by Cassia Leo
“I’ve imagined this day a million times, but I never imagined you’d be the one holding my hand.” She wipes her cheeks and takes a deep breath. “I don’t think either of us will be sleeping tonight. Come have an espresso with me. I want to hear all your best stories about John.”
I sit at the breakfast table in her pristine white kitchen while she prepares us both an espresso. By the time she arrives at the table with our drinks and takes a seat next to me, there’s not a trace of moisture around her eyes. Just like Rebecca when she came back into my life last month. Unwilling to crumble until I showed her how good it felt to let go.
“John took me to Henry’s chop shop when I was sixteen,” I begin and she shakes her head in dismay. “Wait, it gets better.”
“I’m sure it does. Go on.”
I take a sip of my espresso, taking a moment to breathe in the warm earth aroma, then I continue. “I had just gotten my driver’s license and I was desperate for a car of my own. My ma couldn’t afford to get me a car and she was always working.” I glance at her to see if she’s getting uncomfortable with me talking about my mom, but she just stares at the table. “Anyway, I was itching to start hustling for John.”
“I thought this story was gonna get better,” Marie teases me.
I chuckle then I continue telling her the story of how John helped me get my first legit car — a ’67 Ford Mustang. I spent every night and every weekend in my garage working on that car for four months until it purred like a kitten. All he wanted in return was to be the first person I took for a ride in that baby.
This story gives Marie pause. She stares at the tiny espresso cup in her hands for a moment, digesting the story of this simple gesture of kindness. As if she’s trying to reconcile the John in my story with the brutal John Veneto we see portrayed on the news or the philandering husband she’s loved since she was a teenager.
“You never really know someone, you know?” She wears a weak smile as she slowly spins the espresso cup in her hands. “I thought I knew the kind of bastard he could be. But it wasn’t until he thought he was going to prison for the rest of his life that I finally began to see the John I fell in love with twenty-nine years ago. The kid who walked me home every day after school and waited until I was seventeen before he asked me out. Who the hell was I married to all these years? Because it wasn’t that kid and it sure as hell wasn’t the man who got you your first car.”
“Marie, we all make mistakes. The important thing is that he loved you.”
“Love is not enough, Marco. Love is just a feeling. It only means something when it’s acted upon. And John had a real sick way of loving me.” She turns and looks me in the eye. “Don’t make the same mistakes we made. Don’t hurt my little girl.”
“I would never. And I’m going to find her, Marie. I won’t stop looking until she’s home safe.”
She closes her eyes and grabs the bridge of her nose, pressing her fingers into the corners of her eyes. Then she lets out a soft whimper and finally lets go. I sit with her a while longer while she weeps and shares a few stories with me. All the stories are about her and John when they were kids, but the last story is about me.
“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this the last time you came here. A few years after Ella died, maybe four or five years, Lori Franco thought she saw someone who looked like you snooping around your old house. I told Johnny and he said it couldn’t have been you because you were living in some other country and you didn’t want nothing to do with that place. Was it you?”
I think back to the last time I snuck into Bensonhurst. It was five years ago. I’d been all over the world building connections as I started up Knox Security. It was my first night back in New York and I couldn’t help myself. I had to get a look at the old house. I wanted to know if the people who lived there looked happy. I wanted to know that it was possible for someone to still be happy in that house.
I had a crazy superstitious belief that if I looked through their window and saw a family watching TV together or having dinner together, that it would mean I had to give up my vendetta. Because my mother’s ghost was gone. She was at peace. I could let her go and move on.
But I looked through the window into that family’s living room and all I saw was a young teenage girl sitting on a sofa. She was hugging her knees to her chest and crying. She didn’t look anything like Rebecca, but I thought of Rebecca when I saw her. Then I thought of John and what he’d done to Frank Mainella. He wouldn’t want me to quit. He wanted Tony dead as much as I did.
“Yeah, that was me,” I say, swallowing the knot in my throat.
“That place got foreclosed on almost two years ago and nobody’s been in there since,” Marie continues as she gathers our espresso cups. “But I saw a couple of guys around there yesterday and I figured it was a couple of your guys.”
“You saw some guys around there yesterday?”
Her eyebrows knit in confusion. “They weren’t your guys?”
“Fuck!” Her eyes widen with fright. “I’m sorry, Marie. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just — I should have fuckin’ known!”
“You think… you think they have Rebecca there?”
I shake my head, trying to temper this insane hope churning inside me. “I don’t know. But I’m about to find out.”
I shoot up from my chair and head for the door with Marie on my heels. “Shouldn’t you get some backup or something? You can’t go there alone.”
“I’ve got one of my guys outside.” I turn around to face her when I reach the door. “Stay here. Don’t answer the phone and don’t answer the door for anyone. You got it?”
She nods and though I can see she’s worried sick, there’s a trace of hope gleaming in her eyes, as well. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
“And, Marco?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t show them any mercy.”
“I won’t.”
5
Rebecca
They’re moving us. Finally!
It took a little scheming on our part, and a couple of days of starvation, but Lita and I finally got them to move us out of this basement. Yesterday, we wrapped our breakfast of toast and eggs in large wads of toilet tissue and stuffed them into the toilet until it was completely stopped up. Then we slid our plates back through the flap in the door, empty and covered in blood-soaked tissue. The blood was actually from my finger. But it got their attention.
We finally heard one of our captors’ voices when the jerk came to pick up our plates and yelled, “What the fuck?” We screamed at him that we were both menstruating and the toilet was stopped up. We didn’t hear anything from any of them the rest of yesterday, and all day today.
We were beginning to think we’d made a grievous error, until they slipped a typed note, two silk hoods, and two pairs of handcuffs through the slot in the door. The note says to put our shoes on, then cuff one of our hands to the drain under the sink and use the other hand to put the hood over our head. They’re moving us tonight. Which means our plan worked!
They’re giving us ten minutes to get cuffed and ready for them to come down. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. This is our chance to make a run for it.
Lita’s gray eyes are dulled by the lack of food. She doesn’t usually skip meals. She usually eats six small meals per day. Her biological mother has diabetes and she insists that small regular meals will prevent her from getting it. Nevertheless, five days in a basement eating two to three large meals full of starch has given Lita major heartburn and deadly flatulence. Which has been a source of both tears and laughter for us in our basement prison.
“So you’re going to pretend to pass out from low blood sugar,” Lita whispers as we both sit on the wood floor beneath the utility sink and cuff ourselves to the drainpipe.
She’s the one with the family history of diabetes, but I’m the one who’s going to pretend to pass out. Not that we think they know anything about our family medical h
istory. But I agreed to be the one who fake-faints because I’m the one who took an acting class at Hunter College. Something I’m seriously regretting right now.
“What if they don’t care that I passed out? Or what if they try to force-feed me some candy or something?”
“Then we’ll go to Plan B.”
“Which is…?”
“Scratch, claw, punch, and scream.”
I haven’t told Lita about the possibility that I might be pregnant. It just seems so unlikely with Knox’s history; vasectomy reversals don’t always go well. And I don’t want to see the pity or relief in Lita’s eyes if we find out later that I’m not pregnant. Because, yes, it will be disappointing. No matter how hard I’ve tried not to think about what it would be like to have a child with Knox, I’ve had nothing but time to think about that for the past five days.
But time is running out. They’ll be down to retrieve us any minute now. I don’t have time to tell Lita all the details right now. But she needs to know why I can’t do what she just suggested.
“I can’t do Plan B. I might be pregnant.”
Her mouth drops open. “Oh, my God. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Like I said. I might be pregnant. I don’t know for sure yet.”
“You need to eat something. We never should have antagonized them.”
“You didn’t know they were going to withhold our food.”
“I’m so sorry. How are you feeling?” She uses her free hand to brush my grimy hair out of my face and something about this gesture gets me all emotional.
“Honestly, I do feel like I’m going to pass out any second here.” I grab my black silk hood and nod at the hood in her lap. “We have to put these on. They’ll be down here soon.”
We give each other a one-armed hug before we pull our hoods over our heads. My heart is thrumming loudly in my ears and pulsing in my fingertips. I’ve tried to stay hydrated since they stopped feeding us yesterday, but I feel lethargic and light-headed. I couldn’t fight off these guys; not even if they were the ones cuffed and blindfolded.
“I love you, Lita. Even if you were scheming to break up August and me for the past seven months.”
She chuckles, but I hear a trace of a whimper. “I love you, Rebecca. Even if you have terrible taste in men.”
The creak of the basement door swinging open makes me freeze. I can’t see anything through the black fabric, except the crack of light at the base of the hood where it rests on my chest. As soon as I hear the first footstep fall onto the wooden staircase, all I can hear is the thunderous pounding of my heartbeat. My entire body begins to shake as adrenaline is dumped into my bloodstream. My fingers get cold and numb as the blood rushes away from my extremities back to my vital organs.
My last thought before I pass out is that I don’t need to pretend anymore.
6
Knox
Dave MacMillan drove me to Marie’s tonight. Dave has only completed a few jobs with me. He’s a good guy. He came highly recommended from my top security adviser. He was Special Ops in Iraq for a few years before he took a private security job in Saudi Arabia. He’s a sharp shooter and his reflexes are better than Bruno’s and Billy’s, but he’s a hothead. He tends to act without thinking. With Billy dead and Bruno clinging to life in a Vermont hospital, Dave is my best alternative. I hope he doesn’t fuck this up for me.
“It’s one story with a basement. You approach from the front and sweep the first floor. I’m approaching from the alley. That’s most likely where they’re coming in and out. They may be hiding out in the garage or the shed.” We load up our holsters and pack some more ammunition in our pockets. I didn’t come prepared for this. No bulletproof vest this time. “Then we’ll rendezvous in the kitchen and you cover me as I go into the basement. Got it?”
He nods and the gleam in his eyes makes me a little nervous. It’s been too long since he’s been on one of these missions. He’s thirsty for blood.
We split up at the corner and I motion toward the alley to let him know I’m moving on. He continues down the street toward the house where I grew up. The place where it all began.
I get to the rear fence of the house on the corner and peek my head into the alley. The back of a white van is sticking halfway out of my old garage. The same garage where I brought to life a ’67 Mustang.
Either that’s a very long white van or these guys are headed out soon. As this thought crosses my mind, a big guy in dark clothing and a white knit cap appears at the back of the van. His hand is locked around the arm of a hooded figure. A female. She’s barefoot and thin, but way too tall to be Rebecca. It must be Lita.
She doesn’t fight him until he shoves her into the back of the van. Her long, thin legs flail out, trying to kick the guy as he walks away. He doesn’t pay her any attention as he disappears around the other side of the van.
My heart pounds as I anticipate where he went. Is Rebecca already inside that van or did he just go to retrieve her? My question is answered seconds later when the guy in the cap arrives at the back of the van. He’s carrying the limp body of a woman. Though she appears to be dead, her hands are still cuffed in front of her and her head is covered in a black hood.
It’s her.
My veins floods with pure madness and wild determination. I’m going to kill every last one of these motherfuckers.
My vision becomes more focused as my hearing is trained on every movement the guy in the cap makes. He sets Rebecca down in the back of the van and slams the doors shut. I wait for him to step away from the van, then I fire.
The shot sounds like a soft pop through my silencer. It won’t wake anyone in this alley. And the shot to the head sure put him to sleep. But this alley is bound to be crawling with goons in a matter of seconds.
Exactly what I’m hoping for.
The first one arrives to check on his buddy and I take a clean shot at the hand that holds his weapon. His gun skids across the pavement in the alley and the guy looks straight at me. From where I’m standing just thirty yards away, I smile then I pull the trigger once more and he falls slumped over his friend.
I don’t know what’s going on inside the house with Dave. But I’m guessing that most of these guys are already outside if they were planning on moving Rebecca and Lita tonight. They probably heard of Tony’s downfall in Vermont and now they’re enacting a new plan.
I see the muzzle of the gun first as it peeks around the corner of the garage, then a corner of the guy’s head. He needs to come out further if he wants to take a shot at me.
“I’m right here, motherfucker! Take your best shot!”
He steps out at the same time another guy steps out from behind the van. I take out the guy behind the van in one shot, but the other guy gets a shot off. It whizzes past my neck and gets my heart racing, but my next shot hits him in the chest.
Four guys. Could there be more?
As if I’ve asked this question to the heavens, I get a response a second later. “All clear! I’m coming out!”
It’s Dave’s voice. He steps into the alley and my muscles relax a little. He doesn’t appear to be shot. Not that I expected him to be. His aim is better than mine.
I race toward the garage, my chest ready to burst with a mixture of relief and worry. I’m finally going to see Rebecca. This five-day nightmare is almost over. Unless her limp body was an indication that I arrived too late.
I’m ten yards from the garage when the van backs up so fast, the tires squeal against the pavement. Whoever’s in the driver’s seat shifts into drive and takes off past Dave and down the alley away from me. Dave raises his gun and shoots at the driver’s side, but he hits the back window instead.
“Stop!” I roar at him. “Rebecca is in there, you dumbfuck!”
His eyes are narrowed as I approach him, still staring at the end of the alley where the white van got away. “Sorry, boss.”
I could rip this asshole to shreds right now. “Just get in the fucking car!”
I nod toward a sporty Cadillac STS that was parked next to the white van in the garage. It’s running with the keys in the ignition. Dave slides into the driver’s seat and peels out of the garage and down the alley after the van.
We catch up to the van on 65th Street. Then he heads straight onto the expressway. He’s headed for the bridge.
Good, he’ll have a tough time getting away when he hits the one a.m. pedestrian traffic in Chinatown. Once he’s on the expressway, he guns it and we stay on his tail at ninety miles-per-hour. He swerves to avoid the occasional car, but we never lose him.
Dave speeds up a bit until he’s almost on the van’s bumper. I point my gun at him and he slows down to put a safer distance between us and the van. I shouldn’t have to tell Dave how fucking important it is that we hang back. At this speed, a small tap on the bumper will send the van careening across the expressway.
I keep hoping that he’ll slow down to take one of the exits, or that we’ll hit some traffic, but neither happens. My stomach and jaw are clenched, waiting for him to get to the bridge. He’ll have to slow down at least a little when he hits the bridge.
Six minutes later, he slows down to sixty-five and gets into the right lane to take the bridge exit.
“Now?” Dave asks.
“Not yet. Let them get on the bridge first.”
The van slows down even more to take the curve on the exit ramp. When the curve ends, Dave glances at me.
“Not yet. The guardrail is only a few feet high here.”
As soon as I say this, the van speeds up to get onto the bridge and Dave speeds up. As soon as we pass the green and white sign for FDR Drive, and the metal railing encloses us on all sides like a cage, I give Dave the green light.
“Pull up on his left.”
Dave pulls into the left lane and speeds up a little so I can take out the left rear tire before he can speed up any more. The van swerves a little. The tire shreds and flies off, but it only slows him down a little. I nod my head and Dave takes us over to the other side and I shoot out the other rear tire. This causes him to lose control and the van slides into the guardrail on the right side of the bridge.