Two of the brothers were dead; the third was a guest of a state prison in the south. The sisters had long since disappeared, happy enough to get away from the Buckley clan. Their father, Peter Sr., had been severely wounded decades before in a chaotic shootout with federal agents at the family compound in a remote part of the country. Their mother had been injured in the same melee and then arrested along with her husband. But she had turned on her spouse, and her testimony had sent him to prison for several lifetimes, while she was put in witness protection with her children. Buckley’s father hadn’t made it through his first year in prison, because another inmate had sliced his throat from ear to ear. After that, Buckley’s mother had abandoned her children, and Buckley had never seen her again.
Buckley’s father had led a large group of followers who believed in segregation based on race and ethnicity, independence from outside laws and social mores, and adherence to a code of conduct that extended to all members, except the senior Buckley. He was free to do what he wanted, and to whom he wanted, because he was the leader, the chosen one, the man with a vision.
And they had also trafficked in stolen property, and sold drugs and guns, because the money was necessary to fund their preferred way of life.
However, the federal government had come calling one night after some bodies were found. The dead were people who had once followed, but now disagreed vehemently with, Buckley Sr. And he had responded not with words but with guns, knives, and ropes. And shallow graves for prematurely and violently ended lives.
And the feds had destroyed his father for it, for merely standing up for what he believed in. Not nice, thought Peter Buckley. But then there were many not nice people in the world.
After his father’s death and his mother’s abandoning them, he, as the oldest sibling but still a child himself, had taken over the leadership role with respect to his remaining family. When he reached adulthood he had spent all his time expanding on his father’s ambitions in a far more sophisticated way, choosing to learn from his father’s mistakes rather than repeating them.
Over the years, he had created a far greater empire, and hidden the criminal elements of it behind a complex web of entities. At the same time, he had inserted himself into the fabric of mainstream society behind a consortium of perfectly normal businesses, while also building a reputation as a philanthropist. He supported myriad candidates for political office and had many friends who held both high and more mundane offices. He had found that only the latter could actually accomplish the things he needed done. Power at the national level was hopelessly gridlocked. But if you needed a residential development approved, or wanted the contract for garbage pickup, or required rezoning for a commercial project, the locals were far more powerful than even the president of the United States.
Several years before, he had bought back the land on which his family’s compound had been situated, and he had rebuilt some of the facilities. He had put in a private airstrip and would fly in there from time to time, and stay there all alone for a few days. He would walk the site, sleep in the facsimile of the house in which he had been raised, and imagine how life could have been had the law not destroyed the Buckleys. That was his therapy, his respite from a world that he had learned to dominate on his terms but also would never truly belong to.
He had tried in vain to teach his brothers that real change meant playing the game until you got to the point where you controlled the game. Outsiders did not make real change. You had to become an insider, and you did so through a series of steps: ingratiate, annex, dominate, and then consolidate. Let the changes be so incremental that they would never see what really was coming until it was far too late.