Page 39 of Carter

Seven streets. Lines of tall rowhomes. One main park in the center.

The homes were built in the early nineteenth century, after the shops and adjacent land had all been acquired. They are sturdy. Built to last. There are seven streets in our Village. Pristine, three-story rowhomes line each of them. Perfectly manicured lawns reach spotless sidewalks. Brick stairs lead up to concrete stoops. The front of each house is painted and decorated to match the owner’s taste.

Inside our homes, the décor varies drastically, but the footprints are the same. You enter into a foyer, to your right is the kitchen, to your left, laundry. On the second floor, to the right is the living room, with a beautiful white marble fireplace. To the left, a large office. The entire third floor is a master bedroom.

There are windows in all of the rooms. They face the back garden as well as the street. We may be a secret to the world, but amongst ourselves there are no secrets.

There are no children in the Village. Our lives here are not conducive to them. If a Bachman couple were to decide to procreate, they would do so in the Hamlet, our family’s remote Village in Connecticut. It’s made of over three hundred acres of fenced-in property, with our own private school and post office.

Once you become a parent, though you are still held to the rules and creed of the Bachmans, you are released from all illegal activity. You move off to our own type of suburbia, to live with the others. You’re given a completely legit and legal job, while still working for and benefiting from the protection of the family. And access to more money than you could ever spend.

Bachmans do love children, though many of us remain childless, having seen too much of the cruel world to want to bring children into it. There’s a few of us though, we still hold out hope that the world is good.

All of us have chosen this life.

Bronson is the head. Below him are his highest-ranking men, including Brett and John.

John is my older brother by blood, the one who brought me into our world. He swims with the political fish of the city, protecting our secrecy and our rights. Brett is his mentor.

John is married to Mary, the woman who bakes all the cakes for their bakery. She’s fantastic. She’s kind and she’s warm and she’s the unofficial head of the Bachman women. She especially has a soft spot for Sasha—probably because Mary used to raise some hell in the early days of her own marriage.

I remember when I first joined, John running his hands through his hair in frustration and telling me, “Mary is just a little spitfire.” He had words with some of the more experienced men in our family and became much stricter. It worked for them and Mary is the happiest woman I know.

Seems I’m following in my older brother’s footsteps in every aspect of life.

Brett is married to Tess. She’s a spitfire and spends many a day over Brett’s knee. He is quite a bit older than her, and we think she likes it that way. Tess is a math whiz with a brilliant mind. She’s the head of our accounting. And she’s damn good at her job. The only numbers she can’t seem to manage are her spending on Brett’s credit card.

Brett has a soft spot for Sasha, too. A few weeks ago he caught her leaving Barbells with a stack of class plans and asked, “When are you reapplying to that kinesiology program?” Sasha told him never. Brett only shook his head. “One no scared you off? That’s not the Sasha I know.” She rolled her eyes at him then, but I saw her tuck the words away.

Brett also has a younger brother by blood that he’s brought into the family. His name is Rockland. He’s a considerably younger than Brett and he’s single. He stays busy learning the ways of the government from Brett and John. He’s not looking to date anytime soon. He’s too wrapped up in protecting our asses through international politics. Currently, he’s based out of Greece. And he’s lethal.

We are the only two sets of brothers that share DNA. But all Bachmans are brothers. And we are closer than most families. Especially since we’ve pledged to lay down our lives for one another.

On the tower of power, as I call it, there are several of us on the next level of the hierarchy.

Rockland outranks us, but his work lies outside the Village.

Next comes Joshua, then me.

Outside of our family, people see me as a meathead—they see my biceps, find out I own a gym, and assume I’m practically brain-dead. I’m perfectly fine with that. It helps me keep my cover.

I graduated top in my class at Villanova.

My legit business is owning Barbells. It’s quite profitable. On the family side of things, I help Joshua run all the tech for the Village. Not even the Bachmans know this, save for Bronson, Brett, and my brother John. We Bachmans like to think ahead. If we were to be infiltrated, Joshua would be named as our tech whiz. I, the dumb blond, would continue to run things behind the scenes.

This is what we’ve agreed to.

As far as my part in our Robin Hood-like scheme, I wear a few hats, help out where I can. I dabble in politics; right now I’m running the identity theft portion of the business.

How many people have had their credit card numbers stolen? Thousands of dollars racked up in their name, using their Social Security number to open new fake accounts. That’s not all it costs them. Hundreds of hours of priceless time. The victims end up spending countless hours trying to prove that the purchases weren’t made by them. Sometimes years.

Yeah, we’re giving the real bad guys a little payback. We find them, flip the script, and make our own purchases in their names. Bronson’s new girlfriend, Paige, has been helping us identify victims, too. As a medical assistant working in a nursing home, she’s got an extensive list of elderly patients who’ve had their identities stolen and were left deep in debt. She doesn’t touch the illegal side of the operation; she only tells us who needs help. They’re now finding themselves to be debt free and able to afford all the medications they’ve been needing but haven’t had to cash to shell out for.

Courtesy of the Bachmans.

It feels good to help out.

My blood runs Bachman.