The Darkness to Come by Brandon Massey Read Free Book Online

inside his Ford Explorer, pulled up the company’s number on his Blackberry and called them.
    Fifteen minutes later, he hung up. Dazed.
    They had hired him to do the corporate identity package. Their deal with another design firm had fallen through that same morning, and they had been wading through a slew of proposals and been on the verge of contacting a different designer—when Joshua had called. Joshua’s timing couldn’t have been better, they said. He must’ve been psychic, to know exactly when to call. It was downright uncanny.
    Sure is , Joshua thought, marveling over his wonderful, mysterious wife. Uncanny.
     

Chapter 5
     
     
    Late that afternoon, Dexter disembarked a CTA bus that put him within four blocks of his mom’s house, in the old South side neighborhood where he’d grown up.
    He’d cleaned the rest of the blood from the Chevy’s interior, wiped it down to remove his prints, and left it sitting in a strip mall parking lot in Harvey, a South Chicago suburb with a serious crime problem. Leaving the doors unlocked and the key not-so-discreetly tucked underneath the sun visor, he was positive some petty hoodlum would boost the car in a matter of a few hours, and by the time the snow melted and the cops found Cecil’s body, his vehicle would have been dismantled through a chop shop and all but untraceable.
    In spite of the cold weather—it was in the mid-twenties and the infamous hawk was out in full force—people were hanging out on street corners. They were all of them young brothers, in their late teens or twenties, clad in parkas and skully caps, talking shit and looking hard at everyone driving or walking past. They reminded Dexter of inmates milling in the yard: grown men who had nothing productive to do with their time. The jagged skyline of downtown was visible in the hazy distance, but the skyscrapers and the business that took place within them were as meaningless to these men as constellations in the night sky, light years’ distant.
    Dexter strutted down the sidewalk, duffel bag swinging from his shoulders. As he approached a knot of the youths, all of them glanced at him, threateningly, but while the others looked away, one of them, a tall, muscled youngster with a big forehead, continued to glare, as if Dexter had invaded his territory. The kid didn’t recognize him, and an unfamiliar man was easy prey on these mean streets.
    He met the kid’s glare with one of his own.
    Don’t even think about it, young buck. I’m not in the mood.
    The kid lowered his gaze, backing down.
    Although the players on these streets were different from the ones he’d known in his youth, some things never changed. There were Alpha males, the leaders of the pack, and then there were Betas, the meek followers who bowed their heads when an Alpha strode past. In every environment of his life—these streets, college, law school, the corporate law firm, prison—Dexter had been an Alpha. Dominance ran in his blood.
    His mother lived in a modest, one-story brick home with dark shutters that stood on a square island of crusty snow; all of the houses in the neighborhood were located so close to one another that if you stuck your arm out the side window, you could touch the wall of your neighbor’s home. Warm light glowed at the front windows of his mom’s place, and twinkling Christmas decorations adorned the shrubbery and window frames.
    While driving from Peoria, he’d stopped at a pay phone, called his mother, told her he’d been released and was coming home that day. She had squealed with joy. If his expectations held true, she was busy preparing a royal feast in his honor.
    He rang the doorbell, waited.
    He heard shuffling footsteps, and felt himself being examined through the fisheye lens in the door. Then the door flew open and his mother shrieked.
    “Dex, baby! Oh, my Lord!”
    “Hey, Mom.”
    She pulled him inside and into her arms. In her early seventies now, his mother was a short, delicate