Secrets Collide (Bluegrass Brothers)

knew it had been wrong to take the pictures, but he had been compelled. He had sneaked past Secret Service agents sitting in the lobby of the condo building while he pretended to be a Russian spy. He was on a mission to get the evidence to prove the Russians were building nuclear weapons. As part of his game, he quietly turned the large round knob and pushed open the front door to his condo. All he could see was his mother’s hair hanging down her back as she moaned from the top of the dining room table. The vice president’s face was looking right at the camera, except his eyes had been closed in ecstasy.
    Looking at it now he felt the power in it. The vice president was running for the presidency, and this photo would destroy him. With a smile, he put the picture in his backpack and hopped on the bus for the nation's capital.
     
    That had been the beginning of his career. It had only grown since then. Every time he brought one more person of power down to their knees, he thought about those boys who had bullied him when he had been told to leave school.
    When he was sixteen, his mother had died from a drug overdose. While he had tried to save her, she was too far lost in the haze of drugs. Instead of going to live with some aunt he had never met, he used his skills to follow street dealers until he identified mid-level management in the local drug trade. He used them to track down the head of the area’s cartel. He gathered evidence and turned it all over to the police. When the ring began to collapse, he stepped in and quickly took over.
    The street thugs vying for the head job were just too stupid to run it so he made a deal with the toughest thug. The thug would use the physical force necessary for the takeover, just like Sergei was doing for him now. When college started two years later, he handed over power to the thug for a steady twenty percent of all profit.
    In college, he fell in love with art and discovered the very profitable side of the black market. After graduating, he’d mastered theft, forgery, weapons, and more. He used his connections to gather evidence and then blackmailed his way to the top. He’d been untouched, unthwarted, and unscathed for all this time—until his dog-fighting ring in Keeneston, Kentucky, was busted last year.
     
    Now he couldn’t sleep. He could hear those boys from high school taunting him when he closed his eyes at night. He feared losing the power and control he’d worked so hard to gain. He cursed and realized he’d zoned out again. He’d been doing that a lot since he stopped sleeping. His men had just botched an assignment and that meant they were in trouble, he thought as he unbuttoned his suit coat to expose the .38 at his waist.
    “The flash drives appear to be full of notes, but nothing of importance to you. Research on a corrupt Washington senator taking bribes from lobbyists, some coverage from the Iraq war, a bunch of notes on the political upheaval and human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo . . . nothing about guns or sex or anyone associated with you,” the young man told him as he held his breath and tried to keep his eyes on the boss. But, his fear was visible every time he glanced away from him.
    “Are you sure this woman has anything to do with us?”
    The boss felt his heart squeeze as his man questioned him. It was hard to breathe as the mocking voices of his classmates filled his head. He whipped around, shot the man who dared question him, and then breathed as the voices quieted. “I know she has info on us. Go back to her apartment and search again,” he yelled. The room cleared and he was left alone with a dead man and his thoughts, once again.
     
    Gemma sat back down on the sofa to wait. She closed her eyes as images of Gia and herself as kids floated into view. She smiled as she remembered their secret hiding place in the attic where they'd go to play and speak in twin. It was their special world.
    “Look, Gemma. I made this box in art class. We can put all our treasures in it and keep it forever,” Gia said excitedly after school in the third grade as she showed off a pink wooden box with a bright purple flower on the top.
    Gemma’s eyes popped open and she sat up so fast Fred almost fell off her lap. “The box!” Frantically Gemma started looking around. Had she seen it when she walked through the apartment? No, she hadn’t.
    “It’s got to be here,” she mumbled excitedly as she started pushing