by Rachel Woods
Two of Richard’s debonair hit men grabbed Ben, trying to hustle him off the path into the trees to carry out Richard’s orders. Ben resisted. The assassins looked nervous. They had been trained by Richard but as servants. Ben had been trained as Sione had, as a son. There was a profound difference. The gentlemen assassins, as his father like to call them, didn’t know all of Richard’s secret tricks. They wouldn’t know how to beat Richard, if they were ever put in the position to try. Ben could bring Richard to his knees. Richard had made sure of it. Once you can overtake me, subdue me, and make me succumb, then you’ll be ready.
“So it’s come to this, Richard?” Ben laughed heartily, wrestling against the men struggling to contain him. “You treat me like I mean shit to you.”
“You mean more to me than you know, than you’ll probably ever realize,” Richard said. “But I can’t tolerate the way you treated Sione. You drugged him. Locked him in a room.”
“You forced me to do that,” Ben said. “I never meant to—”
“But you did,” Richard said. “That was a terrible mistake you made. Actions have consequences.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Ben said. “They do …”
Seconds later, Ben slammed his heel against the shin of the guy holding him. Sione recognized the moves. The gentlemen assassins would end up on their asses in the dirt, wondering what the hell had just happened. As if on cue, Ben’s foot slammed down on top of the second assassin’s foot. With both men stunned, off guard, and in pain, Ben executed a series of defensive maneuvers in lightning quick succession.
After ramming his elbow into the gut of the guy on his left, Ben grabbed the arm of the guy on his right. Forcing the man’s arm backward, he dislocated the man’s shoulder and then pushed his head down. Two knee strikes to the face, and the guy was on his knees, wailing and holding his useless arm.
The guy on the left stumbled to his feet and threw a wild punch. Ben countered with an elbow strike to the guy’s head, followed by a palm-heel strike to the chin and a knife-hand strike to the side of his neck. Wobbling, the assassin tried another punch, but Ben blocked it and delivered another elbow strike, this time to the guy’s face before he grabbed the assassin’s head with both hands, pushed his head down, and then brought his knee up, smashing the guy in the face.
“Shit,” Richard muttered. “He’s good.”
Irritated and grudgingly impressed, Sione said, “You taught him well.”
“Taught him better than I taught these pussies,” Richard said, disgusted, shaking his head as Ben took on the third assassin, who was steadily losing the battle against Ben’s powerful left hooks and right jabs.
“When you want something done right.” Richard shook his head and took a step, as though he was about to head into the chaotic melee fifteen feet away.
Alarmed, Sione grabbed Richard’s arm.
“What?” Richard glanced back at him, slight confusion in his hazel eyes.
“Dad, wait,” Sione said, though he wasn’t sure why he didn’t want his father to get involved. “Don’t—”
Gunshots rang out like suppressed fireworks. Whizzing and popping, bullets blew large chunks of bark off the tree Richard stood next to.
“Dad, get down!” Sione pushed Richard to the ground as Ben and the assassin wrestled for control of the gun, grappling in a haphazard circle, grunting and straining, while Ben managed to squeeze the trigger a few more times. A fine spray of dust flew toward Sione as a bullet slammed into the dirt, inches from where he crouched down.
“Come on, this way,” Sione told Richard, his eyes on a narrow clearing to the right, a place where they could hide from the spray of wild bullets. Staying low, Sione ran toward the path, glancing back.
Behind him, Richard rose a few inches from his crouch, reaching beneath the hem of his trousers, his gaze focused on the fight.
“Dad, come on,” Sione implored, angered by Richard’s dogged persistence. “Don’t—”
Richard grunted and then cursed, clutching his side. “I’m hit!”
Sione pulled Richard off the path and into a small clearing surrounded by bushes. Helping Richard ease to the ground, Sione unbuttoned the jacket, terrified by the blood steadily soaking his father’s shirt.
“I’m okay.” Richard grimaced, sweat beading his forehead. “Bullet just grazed me. Flesh wound.”
Unconvinced, desperate to see for himself, and wanting to make sure his father was okay, Sione yanked the dress shirt open, popping platinum buttons, searching for the wound.
The mangled, bloodied flesh looked worse than he’d expected. Enraged, Sione looked over his shoulder where Ben was still wrestling with the third assassin, who was barely holding on. Standing, Sione turned, his mind screaming with crazy thoughts and ideas, propelling him toward something dangerous and yet inevitable.
“Sione, don’t…” Richard said behind him, his voice weak and whispery. “You can’t kill him.”
“Don’t I have to?” Sione glanced at his father, lying in the grass, bleeding. “Aren’t we Cain and Abel? It’s just like Uncle Siosi said. One of us has to die. One of us has to kill the other.”
“George was wrong about you,” Richard said, panting. “You two are like Jacob and Esau. There is strife and anger between you now, but one day, you will forgive each other.”
Turning from his father, Sione headed toward the fray he’d tried to stop Richard from entering. Why? He wasn’t sure. Or maybe he did know and wasn’t ready to face the truth. Now was not the time for reflective introspection. Ignoring Richard’s pleas to stop, Sione stalked toward Ben. Heart slamming, his mind swam with images of his hands around Ben’s throat as he thought about all the ways Ben had made his life a living hell.
Ben slammed the butt of the gun against the third assassin’s head. The man stumbled back. Ben shot him two times and then turned, pointing the gun at Sione.
Stopping abruptly, Sione glared at Ben, looking for some sort of weakness to exploit. Trying to think of a way to get the advantage, Sione saw a flash of something to the right of Ben, something moving through the leaves.
Raising the gun, holding it steady with both hands, Ben smiled. “Well, old friend, I’m not surprised it’s come to this.”
Behind Ben, the trees rustled slightly.
“So now what?” Sione asked. “Are you going to shoot me? Kill me?”
“I should,” Ben said, an almost imperceptible tremor in his hands, as though the gun suddenly weighed more than he was able to bear. “But…”
“But…” Sione took a step toward Ben, recognizing the hesitation in his dark gaze. “What?”
Eyes narrowed, Ben tightened his grip on the gun. “But, I—”
Without warning, Ben pivoted, turning from Sione and pointing his weapon toward the trees. A gunshot roared. Unsure of where the bullet had come from, Sione dropped to one knee.
“Freeze! Nobody move!”
Confused, Sione scanned the clearing. Ben was sprawled on the ground, face-down in the dirt. Obeying the directives of the familiar voice, Sione stared at Ben’s unmoving form, wondering if he was dead, wondering why so many conflicting emotions seemed to be churning in his gut.
“I mean it! Do not move!” Roy stepped out of the bushes. An instant later, too many cops emerged from the trees in all directions, surrounding the scene. “Especially not you, Uncle Rich!”
Richard half-scoffed, half-wheezed. “Do I look like I can fucking move, Roy?”
“You look like you’re about to try, but I would not advise it,” Roy said. “Mom wouldn’t want me to shoot you, but I will.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Richard said. “So, do your uncle a favor, and call me a damn ambulance before I bleed to death.”
64
A’arotanga, South Pacific
Pacing from one side of the street to the other, Spencer felt like she was losing her mind.
Clouds crowded the sky, blocking the sun, and an ocean breeze wafted through the sea grape trees bord
ering the road. She was hot and dizzy, slightly nauseated, feeling as though she might come out of her skin.
Where was John? What was happening? Had the police caught Ben? Was he being handcuffed right now? How much time had passed since Roy and his officers had disappeared into the trees? An hour? A few minutes? Forever? Walking toward the car, Spencer wiped sweat from her face and took a deep breath. Praying she wouldn’t go insane, she leaned against the trunk and cradled her stomach, mouthing assurances to the baby. Daddy would come back to them. Daddy loved them too much for anything bad to happen to him. Swiping a tear from her cheek, she pressed a hand against her mouth so she wouldn’t wail the anguish churning within her. John had to come back to her. After everything they’d been through, all the hell and damnation they’d suffered and survived, they could not have made their way back to each other only to be separated by—
No, she would not think the worse. John would come back to her. Nothing bad would happen to him. It couldn’t. She wouldn’t be able to survive if—
A sound, faint and yet unmistakable in the distance, rattled her. Sirens. More police? She turned. Her heart slammed when she saw the ambulance speeding down the road. The closer the ambulance came, the faster her pulse raced until the loud blaring seemed to be coming from within her, trying to escape from her mouth. She was screaming, she realized, as the ambulance screeched to a halt on the opposite shoulder.
Two paramedics jumped out. Trembling and confused, Spencer watched the EMS workers remove a stretcher from the back of the ambulance.
“What’s happened?” she whispered, taking several halting steps away from the car. Why was an ambulance here? Was someone hurt? Was it John? Please, God, no. Not John. He promised he would come back to her.
Carrying the stretcher, the paramedics headed into the forest. Spencer wanted to follow them. The only thing stopping her was fatigue and dizziness. Watching the trees, she panicked and prayed and panicked again for what seemed like hours. She’d just about made up her mind to head back into the forest when two A’arotangan officers came out of the woods, followed by three men in dark suits, all of whom were handcuffed and seemed to be sporting black eyes, bruises, and various other facial traumas.
Spencer’s heart sped up when Richard Tuiali’i was escorted out of the forest by two officers who had a firm grip of each of his arms. The shirt beneath his jacket was opened and was stained with a large, dark splotch. Blood, she thought, her pulse jumping. Walking gingerly, he seemed to be favoring his left side and had a hand pressed against his abdomen. Next came the paramedics, carrying a man on the stretcher. Straining to see, she couldn’t determine who was strapped to the gurney. Spencer cried out and ran toward the back of the ambulance, where the EMS workers were headed, praying it wasn’t—
“Spencer!”
Flooded with relief and joy, she turned.
John walked toward her, smiling. As everything within her started to lift, Spencer rushed to him, crying, collapsing into his embrace as he put an arm around her waist, pulling her close and holding her tight.
65
A’arotanga, South Pacific
The Tuiali’i Estate
Standing in the large foyer of the home where he’d spent two of the most promising and profound years of his life, Sione hesitated and took a deep breath. Memories washed over him, taking him back to the first time he’d stepped foot in the sprawling, grand mansion, which belonged to Uncle Siosi, his father’s older, and infinitely more wiser, brother.
For a moment, as the smell of pineapple, frangipani, and coconut swirled around him, he was sixteen again, far from home. Anxious to start a new life, relived to be away from the demoralizing expectations of his father, he’d tried to focus on his new opportunities. Tried to forget about the secrets of his life in Belize, the pressure no one knew about, except for his mother and Ben.
Once in A’arotanga, Sione had resolved to forget his father. And Ben, too, he supposed. Initially, he did miss Ben, their friendship and fraternal camaraderie, but in order to move on with his life and be the kind of man his mother and uncle could be proud of, he could have no lingering ties to the violence he’d barely escaped. Uncle Siosi always told him he’d been snatched from the fire. Sione wondered if those flames had burned the bridge between him and Ben.
Ben had said he’d been left behind, suggesting he might have embraced the chance of a better life, a less terrorizing existence. Selfishness and fear had kept him from inviting Ben to embark on the new journey with him. The first year in A’arotanga had been exciting but also jarring and sometimes lonely even though the Tuiali’i family was large and there seemed to be another cousin to meet every other day. At times, Sione had wanted to contact Ben, but he worried his father would find some way to exploit and manipulate Ben, using Ben to invade his life. Richard was a magician at times, casting spells, using misdirection to overwhelm and overpower. Sione worried he’d be fooled and enticed into giving his father control over his life.
Looking back, Sione supposed he should have made an effort to sustain the friendship with Ben. Maybe if he had, things would have been different between them.
“John, is that you?”
“It’s me,” he called out, buoyed by Spencer’s voice. Out of the foyer, he followed the wide hallway to the large den, where he found her waiting, still wearing the grass-stained, fabric-snagged sundress she’d had on when he saw her walking into the bank. From the wall of windows where she’d been standing, Spencer hurried across the room toward him.
Three, maybe four, hours had passed since the shootout at Nonu’s boat. After the police had surrounded the area, everything happened in a blur of slow motion. Time passed quickly but not quite fast enough, as Richard and his three assassins were arrested and marched out of the forest. The paramedics stabilized Ben, who’d been shot in the back by one of the cops, and then strapped him on a stretcher. With Ben headed to the hospital, Richard and his crew had been taken to the police station. Roy had driven Sione and Spencer to the station, where they’d given statements separately. Spencer spent two hours with one of the detectives and went to the hospital to be examined.
Sione stayed behind, confident she would be competently and thoroughly taken care of by the resident ob-gyn, his cousin Winnie.
“You okay?” Sione asked. “What about the baby?”
Nodding and cradling her abdomen, Spencer said, “I’m fine. The baby is fine despite everything this precious little guy went through because Mama was running from crazy people. I hate what he had to go through because of me.”
Sione put an arm around her and led her to one of the four couches positioned in a square around a rectangular coffee table. They sat, and he pulled her as close as possible, entwining his fingers with hers. Holding hands, they cradled her abdomen together.
Spencer was wrong. It was his fault. He was the reason why both Spencer and the baby had gone through torment—traumatic circumstances that could have been disastrously life changing. And unforgivable. If anything horrible had happened to Spencer and the baby, he wouldn’t have forgiven himself. Wouldn’t have been able to—
He stopped the thoughts, pushing away the grim reminders of unforeseen tragedy. He would never forget the hell they’d suffered because of his strange selfishness. Whatever had compelled him to steal Ben’s envelope remained a mystery. Some malevolent force had taken over him on that humid night in October, when he’d confronted Ben. Influencing his thoughts, whatever had possessed him had compelled his actions.
Or maybe the anger had guided his fatal choices. It was easy to blame everything on the devil, but he had to take responsibility for bringing Ben back into their lives, allowing the bastard to wreak so much havoc on their dreams and hopes, their future.
“John?”
He looked away for a moment, fearing some strange look was reflected in his gaze, and then focused on Spencer again. Mesmerized by her lovely face, and the baby bump, which seemed to have become more noticeable to him, he pushed away
all thoughts of his uncertain motives.
“You’ve been at the police station all this time?” Spencer asked, resting her head on his shoulder.
“I was talking to Roy and some of my other cousins on the force,” he explained. “Just trying to figure out what happens now that my father has been arrested and Ben…”
“Is Ben dead?” Spencer asked.
“No,” Sione said, worried, wondering if he’d heard a hint of concern in her tone. “He had emergency surgery to remove the bullet. Caught him in the back, near his right kidney. He’s expected to recover. My cousin Cora was the nurse on duty during the surgery. Ben is in ICU now. Handcuffed to the bed with a cop outside the door.”
“So, he’ll be arrested when he wakes up?”
“As soon as he wakes up,” Sione said, thinking he’d imagined the concern and hoping he had, though secretly, when Ben had been shot, he’d been bothered by the sight of his lifeless form. He told himself he’d been frazzled by the heightened emotions and drama of the moment, but he wasn’t so sure. He’d always believed he wanted Ben dead, had believed he wanted to kill him.
“Is there enough evidence against Ben to make the charges stick?”
“Two of Roy’s officers caught one of the guards Ben had watching me,” Sione said. “Local guy. Ben gave him a few hundred bucks to watch the outside of the house where I was being kept. He’s spilling his guts. The guards inside the house were Triad guys, and they have disappeared, not surprisingly.”
After moment of silence, Spencer asked, “What about Richard?”
“Still sitting in jail as we speak,” Sione said. “Roy doesn’t think any charges will stick. His guys will not rat. They’ll eat a bullet before they snitch. Roy can hold him for forty-eight hours, then, if there’s nothing to charge him with, Richard and his guys will be released.”
“Your father shouldn’t be released from jail.”