by S I Taylor
He leaned closer to her as he sat on the bed. He touched her face, caressing her features.
She leaned into his caresses. “McKinley, we live in different worlds. Even though I wasn’t the killer, I could’ve been. I’ve done some bad things to good people and to bad people as well. You’re an honest man making an honest living and I don’t deserve you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve done things too. I haven’t met someone who entices me as much as you. I know of your past and there’s nothing that you can do to surprise or change my feelings.”
“McKinley, I… I… I can’t—I just…”
He cut her off and their lips collided.
They both sensed that they had a strong connection. He’d known it from the day he cuffed her to the bed. She’d known it the moment she saw his tattoo and the countless times he’d had the opportunity to turn her in or kill her, but he hadn’t.
They pulled apart and looked into each other’s eyes.
“Barbara, I like you, and if you ever think that we could someday be together, call me.”
She looked at him and then she looked down at her hands. A tear left her eye and she knew that this meant goodbye. She couldn’t pretend to be someone other than herself. Even if she didn’t revert back to her previous life, she knew he was too good for her.
He gave her one last kiss and got up from the bed.
“Barbara, I know you will call me, so this is not a ‘goodbye,’ but an ‘I’ll see you soon.’ I’m staying at the hotel near the sheriff’s department. I’ll be leaving by the end of the week. If you think that there can be something between us I’ll be there waiting,” he told her as he left the room.
She only stared after him and hoped that things between them were different. She thought about Nixon and realized that this was just how his obsession for her had started. Leading him on and never finishing.
“No, I’m not going to victimize him. I told him I didn’t want anything. He did this to me. He did this to himself,” she said aloud, “I’m not letting history repeat itself. I need to get my personal life in order.”
“Hello, Ms. Wolf, my name is Chief Agent Buchanan from FCCA.”
“Don’t tell me you’re here to arrest me?”
“No, on the contrary I have a proposition for you.”
“I already told Agent McKinley that I’m not testifying.”
“It’s something better than that. If you give me a few minutes of your time I can explain.”
“Sure, make yourself as comfortable as you can.”
He walked toward the second armed chair and moved it closer to the bed.
Chapter 48
The day after, her nurse came in to take her vitals and give her the last dosage of her pain medication.
“You’ll be ready to leave here tomorrow,” her nurse said.
“That’s great,” she said, but where would she go? She couldn’t return to the old basement. She could ask Lori to room with her until she found another place and with the money she had in her account she could leave Huntersville for good.
“I’ll be back to give you your lunch,” the nurse said.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, dear.”
Barbara watched as the nurse left the room. She lay in her hospital bed and saw a tall dark-haired man, well-dressed in a tailored three-piece suit, enter her room. Two other men accompanied him, also wearing tailored suits.
“Tony, Gianni,” the tall man said to them, “wait by the entrance.”
They both nodded, closed the door to her hospital room and stood outside.
She recognized the man.
“Hello, Miss Wolf, I’m Nicholas Trivaldi, Senior. I’m sure you heard of me, as your friend murdered my only son,” he said in his Italian accent.
Fuck, I wasn’t expecting a visit from him, she thought. She squirmed in her bed then sat up straight, looking at him. He must’ve sneaked past the nurses’ station to get to her room. “What do you want?”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Miss Wolf. This isn’t the way to greet the only victim in this fucked-up scenario you caused.”
She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “I have nothing to tell you but to give you my condolences.”
“I want my son back!”
“Unfortunately, he’s dead and I can’t bring him back, but if I could I would. Besides, I didn’t do anything to him.”
“No, but you played a role in it.”
“I was paid to be there. He took me somewhere against my will, drugged me, raped me, and physically assaulted me, so I don’t owe you shit,” she said, gritting her teeth.
“You have two things that you took from me.”
“I don’t have anything of yours,” she lied. She looked at the chair next to her bed and saw the backpack sitting there. The same one McKinley had returned when he found it at Nixon’s place. He knew it was hers and hadn’t turned it in as evidence when they investigated Nixon’s apartment.
“Yes, you do!” Trivaldi shouted. “Unless you want me to go to the police and tell them about my missing jewels.”
“Oh, really? Because I can tell them about the drugs too.”
He laughed. “What drugs? If you tell them about that then you incriminate yourself anyway.”
Barbara looked away. She was upset, and she knew he had something against her, something he could control her with.
“But you don’t have any proof that I took anything from you,” she responded.
“Oh, but I do.” He smirked. “Agent McKinley followed you that day. He could place you at the time of the theft, my neighbors saw you—in fact they spoke to you—and the gate guard saw you and the killer.”
Barbara clenched her jaw and gripped the hospital sheet hard in rage. “What you forgot was that I was there when Junior was conducting your drug transactions and there was a lot of drugs.”
“But you can’t prove those were for me. All you’re going to prove is that Junior was dealing drugs with your friends and you were there to oversee everything. Nothing gets pinned on me, only on you.”
That motherfucker had thought of everything. “Fine, what do you want?” she said, defeated.
“Since I can’t have my son back you will take his place. You will be the head of my empire and you will take over what he would’ve had if he were alive.”
“No! That’s not remotely close to what you lost. If you want those jewels back, I’ll give them to you.”
“Fuck, no. Either we have a deal, or you die a long agonizing death.”
“What about your daughters? They could work for you.”
“Not a chance. They don’t know anything about my other business, and I don’t want them in that line of work. But you, you are already in and know the ins and out of the game. You’re tough, you’re resilient, you’re a champ. You’ve been through it all and a lot of people respect you. You’re already in the door before my daughters could ever get in. Take those jewels as an early payment—as a gift even.”
He handed her two notes. She looked at them. One of them was his business information and the other one was an address to a home.
“What is this?” she asked.
“One is the address of your new job and the other is the address of your new home.” He threw a few other files at her. “And these are your new bank accounts.”
She looked at the paperwork and everything was there. Even the money from the job that she’d gotten as an advance from Iggy.
“How did you get this information?” she asked, perplexed.
“When you have power and money everything is possible. That’s the power that you will one day get. Your greedy friend Iggy helped.”
Fucking Iggy. I knew he wasn’t one to trust, she thought. “How did you know that I was going to agree to this?”
“Because you have no other choice. You’re a thief and if you don’t want to die or live the rest of your miserable life in prison, then you’ll agr
ee.”
Barbara looked away once more and cursed the day she’d taken that job.
“Come see me once you leave this hospital to be introduced to the staff, to our new business venture, and for your new assignment,” he told her as he walked out the door. “Oh, and by the way, make sure that you look presentable—no jeans or sneakers.”
She gritted her teeth. “Fine.”
He left the room and the other two men left with him.
What have I gotten myself into? I left one controlling psychopath for another. Well, at least I know of his true intentions upfront and know what to expect from him, she thought.
Chapter 49
SEVERAL DAYS LATER
“Dad, you’re home?” Barbara asked as she unlocked the front door and entered her father’s apartment.
“Princess,” he said, “I’m in the kitchen. I’ll be right out.”
The TV was on a rerun of a show she used to watch with her dad when she was a kid. She remembered that it was the only show she was allowed to watch after she finished her homework and ate her dinner. She sat on the sofa looking around the room as if inspecting or taking a real look at the place. She had come to visit her father a handful of times and she never stopped to actually observe the apartment. She knew the layout of the house since she picked this place and saw it when it was empty and the cream-colored walls screaming for some color. Now it was furnished and filled with his trinkets, and the scent of loneliness lingered in the room. She had skipped a few months of rent and given him money to get someone to deliver the furniture from the Salvation Army. She would’ve done it herself but she wasn’t in a good place with him yet and now she looked back at the opportunity to have had a moment with her father. She didn’t want to think about that and didn’t want the gnawing feeling of regret to loom over her. So she wiped that feeling away.
Her father rolled himself to the living room took the remote and muted the volume. His smile caught her by surprise, and she thought about the times when she was a little girl waiting for him on the couch. Waiting for him to get home after work so they could eat dinner and watch the very same show playing on TV now. Those were the memories she wanted to remember and to recreate. She didn’t have her mother but she had him and she wasn’t going to let time pass by holding an unnecessary grudge.
She kneeled next to her father and hugged him.
“I’m so happy to see you, Dad.”
“I’m happy that you’re all right and nothing happened to you.”
“I’m hard to get rid of, Dad,” she joked.
He didn’t seem amused by her comment but he didn’t say anything to the effect.
“I have something for you,” she said.
“It seems as if I should be the one with something for you.”
“Well, technically, it is something that you gave me.” She rose from the plush carpeted rug and walked behind the couch and grabbed a badly wrapped box and presented it to him.
Tears welled in his eyes at the sight of the box. She could tell he remembered the box and she smiled.
“You kept the gift box.”
“Actually, I never opened the gift. I was always waiting for you to come to open it with me. I got mad and shoved it in the back of my drawer. I was pretending to be fine around everyone but in my room I shed tears because you weren’t there anymore.” She looked down at her fingers fidgeting but that fleeting moment went by fast and she looked up at him and smiled. His smile was weak and full of regret.
“But I’m better now. I brought it so we can open it together.”
“But it’s not your birthday and it’s so old now. I’ll get you a gift on your birthday and we can start over.”
Her mouth pressed together into a thin hard line that obscured her lips before she managed a response.
“Dad, I don’t want to start over. I want to start from where we left off.”
He tried to blink back the tears but they came rolling down his cheeks. He swiped them away with the back of his hands and then instantly wrapped his arms around his daughter.
“Let’s open it then,” he said.
She grabbed the box and placed it on his lap. She was finally going to open the gift she never was able to enjoy because of her pride. She wanted to tear at the remaining wrapping paper barely securing the box but she wanted to savor the moment and imagine herself at the living room dining table surrounded by her parents, Sam, and all her friends. She imagined herself in her pink princess dress with wide eyes and a smile that showed her gums and the red hue that appeared on her cheeks from blushing at the attention. Piece by piece, she carefully peeled the clear tape that held the paper together to reveal a white shoe box.
“Dad, you got me shoes!”
“You haven’t opened the gift yet, you’re just looking at the box. Go on keep going.”
She looked at him and removed the lid of the shoe box and inside there was another box—a flatter box—inside. The shoe box was a gag gift her father used to do to trump her. She looked at him and he laughed more at himself than at Barbara.
She removed the box and this one was neatly wrapped and she wanted to guess what it was but decided that she wanted to be surprised instead. Her fingers picked at the corners of each adhesive until the gift wrap was removed. She opened one end of the box and a Polaroid picture slipped out. She held it by the white borders as the glossy imaged glared in the incandescent light in the living room. When she looked at the picture she burst into laughter.
“You took this picture when Mom caught me wearing her lipstick when I was five. I wanted to be a real princess that wore lipstick. Mom was mad that I ruined her favorite lipstick and had to wait a month before the beauty store would restock it again.”
“Yes, the look of surprise when I snapped it was funnier because you wanted to get another one of you smiling but I ran out of film.”
“I think I look more guilty than anything else.”
“Kind of looking at it again, I guess you’re right. Your guilty photograph,” he said.
She set the box aside and realized that there was something else in there. She pressed her thumb and index fingers together as if pinching and slowly dragged out a metal frame. “You got me a Beauty and the Beast picture frame to go with my picture.” She held up the yellow picture frame with a smile.
“Not any old picture frame. When you press this button it lights up.”
He pressed the button on the back of the frame but nothing happened.
“Dad, I think it has been sitting in this box for too long. I think either the light feature or the battery died. But thanks, Dad. I can’t believe you got me the frame to go with my room.” She reached over and hugged her father briefly and looked at him as he spoke.
“I knew you would like it. Even though it’s a bit too late for it.”
“That’s nonsense, I’m going to treasure this picture and frame more now than eight-year-old me would have.”
There was a brief moment of silence as she thought about what she wanted to propose to her father.
“Dad, I have something to ask you. You can decline if you like but I want you to listen to me.”
“You’re scaring me, princess, what’s wrong?”
“I have a new job.”
“That’s great, princess. I’m proud of you. But that wasn’t the entire thing you wanted to tell me, right?”
“She shook her head. “No, it’s not. The job is in Miami and I want you to come with me. I no longer want to live in Huntersville. It brings awful memories and I want to start fresh.”
She looked at him reluctantly. She felt as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders. She knew that he was rooted to this place and she was as stubborn as him. The silence in the room and the scrunching of his nose coupled with the pursing of his lips made him look like he was thinking very hard. He parted his lips to speak but she already knew the answer to the question.
“Of course. There’s no need to convince me or give me a long speec
h. I will go with you wherever you want to take me. I’m an old man and I don’t have time to spare. We’ve been apart long enough.”
She gave him a hug, surprised and relieved by his answer.
“Dad.”
“Yes, princess.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Chapter 50
A MONTH LATER
Barbara held Lori’s hands tightly, as they walked toward an expansive lot filled with flowers, several scattered trees, and plush green grass. Everything was manicured to look immaculate.
Being with Lori reminded her of the day she was in nursing school and got a call from Serenity—the social worker from the hospital—telling her that her mother was hospitalized and she needed to come right away. There she met Dr. Calico, a hepatic cancer specialist who told her that her mother had stage four liver cancer.
Dr. Calico said that her mother’s cancerous tumors had spread to surrounding organs and she had a few months to a year to survive.
Apparently, her mother had known years ago of her prognosis and hadn’t bothered to get treatment to control the tumor growths. Chemotherapy would be costly but there was no guarantee of survival. Dr. Calico advised that treatment would slow the progress of the malignant tumors, but it wouldn’t cure her.
Barbara was thankful for Lori’s comfort. She squeezed her hand tightly as they sat in Dr. Calico’s small office as he explained the prognosis of her mother’s illness in detail. There was nothing for Barbara to do to remedy her mother’s inevitable death.
She had to take drastic measures and decide for her mother’s well-being.