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“But it kind of felt like one, you know?” I winked.
He smirked and then sobered, as if remembering he was supposed to be teaching me shit. “You’ll get the tattoo like everyone else, think of it like a secret club.”
I nodded and grabbed the glass of whiskey from his hand and took a sip. “Mmm, a strip club, I could get onboard.”
He snatched the whiskey back. “There will be no nudity at this club, no matter how desperately you want to see your first flash of boob, Ivan.”
“Please, I’ve seen boobs.”
“And yet I assume you still don’t know what to do with them once you’ve seen them.” He teased.
Love/hate, that was our relationship in a nutshell.
Teacher/student.
Enemies/Friends.
Take your pick.
“Sometimes…” His expression shifted to something darker, more sinister. “You need to become the very thing you hate in order to beat it. The white horse is an example of what we’ll all become. You remember the Trojan Horse? There’s meaning there, you infiltrate from within, we’ve been littered with haunts from the White Horse for years and nobody ever really knew the significance other than it meant death was coming soon, but do you know where it all really started?”
I let out a heavy sigh. “Will I need more alcohol for this?”
“Nah.” Junior laughed. “I mean, a story is just a story and I think my dad completely embellishes it at this point.”
“So?”
“When his sister, the girl who shall not be named.”
“Mil,” I said in a bored tone. “Continue.”
“Yeah, when she was married to Chase and he almost died, Dad was deep undercover and was still alive, surprise, apparently the mafia likes to pretend to kill people, anyway, he wrote her a note and said that she deserved someone who would leave her favorite white horse under her pillow every night. She’d been obsessed with that stupid thing for years and nobody really thought twice about it until the white horse was used for something other than love. Once she died, it became a symbol of death.”
I processed what he was saying, but still didn’t get it. “So, it became like the boogie man? A child’s toy?”
“Yeah.” He shuddered like it was uncomfortable even talking about it. “Anyway, we started getting random stuffed white horses in the mail or figurines and then, for a while, it stopped, during the treaty with the De Langes, it stopped for a while.”
“So, what’s this have to do with me? It’s just a story and not even that scary.”
“Killing and bomb threats are always scary, you dumbass.” Junior shook his head. “I talked with my dad last night, and apparently they found the original white horse years ago and it was something that he kept in his office to remember the fallen, even though she betrayed everyone.”
I nodded. “And?”
“When I went into my dad’s office last night, it was missing.”
“Maybe he got rid of it?”
Junior shook his head. “He would never. And when I asked him about it, he just shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal.”
“So, I get the tattoo and it appears?”
“You get the tattoo so you understand that at the end of the day you have loyalty to us and only us no matter what, a reminder that the very finger you put that horse on will get severed if you back down, and a reminder to all of us that the war isn’t over, it’s quiet on purpose. And, finally…” He stood and grabbed his knife from his pocket and held it to my chin. “A reminder that one day, I might ask you to become it.”
“Become what?”
“The white horse.”
“Why?”
