A/N: Charlotte, after this story that is exactly what I intend to do. I actually started writing about their lives in Ireland following the end of the show, but I incorporated it into this story. So, in effect, this story will move from the past to the future.

XxX

Chapter 3: Negotiation

Miami, Florida.

1984.

When I was twelve I caught Nate drawing on the side of the Charger with pink sidewalk chalk, and of course Dad poked his head into the garage the moment I snatched the chalk out of his hand. Nate was only six at the time, so I took the blame, and Dad and I ran laps around the neighborhood in the middle of the night as he tried to get his hands on me. I made it to a local grocery store, the Tigre Blanca, climbed the rickety ladder up to the roof, and threatened him with a brick every time he tried to climb up after me. It took him nearly thirty-six hours to talk me down, even when he was sober, and only because he brought Mom and Nate back with him. We all went for ice-cream inside afterward and acted like we were a normal family.

I still went back to the store every weekend to spend whatever money we had on groceries, and to steal the rest. One time the bagboy had caught me stealing and sent me home with a black eye, and one time Dad and I raced through the aisle like little kids and got the cops called on us. I had a mixture of good and bad memories at the store, so it seemed like the right place to go when my head was so jumbled up. It made me wish I was a kid again.

Andre showed up at dusk, when the sky was midnight blue and streaked with gray clouds. He blocked my view of it by stepping in front of me, a typical scowl on his face, his dark skin making his expression impossible to read in this light. He was bigger than me, the size of a linebacker and capable of deadlifting three hundred pounds like it was nothing. He dominated the wrestling team and sacked the crap out of opposing quarterbacks.

He took in my posture as I lay there like a broken egg, limbs sprawled out, ants crawling over my forearm, a sort of vacant expression, and snorted, "What happened to you?"

He dropped a six pack of beer beside me and sat cross-legged on the warm concrete, popping a can open and taking a long sip. Andre never talked much, and that was probably why I liked him. He took a crayon from me in kindergarten and I punched him in the mouth, and then we wrestled until the teacher pried us apart and banished us to separate corners. We revisited our feud on the playground, arriving as enemies and somehow leaving as best friends.

We got into a lot of trouble together, and even if we never had long, deep conversations, I knew more about Andre and he knew more about me than anyone.

So I just sat up, took a beer, and shrugged, "You remember Pete."

Before he dropped out of school, Pete had been the only guy who still tried to mess with us. He managed to knock Andre down and while he was gloating, I grabbed his arm and jammed it against an open door, breaking it in three places. He never forgave me for that.

Andre glanced over, an eyebrow cocked, and said, "He got a beef with you?"

I was frank with Andre, because he was the only one I could think of to give me advice. Mom was out of the question and my only other friends were more like acquaintances. Andre felt the same as me about the police – nobody listened to us and they were more likely to arrest Phil anyway.

He skipped over that part.

"We should talk to the Muerte, give them what they want."

Muerte. So that was how it was pronounced. Just hearing it out loud gave me a chill. I had been approached when I was younger to join them, but Andre and I dusted up with the cops so much that they wanted nothing to do with us. Clean records, clean business. It was their motto.

He followed up with, "But it sounds personal, with Pete."

It was very personal, from the moment I met that ascot-wearing modern cowboy I knew I would always have a problem with him. He was the kind of guy I didn't want around my house, the kind of guy people subconsciously edged away from. I had no problem putting him in his place again, but this was about more than me.

"He threatened my family."

"Man," Andre muttered. I knew he wanted to add in a few things about where Pete could go and what he would do to him if he put a hand on my mom – because Mom had basically adopted Andre for months while his mother was away – but he stayed quiet. Her fumed, drinking his beer.

"He wants me to get him the guns, and the money – which I never saw, by the way." I wrapped my hands around the beer can, savoring the cold seeping into my palms. Beer was a social thing for me, not a means to an end. I had seen my dad do too many terrible things to think that being drunk was glamorous. Reality took the joy out of it.

Andre thought for a few minutes, and then said, "You know if Pete does something stupid, gets involved with the cops, he endangers the whole gang. Remember what they did to Bobby?"

I swatted a fly, suppressing a wave of disgust at the mention of Bobby. He was an okay guy before he got busted, before he cut a deal and walked out of jail, and never made it home. His story was touted every year to try and keep kids out of gangs.

"If he goes after you, if we get him arrested for it, the Muerte will spat him like a little gnat." Andre slapped his knee for emphasis. "You will be the last thing on his mind."

"Even if it worked, it doesn't help the Reyes family. If we give them back the guns and whatever else Phil took, they'll still come after him. Someone had to send Pete in the first place, and that someone sent him out there to kill Phil already."

"Past talking," Andre agreed.

"But you're right about Pete. If I can get him to come after me in public, and get him arrested, the Muerte might decide to cut ties with him."

"Or cut off his head, and put it on a stake."

He threatened my family and beat the crap out of me, but I still hated the idea of getting Pete killed. It was his choice to join the Muerte, though, and now his life was in their hands. If the only way to get him to leave my family alone was to sick the Muerte on him, I had to do it.

"I gotta go talk to Phil, convince him to hand over what he took." I staggered to my feet, feeling better after lying down for a while.

Andre got up, too, and put his hand on my shoulder. "You look sick, Mikey."

"I'm fine. Can I borrow your bike?"

He tossed me the key to his bike lock, frowning, his bushy eyebrows drawing to the center of his forehead. "If you can stay on it."

"See you tomorrow."

I took the long way home.

It was dark by now. I wove in and out of the glow of street lamps, thinking about how I was going to solve this thing with Pete, and wondering how someone like Phil got involved with the Muerte.

When I turned onto my street, I kept to the shadows, watching my house from the Reyes' bushes. The garage was open and Dad has his head stuck in the engine of the charger. Nate was nearby spinning around on a stool, licking a popsicle. Mom was visible briefly in the kitchen window, but she disappeared and the blinds came down.

Confident that Mom was going to bed for the night, I strode across the street and set the bike up against the wall. Nate brightened, offering me a bite of the rocket pop melting down his arm.

Dad looked up, grease on his face, and scowled at me, "What happened to you?"

"I fell, it was nothing."

He grunted and went back to what he was doing – which was probably ruining the wiring some more. He liked to think of himself as a grease monkey, but his 'repairs' were questionable.

I changed my shirt, combed my hair, and tried to look presentable, adding every little edge I could to make myself more convincing. But when I walked over, the Reyes house was empty. It was dark and quiet inside, not even a candle lit.

One of the first things I learned about people was how unpredictable they were. Mom and Dad were my teachers. I knew that a man could wake up in the morning and be the perfect dad, take me to the park, swing me around by the arms, and that by the evening he could be throwing beer bottles at my head and telling me he never wanted kids. I knew that a woman could love me, and that we could watch television together all day when I was sick, and that she could make all the promises in the world and be the strongest person I thought I had ever met, but that she could also be stuck loving someone who hurt her.

I knew that not all gangsters were jerks, and not all old ladies were nice, and sometimes scrawny kids got the best of their adversaries in fights.

But I was still dumbfounded when I stepped into the master bedroom of the Reyes house.

It was empty, the bed perfectly made and the curtains pulled, but the drawers were all open. Someone had gone through them and strewn clothes everywhere. Mrs. Reyes' jewelry boxes were lying sideways. The whole place made me uneasy.

I went to the back, where the shed door was cracked open, and forced myself to stop. Curiosity could only take me so far. Last night I had discovered a whole cache of guns in the rafters of that shed and now it was sitting here, door cracked open, just asking me to go in. Had the guns already been moved? Were Mr. and Mrs. Reyes long gone? Or had the gang swung by and taken care of business? Was I already too late to help them?

My better judgement was telling me not to do it, but I went to the shed anyway, tapping the door to make it swing open.

Phil was sitting there in the half light, a saw-off shotgun resting across his knees. His tired eyes struck mine when I stepped inside. He did not looked surprised to see me.

"Phil. I was looking for you inside. We need to talk."

He studied me. His face seemed to have aged several years overnight. His usually perky gray mustache was limp against his greasy cheeks, and his hair was sticking up in the back. He had big purple bags under his sunken eyes and he wore a too-big Hawaiian shirt and bedroom slippers. His cargo shorts' pockets were filled with shotgun shells. He had a camouflage cap pulled down over his balding head and strapped around his chin, so he looked like an army grunt.

His appearance bore a shocking resemblance to my father after a bender.

When he finally spoke, his voice was gruff, "I forgot they were up there."

I knew what he was talking about, but I kept my mouth shut, suddenly realizing I might be in trouble. It had never occurred to me that Phil could be dangerous.

"When I sent you up there last night, I forgot about the guns, and that was my mistake." He ran one finger down the shotgun, dusting off a spider, and looked up into the rafters. It was too dark to see the crates full of weapons. "You should go to the hospital, Michael. I'm sorry for what happened… Just forget about all of this."

I wanted to be afraid, and I wanted to back out of the shed and agree with him, but I got the sense that Phil was just as unnerved as I was. I sat down on a box of Christmas decorations, cupping my injured side to make the throbbing stop. "Why do you have those guns?"

"I made a mistake, years ago, and it caught up with me." Phil almost smiled. "You should go, before they get here."

"Where is Mrs. Reyes?"

"On the way to New York, to see her brother." He managed to smile this time, but it was a sad expression. "I mean it, kid. Get out of here."

"I can help you. We can take the guns back to Pete and-"

"Pete," Phil repeated in a scornful tone. "If they get their hands on this many guns this will no longer be a neighborhood, but a battlefield. I have an appointment with someone much more powerful than him. Everything is going to work out."

I doubted that, but Phil looked determined, and he just told me to leave again when I tried to insist he go to New York with his wife. He was almost manic in his insistence that everything was going to be alright, like the Muerte had not already sent someone to kill him.

"You're a good kid, Michael," he said at last, rising from his chair, setting his shotgun down, and removing me bodily from the shed. He walked me up the side of the house, stopping before we made it to the driveway and putting his hands on my shoulders. He looked at me very seriously, a probing, thoughtful kind of look, and murmured, "Everything is going to be fine. You'll see."

I let him leave without trying to convince him again. It was late and I was tired, my body ached, and I still had to deal with Pete. Phil was right. If he got his hands on those guns, this place would turn into a battlefield, and if I wasn't going to give Pete the guns or the money, I had to find a way to get him to leave me and my family alone – a way that didn't involve getting him decapitated.

Dad was still fiddling when the Charger and Nate was solving a few last minute homework questions on the workbench. Both were silent as I approached, and only Nate looked up when I sat heavily in our old lawn chair.

Hours passed. Nate went to bed. Dad pulled all the wiring out of the Charger and started fresh, muttering to himself. I watched him idly, glad he was sober, glad he was quiet, and strangely glad for his company. My day had been long and filled with conflict, and right now Dad was a constant.

Eventually a long black car pulled up across the street and Phil came out of the house. He shook hands with a man in a powder blue suit and led him and his muscled friends inside.

Dad noticed, but said nothing.

I wondered who these people were, and how Phil knew them, and what he expected them to do about the Muerte. With no sign of them leaving anytime soon, I gave up my surveillance and flopped into bed, resigning to figure it out in the morning.