Facade

36|| unhappy new year

tw : guns, mentions of abuse
Song : Murder My Feelings - Lala Sadii

~ Gabriel ~

New Year's is probably my least favorite holiday.

I don't believe in resolutions. I don't believe in changing for the better all because the Earth made its way around the fucking Sun.

I don't believe in changing for the better, period.

Then there's the fireworks going off at all hours from the rooftops of the projects for days on end while the clubbers and bar-hoppers roam all throughout the city. Especially around the LES.

Tonight, my father's men wanted me to come with them to one of our clubs by Union Square.

That area is a shit show on a normal day but on a holiday?

Absolutely fucking not.

I made up some bullshit excuse about how I have to stay in and watch Bea, being as how I'm her soul caregiver.

Only my fathers top lieutenants know about Bea's existence, hence the deal I made with my father when she was born.

I'd take over my father's growing empire and expand it as he wished me to, so long as she'd have no part in the life we were involved with.

I'd be his heir to save her from being his prisoner.

I was only eight but still, after seeing that chubby baby girl the day she was born with her mud brown eyes and toothless smile, she became my purpose.

I'd do anything to protect my hermanita.

Tonight though, she had already passed out by eleven after making me promise to stay up with her for the countdown.

Every year she stays up a little later and while it makes me proud, her being asleep means I can do my own shit until morning.

I brought her to her bed around eleven thirty and tucked her in, checking my phone after closing her bedroom door to check my messages.

Text after text, I read through over and over again but there's still nothing.

She still hasn't responded.

Leaving Alé the way I did was a pussy move of me, both at the shooting and then at Anayah's house. I know it was, but I didn't know what else I could do.

She needs time and I've given it to her. But now, I'm really fed up with it.

I've tried finding her in the neighborhood but that's less than effective. I stopped by her job and the bodega she goes to before school with no luck.

Even though the LES is one of the smaller parts of the city, it's big enough to need more bodies to cover the ground.

That's why I started asking around about her to some of Imperio's kids.

Not the little ones obviously.

The young boys, between twelve and fifteen, who do anything I ask of them because they worship the ground I walk on.

They look up to me, see me as their leader.

Through them, I know that she lives in the main project complex in the neighborhood, but there's at least ten buildings in that bunch on its own. I don't have the time or the bodies to search them all.

With still no response on the few messages I sent her, I check the anonymous accounts I made simply to keep tabs on people.

I don't post. I don't like. I don't share.