No one, no matter who they were could be so easily accepting of the fact that there was so much darkness in a person they were supposed to love.
A parent.
Pa had turned my love to hate. Nevertheless, it didn’t make me hurt any less. It didn’t ease the depth of disappointment in him.
“My dear you have no idea. I’m guessing since you know a lot I can share this with you,” He focused ahead on the road. “Something feels off Jia. Giovanni was really concerned with who hired Xander. I don’t think it was because he wanted to simply get a name, it felt more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just a feeling bellezza. It occurred to me from the way he tortured him, he would have just killed him. I think he would have done. I’ve worked for your father for nearly twenty years. I know the man. I know him and know that he doesn’t pussyfoot around shit for no simple reason, asking the same questions.”
“I understand. So you think what?”
“I don’t know, that’s just the thing. I don’t fucking know. What I feel now is that Armand is definitely in cahoots with The Ra.”
Okay, he’d said Ra. I could talk about them.
“A man from the Ra came to my home yesterday. His name was Balthazar Kane. He’s a leader of sorts –”
“I know who he is Jia.” He cut in and glared at me. “Fuck, this just keeps on getting better and better. That is not a name that is thrown around lightly, nor is it one to trifle with. Didn’t fucking know he went to your house. Fuck.” He hit out at the steering wheel.
A shiver ran through me just watching him.
Christ. I knew to be afraid from yesterday. Balthazar had someone with a rifle trained on me. The last time I’d felt fear like that was when Ma was killed. I’d been seconds away from death. Yesterday was like that, knowing I could be dead before I drew my next breath.
“Frankie, he said he knew I was Xander’s weakness. He killed… he killed Xander’s girlfriend.”
Frankie paused for a few seconds and looked to me. “This is not good Jia. Not good at all. Armand is involved, but he’s just a pawn. A guy like Balthazar wouldn’t have gone through someone like Armand. He wouldn’t and we can’t have a guy like that on our ass as well as your Pa.”
“What do we do?”
“I pray your boy wakes up with some ideas. He’s no mere person either. That did not go unnoticed by me at all. Tricks up his sleeve and secrets. I can tell.”
I looked at Xander and again I agreed.
Pa said to me the other week that I didn’t know much about him, even after all that had happened I still didn’t know as much as I’d wanted to.
All the same, I still loved him. I knew his soul and it was enough. I fell in love with his soul. That was enough to love him.
Even so, we’d reached a point where I needed to know more.
I needed to know more because I wanted to help.
One hour passed and we pulled off the highway.
All around us was desert land.
It was just a dark expanse of nothingness, reminding me of something from the set of one of those films where one of the characters breaks down on the road and then ended up stranded. Then some kind of a serial killer would take her, kill her and bury her somewhere in the expanse. Nobody would find her.
Sounded like I might have watched one too many films, but when that was your life and your father was like mine, it wasn’t all that hard to imagine. I couldn’t claim to have seen it happen but I knew stuff. I would be very foolish to assume the stuff that happened in the movies was just reserved for just that.
Pa had a cleanup crew that came on the scene when they needed to clear bodies.
My first experience with the like was after I watched my mother get killed and seconds later my father shot the man who killed her. Donny Morales. That was his name and he was, in those seconds, getting ready to kill me too.
Pa killed him, saving me.
Part of me always remembered that, even though Pa locked me away for months after the incident happened. He locked me away to keep me safe. It was horrible but for my safety.
All that time though, I never knew what it was Pa had done to Donny to make him come for us in that way. I still didn’t know.
The cleanup crew took him. A year later I saw on the news that the feds found body parts in the desert. Not even all the body parts. A hand and a head. That was it, and it was of course a skeleton of the hand and head. They were able to establish that it was Donny. The other parts of him were never found.
I knew what had happened to him, and I knew only one person could have arranged for him to be disposed of in such a way.
We turned off the road sharply and it snapped me out of my thoughts.
Frankie and I hadn’t said all that much in the last hour. Xander shifted and groaned like he was going to wake up but then drifted back off to sleep.
“We’re practically there, doll,” Frankie declared.
Ten minutes later we approached a woodland area with a lake. The moonlight beamed down on it in that fairytale manner that made the water sparkle and glisten. It was the sort of picturesque scenery I would have loved to paint. Definitely loved to paint something so moving yet peaceful with the overpowering silver moon hanging over the lake and trees with a shiver of shadows surrounding it.
Something for another time, maybe.
My creative mind was always seeking something, desperate to do what it loved. That was what I should have been doing.
This started out with me just wanting to go to Europe to finish my art studies. That was all.
Then things changed.
We drove for a few more minutes until a cottage came into view.
I gazed on ahead, curious.
We parked up and the door to the cottage opened. A woman rushed out. She looked like a classical image of an Italian mother. Warm presence, plump, long wavy hair that flowed out into the night and when she got close I realized she looked like an older version of Frankie.
“Ma,” he beamed and she smiled.
Frankie got out and gave her a hug.
I’d never heard Frankie talk about his family. All the time he’d worked for Pa he never mentioned them. I understood why. It must have been that same thing of keeping the people you love out of business.
Two men rushed out of the house too, both looked like him also.
Brothers maybe.
While his mother helped me out, the guys got Xander.
We all went inside. Xander was placed in a room where one of the guys tended to his wounds. He worked like a doctor so I guess he had to be exactly that.
I stayed with him while Frankie went off with his mother.
I learned within minutes that the guy tending to Xander was Alberto, Frankie’s middle brother and the other guy was Zivelle. He was the youngest.
I observed them as they moved around and I could tell they were separate, as in they seemed to exist outside the business. Outside the usual mafia related restraints. It was their mannerisms that gave them away.
Alberto had a lot of work to do on Xander. He had broken ribs and thankfully that seemed to be the worst thing that we could tell just from the physical examination he did on him.
He did advise us to go to the hospital though as soon as we could because there was no telling what damage could have happened internally without more extensive checks.
Of course I definitely agreed. It was just on the basis of a matter of when and how we would get to the hospital.
Xander woke up fully a little while after but he was so weak. We had him propped up on a stack of pillows. I sat next to him with a warm rag placed on his head that seemed to comfort him. He’d complained of a headache earlier.
Every time it went cold I’d warm it up.
I was just about to again when Xander reached for my hand and pulled me back to sit down.
“Baby…” he breathed.
I moved to him, careful to avoid his wounds and kissed him. It
was a kiss my body longed for. “Xander…”
“Jia.” He cupped my face and it was a direct contrast to the rough manner in which Armand had handled me earlier.
When Xander touched me it warmed my heart.
“How are you feeling?” I moved my hand over the edge of his jaw.
“Can I just be happy to see you?” His voice was thick with emotion.
“Of course.”
“Stay with me, just stay here. My head feels fine. I don’t need that rag anymore. Just you.”
I cupped his face too, looking over his bruises. I couldn’t believe I was holding him. “Of course. If you need me to warm it again in a little while I will.”
He smoothed his hand up my face.
“I love you,” he told me on the edge of a heartfelt whisper. His words were like a gentle caress on my soul.
I beamed down at him. “I love you too.”
“Thank you.”
I chuckled. “You aren’t supposed to say thanks.”
“Baby… it would only be bad if one of us told the other they loved them and the answer was thanks.” He gave me a weak smile.
“I know, that’s really bad. But I mean you don’t have to thank me for loving you.”
He bowed his head for a few seconds then lifted it back up, his bright blue eyes meeting mine. “I do… I do, because I trust you. I trust you, Jia, with everything I have in me. I don’t find it easy to trust people. You have proven to be the most trustworthy person I’ve ever met in my life.”
He was talking about this morning.
“It’s okay. I told you I wouldn’t say anything,” I reminded him.
“You could have though, I’m not sure that if the tables were turned that I could have done what you did. I’ve never been placed in such a situation and it was unfair that you were. I slipped up baby and I got caught.” His hand dropped like a leaded weight to his side.
“Can you talk to me a little more about what’s going on? The blueprints I mean, and what happened when Pa caught you. Do you feel strong enough to talk?” It was my eagerness to help taking over. Seeing him so helpless made me want to help even more and do what I could, whatever that may be. It was like I’d found strength from somewhere despite the weakness that had taken me earlier while I was with Armand.
“Yes… The blueprints are for a nuke… and your father was keeping them in a place where he didn’t share with his knights.” He seemed a little more stronger as he spoke, although he took a few breaks to catch his breath. He swallowed hard then continued. “The area was all secret. No surveillance, not even on the plans for the building. My friend, his name is Wes, he always had my back. I thought it would be safer for me alone to go for the prints when some Ra guys jumped us at our base. So I went alone, blind and your father caught me. You know the rest of the story.”
“God, Xander. I’m so sorry. I knew it was supposed to be goodbye and all I could do was imagine what you must have been doing. Xander, my father still has the prints. What do we do about that?”
He pressed his lips together and stared at me.
“Nothing. There’s nothing I can do. Jia he wouldn’t be foolish enough to put the prints back in the same place, it’s a given. Do you remember at the poker game that night? You asked me about a man that was there?”
“Yeah, Russian looking guy.”
“He’s a black market trader. We also call him The Chameleon because of how he vanishes in plain sight. My advantage that night was that he’d never seen me before. He however caught me along with your father and it was always the worry in my team that if he got the prints then that would be it. We wouldn’t know what happened to them. I’m guessing he has them now.”
Great…
“So, there’s nothing we can do?”
“There’s only one thing I’m going to do and that’s take care of you.” He looked at me with firm determination.
I would have loved to feel happy about the declaration but fear got the better of me.
It really did.
It also switched my focus from the prints to the more pressing problem, my father.
He always said I was the most important thing to him. I believed him.
I believed him and I expected the whole Marchesi clan to be after us by morning.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Xander
I sent a message to Wes.
Nothing in the content. It was blank.
It was a signal to let him know I was alive.
I was alive and would contact him as soon as I could.
That was the gist of the message.
Blank for safety reasons.
The same sort of message was sent to Ethan. For him it was a code though. Code 9. Meant the mission had been compromised and he should move to the next plan of action. Whatever that was.
Whatever it was wouldn’t involve me and I supposed I’d be in the shitstorm I’d been in previously, back to square one.
I sent the code to confirm the next steps even though I’d left Wes with the instructions. I guessed Ethan would have probably taken action anyway, given shit hit the fan days ago, nevertheless, having confirmation the mission had been compromised sealed the deal.
I’d managed to get myself up and emailed him the code, blotting out the IP address so it couldn’t be traced here to Frankie’s family.
I didn’t say where I was because this place wasn’t for me to broadcast.
Frankie hadn’t said anything to me to caution me, but I guessed straightaway that he’d kept his family away from his life and activities with Giovanni.
The way they carried themselves was a dead giveaway. They were different. Not so tense or on edge. We’d been here for a day and a half and it felt like living back in Idaho with Jack.
I grew up rough in Chicago. That was where he found me and took me in. A year later he moved to the farm house in Idaho.
I’d thought he was going to bid his goodbyes when he told me he was selling up and moving. Then he said he wanted his kids to have some of the country life like he had. Kids, as in plural. Claire and me.
It was then that he really became family to me.
Knowing that he would not only take me with him, no questions asked, but also he made sure he got a big enough place so that I had my own room and space in abundance.
He wanted me to have somewhere I could call home and always return to.
Neither of us knew at the time that I would end up falling for his daughter.
These people here lived like him, so it wasn’t for me to give my location away.
Like Frankie, Wes and I had separate phones. My phone had been taken from me but I’d memorized Wes’ number for the secret phone.
He’d messaged back with the same blank message. That meant received.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed trying to heal my core. I did some deep breathing techniques I’d learned from some Buddhist monks in Nepal.
The technique helped to build inner strength. As soon as I got mine we needed to make a move.
On my plan I wanted us gone by morning. The early hours of the morning, so we’d still have the cover of darkness.
Frankie came into the room and looked me over with concern.
Another thing I’d done when I got some ounce of my strength back was talk to both him and Jia properly. I gave them the full run down on me.
I’d felt they deserved it. They more than deserved to at least know me given that they’d risked their necks for me multiple times and we were in the height of it. There were no secrets now. I’d filled in all the blanks and even told them about Claire and Jack. They knew that to everybody else I was supposed to be dead and that just got wiped from my records so I could blend in when I became a knight.
Frankie had that same expression he held then. One that offered compassion and understanding.
“Hey.” He grinned.
“Hey there.”
“You look stronger.”
“Must be the food.” I
managed a smile. Frankie chuckled.
Jia was with his mother, cooking. Earlier they’d gotten talking about food. Jia being such a great cook and lover of fine cooked meals got sucked in straight away, right into the conversation and then ended up heading off to make some classic Italian dishes. She’d come up with lunch earlier and it was divine.
“I’m not gonna disagree. It’s heaven being in a house with two of my favorite cooks.” Frankie made his way over to me and sat on the edge of the bed. “How you actually doing buddy?”
“I’m trying to get stronger. Mind and body. I was thinking we should get gone by morning. Maybe four or earlier. Grab some sleep, then head out.”
“I’m cool with that.”
My shoulders tensed. “Frankie, I meant me and Jia.”
He gave me a cunning smile. “I know you’re healing yourself up so you can get back in bed with her as quick as possible, and you probably want your privacy, but I’m coming.”
I laughed. It hurt to laugh but it was worth it. It was moments like these that lightened the tension.
“That’s not why. You’ve done enough for me, you’ve done enough for Jia too.” He had done more than enough, his help was… well I couldn’t have done it without him. Not one damn bit.
“How can it be enough when your journey’s just beginning? Who knows what the hell Giovanni must be going through. He probably thinks I’m the rat in the circle and I kidnapped his daughter and handed her over to The Ra.” He chuckled.
It wasn’t funny. It was a possibility that Giovanni could think that but I’d be the wild card in the mix.
“He won’t. Because he’ll know you helped me, he’ll know this is a separate problem. But he’ll go crazy nonetheless. I’ve never met a man like that before, love and crazy mixed together. I get that parents do what they can for their kids but he’s just…” I didn’t quite know what to call him.
“Bad,” Frankie filled in.
“I don’t know if that’s the right description. I’m bad.”
“You’re a fucking badass. There’s different levels of bad. Some of it isn’t all bad. That’s why I knew you couldn’t have been a cop. Play too dirty. That day you nearly killed Armand spoke all. You messed that mothafucka up real bad. Gotta hand it to you. I could see you would have done it though, because of what he was going to do.”
Game of Love : A Mafia Romance Page 39