Friendly Fire

CHAPTER 5 : PRESTON

Preston would give anything to not sit in a smelly, musty bar with wanna-be outlaws. The worst part was not the conditions of the bar, no, it was how the guys spoke and treated people, especially the workers. Their conversations revolved around anything and nothing at all. From “I bet I can tap that ” to “I think this financial year will be a blast” and sadly and very sus, “I bet my balls are heavier”. He wanted to fit in the neighborhood so no one would be suspicious. He’d also come in to ask for a temporary job so it could be easy to meet people and gather information. After all, people tended to talk to bartenders as if they were therapists. This would be a great way to be updated as well as keep an eye out for the target that was now within the area as far as his intel implied. After nursing the disgusting beer for longer than he should have, he decided it was time to go back and work on his findings. So far, he still didn't get the job. How f****d up was the world. The owner probably thought he was a bull in a china shop or would he scare the patrons?  "I guess I'll never know." Preston shrugged to himself as he went out. 

He went back to his apartment and opened the classifieds as well as his website. Up until this time, he only kept a digital tab on his target. Which meant how and where he spent his money and that's how he knew he was in River-view. The thing that did not add up was the fact that nothing came up when he searched for “ Ivan Monty”. It's like he did not exist. His son, however, Dominic Y. Sergei did show up at the birth registry. There were no details on Dominic other than his name and age, not even a picture of the child. This was not going to be an easy search. He tried to put a name on the Y that was common in both names. How many bad guys had he come across that had that initial? What kind of name was it? Who would want him dead? What was not adding up? What was he missing? These thoughts almost made his head explode.

A brilliant idea popped up in his mind. He decided to do the old-school stalking method, social media way. He first tried f*******:, he typed in Ivan Monty and got over  300 results, but only  50 fit his criteria. He continued narrowing down until he saw Ivan's Creative Studio. When he clicked it, immediately the business profile appeared. His target recent and very handsome-cute face appeared on the. So he was a graphic designer. He scrolled through the few photos that showed his business side, photos with colleagues, photos of his projects, and many other things. What really got his attention was the name he was using. It was Ivan Young Sergei. So that was why he couldn't find any information on him as Ivan Monty when he searched for Ivan Young Sergei, he found his personal account. There were pictures of him and his child and wasn't the baby a cutie. The child, Dominic, was an exact copy of his father. The only difference lay in their eye color. There were pictures of them in the pool, at the beach, at home just being lazy, and even one in bed where it seemed someone took their photos while they slept. That was the most innocent-looking face he had ever seen in a man. He was well built, as the pool photos showed off his defined muscles. 

He continued looking through his social media trying to figure out more about him but it seemed like he did not exist before his child was born. There were no signs of another parent in the picture.  There was one post that had that read “WELCOME HOME ” with a selfie that showed Ivan carrying an infant in his arms.  The post had very few comments all of them positive with congratulatory messages and emojis, all but one that caught his attention.  the comment read, “IT'S NOT OVER, I WILL FIND YOU” and was written in morse code, nobody had made an attempt to reply to the message since and it was dated 2 months ago, around the same time he got the contract. The threat brought out an ugly feeling deep in his guts. He suddenly wanted to find the person who dared threaten such an innocent man with the cutest baby alive. What could such an angelic face have done to deserve death? 

When he clicked on the profile that left that vile message, it brought up a blank page. He was right, after all, it was a fake account and probably belonged to the person that had issued the termination order. He continued looking through various social media links that were linked in his profile, but all he could see were Ivan's posts about his work interactions. The last post he made was dated a month ago where he mentioned shopping for his son's trekking gear. He was never the type to judge people by their appearance, he knew when people faked being nice and knew how to read people's body language and so far, nothing about Ivan gave off bad news. Shutting down his laptop, Pres tried to catch some sleep before the sun rose in the next couple of hours. As he got ready for bed, he wondered why Ivan was raising the child alone, the most important question was whether another hit had been placed on him already and if so he would have to act fast to figure out how deep Ivan was. As he finally lay in bed, images of Ivan floated behind his lids and occasionally the tattoos of the woman he saw at the terminal a few days ago. What a weird combination, Preston thought to himself as he fell into the arms of sleep.