wall behind his father’s desk.
Who has not not stopped laughing.
“Such a momma’s boy still hm?” His father says, leaning forward into his space before he slaps him across the face quickly and then curls his fingers around Nathaniel’s jaw. Forcing him to look forward at the mirror reflection of his future self. “Yet you are every inch me.”
Nathaniel says nothing.
His father seems pleased with that.
“You’ll be going undercover as civilian consultant for the Baltimore Police starting next week.” He starts abruptly, dropping his chin and settling back into his chair as if nothing had happened.
The words make his body stiffen, his eyes now falling to the papers on the desk before him.
“There is a leak in our ranks, snuff them out and kill them. Figure out who is slipping the information over. Figure out what they have on the family and kill anyone who is too close to the truth.”
Nathaniel takes the papers from his father.
“Make your new identity, make them trust you. I need someone on the inside. I figured this would be good for you since you are such a good actor, hm? A final test for you Junior, of sorts.”
His heart rate is picking up dangerously fast, Allison’s voice in his ear - she warned him.
“Final?” He hates the questions the moment it leaves his mouth. He hates how he knows that he has walked directly into the trap his father had laid out for him.
He also hates how his father has also willingly walked into the trap Nathaniel made for him.
“Then you become my second. You won’t just be my son, you’ll be the next Butcher.”
For all the years he’s known his father. There was one thing he knew he would never let go of. His power. His power gave him everything he needed, his power made him the monster of nightmares he so craved to be. Everyone told Nathaniel how much he looked like his father, how much he acted like him - but Nathaniel also never thought his father would give up his title. He figured he would take it to the grave.
Allison’s fingernails are tapping anxiously in his mind, chanting over and over again, ‘ before it is too late, too late, too late, too late’.
“Why?” He asks.
His father decidedly ignores the fact the question is clearly directed at his recent confession. Instead nodding towards the papers gripped in Nathaniel’s hands.
“The Moriyama’s have given me this task.” His smile grows. “Now take it and make your father proud, son.”
He grabs the knife from the wall and gives it back to Nathaniel. Who takes it in sweaty palms and stands, his skin trying to crawl off his body at the words lingering behind him. His body twitches - his mind reels.
For a moment he sees his mother’s limp body.
“Make daddy proud.” His mother’s voice was soft, “He will be nicer for you if you do.”
That was the last conversation he had ever had with his mother before she was killed.
Nathaniel was beginning to regret ever listening to her.
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