If I Could Stay

by Annette K. Larsen

He held out a hand, pleading. “Let me call Agent Spencer. He can pick us up—”

  “No. I’m not getting back in the car with that man. Just tell me.”

  “I don’t know everything, and I’m supposed to let Agent Spencer handle this. Your uncle can answer—”

  “He’s not my uncle!”

  He took a breath, his calm still perfectly, annoyingly, intact. “Marcus can answer your questions better than I can. I don’t know everything.”

  “You know enough. And I don’t want to hear it from anyone else. I want to hear it from you. So start talking, or I’m leaving.” My legs itched to run, and I fought down the voice that told me he was just stalling, that he would say anything to get me to stay. The only things that kept me there were my desperate desire for the truth and my need to get to Renee.

  He took a deep breath, then pressed his lips and breathed out through his nose. “The falling out between Marcus and Julien happened the first time your father executed a man for being a traitor. Up to that point, Marcus was a willing, enthusiastic partner. But murder wasn’t what he had signed on for. They fought. Marcus threatened to tell your mother what had happened, and Julien immediately had him thrown out. All communication between Marcus and Adele was cut off.”

  He continued talking, filling me in on all the important parts of my life of which I had been ignorant. My mother had remained blissfully unaware of my father’s tendency to threaten and exterminate those around him—until she stumbled on an execution herself. That’s when she had left with my sister and me. She told my father that she needed time, that she wanted to put a little distance between my father’s criminal activities and their girls.

  While we lived in the Hamptons, she had tracked down Marcus, telling him what she had seen. Marcus had started building his own business, hoping to stay in the game not only to keep my father in check but also to keep tabs on my mom and eventually get her out.

  Jack took a deep breath and continued. “He offered to take the three of you away, make a run for it, but your mother refused. She felt responsible for allowing your father to build his business without objection. Plus she knew that your father would never let her go willingly. She wanted your father in prison, so she convinced Russo that she needed to stay and keep trying to gather evidence.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. She couldn’t get evidence while living in the Hamptons.” She would have needed access to my father’s estate, his office, his conversations, his comings and goings.

  “No, but she could record all her conversations with Julien when he came to visit, when he took phone calls while they were together. She told your father that if she was ever going to come home, she wanted to understand how everything worked. He was desperate to get her back, so he told her more than he should have, though it certainly wasn’t all of it.”

  She should have just run, accepted Marcus’s offer and taken us away. I could have grown up with my mother. I could have grown up with my sister. I could have grown up away from my father.

  I got stuck in the mud of my own thoughts as I tried to make sense of them, but it was an endless string of could-have-beens, each one more appealing—and thus more depressing—than the last.

  It took me several moments to realize that Jack was still talking. For a newbie detective who was just here to be a friendly face, he sure knew a lot.

  “So wait,” I interrupted as I remembered how this conversation had started. “Marcus Russo, who happens to be my uncle, is the other player you think can help us get to Renee?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.” My reaction was instinctual, the product of years of fearing for my life. I couldn’t turn it off now, despite the fact that I was starting to believe Russo wasn’t all bad.

  “Leila—”

  “I can’t work with him, Jack.” Didn’t he understand?

  “It was lies, Leila!” I rocked back, surprised that he was losing his cool, just a little bit, for the first time. He stepped close to me. “All of it was lies! Your uncle is not the bad guy here. Your father is.”

  “I know that!” I shoved him away from me, furious that he would try to tell me about my father. “I know what kind of person my dad is, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to put my trust in this new uncle of mine. How do I know he had nothing to do with my mom’s death?”

  “Because I’m telling you he didn’t. And I had hoped that by now that might mean something to you. That you might trust me.”

  “Well, I’m sorry if my capacity to trust has been sucked into the black hole at the center of my relationship with my father.” I said it in anger, but really I was just sad. I turned away from him and shoved my hands into my hair. I longed for the ability to be rational in that moment, to give him the credit he deserved. I wanted—desperately wanted—to trust Jack. But he had just allowed Marcus Russo to climb into a car with me, and the terror that had ripped through every cell of my body couldn’t be forgotten in a matter of moments.

  What was the truth? I needed to know the truth. I turned back to him. “If you know Russo wasn’t the one to kill my mother, then you must know who did.”

  Jack nodded.

  “Who was it?” I demanded.

  “It was accidental.” He put out a placating hand. “She wasn’t the target.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “Your father.”

  My lungs seized. “Oh God!” I cried out, doubling over with the ache of it.

  “He didn’t mean to. He was aiming for Russo. An undercover agent was there in the restaurant, and he tackled your father from behind. Your father’s arm was pushed down, and they believe that the unanticipated assault is what made him pull the trigger.” His voice broke on the last word and he stopped talking.

  I was bent in half, one hand on my knee, the other pressed into my chest as I tried to breathe through the racking sobs that rolled through me.

  The FBI was responsible for my mother’s death.

  Accidental. Sure. But that didn’t change the fact that she was dead because of them. She had been helping them, and they’d gotten her killed.

  “Leila.” Jack’s voice reached me as his hand wrapped around my arm.

  I latched on to his sleeve and collapsed against him. He wrapped his arms around my waist and when my knees gave out, he lowered me to the ground.

  No wonder my father had been so broken. He had killed his own wife.

  Renee had been right. Maybe not in the way she thought, but still she was right. My father had been responsible for my mother’s death. So then…

  “Why did he blame Russo?” I choked out, still drowning in a new wave of grief but needing the answers if I was ever going to crawl out of it. “Just because he was there? Because the bullet was meant for him?”

  “He assumed that the agent was actually one of Russo’s guys. Your dad never got a chance to question either of them because at that point, the agents who were stationed outside shot out the window as a distraction. They didn’t hit anyone else, but it caused enough mayhem for the agent to get out.”

  “And my mother was what? Collateral damage?”

  The sadness and pity in his eyes pushed me over the edge. I pulled my arms from his grasp, stumbled to my feet, and walked away.

  20

  JACK FOLLOWED ME, of course.

  Because I was a flight risk, or a hostage, or a protectee.

  At least he followed at a distance, enough that I was able to ignore him for the most part.

  I stalked my way around the block, for the first time in four years allowing myself to shut out everything else and stare at my feet. If he was so desperate to protect me, then he could take a shift and watch my back.

  I did a whole lot of mental yelling. I screamed at my father, railed at Jack, cried at my mother, and yelled at Russo.

  None of my internal dramatics changed the facts, though. Renee was in trouble, and I had to do something about it.

  Once my decision was made, I didn’t hesitate. I stopped, let Ja
ck catch up to me, and told him to call Agent Spencer.

  He did so without comment, and I paced in an anxious flurry until the SUV pulled up alongside us. Jack opened the back door for me. Russo sat in the seat opposite, patiently waiting to see if I would get in.

  I really did have an uncle. That fact seemed to have sunk in over the past half hour. I tried to think of him as Marcus. Uncle Marcus sounded nice, like a normal person.

  I had planned to jump in and speak up, demanding answers and a solid plan. Instead I stood on the sidewalk for several interminable moments, trying to tame the maelstrom of uncertainty and doubt that clutched at my heart and throat. I pinched my eyes shut, arguing with myself. I should trust Jack and trust Marcus Russo. I wanted to. That would be one less person that I had to run from; it would be a relief. But I couldn’t just take it on blind faith. Finally I opened my eyes, shook my head and took a step back.

  Jack leaned into the car, saying something to the occupants, and then closed the door and walked over to me. The car pulled away.

  Jack’s hand rested on my upper back. “What do you need?”

  Good question, and the answer came to me with surprising ease. “Proof.”

  His head tilted just a bit. “Of what?”

  “That he didn’t kill my mom, that it really happened the way you said it did. The FBI must have proof. They work with this man. You all let him get into a car with me. Whatever proof has convinced them to trust him, I want to see it.”

  He gave a succinct nod. “Okay.”

  He made a phone call and Agent Spencer picked us up five minutes later. Russo was not in the car.

  Fifteen minutes later, after multiple attempts to prepare me for what I was about to see, Jack sat beside me while Agent Spencer pulled up a video recording of my mother’s death. I could have refused to watch, but I had been told so many lies about my father, about Russo and about my mother, that the only way I would be able to know the truth was the see it for the myself. So I braced myself and I watched.

  The footage was from the corner of the restaurant, facing my father’s back. The scene played out just as Jack had described, only there was more. My parents had been arguing while sitting at that table. My father had grabbed my mother’s arm, shaking her violently. Marcus Russo had come crashing through the front doors to confront my father, who in turn pulled a gun. They argued, and the undercover agent behind my father tackled him. My father pulled the trigger at exactly the wrong moment. My mother crumpled in her seat and my father lunged for her, tried to stop the bleeding. Then the window blew out, chaos erupted, the agent slipped out of view, my father’s security dragged him away, and in the end, only my uncle had been left to cry over my mother’s body.

  I sat, staring at the last frame of footage for probably ten minutes, the shock and grief too overwhelming for me to move.

  Agent Spencer’s office had a window along the same wall as the door. It allowed him to see into the hallway and others to see in. I was certain that people were peering in, watching me, and I determined to keep my cool and remain stoic. If only I could be calm, logical. Ask questions and get answers.

  “Why wasn’t he charged?” I asked in the barest of whispers, barely able to push the coherent question past all the broken pieces in my brain. “For manslaughter at least?”

  Agent Spencer turned the screen off. He and Jack had both been sitting in the silence with me since the video had ended. “The district attorney tried, but the gun disappeared and police reports claimed that the shot had come from someone else, that the bullet hadn’t even matched the kind of gun he was holding. Evidence went missing. This video has only recently been recovered. There were too many officials who were on your dad’s payroll.”

  A burst of air puffed past my lips. In another world, another situation, it might have been called a laugh. Instead it was just incredulity fighting its way out of my lungs. “And you wonder why I don’t trust law enforcement.” I didn’t look at either of them, just stared at the floor.

  “I’ll give you a few minutes,” Agent Spencer said, “and then I know it’s not fair, but we need to make some decisions.” He left the room.

  What did that mean? A few minutes for what? Was I supposed to process what I had seen in that time? Move on? What?

  Chop chop, Leila. We have things to do. You can get over the fact that Daddy killed Mommy later. No big deal.

  Bitterness soaked my thoughts so thoroughly that I didn’t dare open my mouth, lest it leak out and pollute the air around me, around Jack. Instead I just looked up at him, hoping that through sheer force of will I could stuff it all down and focus on what needed to be done next.

  Jack gave me a weak smile and almost said something but then stopped, probably because he saw my chin starting to tremble, saw the way my chest convulsed as I tried to hold it all in, hold it all together, and failed, and failed, and failed.

  My vision blurred and I was crumbling when I heard the door close and then felt Jack pull me up. We ended up sitting on the floor. Jack put his back against the door and sat me between his knees, cradling me like I was a five-year-old with a scraped elbow. Later I realized he had done it to get us out of sight. He knew I wouldn’t want people staring through that office window, seeing me dissolve into a pile of nothing—because I felt like nothing, and nothing made sense, and maybe nothing would ever make sense, because who could I trust? And who was lying? And everyone, everyone, everyone was lying. And I missed my mother more today than maybe ever before, because I had no one. I had no one, and no one had me, and I wanted Jack, but I couldn’t have him because the broken part of me would always wonder if maybe he was lying too. Even while he stroked my hair and rocked me back and forth on this cheap office carpet, he might not be telling me the whole truth, and I couldn’t even blame him for that.

  Because I lied. All the time, every day. For years I had been lying to everyone who thought they knew me. I was no better. I was a hypocrite. A motherless liar who lied to save herself. So what right did I have to judge Jack for doing what he thought was necessary to protect me?

  My breath and my cries wrenched their way in and out of my throat while my hands clutched at Jack’s shirt, at his arms and at my own heart, fingers bent into claws, shaking with the tension that wouldn’t let me go.

  “It’s okay,” Jack kept whispering to me. “I’ve got you. You don’t have to be strong right now. I’ve got you.”

  ***

  “What makes you think that Russo—Marcus—can help? Won’t he just put my dad on high alert?” We were still sitting on the floor of Agent Spencer’s office, but now I sat beside Jack, with my back against the door.

  He rolled his head against the door so he could look at me. We’d been sitting this way for several minutes, the silence between us almost comfortable, but not quite. I wanted to lean into his side, rest my hand on his knee, anything to feel that physical connection to him, but I didn’t know if I had the right.

  “Yes, but that’s what we need. We need to change your father’s expectations.”

  “How do we do that?”

  He studied my face, hesitant. “Do you think you’re ready to go talk with Marcus about this? That way we can all be on the same page?”

  I would have to hear him out sooner or later, and at this point, the more I stalled, the more tempting it would be to put it off. So I nodded and let him pull me to my feet before we ventured out to find Agent Spencer.

  It was another half hour before we were once again in the government SUV, picking up confidential informant Marcus Russo on a street corner.

  When Marcus climbed in, his eyes were wary. He moved slowly, probably trying not to spook me. Once the car was moving, he spoke up. “Leila. I’m sorry. I scared you before and that’s not…what I intended.”

  I studied him for a moment, trying to see him as my uncle instead of the Russo I thought I had known. His gray eyes matched his graying hair, and though he was large and carried himself with authority, he was also humming wit
h nervousness. He was studying me just as intently as I was him, his face swathed in concern, worry and hope.

  After several moments he continued speaking. “I didn’t realize how much you would fear me. I’m sorry for that. I knew you would be shocked, but I didn’t know you’d be terrified.”

  The need to explain my behavior took over. “I believed you killed my mother.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut for just a moment.

  “And I believed that given the chance, you would have killed me too.”

  He nodded even as tension tightened his jaw and curled his lip. “He’s a master manipulator, your father.”

  I huffed a dry laugh. “He even had me convinced that you would try to take me and Renee away from him.”

  “That he was right about.”

  I blanched and he hurried ahead to clarify.

  “Not to manipulate him and demand ransom or anything, just to get you away from him.” He leaned forward in the confined space, resting his elbows on his knees. “Your mother didn’t want you to have to live that life. I didn’t want it for you, either.”

  My eyebrows squeezed together. “So we would have lived with you in your criminal empire?”

  “I would have been done the minute I got you girls out. The only reason I’m still in is so I can help the FBI.”

  An awkward silence fell between us and I forced myself to breathe deep and dive in before it became unbearable. “Agent Spencer says you might be able to help get Renee out.”

  The sigh he released was silent, but the way his shoulders and chest sagged in relief spoke volumes.

  “Yeah, I have an idea. Maybe I’ll finally be able to keep the promise I made to your mom all those years ago.”

  “If you were helping my mom when we lived in the Hamptons, why didn’t I ever see you?”

  He gave me a sad half smile. “Because kids shouldn’t have to keep secrets, and we couldn’t let Julien know that I was talking with Adele.”

  “What made you decide to help her then, when you hadn’t before?”

  His eyes were suddenly brimming with guilt. “Because she asked me to. And because it’s my fault she married Julien. I introduced them.” His words were quiet but harsh, punishing himself for his mistakes. “I was a young, stupid kid. I had an ego the size of Texas, and I thought I was doing my sister a favor by introducing her to a man who had a booming business. Adele didn’t know about any of the illegal stuff, not until years later. But I did.” The mocking smile that twisted his mouth was almost a sneer. “I thought it was genius, what Julien did.”