Friday came faster than I would have wanted. On the car ride with Xavier and my father to the Mayor's private house west of the city center, we were mostly quiet until we were ten minutes away from the destination.

It was there that my father took his eyes off of his tablet and looked at me. "Is there any other information I should know about your friend's father?"

Besides the fact that he's also the leader of the Locusts in Chicago, then no. I kept my mouth shut.

"Za-Za," he sighed. "This mission will be difficult for the both of us." He didn't elaborate. He just went back to tapping away on his tablet. That only left me with serious doubts. I honestly didn't believe that this contract would pose a problem for my father.

Once we arrived at the modest suburban house with a well catered lawn, we walked the stone pathway to a patio, and stopped before a screen door. Surrounding the house were multiple guards dressed in suits keeping an eye on us while also avoiding direct eye contact.

Anticipating our arrival, Ash was the one who opened up the door. He put on a big false smile and looked like he wasn't in league to murder the man he was greeting with such kindness. "Hello Mr. Mata. Please come in. Would you like me to grab your coat?"

My father took off his coat and handed it to Ash. Spring was here in the city, but the suburbs hadn't gotten the memo yet. The withering trees on the way here were proof enough. I handed Ash my coat too and we exchanged a look, confirming if we were going through with this.

Then the Mayor stepped into the hallway, holding a glass of wine. He looked genuinely surprised to see who my father was even though he knew from the first time we chatted. Politicians are great actors.

"Pas," he said with a smile and opening himself for a hug. He gave my father a brotherly hug and patted his back. "It's been years."

Ash and I looked at each other confused. Pas?

"Dex," my father muttered. "Glad to see you climbing the socio-political ladder. What's next? Senator Dayton?"

"Maybe in a decade," Dex laughed. "I still have my terms to finish out as Mayor."

"That's if you get reelected," my father corrected.

The Mayor chuckled. "Always the optimist." He wrapped one hand around his shoulder. "Pascal, we need to get you a drink and catch up."

My father's name was Savage, but the Mayor calling him Pascal made me wonder if Savage wasn't his real name after all. Yet, it was on all his signed documents, even his driver's license.

"Yes," my father agreed. "We should. The last time we talked I went to study computer science and you went to join the Chicago PD."

The Mayor poured a drink of wine and handed my father the cup. "I rose up to Sergeant before I left the force."

My father sipped the drink. "And six years later you're mayor of the third most populated city in the United States. You had quite a fast track to success."

"Not without its many obstacles," Mayor Dex said as he sat down on a couch. The living room was decorated with police medals, pictures of the family, including a huge photo of Ash's mother. She had a thick frame, but still would rock a beauty show. She wore a pink dress in the photo, had her hair braided like a forest of vine stretching down to her lower back. She had a smile that looked sincere—as if she was watching your back and making sure that everything was okay.

My father noticed me looking at the photo and he made a connection. "Oh," he apologized. "Your wife. I see now." My father gripped his glass and drained the rest of the wine in a single gulp. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you during such a turbulent time."

The Mayor was silent. He swirled the content in his wineglass around as if debating to say something. "You remember our shack in the forest."

My father smiled. "Of course. How could I forget Fort Peace."

Dex leaned forward on the couch. "Have you ever gone back?"

My father set the wineglass down on the wooden table decorated with magazines arranged like a rainbow. "Once."

"Me too." Dex paused for a long time. Perhaps a minute of silence went between the four of us. I looked to Ash and he shrugged his shoulder. We both had no clue what they were talking about.

Then Dex finally muttered. "Do you ever wish we could go back?"

My father scoffed. "To poverty? To our junkie parents finding excuses to deprave us? To the WASPS flying around the neighborhood?"

Dex said nothing, but kept his eyes locked onto my father's, who tried to avoid looking directly at the Mayor's eyes. Then my father seemingly couldn't resist, and they locked eyes for a second too long.

That's when I realized why this would be difficult for my father. It wasn't the security detail around the house. It wasn't the fact that Mayor Dayton was a high-level politician.

It was something much deeper.

The Mayor stood up and grabbed both my father's glass and his. "Well, let's get the dinner started, shall we?"

***

As if noticing their children were there for the first time, they finally acknowledged us at the dinner table and asked us about school, volunteer work, and other simple matters. The small talk went through the appetizers and much of the main course meal, which was stuffed peppers, lobster, shrimp, mac and cheese, and cornbread. An odd assortment, but I managed to pick on the non-flesh items. I never understood how people could eat lobsters and shrimp. They look like sea bugs, and I'm pretty sure one of them eats your poop.

When it came to eating, Ash and I did little of it anyway. No doubt we were both thinking about what we were sent there to do. I just sat there listening, for what might be the last time, to my father's voice.

It was half-way through the meal that Ash asked about that shack in the forest. "What's so important about Fort Peace?"

Both of our fathers looked at each other and chuckled. "It was our way of escaping the chaos we grew up in," the Mayor said.

"Whenever our parents got carried away," my father added. "It was our refuge from the symptoms of poverty."

"Wait," Ash was surprised. "Mr. Mata, you were poor?"

Ash looked at me and I gave a slight shake of my head to signal not to go there.

However, my father didn't seem to mind. "Yes, your father and I both grew up together. We went to an underfunded rural schoolhouse in a little old town skipped over by the hyper state. My parents were small farmers. His worked as hired hands on a corporate farm not far from ours."

Ash looked like he wanted to ask him why he was killing off the poor when he used to be one of them. But he stopped himself because he knew that would escalate things sooner than we both wanted.

That's when I cut in with a curious question of my own. "Why is this the first time you guys are meeting then if you were such close friends growing up? Why couldn't you keep in touch?"

I looked between the both of them and Dex seemed to look at my father for the same answer. He leaned forward as if he too wondered what happened.

"We weren't compatible," my father said before drinking a glass of cava with his meal. "We sought different solutions to our mutual problem. Plus, if that were the case, I would've never met your mother, and you, Za-Za, wouldn't be here."

"Why? You couldn't stay friends and have met mom at the same time?"

My father gripped his fork tightly. "The past is history Za-Za. Let's focus on the present." He looked at me with eyes that reminded me what we were here for. I couldn't believe my father was managing to muster up the audacity to kill a childhood friend.

Then I remembered that he hardly hesitated to have his own son killed. Killing off an old friend whom he hasn't spoken to in decades would be a breeze.

The Mayor gulped a glass of cava. He sighed and shook his head as he turned to my father.

"I guess the past means nothing to you old friend," the Mayor sat back in his chair and rested his arm on the backrest. He waved and the waiters came to take out the food that we had basically finished by now. Then they brought out dessert: a salted caramel cheesecake with kernels of popcorn on top drizzled in sea salt caramel.

We each were given a slice and as we were about to dig in, the Mayor interrupted the deliciousness to reign us into business. "So Pascal, when were you planning to kill me, during or after dessert?"