Change in Plans

by Meagan Fink

  Not possible? She had come this far, traveled hundreds of miles, lost her brother only to be told by someone who hadn’t even tried, that getting her brother back wasn’t possible. Her breath catches in her throat, this man was supposed to be her hope. Someone for four years she had believed would help her and be everything she needed. Her patience was gone.

  “Not possible? Or just not what you want to do? You said it yourself you’ve been hiding here for quite some time, you just don’t want to take the chance do you?” she asks incredulously.

  “Now Tatiana, that’s not what I’m saying,” he says, holding his hands up in a placating gesture.

  “It’s not? You just said that you’ve been hiding here for 19 years from the Morans and that’s understandable; but, when your grandson needs your help, you’re still going to hide?” she asks. Sure she didn’t really need his help, but still the least she had expected was for him to be willing to offer some assistance.

  “I am not hiding, and if I could I would help Dyton; but there’s nothing either you or I can do, Tatiana,” he says, trying to close the matter.

  “Nothing I can do?” she asks. There is something she could do and she was going to do it. She looks at her grandfather once again. He wasn’t even going to try and help his grandson, she shouldn’t feel bad about exchanging him for Dyton, and she doesn’t. Not anymore.

  “There may be nothing you can or want to do, but I can help him; he’s my brother, and I’m not just going to sit here and do nothing.” Tita says.

  He nods sadly, “I am sorry, Tatiana,” No you’re not.

  “I know you want to help Dyton but you don’t know this family. If you try and get him back, they’ll just kill you and then him, he might even already be gone,” Greg says sadness in his voice, pleading with his eyes for her to let it go. But I have Luca on my side; he promised to get him back and I promised Dyton everything would be OK, and I keep my promises.

  “Excuse me, I’m going to go check on Luca,” she says and stands up. She pauses before she turns into the hallway.

  “Your father may have been a very brave man, but you didn’t inherit his bravery,” she says, and then turns into the hall. It didn’t matter if he would help or not, she didn’t need it. At least now she knew where his loyalties lie. They were with himself.

  18

  Pull yourself together. Luca looks at his reflection in the mirror, his jaw clenched and his face red with anger. He felt bad for leaving Tita alone with that man; but, if he had stayed in that room another minute, he would have lost it. He dare claim that he doesn’t know how my father died? Blackson killied him himself. He takes a couple deep breaths trying to rein in his anger. He had to act like he liked the guy or at least like he didn’t want to tear him apart.

  He sits down on the counter and rubs his face. He had to pull it together for Tita and Dyton as that kid’s life was resting on their getting Blackson. He couldn’t blow it by letting Blackson find out who he really is. He’ll get what he deserves, just not right now, Luca tells himself.

  He looks down and checks his side. He had actually forgotten that there had been a shard of glass there a few days ago; the doctor did a great job.

  He should tell Tita he is fine, she is probably worried about him. She shouldn’t be worried about a liar. He shakes his head as another wave of guilt comes. He needs to tell her, before they call Isaac and she gets Dyton back. If he didn’t tell her now when it was just the two of them, she might find out by something Isaac says. No doubt Isaac would be all over telling Tita that he had been in on it the whole time. No, he couldn’t let that happen, he had to tell her himself and before they call Isaac.

  There’s a light knock on the bathroom door.

  “Luca, are you all right?” asks Tita.

  He slides off the counter and looks once again in the mirror; he takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. He’s going to tell her. He hesitates before he opens the door and steps out into the hall. Tita has a deep set frown and anger lies behind her eyes. She looks at him while her hand flips around her locket, what happened? He thinks.

  “I’m fine. Sorry to step out, but I just had to… I had to think,” he says.

  Her eyebrows pinch together.

  “So you’re all right? Your side isn’t bothering you?” she asks.

  He shakes his head guiltily. “No, I just had to think.”

  “Think about what?” she asks. She leans against the wooden wall of the hallway, her head next to the mounted head of a duck; she glances at it and then scoots about a foot to the right of it.

  He motions to the bathroom behind him and she nods and walks in. He didn’t want to say anything that Blackson might overhear.

  “Wow,” she gasps, as she looks around the bathroom. He hadn’t really taken in his surroundings until now. He had been too mad to pay attention to anything else, but now it had his full attention.

  The floors are made of polished marble, the walls padded with a shiny deep red silk, and gold-plated well, everything. Dang, this guy is rich, he thinks.

  The room was huge, almost as big as his kitchen back home; and it wasn’t a bathroom as he had thought but the powder room. A counter wraps around the left side of the room covered with every imaginable decoration, including the same picture that he had seen in Tita’s locket. A table with a stool and mirror sat off to his left, and Tita takes a seat trying to process it all. She rubs her hand along the polished wood table and then moves her hand along the gold-lined mirror. She then directs her eyes to her reflection. Curly deep brown hair, that almost looks black, frames her tanned face.

  She looks away and leans back against the table and lets her gaze rest on him.

  She raises her eyebrows at him waiting for him to explain his disappearance. He rubs the back of his neck and takes a seat on a red velvet sofa next to Tita’s table.

  “It’s just, I figured that when we got here we would discuss what had happened to my father and Blackson would explain how he killed him and all that, and I was prepared for that. I was expecting him to make excuses for his actions and to say that he wasn’t a terrible person and, whatever,” he takes an angry breath.

  “I didn’t care how he explained it. I wanted to know why Blackson killed my father, but for him to say that he doesn’t know---” he says, as he shakes his head and takes a deep breath to keep the anger from resurfacing. He glares down at the floor as his hands grip the velvet. Tita nods and leans forward on her stool.

  “I understand, you wanted him to own up to it,” she says, and he nods.

  “Yeah, so when he said he didn’t know how he died and that he didn’t care. He doesn’t know, and you don’t know, all of the trash that I went through because of his death.” His eyes become distant, remembering how his family had reacted to the death of Ace. He sighs and continues, feeling the need to explain why this was so hard.

  “I just---” he shrugs, and he meets her eyes. That’s just it, he can’t explain. He didn’t really know what happened to himself, he had just cracked. “I just had to get some air, I’m sorry I left like that.”

  “It’s OK, if our positions were switched, I would have reacted the same way, perhaps even worse,” she says, with a knowing smile.

  If our positions were switched, he thinks about that for a moment. If Tita had met with his father and he didn’t know who she was or who her parents were, and his dad said he didn’t know how Emily Lasko died, she probably would’ve exploded; but, it would be worse in her case, she saw Luca’s father kill her mother. Luca had only been told that Blackson had killed his father.

  “Besides, your leaving allowed us to talk,” she says. Her expression hardens.

  “Talk about what?” he asks warily, wondering if his dislike of Greg Blackson is mutual for Tita.

  She sighs and thinks about it for a moment. “Well, I now know how Blackheart started and what
really went wrong, but, I don’t know---” Tita’s voice trails off. Apparently both of them were in a shocked state. Nothing that had already happened was up to their expectations.

  He watches as she struggles for the words, so he says what had been on his mind and just hopes that is what she is thinking. “Greg Blackson just isn’t what you had hoped he would be?” he asks.

  She stares at him for a moment saying nothing, making him worry that that was the last thing on her mind; but then she lets her head hang and nods. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. The least that I had hoped for was someone who would try and help his grandson in some way,” she says, shaking her head.

  “What did he say about Dyton?” he asks.

  “He said that there was nothing that he could do, that it was impossible to help get him back.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Oh please, there is no reason; he just doesn’t want to risk being found by the Morans. He’d rather let his grandson stay with those people than take a risk,” she declares. She rubs her face with her hands trying to settle down.

  “I know that it doesn’t matter, but he should still at least be willing to help. I think I would have liked him better as a crazy bird man,” she says, shaking her head.

  Luca grins and gives a humorless laugh, “So would I.” He rubs the back of his neck wondering if he should tell her now or after they call Isaac. If only he would stop questioning himself, he already knows he should do it now.

  “I think we should call Isaac now,” she says. “while I’m angry enough to do it.”

  He nods, anger would help get rid of the guilt of betraying her grandfather.

  Tell her, tell her now! But she was already mad, not mad at you, tell her! But once he told her, then that anger would be directed at him, but amplified. It doesn’t matter when I tell her; she’s going to be mad at me no matter what.

  He takes a deep breath and steels himself. “Tita, I need to tell you something.”

  She looks at him and nods. “Alright, what is it?” she asks.

  “I, I’ve been trying to tell you for awhile, but I just couldn’t find the right time, and---” he struggles, forcing himself not to back out.

  “Luca, you can tell me anything,” she says. She trusts him; she shouldn’t, but she does.

  He takes a deep breath, this was going to ruin everything but it had to be done.

  It had to.

  19

  At first what Luca says doesn’t sink in. When it does, though, she wonders if he’s joking. She gives a nervous laugh. “What do you mean?” she asks.

  “Tita, I’m still working for my family,” he says.

  He’s not joking. She can see the truth of it in his eyes. He’s been trying to tell her for some time; and, now that he’s laid it out on the table for her to see, she can see the relief of telling her, and also the dread. Mostly dread.

  “Luca, what are you saying?” she asks. She thinks she knows, but the idea of it just couldn’t be possible. Luca had said that he had left his family because he hated what they were. When he would talk about them he would speak about them with a malice that you just couldn’t make up. He had to be joking.

  He shakes his head and rubs his hands over his face. “Tita,” he says her name with pain in his voice. “I lied to you; I’m still working for my family. All of this, us meeting at the warehouse, everything that has happened these past few days, it was all to get you to take me here to your grandfather,” he says. He seems mad, but not at her, at himself.

  “You planned all of this?” she asks, her voice disbelieving. She stands up from her chair and looks down at him. If he planned it, if he’s been in cahoots with Blackheart this whole time, then they knew everything. She had trusted him, and the whole time he had just been playing her.

  “Yes, I didn’t want to do it, it was supposed to be a simple job. Just get you to take me to Blackson and no one would get hurt, well except Blackson; but you and Dyton would be fine,” he says, his eyes beg for her to understand. She couldn’t.

  “You, you’re still working with your family? With Isaac, the guy you’ve been saying this whole time you hated?” she asks, making sure she heard him right.

  He nods guiltily, “Tita, I didn’t want to do this, I didn’t want to betray you or to lie to you---” she cuts him off before he can finish.

  “But you did. This whole time, everything that happened was planned?” she asks again, looking at him. He gets up and steps closer to her, she steps away.

  “Yes. Everything was, calculated, to make sure you would bring me here,” he says. His voice is full of an anguish that she finds surprising.

  “Everything was planned. Us just happening to cross paths at the warehouse?” she asked. He nods, averting his eyes from her gaze. Her eyes move back and forth thinking about everything that had happened, “Those men who chased us to the train station?”

  His gaze meets hers quickly and light up with truth. “I didn’t know that would happen, but Isaac said he did that to make sure you knew who I was,” he says.

  She shakes her head disgusted at him. She paces around the room for a moment walking away from him, not saying anything. And then she stops. She raises her head from her hands and turns her gaze on him. Her jaw suddenly tightens and her hands turn into fists. “No one would get hurt?” she asks in a cold whisper.

  He looks at her, confused. “What?”

  “Before, you said that no one would get hurt, that we would just take you to Blackson and everyone else would be all right,” she says and glances at him to see him nodding.

  “Then what, Luca, would you call Dyton getting taken?!” she yells at him, her voice getting higher and madder with every word. If he had planned everything, had known what Isaac was going to do, then he knew that Dyton was going to get kidnapped. And he allowed it.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he says quickly and with conviction, walking back over to her. He looks down at her and at her hate-filled eyes. “Tita, if I had known that Isaac was planning to take Dyton, I would have never gone along with it. I would have stepped out of all of this and stopped it; but Isaac didn’t even know that was going to happen, someone else made that decision.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better!?” she asks, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation. She rubs her hands through her hair; her eyes squeezed tight keeping back angry tears.

  It doesn’t matter what he did, she tries to convince herself. But it does, it does matter.

  She shakes her head. Luca knew how important her brother was to her; he probably thought that taking Dyton would ensure her taking him to Greg. And it had. He used it against her. But he said he didn’t know Dyton would be taken. That could just as well be a lie, how could she trust anything that came out of his mouth again?

  “It’s your fault Dyton was taken, you led them right to where we were,” she says, averting her gaze from him.

  “I know, if I had known what would have happened, I would’ve changed everything. It is my fault Dyton was taken and I’m sorry Tita---” he says, with pain in his voice that she resented. He bends his head down trying to meet her gaze.

  She looks up at him and puts her hand in front of him. “Don’t you dare try and apologize, Luca. Don’t you dare,” she says. She felt like punching him, it was probably the least he deserved. She was mad at him, beyond mad, she was furious. But not only at Luca, but also at herself. Part of her feels that she should have known and should have realized that there was something else going on.

  If she had learned anything from living on the streets, it was that you don’t trust anyone. That was her rule, and she had broken it.

  She leans against the edge of the counter and looks at the different knickknacks. The one that just happens to be in front of her is a picture of her family, the same picture she had in her locket. She rests her
elbows on the counter and lays her head in her hands. She glances again at the picture; but, instead of focusing on the smiling faces of her family, she looks at the golden frame. Inscribed at the top in fancy lettering is the word “Forgiveness.”

  That’s convenient, she thinks. She looks at her family, the small family that was ruined. Her father was dead; her mother was dead; and her little brother, taken. When she blinks, a few tears stream down her cheeks and she quickly wipes them away.

  She switches her focus from the picture to the frame again. It makes sense why her grandfather would have that particular frame. Every time he would look at it, he would be reminded to forgive the people who killed his family. Easier said than done, she thinks.

  “Tita, I know you’re mad at me, and you should be; heck, you should hate me, and I understand that,” Luca says as he walks closer to her, holding his hands out hesitantly like he was approaching a dangerous animal.

  “But I’m telling you this so you’ll know what to expect when Isaac brings Dyton. And also because- mainly, because I can’t lie to you anymore,” he says, walking up her.

  She glances at him wondering if this was just another lie to manipulate her. But a thought occurs to her, he didn’t have to tell me, she thinks. It was true; he could have just gone on with the plan of keeping his real motives a secret. But he told her. Why? But another question is on her mind and she decides to ask.

  “You said you didn’t want to do this.” She looks over to him where he stands to her right, he hesitates at first, wondering why she was asking but then he nods. “If you didn’t want to, then why did you?” she asks, her voice still laced with anger.

  He sighs and sits back down on the sofa. “I made a mistake. By letting you go that day in Germany, by not telling someone you were under that desk when we found you, it led to an event that got my father killed. And Isaac holds that against me and I was severely punished for it. If I don’t do what he asks, he’ll turn the whole organization against me.”