“Ed,” I said, lacking the energy to do more than place my hand on his arm across the bar. “You heard him. He’d been watching for a year. If not tonight he would have come for us another time. You…you protected my boy. You saved us.” There was no swallowing the lump down this time, the adrenaline was leaving and the tears were coming, hot and heavy. I needed my boy, I needed tactile proof that he hadn’t been taken and he hadn’t been hurt. I could see him, still climbing Jesse like a tree and latched onto him tightly but I needed to feel him in my arms to be sure.
I crumpled to my knees next to Jesse on the floor. I put my hands on JJ but he just clung to Jesse tighter, and I knew that he was probably having the same problems right now that I was. He didn’t want to let go of his protector, probably still so scared he couldn’t move even if he wanted to. “Baby, Mama needs to hold you. I need you too, JJ, can I come in?” And one thin little arm moved from around Jesse’s neck and wrapped around mine, pulling me into the three-way embrace because he was not going to let go of Jesse. I allowed it, letting Jesse hold us both up as I clung to my Jesses, the two most important people in my world right now.
A noise from the other end of the bar had all of us jerking in shock. Elliot was on his feet, his head swinging from side to side, his eyes wild. Damn, I must not have kicked him as hard as I thought. That or he was too high for his body to know when to stay down.
“I’m not going back to jail, Harlow. Fuck this shit I’m out.” I wanted to get up and stop him, but my body wouldn’t move and there was no way I could let go of my son, now that I had him back from Elliot’s clutches. Elliot ran to the front door and swung the heavy wooden door open so hard that it slammed against the opposite wall with a boom.
Shit, I thought to myself. He got away.
18
Jesse
I thought I’d been shocked as hell when I saw Harlow attack Elliot, knocking his gun to the ground and delivering him a Jean Claude Van ass kicking to the side of the head. Turns out, that was not the most amazing feat of strength that I was going to witness that night. Elliot made a run for the front door, that was true, but he never made it out.
I couldn’t see everything from my angle, plus JJ had his head buried in my neck and his bouncy brown curls obscuring a bit of my vision, but I could see enough to know that Elliot had taken one step towards the door, then come flying back through it again, his feet higher off the ground than his head. Hot on his trail was Rosalina Affini brandishing a metal A-frame sign, the one the restaurant used to promote specials by the front door. I don’t even know how she was lifting it, that sucker must have weighed thirty pounds and she had it brandished over her head like a baseball bat.
Rosalina Affini was terrifying. No wonder Dino had looked scared when she cracked him across the face earlier.
Rosalina stood over Elliot’s unmoving body, a slew of Italian curse words, or at least that was my impression, pouring out of her mouth as she brought the sign down onto Elliot again. He didn’t even twitch—the man was out cold. Through the doorway poured Vanessa and her mom, both clutching weapons of their own. Vanessa held a wicked looking meat cleaver in her hand and her mom wielded an equally sharp and evil looking butcher knife. Both looked like Valkyries, coming down from the heavens and ready to rain destruction. I was kind of glad Rosalina got to Elliot first because holy shit, Vanessa and her mom looked downright savage.
I struggled to my feet, JJ still clinging to me, and I felt Harlow move with me, her body pressed so close to mine I could feel the trembles racking her body. We’d almost lost each other tonight, and that was fucking scary. To be honest, I was feeling shaky as well, and the relief that flooded me as I heard the sirens come screaming down the street was enough to suck all the energy from my body. Help was coming. Hell, help was already here. I could relax.
“JJ, buddy, are you all right?” He nodded his head into my shoulder; I could feel the tears and snot soaking through my shirt. “I need you to say it though, okay? I need you to say the words, so your mom can hear too.” JJ raised his head, his large brown eyes red from crying.
“I’m okay, Jesse and Mama. Papa Ed helped me. He didn’t let that man take me away. Even when he hit him so hard all those times. Papa Ed didn’t let him take me.” And his face screwed up again and the little sobs racked his body. And this time when he buried his head in my shirt I didn’t tell him to look up again, just clutched him to my chest and absorbed as much of his pain as I could. Poor kid had just been through more than anyone so young should have to go through. We were probably going to need to talk therapy soon.
“Dear God, Nonna, stop hitting him with that thing. He’s knocked the hell out for Christ’s sake.” The string of curses had slowed down, but it looked like Rosalina still had some energy left and was gearing up for another wallop when Dino took the sign out of her hands and tossed it in a corner. She looked from Dino to Jeanette, who had just come through the door with him and gestured to both of them angrily.
“Where were you this whole time? You say you help and then you disappear. You say you take care of this and then he almost get away. Good thing for Nonna and her sign, yes?”
“Yes, Nonna, thank you, but we were helping,” Dino sighed and pinned his grandmother with a long-suffering look. “Jeanette and I were at the back door. Remember? He said he was leaving through the back door.” Then his attention came to us in the corner and he left Rosalina sputtering in the front of the bar, letting Jeanette handle his outraged grandmother.
Dino’s face was worried as he came to our little cluster. “Please tell me everyone is okay.” Then he looked over at my dad, gray-faced and wobbling behind the bar. “Holy Christ, Ed, you are definitely not okay. Hang on, buddy, the police and EMT’s should be here any minute. Jeanette called everyone she could think of.”
The red and blue lights were already flickering outside the window, so the cops were already there. And even as the thought occurred, blue-uniformed men and women started streaming through the front door. It only took a few moments for them to ascertain that Elliot was no longer a threat, and several officers accompanied his body as EMT’s took vitals and strapped him to a gurney for transport. He’d live, but he was going back to prison—and staying there. I had questions though, and I was finally able to ask them because Harlow had managed to weasel her arms in between JJ and I and snatched him right off me, cradling him to her chest like she thought he might disappear on her if she let go.
I knew the feeling.
“Dino, how did you know?”
“At least we can tell Gabe the new toys work,” Harlow said weakly from beside me. Dino raised his arm to show me the slim black watch he wore on his wrist, a carbon copy of the one Harlow had recently started wearing. The one she fidgeted with all the time.
“Yeah, it scared the hell out of me when my watch started talking in the middle of the restaurant. I didn’t know it could do that.”
“Your watches talk?” I wasn’t following what was going on, obviously.
“They’re two-way radios, actually. Although I’d been tinkering with mine for a few days, I still didn’t get to test it. I had no idea if it was going to work or not.” Harlow’s face was gray from stress and the EMT’s were making their way back to our corner. She needed to let them check her out. She looked ready to fall, and I didn’t want her to be holding JJ when she did. Of course, she didn’t look like she was going to let go of him anytime soon either.
“So that’s why you were playing with the face earlier? Twisting it back and forth?” I couldn’t believe she had the presence of mind to even think about it in the face of all that was going on. Harlow was amazing.
“Yeah, but I had no way of knowing if it would work. This is spy gear, so there are no noises or lights to click on to let you know you activated anything.”
“Well you activated those guys,” Dino told her, nodding his head in the direction of the women who were still standing at the front of the bar. Rosalina was giving a uniformed cop her statement, he
r arms flailing wildly as she rattled off in her heavily accented English. “You did good, kid,” Dino said, coming a little closer and putting his hand on Harlow’s shoulder. He stared at her and Jesse for a minute, before lifting that hand, trembling a little, and placing it on JJ’s curls. “You did well too, Buddy. I’m so proud of you. Harlow, we heard him talking. We heard him say he was walking out the back door so that’s where Jeanette and I went. We would never have let him take JJ. Harlow, he never would have made it out of the alley. Okay? He wouldn’t have.” And as he pulled both Harlow and JJ in for a bone-crushing hug, I pretended not to notice how hoarse his voice was, nor how shiny his eyes were.
I was probably imagining things.
One of the EMT’s tried to check me out, but I swatted his hands away and looked over towards the bar. They had brought a gurney in for Dad but were having a hell of a time getting him to sit on it, much less lay down so they could get him in an ambulance. Damn it, Dad. I smiled because I could. Because even though we had been through so much and he was so roughed up, he was still here, and I could still talk to him.
“Old man,” I said as I came up next to where he leaned against the gurney. “You look like shit. Will you just let them take you to the hospital so you can get looked at? Stop being a hard head.” Tears pricked the back of my eyes as I realized how close I had come to losing my dad tonight. To losing everything I cared about all in one fell swoop.
He looked like maybe he wanted to argue, but then got one look at my face and changed his mind and laid back on the gurney obediently, wincing in pain as he did. I didn’t know how many knocks he had taken before we had gotten there, but the threat of internal bleeding was very real. His face was void of color around the horrific bruising and his breathing was shallow. As the EMT’s got busy strapping him down so he wouldn’t fall off I put my hand on his shoulder.
“You’re a hero, Dad. You saved him. You know that? Some really bad shit could have happened tonight, but it didn’t. And I just want to tell you before like, another second goes by, that I love you so much. And I’m so glad you’re my dad. So please stay with me for a long time yet, okay?” If he noticed the hitching in my breath he was gracious enough to ignore it.
“I love you too, boy, but I’m no hero. I’m just a grumpy old drunk. But don’t worry about me. They say only the good die young. Me? I’m gonna live forever.” Tough words for an old bird, but he coughed on a breath and ruined the manly illusion by groaning in pain.
“Is Papa Ed going to be okay?” JJ said worriedly from behind me.
“Yeah, Buddy, he’s gonna be just fine. He just needs to lay down for a while and rest. They’re going to take him to the hospital so he can get some medicine and rest. Sound good, JJ?” I had no idea what was going to happen with Dad, but I was saying nonsense words at this point to make JJ feel better. Maybe myself too, I don’t know.
“When you come back will you make a racecar track with me again, Papa Ed?”
“Sure will kid. But only if you’re good for your mom. She’ll tell me, won’t you, Harlow?”
Harlow managed to choke out a garbled, “yeah,” and I knew she was crying too.
The EMTs were ready to wheel him out now, but Dad wasn’t done talking. “Jesse, while I’m gone don’t forget to save me all the paper towel rolls. We’re gonna build us a double-decker track, so don’t go throwing them away just because it’s busy here okay?” He was reminding me of the four I threw in the garbage last week because I got busy behind the bar and forgot about saving them.
“Dad,” I said sincerely. “I don’t want to work in this bar anymore.”
He listened to me, a small frown on his face as the EMT’s began to move the gurney towards the door. “Neither do I, Boy,” I heard him whisper before he got too far away and I couldn’t hear him anymore. “Neither do I.”
19
Harlow
I’ve gained eight pounds in the last two months and it’s all Nonna’s fault. JJ’s gone up a size in clothes too. It could be a normal growth spurt, or it could be all the pasta and cookies that Nonna gives him when I’m not looking. Which is a lot because Vanessa and Madeline whisk him away from me all the time and I know damn well they give him whatever he wants because he’s got them wrapped around his chubby little fingers. Even Dino can’t stay away from him. Just the other day I had to ground JJ from using the battery powered off-road vehicle that his Disney uncle bought him because they built a wooden ramp over the creek in Jesse’s backyard and kept trying to jump it.
I don’t care if he was wearing a helmet and Dino was supervising. He’s only four. I’m still the boss.
I love my life so much I could explode with joy.
Dino still gets on my damn nerves daily, but he’s much easier to deal with now that Gabe has him working regular assignments. Angel met her last deadline even though she was exceedingly pissed that she missed all of our craziness, and since she found out I’m a huge Samantha Ice fan I get to beta her work before it gets published.
Gabe was drowning in guilt over not doing a complete check on Elliot since no one, not even Gabe and Dino had known he was out of prison. He’d done the check on me but hadn’t gone any further on intel after our interview, and he’d been so wrapped up in trying to get the business up and running he just didn’t see the need. Now he was beating himself up because of the miss thinking he could have had us more secure if he would have been keeping an eye on Elliot’s whereabouts.
I tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault. Especially since the one person who should have kept on top of it more than anyone was me, and I hadn’t even known he was out of prison. The blame should have laid on my shoulders. Gabe was a difficult man to sway though when he made his mind up about something. And even though I argued with him that we didn’t need it, and he already did too much, he still bumped my salary and gave me a bonus for doing field testing on the new watch coms. That was a pretty big reach, but Jeanette told me I was just wasting my breath arguing about it, so I set all that extra money aside in a special account for JJ. When he was old enough and decided what he wanted to do with his life—go to college or learn a trade—that money would be there for him, to help him on his way.
Elliot really wasn’t a threat to us anymore. Actually, he hadn’t been a threat to begin with. That stupid gun he had wasn’t even loaded, and the cops said he wouldn’t have been able to shoot it anyway because it wasn’t even a real gun. It was a replica. Turns out, Elliot had lifted it, and probably fifteen other inoperable weapons from a collector across town. They looked and felt like real guns, but the firing pins had been ground down. Those guns had never been made to shoot.
Thank God, Elliot was a dumb shit. There were so many charges pending on Elliot, he wouldn’t be getting out of jail for a long, long time. From breaking parole, the cocktail of drugs in his system, and the whole child endangerment thing to name a few, Elliot had a laundry list of problems to deal with. It didn’t make what we went through any less scary though.
JJ has nightmares. Mostly about watching “Papa Ed” get attacked repeatedly by Elliot. I had to enroll him in therapy, but it seems to be helping. It also helps that we moved into Jesse’s big house by the golf course. Jesse had meant what he said about not working at the bar anymore. When the EMTs took Ed to the hospital Jesse didn’t open the next night. Or the night after that. We stayed at the hospital as long as they would let us—JJ would only calm down after he saw that his “Papa” was going to be okay. Nasta’s didn’t open for service again.
That’s okay though. When he got out of the hospital, Jesse helped Ed put the bar up for sale. Rumor has it that the investor paid the debts that went along with the business as well and there was talk around the neighborhood that the Affini’s might branch out into the bakery business. It was all hush hush, but I had a feeling I knew who the benevolent buyer was. I also had a feeling Jesse would be getting a call about a job opportunity pretty soon.
I didn’t have any proof—just a hunch.
>
Since the bar sold, old Ed had to move out of his upstairs apartment. Jesse tried to get him to move back to the house with him—with us—but Ed wouldn’t do it. He said it was still too hard for him to be in that place, surrounded by the memories of his late wife. He gave us full blessings though. Telling me the house was made for a family, and he couldn’t think of a better one to live in it. That was probably the nicest thing he’d ever said to me, actually.
Finding a new place to live wasn’t a problem for Ed anyway, since JJ and I had just vacated a small, one-bedroom apartment in a great location, with wonderful neighbors. It took about forty-five seconds for Jolene to get all up in his business, and even though she’s probably ten years older than Ed, and he swears he isn’t interested, she might be wearing him down. Jolene can be pretty persuasive when she wants to be.
And me? I was grateful to be lying in the bed, my head resting in Jesse’s armpit, feeling his chest rise and fall next to me as he slept. I’d put JJ to bed in his own room, in the racecar bed his Uncle Dino had insisted was absolutely essential to every young boy’s childhood. I found out later it was because Dino had always wanted one growing up, and never got to have one. He’d gone to sleep in it last night for sure, but here he was anyway, curled up tight in the space between Jesse and me—sideways. One jerk of his feet and I was going to end up on the floor. Well, me or Jesse. At least I was awake. The last time JJ crawled into the bed and stretched out, he’d booted Jesse right onto the floor. He was sleeping so deeply he didn’t even wake up. Just stayed that way until the alarm went off the next morning and he woke up confused as hell next to the bed.
I didn’t know what I did to deserve this life, but I was so very grateful. I’d moved to Toledo so many years ago for a better opportunity and had struggled and scraped just to survive. But all of those circumstances were leading me to this moment, and everything seemed trifling compared to the wide-open glow that was the future. I had my son and he was happy and healthy, and I could finally provide for him in the way he needed. I had a family. A crazy, passionate, loud family, that would always be by my side, whether I wanted them to or not. And I had Jesse. My bearded hero who still smelled like powdered sugar and the occasional cigarette that he still snuck out to the backyard to smoke when JJ wasn’t around. He’s a spectacular partner and an amazing father figure for JJ. I’d picked his name because I wanted something strong, and different from anything Elliot would have chosen for him. How could I have known then, that in the future it would be something that tied him to one of the most loving men I had ever known?
Jesse (Glass City Hearts Book 3) Page 15