“That’s the idea,” I snarl. “Where did Magda get the tape?”
“What tape?” He turns his head to the side and gulps air through his mouth. “Ah, fuck, that hurts.”
“The one she left at my place. Yesterday.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I push harder, inviting more swearing, this time mixed with snot and tears.
“An old tape. Home movie.”
“Fuuuuck. Stop.”
He squirms like a worm. I let go an inch, giving him room to breathe and speak.
He pants and hisses. “I dug up a video tape in the graveyard.”
“Which one?”
“Rosettenville.”
“Which grave?”
“Haynes, Charles.”
I shove again, inviting a howl. “He’s not dead. If you lie to me, you son of a bitch––”
“It’s his plot,” he screams, “for when he dies.”
“When?” I accentuate my urgency with putting strain on his elbow. “When did you dig it up?”
“Ah, fuck! For the love of God.” Air wheezes through his teeth when I let go. “Yesterday.”
“How did you know it was there?”
“Charlie.”
“He told you?”
“He told the shrink.”
“Who, Christopher?”
“Yessss.”
That bastard. That’s why Magda insisted on the hypnotherapy. She needed to find a tape she was looking for. Some pieces fall into place, but there’s still a big, dark hole in the middle of the picture.
“Why did she give the tape to my wife?”
“I don’t know! I don’t even know what’s on the tape.”
I reached my limit with Scott. He doesn’t know more. Gripping the gun by the barrel, I bring the shaft down hard on his head, knocking him out cold. Just in case, I retrieve the cable ties Magda keeps with various other torturing tools in the bottom drawer and tie his hands and feet. I put out a closed sign and lock the front door before heading to the back office to get my answers.
Magda hops from her chair and rounds her desk, calling for Scott before the door shuts behind me.
I advance on her. “He can’t help you.”
Her eyes slip to the gun in my hand. “Be reasonable, Gabriel.”
“Like you were when you gave Valentina the tape?”
She pales to the color of whitewashed wood, the surface of her skin uneven and rough. “She showed it to you?”
The diabolic side of me wants to play with her. A rabbit and a fox. “Were you hoping she wouldn’t?”
She holds up her palms. “All I wanted was for her to leave. I only wanted my son back.”
My voice grows louder with each syllable. “You thought she’d run knowing my goddamn father raped her.”
“Yes, I thought it would drive her away. You haven’t been yourself since she came into your life. She’s destroying you, just like she destroyed your father.”
“She destroyed him?” Every one of my limbs is shaking. “He’s the one who took her innocence, her youth––God, Magda, they beat her to an inch of her life––and she destroyed him?”
Her eyes are magnified behind her glasses. “She seduced him!”
“She was thirteen fucking years old,” I grit out.
“I saw the way he looked at her, even when she was that young. Do you know how that feels? It’s the way she walks, with her ass swaying and her tits pushed out. It’s what she wears, those short skirts and tight tops.” She points a finger at my chest. “She did it to him, and she’s doing it to you.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “How long have you known?”
She looks away.
“You will tell me,” I say. “Today’s the day we come clean.”
“You weren’t supposed to find out, not like this.”
No. Neither was Valentina. God, not like this. “I did, so start talking.”
She faces me slowly. “What are you going to do with the tape?”
She needs to understand how serious I am. I’ll frighten her into talking, and if that doesn’t work, I swear to God I’ll torture my own mother. “It will go to the authorities, the ones you don’t own.”
She trembles from the hem of her dress to her neatly trimmed hairline. “It’ll destroy us.”
“We’re already destroyed. It’s over, Magda. We’re over. The business is over.”
Her Adam’s apple bobs as she swallows. “Don’t do this, Gabriel.”
“Why not? My father is a rapist. My mother is a criminal, and I’m a killer.”
“We do what we must to survive.”
“Don’t fucking justify our sins.”
“You say that because you’re under her spell, just like your father.”
“No, Magda. I’m in love with her. I love her like I’ve never loved a woman. I’ll go to hell for her, and I won’t blink an eye to send you to jail for what you knew and covered up, so start talking.”
For five full seconds she stares at me. Just when I think she’s not going to answer, she says, “Your father thought he killed her. He said no one needed to know, so he told Barney to destroy the tape. Only, Barney never did. He held onto it, as a bargaining chip, maybe to blackmail your father with later, who knows? Valentina survived. We learned about it when she was already well on her way to recovery, because Marvin and Julietta kept it quiet. Your father––”
“Stop calling him my father.” I can’t stand to be related to him.
“Owen was sure Val knew their names. He arranged a hit to take out the whole family.”
Ugly words sit on the tip of my tongue, but I will them away so she can finish this nightmare of a story.
“Before the hit could take place,” she continues, “Barney ended up dead. Shot down in his own front yard. Then Marvin paid Owen a visit and said he had the tape. Got it from Barney. He gave us a printout that clearly showed your––” She catches herself. “That showed Owen’s face as proof. He said the tape was hidden, and if we touched his family, it would go to the police. At the time, when Owen was running the company, we didn’t have many connections in the force. The police were waiting for a reason to arrest Owen. Even a speeding fine would’ve done. We didn’t have a choice but to call off the hit.”
Now I understand why Magda worked so diligently to buy her way through the police force. There was method in her madness of having as many of them in her pocket.
“What was the payback?” Marvin would’ve wanted revenge and compensation for what had been done to his daughter.
She gives me a long, sad look. “You.”
I stumble a step, the full weight of my body pressing on my half-lame leg. “What?”
“The deal was that you’d marry the ruined Valentina, and Owen would give half of the business to Marvin.”
I battle to take in the information, but it makes sense. Marvin would not only get an upgrade in terms of a suitor for his daughter, but also a hell of a payback, not that any money could make up for what they did.
I force the question from my dry lips. “What happened?”
“Owen wasn’t going to let himself be blackmailed. Charles was fifteen and a dangerous factor to be reckoned with. He was protective of his sister. I told Owen Charles would never let this go. He would bide his time and take revenge. Not having a choice, Owen agreed to Marvin’s demands, but the minute Marvin was gone, Owen called in his guys and told them to find the tape and kill the Haynes’. Instead of a hit, it was supposed to look like an accident.”
“The car that went off the bridge…”
“Our men cut the brake cables.”
“Julietta?”
“The bank robbery was staged. She was the real target.”
“Why did Owen let the children live?”
“Owen spoke to Val at Marvin’s funeral. It was clear she didn’t recognize him. She didn’t put two and two together. You’ve seen from the tape…” She looks away again, u
nable to meet my eyes. “You’ve seen from the tape she never opened her eyes, and Charles wasn’t himself any longer.”
“Why take the risk?”
“Owen wanted that tape, and Lambert Roos told us Marvin had given it to Charlie to hide. Charlie was the only one who knew where it was. We tried talking to him after the accident, but Charlie couldn’t remember. He didn’t know what we were talking about. He was totally incoherent. A complete vegetable.”
“The mafia cast the Haynes kids out, and Lambert rejected Valentina. Owen ordered them to do it, didn’t he? Was it because Valentina was betrothed to me?”
“I had no intention of ever bringing that woman under our roof. Do you think I wanted a constant reminder by looking into her face, every day?”
“Then why tell Lambert to break off the engagement?”
“Owen didn’t want them to have the Portuguese mafia’s protection. If the truth came out, it would be a war between us and them.” Her eyes turn flat and shiny like silver coins. “No one was allowed to take her in, but no one was allowed to touch her or her brother, either. He said it was just until he’d found the tape, but I knew it was for a different reason.”
“What reason?”
“He became obsessed with her.”
“Why would you say that?”
She opens the top drawer of her desk. Taking out a scrapbook, she throws it in my direction. I stride to the edge with more doom than curiosity in my heart, but we’ve come too far not to break the lid wide open and let all the maggots out. Flipping open the pages, I reel in shock as I stare at photo after photo of Valentina, all taken from afar. I only get to the third page before my gut turns on itself and bile pushes up in my throat. That explains how Valentina survived—relatively––unharmed in Berea.
Magda splays her fingers and rests her fingertips on the desktop. “We kept on looking, searching everywhere. We turned their house upside down and swept every nook and cranny of Marvin’s workshop, but the tape never turned up. Yet, Owen kept on delaying their killing, using that damn tape as an excuse.”
“When Owen died you ordered Charlie and Valentina dead to prevent them from ever talking and to take revenge on Valentina for your unjustified jealousy. The debt was just an excuse so no fingers from the mob family could be pointed at you.”
“Yes. I paid Jerry to take Charlie to Napoli’s.”
“That’s why you had Scott shoot Jerry. No witnesses.”
“Yes.”
“The break-in in Valentina’s flat?”
“We’d searched the flat before, but when I heard she was selling it, I had to be absolutely sure the tape wasn’t there.”
Then I fell for Valentina, not only unknowingly honoring Owen’s promise to marry his only son off to the girl he raped, but also making Magda’s biggest nightmare come true, dragging the memories of my father’s hideous crime over her doorstep. What a big fucking ironic turn of events.
Her voice shakes. “I told you not to fall in love with her. I begged you.”
I’m dead inside for the people who conceived and raised me. My family no longer exists.
“Your brilliant plan to have Charlie hypnotized worked.”
“It did. He told Christopher where the tape was hidden.”
“And then you thought you could kill Valentina by showing her in brutal detail what the father of her husband did to her?”
“I’d never kill the mother of my grandchild. I only hoped she’d leave you.”
“Well, you almost killed her.”
“Almost?” she asks in a small voice, very unfitting for Magda.
“Valentina went into labor yesterday from shock. Not only did she almost lose my baby, she also almost died.”
Joy flares in her eyes. It’s brief, lasting only a split-second, but I don’t miss it. She would’ve been glad if Valentina was dead, maybe even relieved if my child was dead, too. This, I can’t forgive. I don’t care that she shot me and turned me into a killer. I enjoyed being feared. I won’t lie. What I won’t accept is a threat to my child and the woman I love, the woman this family has wronged in every way. We took her virginity, her parents, her brother, her home, her money, her fiancé, and her protection. We brutalized her, disfigured her body, destroyed her studies, her dreams, and her life. I forced my child into her body, and now she knows. She knows the ugly truth.
Magda breaks my train of thought. “What are you going to do, Gabriel?”
“Make this right.”
“I see.” Her tall, straight body hunches. She looks fifty years older. “This is what it comes to, then.”
“It should never have started.” Owen should never have laid a finger on Valentina.
Her gaze is desolate as it searches mine. “What now?”
“It’s in Valentina’s hands. It’s her call if she wants to lay charges or send the tape to the Jews.”
She purses her lips, as if in deep thought. After a while, she asks quietly, “Boy or girl?”
“It’s a boy. His name is Connor.”
“Connor. You kept it in the family. That’s nice. Gabriel…” She hesitates. “There is something you need to know about Carly’s death. I don’t think the baby was the reason for her suicide.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sylvia and Carly came over for lunch the day before she passed away. They had an argument about Carly going out to a party with her friends. Sylvia wouldn’t let her go. She said after what happened with the drugs she couldn’t trust Carly. Carly was being dramatic, accusing Sylvia of ruining her life. She said she’d rather be dead, and if she were, Sylvia would be sorry. I don’t think she meant to overdose on Sylvia’s sleeping pills. I believe it was another one of her attention seeking stunts that had gone terribly wrong.”
I don’t have to ask why she didn’t tell me before. She wanted me to feel guilty about keeping Valentina. It was a matter of, ‘See, I told you so.’ Nevertheless, some of the weight lifts off my shoulders.
“Thank you for telling me.”
She nods.
I look at her one last time, because when I walk out of here, I never want to lay eyes on her again.
“Goodbye, Magda.”
She doesn’t answer. She’s still nodding, her head bobbing up and down, when I leave her office without bothering to close the door. I don’t get as far as the front desk when the shot goes off.
16
Gabriel
The all too familiar sound of a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun tears through me. I stop dead. The metal explosion vibrates in my skull before the walls absorb the last echoes. My first reaction is to listen. For sounds of life? That she missed? I don’t know.
Silence.
My body is heavy. I’m slow in turning and heading back to the office. My fingers hesitate on the knob of the open door. I can’t breathe. It feels like I’m ten years old, under water in the swimming hole, counting to sixty. The weight of the door moves in my hand. I don’t want to push it open wider, but I don’t have a choice. Just like when I was twelve, Magda took my choice away when she pulled that trigger. The door swings open all the way, a crack of light falling over my shoes. I know what awaits, but the sight shakes me. Magda is slumped face-down on her desk, blood everywhere. In her hand, she clutches the gun with the ivory shaft, the same gun she used to shoot motivation into me.
Her unmoving body looks unreal. She’s too strong to be splayed out like this. Too proud. Too much of a fighter. This must’ve been the end of the fight for her. It sure as hell is for me. My chest deflates and rises. Air fills my lungs, one painful drag after another, while her words tumble around in my skull.
This is what it comes to.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I dial a friend, Captain Barnard at the Brixton police station, and explain what happened, minus the back history surrounding my father. Minutes later, detectives swamp the office.
Barnard gives Scott, who is coming to, a sidelong glance. “What happened to him?”
; “I restrained him for questioning.”
He writes something on a notepad and regards me from under his brows. “You and Magda had a fight?”
“A disagreement.”
“What about, if I may ask?”
“A family matter that concerns my wife.”
“I see.” He continues to scribble. “Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“It’s suicide then?”
“Yes.”
“Ah ha.”
“May I go? My wife just had a baby.”
“I’ll let you know if you need to come in for further questioning.”
Barnard’s tone borders on boredom. He wasn’t a friend of Magda, which is why I called him. He resented the criminality her loan shark business brought to an already crime-ridden Brixton.
Fighting claustrophobia, I rush outside and stop in the sunlight. What do I feel? Guilt? Relief? Sorrow? Pity? Magda and I were never close, but she was my mother. Good or bad, family is family, and I alone am left to carry the sins of ours. My life is falling apart, so I do what I’ve always done. I carry on.
The world weighs on my shoulders when I call Rhett to give him and Quincy the news before they see it in the media. Rhett offers to fetch me, but I decline.
“I do have another favor to ask,” I say.
Rhett is a reliable rock, as always. “Shoot.”
With the funeral to take care of, I won’t get around to everything. “Can you and Quincy help with some baby shopping?”
He hesitates for a heartbeat. If it weren’t for the circumstances, the fear in his voice would’ve made me smile. “What kind of shopping?”
“The stuff babies need. You know, a pushchair, car seat, crib, those kinds of things.”
He swallows with an audible gulp. “Uh … I guess.”
“Good man. Take my cheque book.” Rhett has signing power. “It’s in my office.”
“Wait,” he says when I’m about to hang up. “What colors? What models?” His tone rises with a hint of panic. “Where do you buy stuff like that?”
“You’ll figure it out. It’ll make Valentina’s life easier when she comes home.”
Mentioning Valentina seals the deal. There’s no lengths my guards won’t go to for my woman.
Consent (The Loan Shark Duet Book 2) Page 20