Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76347 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76347 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
“Well,” Atlas’ granny says with a sigh. She sits back down in her chair, but she doesn’t relinquish the pie knife, which is a sharp, deadly-looking blade rather than something normal like a butter knife or even a flipper spatula type deal or one of those triangular pie cutter things. Nope. Instead, she waves it around as she talks. “I guess that’s a pretty good introduction to the conversation I’d like to have. I was going to wait until we’d eaten, but now is a good time too.”
“Now is never a good time,” Atlas grunts. “Seriously, this is like going in cold turkey.”
“Or perfectly golden chicken because low and slow is the way to go.”
“Granny!” Atlas snaps. He turns to me, pleading, his eyes stormy once again, the sweet placidness in them gone.
He’s looking at me like I’m his lighthouse, his beacon in the dark, there to save him from stormy waters. Good god, I really don’t want to be the lighthouse. What the heck is going on?
“The other night, after Atlas came to tell you that he was lying scum and beg your forgiveness, he came back home bearing some extremely wilted pizzas, and while they were cooking, including reviving someone’s terrible choice of anchovies, we had a discussion. It was the type of family discussion that families like us need to have before we move forward with something, which is why he couldn’t tell you. Not just because it needed to be okayed with all of us but because it was for your own good. Your own safety and protection. You don’t want some drug lord turd-linger showing up at your doorstep because you made a mistake, so he’s out for revenge with a vengeance because you wrecked his life, and now he’s looking to wreck yours, which means taking down any and all who are close to you now, do you?”
I stare at her, completely confounded. She’s still holding the knife, and right now, with her face being all intense like that and her eyes pretty much glowing, she looks a little like a murder-happy granny rather than a sweet old granny.
“Uh, what…what’s going on? I’m not sure I get what you mean.”
“Granny!” Atlas reaches for my hand, but then he stops himself and drops it back down to his side. He sighs, and we all just sit there, staring at our pie. Okay, I’m staring at him, he’s staring his granny down, she’s looking at the knife in her hand, and everyone else is studying their pie like they really wish they could have enjoyed it before everything went to shit.
Wait! Is everything going to shit?
“We’re not a normal family, you see. Atlas couldn’t tell you that for your own good. We’re kind of a family that takes down bad guys. Very bad guys. We hide out in between those missions…well, we always hide out, but in our downtime, we pretend to be normal—okay, fine, normal-ish—and we have occupations. Right now, the deal is fixing computers. We’re very good at that because we’re cyber-criminals. Yes, that’s right. Technically, what we do is illegal, but that’s kind of like saying vigilante justice doesn’t have a time and a place. We take into our own hands whatever the law can’t take into theirs because people like this…they think they’re above it. We’ve brought down drug lords, organized crime, unorganized crime…you name it. If they’re bad, they’re fair game for us.”
“We’re kind of the not-mafia mafia,” Cass speaks up, her voice overly cheerful. “Someone said that once, and it stuck.”
“A lot of people have said it,” Atlas’ granny confirms. She waves the knife through the air as she talks with her hands. It would be almost funny if globs of cherry weren’t dribbling off the edge like, um, yipes…blood. “It’s kind of true. Those bastards took my husband from me, and I vowed revenge. He got mixed up with the wrong people, and by the time he figured out what was what, it was too late. He died in a very unfortunate accident. Yeah, it was unfortunate for them, alright—unfortunate that the only thing that motivated me to get through my grief was revenge. So I did that by taking my already old, even back then, bottom to college and getting a degree in computer science before the world really even knew what a computer or the internet was.
“I learned the basics right from the start and made a lot of friends who had similar interests. We used to get together and practice our skills. I guess now people would call that geeking out, except our geeking out involved getting really good at hacking. I found my merry band of misfits one at a time, except these two.” She gestures at Atlas and Orion with the knife. “They came as a package. All of them were mixed up with bad living and had sad stories. But I plucked them from the streets, right out of the clutches of the law, and made them my boys. I taught them a trade. Not that they didn’t have a choice. They most certainly did, and some of them have chosen to fall in love and go their own ways and not be involved in this for the safety of their family. Lennox and Cass chose to stay with us. We’re giving you that choice if you want it.”