I’d forgotten how big the place was, it was huge.
I pulled up just outside the house across from his truck. He had that same beat up pickup he called Bertha.
God, I’d missed him. He was Claire’s father but he’d felt like mine too.
The door to the stables opened and my heart stilled when Jack stepped out. His face contorted with curiosity as to who would be coming to his home at this hour.
He took off his heavy duty work gloves and started walking toward us.
When I opened the door and stepped out he stopped short and stared on ahead at me, his lips parted and shock registered on his face.
Jack looked the same, a little older but roughly the same. Most guys who were ex-military tended to take care of themselves. Jack was no exception. He still looked tough like he could kill you. A little like a cross between Bruce Willis and Hugh Jackman. That was what Jack looked like.
I froze, not knowing what him stopping meant.
Did he stop because anger made him stop, or did he stop because of the surprise.
I didn’t know and the not knowing seized me up, preventing me from moving forward.
Hope however filled my heart when he took a step toward me.
Hope I hadn’t realized I’d wanted badly, and for years.
One more step, then another and I started walking to him too.
We met each other halfway and he looked me over with that classic look. Like he’d just seen a ghost.
He wasn’t far off since I’d been a ghost for the last five years.
“Xander? Is that really you?” he asked. His voice was heavy with emotion.
When I nodded a tear ran down his cheek and he pulled me in for a hug.
Chapter Fifty-One
Xander
It was so strange being back.
Being home.
Home.
Over the last few years I’d had some days where it felt like I’d never return. When I thought about it now, it was clear to me that I’d been on a mission of vengeance that would have carried me to the last days of my life.
Looking for Balthazar Kane and trying to find answers was like digging around a haystack looking for that proverbial needle. It was people like him who gave weight to sayings like that.
Simply because it was difficult.
Difficult but not impossible, but bordering near enough on the impossible.
Seeing Jack now made me see that realistically I’d erred on the side of failure because I couldn’t face him.
After that very emotion-filled reunion that saw me in tears too, we went inside the house. There the bulk of the time was spent tending to Frankie.
Just as I’d thought, Jack knew exactly what to do. The man was medically trained and just the sort of person we needed, who understood why we couldn’t pitch up to the hospital without answering some very important questions that would undoubtedly land us in trouble. More shit.
Jack skillfully removed the bullet from Frankie’s arm, patched him back up, and set him up in a room the way Frankie set me up at his family’s home.
Once we were all packed out with the little we had, I joined Jack for the looming conversation we needed to have.
The conversation that was a combo of two very big matters. The most pressing questions were where I’d been for the last five years and what happened to me. I’d practically returned from the dead.
The next big conversation was Giovanni, Jia and Frankie.
I’d pitched up on Jack’s drive in trouble, just like when I first met him at sixteen years old.
I couldn’t believe that was twenty years ago.
Twenty years ago I snuck into his garage, injured from being beaten up after a job with mobsters went wrong. I’d thought then that I was in the deepest shit of my life. It was my first taste of mafia guys and the last until this recent stint with Giovanni. It was enough however to teach me a damn good lesson.
Twenty years later I was in trouble again. Worse than ever before.
We sat in the kitchen at the breakfast table, opposite each other. It was close to lunchtime and the sun beamed through the window in all its glory.
It seemed brighter to me here, like everything felt more enhanced.
The thought was stupid because like the moon, the sun was the same. Couldn’t really vary in brightness across the states. Maybe across the world in some parts but not the way I was thinking.
“I kept imagining this,” Jack stated. He ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair and gazed across at me with that fatherly warmth I’d always appreciated.
I looked back to him. “That I’d come to you clearly in trouble again?” I might have been going for some element of humor but didn’t manage to pull it off. There was nothing funny or humorous in any of this situation.
He gave me a warm smile and rested his elbows on the table.
“Xander, this is me. I’ve waited years for this and I want you to be real with me. That was the first thing I asked you when we first met. Remember?”
“I remember Sir. Back then I had fewer secrets.”
“It’s not about the amount of secrets you have, son. It’s the content that defines them. Now I’m sitting here looking at a man who I consider my son. I was told he was dead, I even got his dog tags. I buried you, or what they told me was left of you and still I refused to believe it was true.”
His gaze clung to mine and I couldn’t look away.
“You didn’t believe it?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t believe it. Claire… she was a different story. I knew in my heart from the minute that girl decided she wanted to follow in her old man’s shoes that I was going to get that call one day. The call telling me something had happened to her. I knew it. I did. Just like me, she did plenty of things that were reckless. Unlike me though, she didn’t have that stroke of luck. For me I got lucky one last time and I threw in the towel. I saw it for what it was and took hold of the chance it gave me. I suspect Claire wouldn’t have done that. She would have kept on going until it killed her. She got that part from her mother.” He nodded.
His words tugged heavily on my heart. They were true.
I felt they were true and that part wasn’t me looking for an excuse so I wouldn’t blame myself.
Claire was a mixture of her fearless father, and her daunting mother who knew giving birth to her child could kill her but she did it anyway. That was how her mother died. In childbirth.
Just like mine. My mother died during child birth too and we always talked about that element of similarity we had. I knew for damn certain that I got my guts and courage from my mother.
I’d always considered that when I was with Claire. I imagined her mother making it her mission to give birth to her baby and sacrifice herself if she needed to. Her life a price to pay for what she wanted most.
That was what Claire was like and she would have indeed kept going until something stopped her. There were many times we got lucky, she just kept going though.
“I told you I’d take care of her.” My gaze dropped to the table and I sighed. When I looked back to him there was nothing but understanding in his eyes.
“And that was nice of you, but there would have only been so much of that you could do. She was her own person. Strong-willed and strong minded. So much more than me. But, I felt it in my bones that something would happen. It was almost a damn given and I prepared for it for years. I was told it was a bomb that took out the team in Nepal. They brought me her tags and yours.”
He paused and silence filled the space between us, opening the floor for me to speak.
As the conversation had taken the direction of the past first, I thought that was where I needed to start. I’d start at the past and work my way forward.
“It wasn’t just a bomb. That came after.” That was the best way I could start. Everything I would tell him next was top secret. This man however, was a man I had no secrets from. He was ex- military, ex-CIA, ex-SMF. We knew when to talk and w
hen not to. He knew when I could and should talk and right now I owed no allegiance to anyone.
I drew in a breath and continued my recount. “We’d been tracking a man called Balthazar Kane for years. Approximately three. The situation with him had gotten so bad, we were ring fenced to deal with everything to do with him. Everything.”
I told him everything from the past and finished with Claire’s death and what should have been mine too.
That was the end of that saga.
He gazed down at the table as he processed the information. It was a lot. Fucking a lot to tell and a lot to take on board.
“I’ve spent the last five years trying to find Balthazar,” I added. “Never getting close. I went off on my own mission trying to find the son of a bitch and never once got near enough until days ago.”
Jack lifted his head. “Days, son?”
“Yeah that brings me to the next part of the story. Weeks ago I was commissioned by Ethan to do a job. He found me. The man found me. Following the success of the mission the promise was to assist me to find Balthazar Kane. It was the only reason I agreed to it. The job was to steal back some blueprints from a mob boss. The blueprints were for a super nuke. I never realized the job would include a web of several layers of traps and players like you wouldn’t believe.”
By the time I finished telling him everything Jack was completely blown away. I could see the intrigue in his eyes and the expression on his face. Hearing the details of the past was a lot to take in, but the more recent stuff was like I was talking about some Hollywood Michael Bay film, minus the blowing up of buildings. That was what it felt like, living in a film like that.
“Fucking hell, Xander. What the actual hell?” He shook his head. “All of that? And Balthazar Kane in the mix?”
“Yes. So I’m here. It sent me here to you. I didn’t want to involve you. I never did before because you’re my family. You are, and I wanted to keep you out of it. I stayed dead because I thought it would give me some advantage to find Balthazar. He thought he killed me so I became the shadow and hoped it would end somewhere. Then this all happened.”
“You are very lucky Xander. Very lucky.”
“I owe my luck to Frankie. He didn’t have to help me.”
“No he didn’t.”
“I know he’s got to be worried about his family.” I would be if I were him. He’d said Giovanni wouldn’t come for his family but I wouldn’t put it past him to try. It was natural for me to factor that in.
“Of course. And um… the girl?”
My breath stilled. I’ll admit I avoided talking too much about Jia. I shouldn’t though. I was serious about her and I meant what I said when I asked her to be mine.
I wanted her to be mine in every essence of the word. I wanted her to be mine and when that day came I was done doing all of this.
I was completely done. I’d go to Europe with her and she could do what she wanted. There were many things I was good at so I wasn’t worried about myself.
When I asked her to be mine, I felt it was right to ask, so she would know I wasn’t just with her for now.
Talking to Jack about her though would be difficult. The only woman I’d ever spoken to him about was his daughter.
“I’m not going to let her father get her Jack,” I declared.
He nodded. “Because you love her.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
I nodded but I knew the awkwardness of the affirmation was evident.
I hung my head down feeling the weight of it, feeling a little more of that failure of being unable to take care of his daughter like I said I would.
Then he reached across the table and tapped my knuckles.
I looked up, met his gaze and pressed my lips together.
“Xander, you don’t have to feel bad admitting your love for someone else. It’s been five years since Claire. I would have hoped you’d move on. She would have definitely wanted you to.”
“It’s hard. It was hard. I will never stop loving Claire, Jack. I never forgot her.”
He gave me a curt nod accompanied by a warm smile. “I know, that’s something I know and you don’t have to explain anything to me when it comes to that. Way back when, there would have been very few people I would have allowed to date my girl. I could see your love for her from day one. It was never a question to me or a wonder. And I know it wasn’t the kind you forget.”
“Thanks, that means a lot.”
“Good. By the same token I know this girl, this woman –Jia Marchesi –must mean a lot to you to put your neck on the line with the mob.”
Jesus, when he said it like that I definitely felt the gravity of the situation weighing down on my shoulders.
“What the hell am I gonna do Jack? It’s all so complicated.”
“One step at a time boy. What have I always told you about complicated?”
I smiled. “Complicated is a bullshit word to cloud over something that looks difficult.”
He chuckled and nodded. “And what have I always said about difficult?”
“Go back to the place where it all began, the part where it was easy. Start from there and work my way forwards.”
He made a show of clapping. “Well done my boy. So let’s do this. Start where it all began.”
I thought for a moment and decided to retrace the events that had occurred. “Giovanni steals the blueprints and becomes a threat to national security. The Ra try to steal them from him but are unsuccessful. He gets away and hides the prints then I get hired to steal them back.” That was the first part.
That was exactly what happened at the beginning.
Jack narrowed his eyes though. “There are missing parts to that story.”
“What do you mean?” I wasn’t following what he meant. That was what happened.
“It doesn’t fit. Giovanni is small time and The Chameleon does not work like that. Not so messy so that the Ra would simply find out. They would have been told, the question is by who.”
Shock seized my next breath. Giovanni had said the same thing. So did Frankie. Jack saying it too was absolutely something to take note of. It carried all the weight of significance it could have for a man like him to point that out. I hadn’t even thought of it myself. Me with all my exposure to The Ra and Balthazar.
“There’s a rat in Giovanni’s circle,” I informed him. I was sure now from what Frankie had said that the rat had to be Armand. It made sense and fit.
“The rat is just a rat, an enabler. Less than small time. There’s no way that guy would have been able to make contact with the Ra much less be in touch with a man like Balthazar.”
“Damn it to hell. Who could it be?”
“My guess is since the blueprints are what I would a hundred percent label as classified, the only people who could have known they were stolen would have come from high up. Like CIA or SMF high up.” He held my gaze and my attention. “If someone high up knew about the prints being stolen then only they could have passed on the intel to Balthazar. No mere rat could have done that. The rat’s just part of the game.”
My blood ran cold. It ran cold and my thoughts stilled. “You think someone in the CIA or SMF is working with the Ra?”
He raised his shoulders into a shrug. “Xander I think you’re aware that I trust no one and the most valuable lesson I could have taught you is that everyone has a price. Everybody can be bought. If you fall outside that category then that’s great but it’s something you have to bear in mind.”
“Ethan said the SMF had been called in to deal with the situation.”
“Maybe because it got out of hand. That’s usually when you guys get called in, right? So they needed you.” He nodded.
I wasn’t sure what the hell to do now.
Don’t trust anybody?
Right.
Earlier I’d messaged Wes to let him know where I was. He said Ethan was still with him working on stuff in Vegas, but he’d come. He was on the way here.
I’d thought at the time that I would speak to Ethan separately. Now it was looking like I needed to. Someone was using him, had used him and I had to find some way of stopping him from getting the prints, and getting the prints back to headquarters.
“There’s a guy I know, a contact of mine with skills a little like yours. Can hack most systems without leaving a trace. He’s good with backtracking. Very old school. I reckon your skills combined could give you more answers,” Jack suggested.
Answers would be good.
It was what I needed to get me on track. Some answers would give direction.
“I need to meet with him soon as.”
Jack nodded. “I’ll set something up for tomorrow.”
“Thanks Jack. I’m grateful.”
My nerves spiked with a sense of awareness. The CIA or SMF working with Balthazar and The Ra.
Shit!
That was definitely something new and an angle I’d never explored before.
It wasn’t something I would have even thought of because it was so damn bizarre.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Jia
I wouldn’t deny that it felt a little strange being here.
Jack was really nice.
The kind of nice I would have loved from my own father. To me he was the opposite of Pa.
Or maybe a different version of what Pa could have been like. Tough and in his late fifties with muscle that showed his years of looking after himself to get that way, and what he’d done for work.
That was what Pa was like and Jack seemed the same. Except my father was evil. Jack was not.
And…
Jack had a daughter who loved Xander and Xander loved her so much he wanted to spend forever with her.
Was it wrong to be jealous of a perfect woman who was dead? Especially when just the other night Xander asked me to be his.
Was I crazy?
Maybe it was just being here.
We’d been here all day and it was the first time I’d felt safe since leaving the airport. It was the first time.
Game of Love : A Mafia Romance Page 42