AMBER_His to Reclaim

by Theodora Taylor

  “The only thing that’s happening when we find that traitorous bitch is a bullet through her thick head,” Stone answers, his voice low and dangerous as he towers over me.

  Something inside my chest eeps, like a mouse. But then I reset. Amber wouldn’t back down from this psycho and neither will I. “Over my dead body.”

  “Believe me, I have no problem with arranging that. You and her, side by side. Then you can finally have what you want, instead of stringing my brother along.”

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “You heard me, you fucking lesbo—”

  My knee comes up with a mind of its own as if suddenly remembering all the basic self-defense lessons Amber’s ex-boyfriend taught me about fighting a larger opponent. And—oh my God. It actually works. Stone’s behemoth body drops to the ground, and he cups his junk, writhing around on the ground in pain, just like in the movies.

  “What the hell did you do to him?”

  Uh-oh. Looks like Luca has come out of his window trance, and he’s glaring at me for taking down his ace boon goon.

  At first, I don’t know what to say, but then I glare down at Stone and tell him, “On behalf of the LGBT community, I’ll thank you for taking that derogatory term out of your vocabulary.”

  I’m a kind person. I’ve spent my life trying to be kind and help others. But I can’t say I’ve ever felt as much satisfaction as I do, when Stone just groans, still in too much pain to respond. I mean, there’s a good chance he might pull his gun and shoot me for daring to incapacitate him like this, but hey, worth it, just for this moment.

  “Whoa, what the hell?” a voice asks behind me.

  I whip around, then double take when I see who’s standing just outside the office door, “Diamond?”

  Amber’s strange assistant takes a neon purple hairband off her wrist and scrapes her waist-length lime green braids into an up ponytail. “We doing this?” she asks. “Because if that big dude laid hands on you, I’m definitely down to fuck him up. Just let me take out this nose ring.”

  “No! No,” I answer before she can reach for the hoop pierced through her septum. “I’m not fighting him.”

  Diamond blinks at me, her bright yellow werewolf contacts, shimmering behind her huge round glasses. “Then why’d you dick kick him like that?”

  Instead of replying to that question I cross my arms and ask, “What are you doing here anyway?”

  As if in answer, Luca who’s now beside me says, “Diamond?” He eyes the ghetto fabulous nerd up and down. “That’s your name?”

  “One of them,” she answers, eyeing him with the same hard suspicion as she enters the room. Then noticing Joey, she says, “Hey? How you?” with a chin-up nod.

  “How did you get all the way up here, without alerting the guard downstairs at the elevator?” Joey demands, grabbing her arm. Then he says to Luca, “I’m sorry, boss, I’ll go deal with Gio right now.”

  “C’mon, leave Gio alone. Nobody needs to get dealt with today,” Diamond answers. She snatches her arm back from Joey, before directing her offended yellow gaze at Luca. “I’ve been staying a few floors down in one of them empty money washer units of yours since January. So it was just a matter of figuring out how to get into the private elevator from my floor.”

  Luca squints. “And you managed to do that in five minutes?”

  Diamond just snorts and asks, “You got that phone for me or what?”

  “Yeah, right here,” Luca says, handing the burner to her.

  I continue to shake my head as I watch Diamond go over to Luca’s desk and pull out her laptop. I still don’t understand why Diamond’s here, or “Why do you need that phone? I don’t care what Luca told you, nothing on it is true. Amber wouldn’t do this.”

  “Yeah, I already know that,” she assures me. “But if I have the number, I can access Peretti’s phone and see who else he was texting before Amber suddenly disappeared.”

  Then she glances up at Luca to say, “Gimme ten minutes and I’ll …” She trails off, her eyes shifting to something behind us. “Wow, looks like I already figured out who your real mole is.”

  Both Luca and I turn around to look at whatever Diamond’s staring at behind us only to get met with the sight of Joey.

  He’s still standing at the office door.

  But now he’s got a gun in his hands.

  22

  Desafinado

  Amber

  “No… Listen to me, Tiff… listen. We can’t…. I don’t care… Petie’s decided…. He says it’s got to be the both of them…. Because he’s my brother, that’s why… Family comes first… you know that…no, the baby’s not family…not really…How many times do I have to tell you…?”

  I sit next to Rock’s cold body with my knees pulled to my chest and wonder why Lucky isn’t crying through all of this. Danny’s been yelling at his girlfriend for what feels like eons. So loud, that I can hear them all the way downstairs, which means little Luca Jr. has to hear them on the same floor. But maybe he, too, somehow gets that this fight is the only reason we’re both still alive. At least for now.

  According to their argument, Peter’s already given Danny Jr. the kill order. For both of us. But Tiff, who seems to be even more of a magical thinker alcoholic than my mother, is adamant about just killing me and hanging on to the beautiful little baby boy to raise as her own. “He’s too precious to kill!” she insists, her words slurred with booze. “C’mon, Danny…”

  She whines yes, and Danny Jr. yells no. Like Luca Jr. is a puppy she wants to keep. Meanwhile, Danny Jr.’s voice becomes more and more impatient the longer his girlfriend keeps him from finishing the job Peter has tasked him.

  I’m inside the cell now instead of my childhood bedroom. And, of course, there’s a dead body just a few feet away. But other than that, I’m a kid again. Listening to my mother pick a fight with my father just before he’s about to leave out the door to return to Boston. She begs, her voice broken and desperate. But my father insists he has to get back to the city. He’s got important work to do for the Romanos, he claims. Even though, they both know this argument is really about him returning to his real family in West Roxbury.

  “Conversation’s done, Tiff. Now move, I’ve got to dispose of that body downstairs and get everything else set up for Petie.”

  “Petie, Petie, Petie,” Tiff whines in the teary way of heavy drinkers. “That’s the only one you care about. You don’t love me like you said…you’re just his servant.”

  “Fuck, Tiff, just get out of my way! GET OUT OF MY WAY!” Danny Jr. bellows.

  I stiffen. Expecting to hear the door at the top of the stairs open next. But no, Danny Jr.’s girlfriend doesn’t get out of his way. In fact, her whining escalates to a full on litany of her misery. She screeches about the same things as my mother. That she never should have let him do this to her. That she should leave him. That he’s just a no good motherfucker who’s ruined her life.

  Only the voice is different.

  “You’re drunk, and the sun hasn’t even set. You think you could take care of a baby the way you drink?”

  Another flashback, this time of my mother passed out in the living room when my dad stopped by for an unannounced visit. Dad, standing over her prone body on the couch, and muttering to me, “She promised me she’d stop doing this if I let her keep you.” Then picking her up and carrying her back to her room.

  That’s why he always called first toward the latter half of their relationship, I suddenly recall. So he wouldn’t waste a drive.

  Strange what you forget. The kind of sainthood mothers are allowed when they die too early.

  But now long forgotten memories wash over me like a brand-new wave.

  “Fuck me? Fuck YOU, Tiff, don’t talk to me that way. Don’t ever—”

  The argument upstairs takes an unexpected turn when the sound of a hard smack replaces whatever Danny Jr. was going to say next. Too dull to be a slap or a backhand, though. A punch, I realize with a thunder
ing heart.

  Then comes Danny Jr.’s voice yelling, “See what you made me do? Get out of my fucking way, bitch, and lemme do this job already!”

  Not like my parents, I amend, coming to my feet. My dad would never hit my mom. No matter how much vitriol she threw his way when it was time to go. And my mother would never stand up to my dad the way Tiff is now, despite getting hit.

  “I want that baby. That baby is mine!” Tiff screams, her voice ragged and crazed. “I deserve him. I’m not moving until you promise me.”

  “Get out my way!” Danny keeps on yelling back.

  And then comes another smack. Louder and harder than the first. “Why do you always make me fucking do this to you?”

  Tiff cries out, and I recall my father sighing at the dinner table, telling my mother and me the story of how Danny Jr. got kicked out of his fancy private school for hitting a girl who made fun of his cowlick.

  “If it was a boy I wouldn’t have cared. But he’s too big to be hitting girls. Told him that. But that kid, he doesn’t listen. You shoulda heard him. ‘It’s all her fault! She was making fun of me!’ Whiny like a baby. I tell ya, I worry about that boy. He thinks the world owes him something just for being born, and he doesn’t listen when I tell him the world doesn’t owe him shit on a cracker. He’s not like you, Bel.”

  He’s not like you, Bel.

  I’d preened under the compliment, proud as a secret peacock. Because it had just been another story back then. One of many comparisons Daddy had made between his real children and me. And my heart had swelled with the certainty that even though I only got his leftover time, I was the child he loved the most.

  But it’s not just a story now. I listen to Danny Jr. hit his girlfriend while accusing her of bringing it upon herself. Again and again, until I can’t stand it anymore, can’t sit there quietly, while a woman like my mother gets wailed on by the man she shouldn’t love.

  “Stop it!” I scream up the stairs. “Leave her alone! If you want somebody to hit, come down here and hit me.”

  “Shut up!” he roars from up above. “Shut the fuck up, bitch!”

  I clamp my mouth closed, but only because the sound of hitting has stopped. My hands tighten around the bars, waiting to see what he’ll do next. If he’ll come downstairs….

  “Tiff? Tiff? C’mon, wake up, baby, I’m sorry. I was just trying to…trying to get you to move…make you see reason. C’mon, wake up, baby,” His voice is an angry snivel now. Like a little boy apologizing for the stolen candy he already ate.

  But no answer comes, and the next thing I hear is several curse words, and then…an anguished cry, guttural and wild. “Oh God…oh God…look what she made me do!”

  I cover my mouth with my hand, suspecting but not wanting to believe the worse.

  “She made me do it. She made me!” he yells out as if trying to explain himself to some unseen God. Then he says, “Okay… okay… I gotta… I gotta clean this up. Stay here. I’ll be back. I gotta go out to the shed. Just stay here, okay?”

  I imagine Danny Jr. talking to his unconscious or worst, dead wife, telling her body to stay right where it is. And am not surprised when no answer comes. Then there are footsteps, heavy and grave, but fading.

  He’s leaving! I realize. But where is he going?

  I listen and listen, cursing my blindness in ways I never have before, as my ears strain to hear anything. Anything at all.

  But then I do hear something. The whining creak of the door to the basement opening, followed by soft footsteps on the wooden stairs.

  Tiff? The name clogs in my throat, as the footsteps get closer and closer. I want to call out, see if she’s alright after what sounded like a severe assault, but the footsteps… they’re not right. They’re coming down the stairs too fast to be a woman who just survived a beating from a man as big or maybe even bigger than my father. But if it’s not Tiff, who could it be?

  The footsteps stop. Right outside my cell. I can sense whoever it is taking in the dead body inside the cage…and me. Dread goosebumps my skin, and it takes every ounce of discipline I have to wait…wait for whoever it is to speak first.

  However, my heart freezes inside my chest when I get my wish. “Please help me,” the voice cries, soft and scared. “Mommy’s hurt bad. She’s not…she’s not breathing.”

  The voice is small, high-pitched. And I’ve done enough IEP consults to guess the gender and age. Six or seven. And, oh God…it’s a girl. Danny Jr. wasn’t talking to God or his dead girlfriend, but to his child. He and Tiff had a daughter. Just like me.

  23

  Ave Maria

  Luca

  “Are you there yet?” the question appears on my phone just as Holt’s pilot flies me, along with Stone, Gio, and two other Ferraro soldiers toward the coordinates Diamond managed to peel off Peretti’s burner phone.

  I glance over at Stone, who’s staring out the window, face so expressionless, you wouldn’t be able to guess he added another body to his count less than an hour ago. He probably wouldn’t be sending Naima any thank you cards for that dick kick anytime soon. But if not for her dropping him the way she did, Stone wouldn’t have been in the perfect position to pull his own gun without drawing Joey’s attention and end my traitorous personal guard’s life with a couple of pops.

  “How much longer?” I ask him, yelling into the mic of the aviation headphones we’re wearing, to be heard over the relentless drumbeat of chopper blades.

  “We just passed over the Housatonic,” Stone answers, his voice as flat as mine is loud.

  So that was what the dark, tree-lined river below is called. “That means we’re close?”

  “Almost there,” he answers.

  Almost there…but what if we’re already too late?

  I shake my head, refusing to go down that road, refusing to consider anything but the best outcome as I type back “Almost there” to Diamond.

  “Just pulled a message from Peter telling his brother to finish the job,” comes the return message. “It was time stamped an hour ago. You need to be there faster than almost there.”

  We’re in a helicopter. There ain’t no faster than that. But damn, if I don’t agree with Diamond. It’s already taking everything civil inside of me not to pull a gun on Holt’s pilot and tell him to step on the gas. So I decide not to return Diamond’s text.

  But less than a minute after making that decision, my phone explodes with a call from an unknown number. Guess Diamond doesn’t like getting ignored either. I accept the call and push my phone under one headphone, just to remind the green haired hacker, “Look, Diamond, I’m just as on edge about this shit as you. Even more, because it’s my—”

  “Luca? Luca? It’s me!” Amber’s voice comes down the line, shaking with urgency. “I didn’t leave you. It was my brothers. They kidnapped the baby and me. I’ve got Lucky with me now, but Danny Jr’s on his way back to the house…”

  Strange, how the question that had kept me from coming after her immediately is now entirely beside the point. So useless, I’m sorry I ever asked it. I just want to get to her.

  And I hate this ugly déjà vu. I might be in a helicopter right now, but my heart is thundering just as bad as it did when I ran that ten-city blocks to get to her side.

  “Baby, it doesn’t matter,” I tell her. “I know where you are and we’re coming to get you. We’re almost there.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Then her voice dips away from the phone as she says, “He says he’s on his way, and he’ll have reinforcements. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  At first, I think she’s talking to Lucky. But then a voice answers, “No, it’s not. He’s coming back! I see him through the window. He’s coming back from the shed right now!”

  I frown. The voice sounds small. Like a little girl’s.

  Amber curses. But then comes a beat of heavy silence, and I can imagine her, doing what she always does instead of panicking. Figuring out her next move.

  I’m proven right
when her voice sounds, from further away this time, issuing orders. “Daniella, here, come take your cousin. Hold him tight around his torso, yeah, like that. And you’ll have to be careful when you’re walking down the stairs. Are there any other keys to that cell other than the ones you used to let me out?”

  “No, those are the only ones,” the girl answers, her voice trembling with fear.

  “Okay. Good. Go down to the basement. Take the keys and lock yourself and the baby in the cage with them. Don’t come back up here. Don’t come out. No matter what you hear. No matter how your father threatens you. Not until a man named Luca gets here. He’s the only person you can trust right now, so don’t give the keys to anybody but him. Do you understand.”

  “Y-yes, I understand,” the voice answers bravely. But it sounds like she’s crying, when she asks, “Is Mommy…is she going to wake up.”

  “Oh, baby, I’m sorry, but no. She’s asleep forever, just like my mommy. And I’m sorry to put this on you, but the only way we’re going to be able to keep the same thing from happening to you and your cousin is for you to go downstairs and lock yourself away before your father gets here.”

  “Amber, how about you?” I ask.

  While at the same time, the little girl sniffles and says, “But how about you?”

  Amber doesn’t answer either of us. Just yells. “He’s coming in the door. Go! Go now!”

  The sound of footsteps, then Amber’s voice is directly in the phone again, her words tumbling out in a breathless rush. “Okay, baby, I love you. I just want you to know that. I didn’t leave you. All I wanted was this family with you. And if we can’t have that because of what I tried to do before I decided to remarry you—I’m sorry. Please know I couldn’t be sorrier about bringing Peter into this. Now… please start recording.”