by Meagan Fink
“Luca told you?” he asks.
“Of course I did, you didn’t say that I couldn’t tell her; you just told me to take you to Blackson and I did. Telling Tita didn’t change any of your plans,” says Luca. He looks over at Tita and Dyton; he had to get them out of here.
He knew how Isaac worked; once he got worked up and angry, which he probably would soon, he would go on a killing rampage. He would just as gladly kill Tita or Dyton as he would Blackson.
Luca glances over at Blackson who is leaning against a wall knocked out cold. He was actually surprised the guy was still alive.
“Luca, could I talk to you, privately?” asks Isaac. That maniac light was in his eyes, things were going to get messy and fast, and Luca had to think of something quickly. He nods and follows Isaac into the dining room leaving Tita and Dyton alone with his family.
“What do you think you’re doing?” asks Isaac. They stand in the dining room far enough away so the others can’t hear.
“What do you mean?” asks Luca.
“You know what I mean Luca! You told her? That messes up all of my plans and you know it,” Isaac says, as he glances around the room uneasily.
“No I don’t know it, how does it mess up anything? You just let the two of them go and then you can take care of Blackson and put this whole thing behind us once and for all,” says Luca, trying to persuade him. Sometimes it was easy to get Isaac to change his mind, other times, not so much.
“No, I can’t let the kids go and you know that. I told you on the phone when you were in D.C.,” he says.
Luca thinks back to their conversation and what all was said. Isaac hadn’t said anything of the sort, Luca was positive. If Isaac had said something about killing Tita and Dyton, he would have remembered. “No Isaac, you didn’t.” says Lucca.
Isaac glances at the floor; he sighs, and then sits down on one of the dining room chairs. “I didn’t?” he asks, sheepishly.
“No, if you had I would’ve remembered.”
“Well, it’s hard to keep track of what I tell you. I thought I told you that Jason didn’t want any of the Laskos alive,” he says, with a wave of his hand toward the sitting room.
All the Laskos dead? Tita and Dyton hadn’t done anything wrong, why would they need to be killed?
But then something doesn’t add up. Who the heck was Jason? Luca plays through his head all of the higher ups and important people that might be able to persuade Isaac to do this. He didn’t know of any Jason.
“Wait, who’s Jason?” asks Luca.
“I thought you knew?” asks Isaac, confused. At least the deadly glint in his eyes was gone.
“Isaac, if I’m asking a question, obviously I don’t know. Who’s Jason?” Luca asks again.
“Jason is the one that gives me my orders. I know, you’re probably wondering why I would accept orders from anyone; but this man has resources that could demolish Blackheart. Better to just give him what he wants,” says Isaac with a nervousness in his voice that was out of character for his brother’s personality.
Blackheart is a huge organization, who could possibly have enough power to demolish it; but, more important, who could be powerful enough to make Isaac nervous?
“And why am I just now hearing about him?” Luca asks.
“Because now you are directly involved, Luca. Before, Jason would just observe things but now he’s actually stepping in. Something is changing, I just don’t know what, but I’ll find out I can promise you that!” Isaac holds his head in his hands and starts muttering. Something about keeping his stand and never bring someone with you?
“When I first allowed Jason to have a position of high rank, I didn’t think he could progress to the point of telling me what to do.” says Isaac, shaking his head in frustration.
“Wait, you gave him a position in Blackheart?” asks Luca, confused.
“It was a stupid mistake, but it had to be done,” Isaac says, rolling his eyes.
“Why did it need to be done?” asks Luca.
“You ask too many questions Luca,” he says trying to dismiss it, but Luca stares him down. Isaac finally sighs and his shoulders slump. “Do you remember what happened three years ago?” asks Isaac, his eyes growing distant as he remembers something.
“Yes, of course, our father was killed by Blackson and you took over Blackheart,” says Luca, also taking a seat at the table. Isaac nods but doesn’t say anything. Luca waits for him to explain more, but when he doesn’t Luca decides to ask another question.
“About Blackson and our father, I asked Blackson what had happened when Ace died and he said he didn’t know. He seemed pretty certain of it; so if he didn’t kill our father, then who did?” asks Luca, watching his brother to see his reaction. If he became panicky, Luca would know that Isaac had lied about their father’s death; instead Isaac looks at him strangely. Luca waits for Isaac to explain but he just keeps that weird look.
“You know, don’t you?” Isaac finally asks.
Know what? Luca wonders. He’s about to say that he didn’t know what Isaac is talking about but he changes his mind. “Yes, so why don’t you explain,” Luca ends up saying. He just needs to continue acting as if he knew what was going on to keep his brother talking.
Isaac sighs and his expression hardens. “As you know three years ago our father was supposed to step down from his position of being Ace of Blackheart, but he didn’t because he was so obsessed with finding the Laskos. So I found a way to ensure that I would inherit what was rightly mine.” Isaac glances at Luca to see his reaction.
Where is he going with this? Luca wonders, but doesn’t let the question show on his face.
“So one night I approached our father to talk to him about stepping down, and I had also taken my best officer to serve as a witness. I had gone to him to peacefully get him to retire his position; but things didn’t go as planned, and I acted a little rashly,” Isaac says, as he pauses and bites his lower lip; he then shakes his head and looks at Luca. “I didn’t want to do it Luca but he forced my hand.”
Luca’s gaze hardens. Was he saying what Luca thought he was saying?
Isaac looks at him frowning. Luca meets his gaze, daring him to break eye contact and to show himself a coward. Isaac looks away.
“You killed our father!!!?” Luca shouts accusingly.
“He was being so stubborn! It was my time to be the leader of Blackheart, to be the Ace that everyone looked up to! So yes, I grabbed my gun and put three rounds in his chest. I felt bad for it at the time, but look what I’ve become!” he exclaims proudly.
Luca’s ears start ringing as rage fills him. Isaac killed our father, and for what, to get a position of power? Luca clenches his hands into tight fists to keep them from visibly shaking.
“Everything would have worked out; I came up with a cover story saying that the Laskos snuck into our camp and killed our leader for revenge, that I personally had seen Greg Blackson shoot my father, and that I would, with a heavy heart of course, take my father’s place. But there was just one problem. I had brought another person with me that night as a witness. If I had known he would serve as a witness to a killing, then I wouldn’t have brought him, of course,” says Isaac, with an expression that seemed to be saying, “Duh.”
“Of course not,” says Luca, the anger still broiling in his chest.
“But, unfortunately, I did and so I had to come up with a plan to keep my officer from telling the entire organization what I had done. So I made him a deal, that once I became leader, I would appoint him to a position just below me.”
“That officer was Jason?” asks Luca.
“Yes, and very slowly and slyly he has been weaving his way in until he’s become above me. Fortunately, though, Blackheart still looks to me as leader and not him; in fact, very few people even know he exists. You should feel proud of this knowledge brothe
r,” he says, twirling a flower in a vase on the table.
I should be proud knowing you killed your own father?!
“And so now Jason has stepped in with the order that all the Laskos need to be dealt with, not just Blackson, and I’m completely fine with that,” says Isaac.
Luca wanted to destroy him right then and there, but he had to remain calm and let Isaac think that this newly revealed information didn’t bother him in the least. When really Luca was devising a plan to get revenge, which is what his family seemed to revolve around after all.
“Luca, I understand that you might be a little mad at me for what I did, and also for not telling you; but what’s in the past should stay in the past, right?” he asks, hopefully.
Luca tries to keep the hatred he felt for his brother from showing on his face. Isaac had killed his father and lied to him about it, and now he was going to kill Tita and Dyton. Isaac may have been able to get away with killing their father, but Luca will make sure that Tita and Dyton don’t reach the same end.
“Right,” says Luca, forcing a smile. Isaac looks relieved and nods. They both get up and, as they walk out of the dining room and to the sitting room, Luca starts to form a plan in his head to make his brother pay for what he had done.
22
Since she had gotten Dyton back, Tita had kept a hand on him at all times worried he might disappear at any moment. But now she keeps both hands firmly planted on his shoulders. She and Dyton stand against the back wall waiting for Luca and Isaac to come back, that is if they do come back. She was expecting the sound of a gunshot to come at any second; Isaac had looked ready to kill Luca when they had left. Despite his betrayal, Tita hoped Luca would be all right.
“Where did they take you?” she asks Dyton after a moment of silence.
“No talking,” snaps one of the men; she recognizes him to be John from the train station.
“Alright,” she mutters, and they lapse back into silence. Every so often there’s a grunt or moan from her knocked-out grandfather who’s curled up in a ball on the floor.
Movement catches her attention as Isaac and Luca come walking back into the sitting room. Luca glances at the two of them and walks over to stand next to them. She tries to read his expression but comes up empty; his eyes seem distant and he bites his lower lip, thinking.
“Sorry for our absence everyone, just had to catch up with my baby brother,” says Isaac, taking her attention away from Luca.
John walks up to Isaac and whispers something to him. Tita couldn’t get over how much Isaac and Luca look alike. Their features were almost identical; the only noticeable difference was that Isaac’s hair was a light red, whereas Luca’s was a dark blond. The similarities stopped there, fortunately. Isaac had an…unstable air about him. One moment he was happy and loved everyone and, the next, he was furious at something. He reminded Tita of some of the rabid dogs they had in her neighborhood back in Germany. Anything could set him off and extremely unpredictable.
As Isaac and John continue to converse in hushed tones, the other men shuffle closer to hear what they’re saying. As they do, Luca leans in to whisper something in her ear. “On my signal, grab Dyton and run into the kitchen; I’ll meet you there.”
Tita looks at him, confused. Something must have gone wrong in his conversation with Isaac.
“I’m getting you guys out of here,” he whispers.
She stares at him for a moment but then nods. “What signal?” she whispers.
Isaac stops talking and turns to face them, and Luca shakes his head. He stands up straighter and walks over to Isaac and the group of men.
“Isaac,” he says, as he stands next to Michael. Isaac looks up at Luca and raises his eyebrows, all conversation between the men stop.
“Yes?” he asks.
“I know we’ve had our differences and I’ve tried to ignore them, believe me I have, but we are two very different people and nothing will change that. And, after what I’ve learned today, I can’t ignore all of the things you’ve done. So you can tell Blackheart as many lies as you want, but I will no longer do what you ask,” says Luca. Isaac just stares at him, silent.
“What?” says Isaac.
“And for the things that you have already forced me to do, I will enjoy this,” says Luca as he moves to grab Michael’s gun, who was the only one that didn’t have it strapped around his shoulders.
Luca fires a round at each of the men and then hits the butt of the gun into Isaac’s unprotected stomach, causing him to double over; Luca then smashes it again into the back of his head sending him sprawling. Tita takes this as her cue, grabs Dyton’s hand and runs out of the sitting room and to the front entrance, their feet crunching over broken crystals from the chandelier.
She guides them through the dining room and then through a door that leads to the smoking room. It’s in there she realizes that Luca wasn’t wearing a vest, he could already be dead. She stumbles at the thought and Dyton steadies her.
“What just happened?” he asks, his eyes wide with shock.
“Luca’s buying us time to get out of here,” she says. She looks back wondering if she should help him. She also wonders what would happen to her grandfather, would Luca think to help him? She didn’t like the man but she didn’t want him to die; nevertheless, Luca wouldn’t want her to go back for him, he wanted them to get out of there.
“We need to get to the kitchen,” she says, and leads them through the smoke room and out into a hallway; she can hear yelling behind her.
“Where’s the kitchen?” asks Dyton.
“I have no idea,” she says, looking both ways down the hall. “You don’t know the house?” he asks, worried. He glances behind and so does she, the yelling’s getting closer.
“We only got here a few hours ago and our grandfather didn’t bother to give us a tour,” she says and leads them to the left. If the dining room was back there, that means the kitchen would need to be relatively close…she hopes. They run past office rooms and one enormous library but still not finding the kitchen.
“Tita,” says Dyton and points at a closed door at the end of the hall; Tita runs toward it and opens the door. It’s the kitchen.
She lets out a relieved breath and looks for an exit. There are two doors in the room and the first one leads to a pantry; but, before they can check the second one, they hear the sound of pounding feet in the hallway outside. Tita motions for Dyton to get behind a counter; she then grabs the biggest frying pan she can find, which happens to be two feet across. She tests the grip and then walks over to the door they had just come through. She waits at the door with the frying pan ready to defend herself.
She waits a few agonizing seconds until the door swings open; she lets the man come all the way into the room, and then she swings the pan like a baseball bat. There’s a sickening crunch and the man falls to the ground.
Dyton jumps up from his hiding place and slowly walks over.
“Tita, did, did you kill him?” he asks horrified. Tita was wondering that herself. Panic starts to rise in her chest as she waits for the man’s chest to rise, it doesn’t.
“Oh God,” she says, and steps closer. It was hard to tell if he was breathing because of the vest; she turns the pan around and pokes him with the handle. He lets out a painful moan and she lets out a sigh of relief.
She rolls the man over to see that it’s John, well she didn’t feel so bad now; she takes off his gun and hands it to Dyton. He stares at it, and then shakes his head vigorously. Part of her was beaming with pride; at least her brother wasn’t a killer. She looks closer at John’s vest to see two bullet holes, so Luca hadn’t killed them after all just stunned them. Maybe he had time to get away, or maybe Isaac would tell them not to shoot him, Luca was family after all. But Tita knew that such ties didn’t matter.
“Luca said to wait here, that he would meet up with us,” s
he says and glances anxiously at the door.
“You t-t-trust him on that?” asks Dyton. She turns to look at him, does he know? He glances at the floor with a look of betrayal, probably the same look she had on her face when Luca had told her.
“You know?” she asks.
He nods. “Isaac told me; I was hoping he was lying, but, when you said you knew, I f-figured it was the truth,” he says sadly.
“Luca did what he had to do, besides he just risked his life to help us,” she says. She didn’t know why she was standing up for him seeing as he had betrayed them; but, then again, what she just told Dyton was true.
“We should stay here,” she says.
“But Tita, what if, w-what if something happened and he doesn’t come; they’ll find us eventually,” he says, and points at John. “We know they’re already looking.” He had a point.
She glances at Dyton; she had just gotten him back, she wasn’t going to lose him again. “Alright, let’s get out of here,” she says and grabs the gun and sticks it into the handle of the door. Hopefully, they wouldn’t need it. She then turns around and grabs Dyton’s hand and runs to the other door.
Please let this be the way out, she begs, and turns the doorknob.
They walk out into the backyard. Relief floods her as she views a large swimming pool that covers most of the gated area. Beyond the gate was the forest which was where they needed to go; then, after that, who knew.
There’s a bang behind them as someone tries to get through the door, which is then followed by yelling.
“Come on,” she says to Dyton and pulls him to a gate at the back of the yard. They push through it right as two men break through the kitchen door.
“Close it! Close it!” Dyton yells at her and she quickly throws the gate closed. The sound of gunshots rings through the air as the men run outside. Tita throws Dyton to the ground and jumps on top of him; she covers her head with her hands, flinching at every shot. Splintered wood lands on top of them as the gate is riddled with holes. There’s a break in the firing as they pause to reload.