Agent with a History by Guy Stanton III Page A

better
over the years Rocco. Now go play with your little toy somewhere
else and get out of my way!”
    He smiled and pressed a little harder on the
knife, but I didn’t move. He removed the knife with a show of fake
gallantry and stepped to the side of the path giving me a half bow.
I stepped past him half expecting to have my throat slit or the
knife rammed into my back, twisted and then broken off, but the
strike didn’t come and I continued on down the path.
    My nipple hurt! I glanced down without
appearing to do so and was glad for the orange and red material of
the dress I had worn. It helped to hide the little spot of blood
that had seeped through my bra. If that was the only injury I came
away from this place with I would be extremely lucky.
    Everything was a power play on this island
realm of my father’s. You were either vicious wolf or hapless
victim. There was no middle ground. All that was respected was
strength. It was a terrible way to have to live and yet I had
managed to until I had turned sixteen.
    One night, when things had looked especially
bad for me I had stolen what cash I could find and swam the several
miles distance across the sound in the dark of night to the
mainland. Nearing the beach I had been caught in an undertow
current, which I had barely survived getting out of, but I had. I
had been surviving life’s strong currents ever since.
    I saw him then, sitting under the canopy of
an umbrella on a small patio out in the middle of the lawn that lay
behind the house and the beach below. I walked through the
perfectly manicured grass toward him. My father, Iya Muatombo, had
been born in a grass thatched hut made of mud in Ethiopia. You
could say that he had removed himself from the humbleness of his
beginnings as far as one could.
    His back was to me and when I was still
twenty or so feet away he stood, the massive muscles of his
shoulders and arms bunching the material of the perfectly tailored
suite.
    How he heard my approach over the crashing of
the waves below and the landward breeze I could not fathom. He had
the senses of a cat and the instincts of one too.
    My father was a brutal monster, but that was
objectifying him somewhat. He was also cunning. He had not risen so
far on sheer strength alone. Never had I seen the raw magnetism of
strength combined with extreme intellect in a single person before
until just the other day. Flint was such a man. I hoped he wasn’t a
monster too.
    My father turned to me with that familiar not
sure what to make of it half smile and revealed a mouth of pearly
white teeth. His skin was as black as coal and he still shaved his
head bare. His conditioning hadn’t slumped a bit and he still stood
at an even seven feet in height. The only way I could tell that he
had aged at all was that his eyebrows were a little greyer.
    He was seventy five years old and could have
passed for a man of forty five. What kept him so young, I didn’t
know, but it couldn’t be clean living that was for sure. His deep
voice broke the wall of silent study that was between us.
    “So, the prodigal daughter has returned. Is
your unexpected appearance indicative of any intention on your part
to kill me?”
    “I could ask the same of you father?” I
replied evenly, standing still in the grass, waiting to see what
would become of me.
    He smiled a little broader and indicated the
chair across the table from him and I moved to it and sat down. He
did not follow suit, but instead followed me. I started to rise,
but his hand on my shoulder held me down.
    I tried not to let it show how much he had
unsettled me, but I couldn’t help the quiver that rocked through
me, as his hand slipped under my hair and closed around the back of
my neck securely. He lowered his head until my eyes could meet his,
as I tried to hold my breathing steady and not let the fear I felt
show.
    This was nothing but another power play, an
effective one at that. I tried to relax under the grip of his hand,
but it was