by Cat Mann
Chapter 29
Disappear
“How come your feet are always so dirty, Max? Where do you walk when I’m not watching you, huh? I’ve never seen feet this dirty before in my life.”
He giggled, sucked in a breath of air and sank below the bubbles in the tub. The washcloth was working overtime as I scrubbed black, charcoal-like smudges away from the bottoms of Max’s peachy feet and removed globs of sand and God knows what from between his very small toes.
He was talking again. Ever since Max had said goodbye to Lola Gallo at The Rangers game, he had been back to his normal three-year-old self. It was as if he had never really stopped talking to begin with. Max was carefree again and his cheery talkative self helped ease the strain and stress between Ava and me.
“Alright.” I rubbed my knuckles on the top of his sodden, water-logged hair. “Come up for a breath.” I pulled the plug when he didn’t float to the surface. I was in a hurry to get to Ava. I was in a hurry to talk.
Max’s grimace became more and more pinched as the water slowly seeped away and circled down the drain.
“Sorry, Buddy, it's too late tonight to play any longer.” I was prepared for Max’s post-bath, naked dash through the house and already had the door closed with me blocking it, a towel in my hand and his pajamas sitting on the countertop.
Running the towel through his springy hair, I couldn't help but crack a smile. Ava had attempted to give him a trim a couple of weeks earlier and the makeshift haircut had not gone as she had hoped. Max ended up with a major chunk being snipped right from the top of his head. He looked pretty silly for a number of days. Now, hair all grown back cartoonish and floppy with chocolate brown tufts poking through in all directions, Max looked like...well, like me. An outsider could look at the two of us together and would never question whether or not I was his biological father. It was the Greek in us – dark eyes, dark hair and an olive undertone that only became more evident in the California sun.
I wasn’t sure, but I think Max had forgotten Maya, his grandmother. He no longer asked about her. He had stopped mentioning her altogether. His own parents had been killed when he was slightly more than an infant and so new to the world that he had no recollection of them or of the scary night of their deaths. I think he believed Ava and me to be his birth parents. Our family felt so right. He fit into our life so perfectly that I sometimes forget someone else, another set of loving parents, doted on him and kissed him and loved him. I was sad for them. I hope that Ava and I made them proud, if they were watching from above. I hope we were raising Max the way they had planned to.
“There.” Yanking his pajama shirt over his pouty lip, I tossed him over my shoulder to ensure he could not escape me. “Time for bed, sweet boy. You can pick one book.”
Max contemplated his bookshelf for several minutes before choosing the same title that he had chosen for the last four nights.
“No, no, we can’t do that one tonight.” Max’s pick came from the French shelf. “Your Mama isn’t reading to you tonight, she’s in the shower, you’re stuck with me, Buddy. Pick a book from the English shelf.”
“Daddy.” This really upset him. He liked the French stories better because Ava read them with so much animation, her accent is cute and her language was interesting. It is always fun listening to her speak and watching her eyes sparkle. A deep whine started to rumble from the pit of his stomach, his lip trembled and his eyes started to tear in preparation for a tantrum.
“Okay, okay, I’ll try … I have heard Ava read you La Lune enough times, I can maybe swing it.”
“K.” His eyes dried quickly, Max smiled triumphantly and carried his little story over to his bed and crawled between the sheets.
“If I come across a word I don’t, know will you help me?” I asked.
He nodded proudly that I had asked him for assistance and I read what I had memorized from Ava. “La petite souris a pris une bouchee de la lune…”
Max snuggled into my arm. He pointed to the pictures the way that Ava does and said the French word and then the English word. “La Lune. Moon.”
“Oui, la lune, c’est the moon.” I said what Ava always says.
“Souris.” He pointed at the tiny mouse on the page.
“Oui, tres bien. Souris, c’est mouse.”
I read the book twice before Max fell asleep. Easing him onto a pillow, I kissed the top of his head goodnight, flipped off his lamp and closed the door behind me, making my way straight to Ava.
I could always find her in our bedroom. The space was our mecca, our meeting point, the nerve center of our whole home. It is where Ava and I do nearly everything – we eat, work and sleep in there, and, most importantly, we do all of our serious talking in bed. Our first real conversation ever was in her bed. I learned everything about Ava when her head was on a pillow and her smile was sleepy.
We have shared a number of firsts together in our bed, and despite our setbacks and tragedies, Ava and I know that we are blessed people. We count our blessings daily and take nothing for granted. Our home is one of those amazing blessings. It is a piece of art. The space is open and the view from every window is spectacular. Reclaimed wood merges seamlessly with clear glass. We want nothing more than to be at peace in this home but I am willing to leave it all behind and never look back if I can keep my family safe from what is hunting us.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” I saw her straight away, as soon as I opened the bedroom door. She was perched in bed, on top of the blankets with dewy eyes. Her hands rested on either side of her cute baby bump. “Are you okay? Is it the baby?” At the very end of September, we were three short weeks away from the baby’s due date.
“You are such a good father to him.”
My eyes narrowed and Ava’s head tilted in the direction of Max’s monitor where a small green light glowed from the on switch.
“Ah. You heard La Lune, huh? Did I butcher it?”
“You didn’t butcher the story at all. I love hearing the two of you together. It makes me really happy.”
I took my place in bed beside her and pressed a kiss to Ava’s temple. “We need to talk.”
She nodded.
“What do you know about the Ziloti, Ava?”
“I really don't know much about them at all.”
“How have you heard of them before? Tell me what you know.”
“I found some information about them last year when I was researching everything I could on The Kakos, trying to figure out who No. 7 could be. Andy suggested to me that I look into the Ziloti for clues. They are a group of Kakos cohorts. He passed along a list of names for me to look through. There were about twenty people on the sheet, most from the Chicago area. I told you about it – remember? Dr. Steven Spruce was a Ziloti, he is the man who killed my mother.”
“I remember. Do you still have the list?”
“No. I had the paper folded away in the journal and it has gone missing.”
“Damn.”
“Ari, I researched every name on that list. Most of the Ziloti on it were very old men, a lot of them had already died, some were in prison serving life sentences and a few were living double lives throughout the county and one or two of them had moved on to Europe. They didn’t pose a threat to me. None of them did. Believe me, I looked, I checked everything. From what I gathered, Ziloti are the people who sided with The Kakos – so, for instance, my father was a Ziloti and so were Julia’s parents. When my father and when Julia’s parents tried to sever ties with The Ziloti, they were murdered.
“That’s it. That's who is after you. This group, The Ziloti, they want you. You killed The Kakos, their leaders, and now they are after you for revenge.”
“I don’t think anyone is after me, Ari.”
“It’s obvious that someone is after you, Ava. Our house was broken in to twice, Jesus Christ, that poor cat! They had our house bugged! They’ve been watching you.”
“If someone wanted me, Ari, then why
haven’t they tried yet? I am just sitting here – pregnant and defenseless. If someone is trying to choose my fate, I would be the first to know.”
“Are there more of them? Are there more members of this group that weren’t on the list?”
“I can only assume that there are. Your father provided me with just those twenty names but this is a highly secretive cult-like society of people. We may never know who is really a member and who isn’t.”
“How did my dad know?”
“Umm… He had a friend who was providing him with the information. Andy never said who that person was that was helping him but the man sent him the names and Andy forwarded the documents to my email.”
“Your email!” Do you still have it?”
“No.” She chewed a lip. “I deleted everything after the research was done. I didn’t know how closely No. 7 was watching me. I thought I was playing things safe that way. I printed the documents and put them in my mother’s journal. I didn’t think anything would happen to that silly journal.”
My cell phone was on the nightstand. Scooping it up, I dialed my dad.
“Ari,” he answered, “is everything alright?”
“Yeah, hey, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“I need you to tell me about The Ziloti. I need to know what you know. I think they may be the ones behind all this. I think they may after Ava.”
“Shhh, Ari,” he whispered.
“What?”
In a louder voice he went on, “Your mother is looking forward to the gala this weekend. She said she was helping Ava earlier today.”
“What?”
“We will see you both this weekend. Give Ava my love...” and then he hung up.
“What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Her face scrunched.
The panic buzzed through me, a shooting wave of nerves like a warning. Something was happening. Something bad and my father knew it.
“Run away with me, Ava.”
“Are you okay, Ari?”
“As long as I have you, I am fine. Let’s disappear. We have three weeks. We can stay here until the baby comes, but we need to start arranging it now. We can get everything together and no one will know. Once it's safe for you and the baby to travel, we will go.”
“No! What are you talking about?”
“We aren’t safe here. I don’t know what's going on, but I know that we aren’t safe.”
“What about your family? We can’t leave them.”
“I love them, but you are my family now. My promises belong to only you. My heart belongs to only you, Max and our baby. You’re my nucleus. We need to leave.”
“Where will we go?”
“Wherever you would like. Tell me where you would go.”
Her eyes narrowed with the furrow in her brow.
“Don’t be scared. This doesn’t have to be scary. Let’s play a game… Just close your eyes and think about where you would go in life if nothing were holding you here. Okay? Just a game…”
“Okay.” She nodded and closed her eyes. “Um, first, I would go to Greece.”
“Greece?”
“Yeah. Definitely Greece. We would spend a year there in the little house where Maya lived with Max. We could experience the culture first hand and learn the real spoken language. Then we could spend some time on the Isle of Hydra. We would live like the islanders – with no cars, internet or TV. We would get our dry goods delivered to us on the back of a pack mule and you would fish and we would eat your day’s catch for dinner every night.”
“Good. Then what?”
“I want to go to Spain.” Her eyes sparkled with a little excitement. “I want to stare out at the Rocks of Gibraltar from my bedroom window. The Barbary apes will climb up to our balcony and sneak pieces of our breakfast when we aren’t looking.”
“I like that.”
“After Gibralter, we would move along to Croatia. You would teach Max how to sail and we would live on a big, beautiful yacht just off the coast.”
“You're afraid of the water, Ava.” My lips pecked her forehead.
“I'm not afraid of anything when I'm with you.”
“Good.”
“We would do the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. We would spend our Christmases in Paris and our New Year's Eves at a quiet cottage in Wales. We’d visit Vienna and watch an Opera in the park and then bring freshly cut roses to Sisi’s tomb in Austria. I want to push the baby in a stroller down a patch of The Great Wall of China while you carry Max on your shoulders and I want to take them to the hidden beach in the Marieta Islands in Mexico. We would see the pyramids, the Galapagos Islands and gaze upon the Northern lights. We would do whatever we wanted.”
“Let’s go, Ava. We can do all of that.”
“Our leaving would break your mother’s heart. We have a life here. Max is happy here. I am happy here. We are settled, Ari. I love this house, this room, this life. I don’t think I can leave it.”
“My mother will understand. She ran away from her own family, remember? She understands love and sacrifice better than most. We'll be happy anywhere, Ava, as long we're together. I promised you that I would keep you safe. That is my duty and leaving here is the only thing that we can do to keep you away from harm.”
She stared out of the window at the dark beach.
“Ok.” Her decision made her sad.
“Greece?”
“Greece,” she nodded.