“Get outta here,” Vito sniffed indignantly. “You, of all people, want this place overrun by tourists?”
“Good point,” she said with a genuine chuckle as she went through the open door to the small storeroom. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she added, turning back to the dock. “Your evening bouncer might be late.”
“Yeah, I already got a warning from Miss Shirley,” he grunted and waved her off.
“You gotta stop letting her take advantage of you, Vito!”
Miss Shirley emceed the area’s most popular drag show, which happened to take place at MochaMoka every Friday night. Unlike Ellie, Miss Shirley was not above using her celebrated status to obtain special favors, like making Bethany stay open late to accommodate her schedule.
“With the amount of money she brings in, she can do whatever she wants.”
“Fair enough,” Ellie said, shaking her head as she left Vito to wait for his order.
Inside, she stood a moment in the back hallway to let her eyes adjust to the always dark interior and hummed along with the now familiar notes from one of Gertie’s favorite jazz standards drifting back from the main area. By day, MochaMoka was a semi-upscale Italian bistro where Gertie served up light meals, authentic pastries, and coffee creations to die for. But in the evenings, the jazz changed to the thumping beat of dance music and mixed drinks replaced coffee orders at the bar.
East Village locals from all walks of life frequented the bar both during the day and in the evening. Despite being of a generation that wasn’t known for open-mindedness, both Vito and Gertie were accepting and incredibly protective of all of their regulars. There were rumors—which Ellie didn’t believe for a moment—that MochaMoka was a front for illegal mob-related activity. Even Bethany, who sidelined as a doorman in the evenings, speculated that there was more to the aging owners than meets the eye. Vito was a little rough around the edges, but just because he wanted to keep a low profile wasn’t enough proof to connect him to the mafia.
For Ellie, the dark paneled bar was a safe haven and one of the only places she’d ever been that made her feel normal. With the eclectic and often flamboyant crowd of regulars, hardly anyone gave her height or strange complexion a second glance. And as she settled into a dark corner booth with a hazelnut latte, Ellie was again grateful for the anonymity. She slid her laptop out of her backpack and reread the email. Again, it felt as if her heart was being squeezed tight by a rubber band.
Hello Ellie,
I’d hoped to put this conversation off for as long as possible, at least until your exams were over and the whole family could be together later this summer at the lake, but I’m afraid something has come up that I cannot ignore. I know I’ve rarely mentioned your biological father and on the few instances where you had expressed curiosity, I was probably shorter with you than I should have been. This was never a slight against your father, but more of a misplaced defensiveness on my part because I did not want to diminish or take away anything from your relationship with Richard.
That being said, I realize now my silence has had its own consequences. I wish I could say more, but for the sake of security, I cannot. I am sorry, Ellie, but you must heed my warning.
As soon as your exam is over, please go immediately to my apartment. You will be safe there. Do not talk to anyone, especially strangers. I know, this is the advice I gave you when you were just a child, but all joking aside, Ellie, this is important. Be mindful and be safe.
We need to talk, as a family. I’m getting on a flight and I’ll be in town this evening. Richard has arranged to meet us at the lake, but I want to have a chance to talk to you privately tonight.
I love you,
Mom
Ellie read the letter a few more times, still unable to believe that it wasn’t some sort of hoax. It was true that her mother rarely spoke of her ‘real’ father, but from the way she spoke, always in the past tense, Ellie assumed he had died long ago. Now she wasn’t sure what to think. All she knew of the man was his unusual name: El’iadryov. Her own full name was supposedly a diminutive of his and from the way her mother accented it on the rare occasions when she used it, Ellie assumed her father had been of Eastern European or Russian descent. Knowing that region of the world had been in upheaval right around the time of her birth, a tragic death seemed unfortunately likely.
Of course, she noted, sliding her gaze over to the open door to the stock room—where Vito was giving the delivery driver a hard time, Italians don’t have the monopoly on mobsters, do they?
A quick internet search showed her that organized crime existed everywhere. Suddenly it didn’t seem so far-fetched that her father could have been tangled up with the mafia and that’s why Isa didn’t want Ellie to know about him. Perhaps he was in danger or worse, maybe he was the danger.
Or perhaps I’m stressed and letting my imagination run wild, she chastised silently. Life was not an action movie. Not even with an action movie director as a stepfather.
“Girl, you are not going to believe what happened last night.”
Ellie jumped, still caught up in the embarrassment over her wild speculations, when a friend of hers plunked a beer on the table and launched himself into the booth across from her. She looked up at Stephan and then at the clock in the corner of her computer’s monitor and blinked. It was already after five. She’d been brooding for nearly two hours. Her mostly untouched coffee was cold and what remained of the whipped topping had formed an unappetizing skin floating in the grayish sludge.
“Whoa, Ellie. Are you okay?”
“Hey Steph,” she said with a smile. “I’m fine. You just caught me daydreaming.”
“Right…” Stephan drew out the word and quirked his eyebrows. “Here, you need this more than I do. Be right back.” With a wink, he slid the beer bottle across the table, exchanging it for the abandoned latte. A moment later, he was back with another beer, which he took a long swig from before setting it down and giving Ellie a pointed look.
“Spill it, sister.”
“I’m fine. I failed my exam, is all.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie, Ellie reconciled. Stephan gave her a quick once over, but after Ellie assured him one last time that she was fine, he gleefully launched into recounting the mess of drama that she had missed while studying for her exams.
Soon, the happy hour crowd began to flood the bar and Ellie found herself surrounded by more familiar faces. Part of her wanted to excuse herself and find a place where she could be alone with her thoughts, but another part reminded her that she was among friends and there was nothing she was going to learn until her mother’s plane landed anyway. She flagged down Gertie, ordered a round of drinks, and allowed herself to be swept up in other people’s drama.
But as she sat and listened to one of her buds launch into a tirade about his ex, Ellie had a creepy, prickling feeling on the back of her neck and sensed she was being watched. Before she could react, Stephan leaned in close.
“Don’t look now, but you’ve got an admirer.”
“I thought I felt something,” Ellie replied with a groan. “Does it look like a reporter or just a celebrity stalker?”
“Neither. He kind of looks like a toad.”
“Steph! That’s not nice!” Ellie smacked him on the arm, but winced when she chanced a glance around the bar under the guise of looking for Gertie. A man sat alone in a corner booth and did indeed have a toad-like appearance. Though she immediately admonished herself for passing judgment, Ellie had to admit there was something unsettling about him, but that could have just been the fact that he was staring openly at her.
She turned back, hoping he would go away, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Bethany coming through the back entrance. At least now if the creepy guy tried anything, he’d have to deal with the toughest bouncer in all of New York.
The flash of her phone’s blinking LED caught her eye and Ellie glanced down, prepared to ignore the message until she saw who it was from.
You aren’t safe at Vito’s right now. I’m not asking you, Ellie. You need to get to your mother’s apartment immediately. And please be mindful of your surroundings.
Ellie felt her anger flare as she excused herself from the booth and stalked up to the bar.
“Really, Vito?”
“Really Vito what?”
“You’re reporting my whereabouts to Julian now?”
“What are you talking about, baby doll?”
Ellie huffed and shoved her phone under Vito’s nose. After backing up to read the text message, he started to chuckle, but something caught his eye and his expression quickly sobered. “Nah, Ellie. I ain’t said nothing, but he’s right. You gotta get outta here now.”
“But how did he—”
“That don’t matter. Let me call you a cab.”
“No, that’s okay,” Ellie said, shuddering at the thought of the rude driver from earlier. Instead, she followed Vito’s line of sight and saw that he was watching the strange man in the corner.
“Do you know him?” Ellie asked, but Vito put his finger to his lips.
“Never mind that right now. Use the side door and get out of here. I’ll make sure you aren’t followed, but you gotta listen to Julian on this one, got it?”
Ellie’s stomach jumped to her throat. Perhaps her earlier speculations about the mafia weren’t as wild as she thought.
“Uh, no actually, I don’t got it,” she said, her mouth suddenly going dry. “Vito, what the hell is going on?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I ain’t kidding, Ellie. You gotta get outta here.”
“Fine,” she said with a huff and slipped down the stairs and out the side door, where she could sneak down into the subway station unseen, just as she had done hundreds of times before, but this time, the fear was just a little too real. Luckily, a train was pulling into the station right as she descended the stairs.
It was still early enough in the evening that the subway car was full, but not rush hour full, so Ellie was able to find a seat and get her bearings. Somehow, her day had gone from simply bad to surreal and she still wasn’t sure what was going on. To make matters worse, the train she’d hopped was local. At every stop, she became less patient and more disturbed until finally, the hair on the back of her neck prickled its warning again. Keeping her head down, she looked around and let out a gasp.
Three seats away, the toad-like man from the bar sat staring at her. Alarms were going off in her head and she tried not to panic. At the next stop, Ellie got off the train and ran, feeling only a little shamed by the dirty looks she received for pushing past families with children and older people. She knew she was being rude, but she had to get out of the station. She only looked back long enough to see that she had been followed, but her new stalker was stuck behind a group of German tourists.
“Danke shoen,” she sang out under her breath as she flew up the stairs and into the deepening twilight. “Excuse me,” she muttered as her face made contact with the chest of a well-dressed commuter coming down the stairs. She side-stepped, intending to take off at a sprinter’s pace, but instead of the rude gesture or comment Ellie had come to expect from New Yorkers, an arm snaked out and caught her own, pulling her up the last few stairs and away from the flow of foot traffic. In a blind panic, Ellie tried to remember her self-defense training, but drew a blank and began to thrash wildly as an arm wrapped around her chest, holding her in place.
“Ellie, it’s me! Calm down, please! We have to hurry.”
“Julian?”
Ellie whipped her head around, but only had time to blink as her mother’s assistant released his arm from around her, but held her hand in a vice-like grip.
“We have to go,” was all he said as he took off, dragging along a confused Ellie, who stumbled a few times before catching up to his pace.
“How did you even know where I was?” she asked, completely baffled. Even if Julian had immediately left the airport and knew she was at MochaMoka, there was no way he could have known she was going to be on the subway, and there was certainly no way he could have known she would panic and get off where she did.
“There’s no time,” he said shortly, tightening his already painful grip on her arm.
“Hey, that hur—ugh!” Ellie’s protest died as she slammed into Julian’s back hard enough to knock the wind from her lungs.
“Why are we stop…ping…?”
The question trailed away as Gordon, the evening doorman at her mother’s building, opened the door for them with his usual plastic smile and formal nod.
“I don’t understand,” she said as Julian steered her to the elevator. She had gotten off the subway more than twenty blocks from the apartment, yet they had run the distance in what felt like a matter of minutes. Ellie hadn’t even been that fast when she was on the track team in high school and Julian, impeccably dressed in a full suit as usual, hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“No, I suspect you do not,” Julian said cryptically, not bothering to turn to look in her direction. At least he’d loosened his grip on her arm. “But you will.”
Chapter 3
Isa paced, practically wearing a groove into the expensive stone floor under her feet as she fumed, still angry at Julian for disappearing the moment their plane landed. Taking a commercial jetliner had been his idea, claiming that it would not raise suspicions, but Isa didn’t give a damn about suspicions. Her child was out there somewhere, wandering alone in a city that she had little love and less trust for.
It had been bad enough when Ellie announced that she wanted to go to school in New York, but there was absolutely no reason for her to rent an apartment when Isa had a perfectly safe property near enough to the university. The dingy and run down brick building on a dark side street that Ellie chose to make her home didn’t even have onsite security. The apartment would have been bad enough, but from everything she’d heard, Ellie hardly spent any time there, opting instead to wander around the unsafe neighborhood and hang out who knows where.
With a quiet electronic ding, the elevator door slid open. Ellie had barely stepped into the foyer before her mother was on her.
“Ellie! Oh, my baby! Thank the heavens, you are safe!”
The way Isa was crying and carrying on was disconcerting, as if she hadn’t seen Ellie in years rather than the mere weeks since her last visit to the city. Along with the baffling email and everything else that had happened since, the emotional outburst did nothing to put Ellie’s mind at ease. Isa was a loving mother, but she was typically far more reserved in her emotional displays.
“Of course I’m safe, Mom.” Ellie patted her mother gingerly on the back as she resigned herself to the little kid treatment. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Over her mother’s shoulder, she tried to question Julian, but he seemed to be deliberately avoiding her eye. Something was definitely up. Julian was usually personable at the very least. That he was being distant now was just an added layer of weirdness to an already bizarre day.
“Hmm?” Isa pulled away and blinked, looking at her daughter as if seeing her for the first time. “Nothing. No reason, sweetheart. You’ll always be safe as long as I have anything to say about it.”
“Isa.” Julian’s voice held the sharp hint of a warning.
Ellie was taken aback by the harsh and admonishing tone Julian used. Equally as confusing was the icy tone with which her mother replied.
“Patience, Julian. I’ll not worry my daughter needlessly.”
“Worry me about what?” Ellie asked but her question went ignored by her mother, who was still glaring at her assistant.
Julian let out an exasperated sigh and crossed his arms, still gazing absently out the window and not meeting the eye of either woman. To an outsider, the animosity between the two would have suggested a deep seated and ongoing feud, but to Ellie, it appeared as if alien pod-people had overwritten their personalities. The silence that descended was deafening, but despite all of her questions, Ellie didn’t
dare speak.
“Svoryk found her,” Julian said at last. His voice, devoid of all emotion, was like a gunshot in the silent apartment.
“Svoryk? Who’s that?” Ellie asked, noting with increased anxiety that the name definitely sounded Russian, but again, her question was ignored.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Isa countered, still glaring.
“Yes, we do.” Julian finally raised his eyes to meet Isa’s, albeit within the window’s reflection. “I saw him, Isa. Svoryk is here, in Manhattan, and he was following your daughter.”
Ellie thought of the toad-like man who had followed her from the bar. “You’re not talking about that little creep with the bulgy eyes, are you?”
At that her mother pulled her attention sharply away from Julian and gave her a nervous look.
“What are you talking about Ellie? When was this?”
“Uh, just now. I was down at Mo- uh, this place in Little Italy,” she fumbled. Considering that Julian had been harassing Vito, it was possible he’d already told her mother where she’d been, but she didn’t want to take any chances. Besides, they were being quite secretive themselves. “There was this guy who was kind of watching me. He didn’t act like press, so I figured he recognized me as your daughter. I mean, I’d had a creepy cab driver gab my ear off about you earlier in the day, so it seemed like the same thing. But Julian’s right, he followed me, but not for long. I’d already pretty much lost him by the time Julian showed up.”
She added the last comment mostly because her mother seemed genuinely freaked out by the possibility that he might have been this Svoryk that they were talking about, but also because she was getting the uncomfortable impression that Julian was making it sound as if he had rescued her.
“There is no losing Svoryk,” Julian’s tone was neutral, as if he was simply stating a fact. Ellie wanted to be mad that he’d contradicted her again, but instead found herself unnerved by his creepy and ominous declaration.
A Space Girl from Earth (The Kyroibi Trilogy Book 1) Page 2