Mamma and Papà stayed for a month and left after Elias’s baptism. Dario became my son’s godfather. While I still insisted on sleeping in the nursery, Luca and I had settled into a new normal. He put a baby monitor in our bedroom, so when the baby cried, sometimes he’d come in and help me. When he didn’t have to drive to Chicago for a meeting, he did his part of staying awake when Elias was being fussy.
We hadn’t resumed sexual intimacy because even when I was at eight-weeks postnatal, and Dr. Kingsley had already given the go-ahead, my body just wasn’t feeling it.
I was too stressed. I wasn’t sleeping enough or eating enough, and my breast milk had dwindled to nothing, compounding the stress.
I was stressed because our new normal was a facade, and my double life was catching up with me, blurring the lines between my feelings, the challenges of being a new mother, and my responsibility to Doriana’s network.
On the night of the dinner, Carmine had mentioned a deal and a date with the Russians. The date coincided with a job Doriana offered to me, but I turned it down. I didn’t even bother looking at the packet. The night Luca came into the attic, I was looking at that information because I got suspicious. As Luca told me how he was going to be a better father and husband to me, he didn’t know my heart was breaking. It was breaking because I saw his name listed in Doriana’s packet.
My husband had become a human trafficker.
Today was the date of the job and I wasn’t surprised Luca was needed in Chicago. I went looking for my husband and found him in the garden with Elias. He was snoozing on the lounger while our baby slept trustingly on his chest.
This was purgatory. I could picture my life with Luca without the threat of something unforgivable hanging over our relationship like a guillotine, about to sever it forever.
He was right.
I loved him despite his villainous, treacherous self.
I was his doormat. Elias gave me the strength to stand up to his father.
But this…
I roused my sleeping husband. He opened his eyes slowly and they warmed when he saw me. My heart flipped. I was stupid. I deserved this. Why couldn’t I stop loving him? I wish I could cut out my heart and substitute it with a block of ice.
“You’re a beautiful sight to wake up to.” He stared at our baby. “You and our baby.”
His words continued to wound my heart. I wished I could tell him what I knew. I wanted to save him, but I risked the minors who were going to be sold tonight. “Don’t you have to go to Chicago?”
He muttered a curse. “What time is it?”
“Five.”
“Yeah, I better get going.”
I rolled my lips and bit down on the lower one. I wanted to beg him to stay, but I didn’t want to raise suspicions and compromise the hacker named The Friar who was taking on the job. On the other hand, maybe finding the evidence that my husband was a monster just like every human trafficker I despised was what I needed to excise my love for him forever.
He handed me the baby and got out of the lounger. “I’ll be in Chicago for the weekend, but I’ll try to get back as soon as possible.”
He caressed my cheek. “Take care of yourself, okay? You need to eat, tesoro. Dr. Kingsley is worried about your weight.” His thumb touched the circles under my eyes. “And you’re not sleeping.”
“It’s just the hormones playing havoc with my body.”
“If your appetite doesn’t improve in the next week, you’re going to see Dr. Kingsley, capisce?”
“Sometimes it just happens. I’ll try to eat better.”
We returned to the house, and while he went into our bedroom, I took Elias to the nursery.
I needed a break from all the sweetness he was showing because my emotions were in turmoil and I was about to implode. Doriana confirmed the auction tonight. The location was in a club owned by Vasily Orlov. I’d heard the name mentioned often between Dario and Luca, but it was Carmine who confirmed to me that he was the bane of my husband’s existence.
Even so, my eyes demanded proof before I accused my husband of taking part in the sex trafficking of minors. Even if he told me it was a deal he had to make to save our son from being my father’s protégé, it was unforgivable. He shouldn’t have made the deal with my father in the first place.
I pretended to be asleep when Luca came into the nursery.
I heard him walk to the crib. “Be good for your mamma, bombolino. Don’t fuss too much. She needs her rest.”
A tear rolled down my cheek and I let the pillow soak in my heartache. Happiness was so close, and yet so far. Luca might not accept that he loved me, but all his actions were proving otherwise. He just needed to face them.
I hoped our marriage could survive what I was finding out tonight.
The mattress dipped behind me. I could feel the heat of his body, the warmth of his regard. He leaned over me and kissed my cheek. “I have to go, baby.”
I gave a tiny moan.
“Sleep. Take care of yourself and our little one.”
When he left the room, I gave in to my tears and sobbed.
“You’re not eating again?” Martha asked. She was feeding Elias.
I was pushing around the pot roast. It smelled heavenly, but after a few bites, I lost my appetite. Nerves rioted inside me.
“There’s also pie if you want,” Yvonne said. She’d been nicer to me ever since I came home from the hospital, even cleaning up the nursery and emptying the Diaper Genie without being asked.
“I just want to sleep,” I told them.
“Are you sure you’re not depressed?” The older woman took Elias from the bassinet to burp him.
“I wish I knew.” I really wish I didn’t know many things. My son came first and not being able to provide him with breast milk was making me feel like a failure. “I need to see Doctor Kingsley.” This time as a therapist.
“Hmm,” Yvonne interjected. “Men in the mob don’t like therapists. I guess that’s why we have Doctor. Kingsley.”
“Luca would be okay with it,” Martha said. “He even suggested that to Junior when his wife was having nerve problems. It might have prevented her breakdown.”
“What happened? She didn’t go?”
“All the men in the family voted against it. Even Junior.”
I smiled faintly. “Luca seems to be different.”
Martha returned Elias to the bassinet. “That’s why everyone’s thankful he’s the boss. He can be sympathetic to those who deserve it…”
“But get on his wrong side…” Tony said around a mouthful of food.
“Why do you always contradict me?” Martha said sharply.
Everyone laughed when the two started to bicker as usual. Yvonne went around serving pie.
Nessa came up to me and signed. I can take him if you want to nap for a bit.
I jumped at the opportunity. “Thanks. Just for a few hours.”
After dinner, Rocco was surprised I went in the direction of the attic.
“Back there again?”
“I want to be in my own personal space for a few hours,” I told him. Luckily, Mrs. B was trailing me, and I didn’t have to look at him. “How about that, Mrs. B? Want to hang out?”
“I thought you wanted personal space,” Rocco said.
I picked up the gray cat and hugged her close. “Mrs. B is my therapy cat.” It was actually true. She comforted me simply by sitting beside me. I wondered if it was because she reminded me that my husband still had good in him, and I clung to Martha’s stories of Luca having a soft spot for cats.
Rocco shook his head. “She gives me allergies.”
“Look, I’m lucky to have everyone pitch in, and not every new mother is this lucky, but…you know, I just need this.”
“Boss doesn’t like it when you hole up in there.”
“Then let’s not tell him,” I said in my brightest voice and smiled as though it was our secret. And because I’d been in a morose state for the past few weeks, Rocco relented.
He grudgingly followed me. Mrs. B meowed. She didn’t like being held without initiating. Surprisingly, she didn’t struggle when I picked her up.
Half an hour later, I logged in to a chat with The Friar (Th3Fr!#r)
Chimera: Thanks for letting me tag along.
The Friar: Anytime. I’m sharing my screen with you.
He had tapped into the cameras of the club and was following movements into the special auction room. This auction was tricky because the Russians had learned from the last time and cut off all cameras and network feeds from the room.
But apparently, The Friar was more than just a hacker of networks. He was a comms expert, and he had more connections than I had. I always depended on Doriana for any kind of support outside of hacking. The Friar was former military and other things.
Whatever that meant, he was able to get a drone inside the room using one of his contacts at the club, and, right now, it was giving us visibility into the room.
The first to arrive was Orlov and three of his men. Two Middle Eastern men followed, and then three Asians, and another of Scandinavian descent, while three others were of indeterminate ethnicity. I recognized one of the richest men in the world. The men greeted each other and pounded each other’s back.
Oh my God. This was worse than the last one.
Chimera: Is this like a society of perverts?
The Friar: Fuckers. We’re going to burn them. I’m confirming their identities with facial recognition now.
On the floor, Orlov rubbed his hands. “We’re about to start. The Lillies are in the club. They were safely transported by an associate.”
My stomach churned. Please, God, not him. I’d give anything for it not to be him.
With each minute that ticked by, the bile in my gut turned more sour. Staff came in and served food and drinks. The stage was behind a glass panel.
The Friar: Confirmed. These are a group of businessmen who belong to the Zavarida Group. We’d been after them for a while.
Chimera: Welcome to America.
The Friar: That’s the spirit.
The lights dimmed. After a few minutes, the first girl walked out unsteadily, dressed in a skimpy outfit that barely covered her body. It was obvious they drugged her.
Chimera: I don’t know if I can watch this.
I’d never gone this far before. Usually the perverts bid on Lillies from a private room, but it appeared this was a society of men who took pleasure in doing the activity together.
It was over an hour of teeth-grinding, stomach-churning experience. I tried to shut off my feed a few times, but I found the courage to go on.
When the lights came on, the stage had darkened, and once more, Orlov took to the floor. “I hope we’ve impressed you with our offerings.”
A rush of murmurings went around the room.
The door to the room opened, and even when I’d girded myself for the possibility, a strangled sob clawed up my throat when the person walked in.
The Friar: That’s Luca Moretti. He transported the Lillies from Vegas to Chicago.
My mind forgot how to form sentences, as if it rebelled at the words my fingers had to type. I had to delete them a couple of times before I typed out one simple sentence.
Chimera: That makes him Orlov’s accomplice.
The Friar remained silent.
Chimera: Right?
The Friar: Shit. Someone’s tracing us.
“What?” I spoke that aloud instead of typing it.
The Friar: Are you sure you’re secure? The signal is coming from your end. I’m disconnecting us now. We’re compromised.
Chimera: Wait, let me check.
But he blinked out, and my recording of the auction also ended. But I finally had proof that Luca was involved. The Friar’s troubling message muted the ache in my chest.
We’re compromised.
Shit. What did he mean? I didn’t linger and instead erased the digital trails and backed out of the system before powering off my laptop.
I went to the closet where I had a specially made giant teddy bear. The inside was outfitted with shields to prevent detection and cloning. I put my laptop and my DEC-phone in it.
I paced around the room, wondering what to do next. How would I confront Luca? I paused and stared at Mrs. B who was looking at me with her golden eyes as if absorbing my panic.
“What did he mean?” I asked her.
We’re compromised.
The last time I’d been compromised, Santino and Frankie took me hostage. I still had their money. I had most of the money from the auction, which meant I was sitting close to three hundred fifty million dollars. I was still waiting for Doriana to find another way to funnel the money.
The urge to run thrummed through my veins. But where would I go? I brought out a secondary laptop but connected to the regular network to add stuff to my wish list. Things I needed, like baby diapers and formula, just in case I needed to go on the run. Should I confront Luca? What if he didn’t take it well that I was nosing into his business? I mean, he wouldn’t just execute the mother of his child, right?
Goodness, I was being paranoid. Damn The Friar.
We’re compromised.
Dammit. I needed to hold Elias.
“Come on, Mrs. B, let’s get out of here.”
I left the attic and frowned at the darkness at the bottom of the stairwell. Did we lose electricity?
Reaching the landing, I looked around for Rocco. His room was right at the bottom of the steps, and usually when he heard the attic door open, he was already waiting for me. I felt bad for my bodyguards and—
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Before I could spin around, an arm banded around my chest and yanked me against a soft wall. The stench of leather, stale coffee, and rancid breath assailed my nostrils and almost made me gag.
I struggled against an unknown assailant but stopped when a gun poked at my side and a Russian-accented voice said, “Don’t fight.”
There was light in the hallway, and three people came into view.
Oh my God. No.
A masked man had a gun pointed at Nessa. She was holding Elias.
Where was Rocco? Tony? Where were all the guards?
“Where’s everyone?” I cried.
The masked man holding Nessa hostage said, “They took a little nap.”
“How many did you have to shoot?” the Russian man asked.
“Two. Apparently, they didn’t like pie.”
The pie was laced with drugs. Yvonne. That bitch.
The man holding me kicked the door to Rocco’s room and flipped on the lights. I saw my bodyguard hogtied, with a gag over his mouth, still unconscious.
The Russian man spun me around. “You’re going to give back all the money you stole from us.” He was also wearing a balaclava like his cohort. He gestured to the other man. “I’ll watch them.” He pointed the gun at Nessa and Elias. “Get her laptop.”
“You’re making a mistake,” I said.
Pain exploded at the side of my jaw. The taste of blood filled my mouth.
“Stop lying!” the Russian man growled. “You’ve cost our organization millions of dollars. We should just shoot you.”
He pinned the barrel to my forehead. “But we need that head of yours. It’s surprising how Moretti kept you hidden, but you were careless tonight.”
My eyes fell on Elias. I did this. Regret was a crashing wave that threatened to pull me under. I put my baby in danger. I was an unfit mother. He deserved more than having me and Luca as parents.
I spoke through the ache in my jaw, but the pain pulsing in my heart was worst. “Don’t hurt them. I’ll come with you and undo whatever you think I’ve done.”
The man laughed. “Still denying.”
The masked man came back with my backpack and laptop. “I found several hard wallets. If she converted them to crypto, it’ll be here.”
The Russian man gripped my chin. “Are those all of it?”
“Yes. Those are my things, but why are you—” He squeezed harder.
“Yes,” I whimpered.
He let me go and gave instructions to the masked man in Russian.
Nessa and Elias were blurry images through my tears. “I’ll do whatever you want,” I sobbed. “Just leave my son and Nessa alone.”
“They come with us.” The Russian man walked toward Elias and I had to control myself from clawing him away from my baby. “He could be leverage. Boss might have some use for him.”
Defiance was a scarce commodity when the life of your child was at stake. At this point, I envied Luca with how he could separate what he felt for us and what he needed to do for the family.
Right outside the door that led to the attic, two vehicles were waiting.
Knowing my son was coming with me, I finally took him from Nessa. I looked at the young woman. She was stoic now, but the redness around her eyes indicated she’d been crying at one point.
“Tony and Martha?”
She signed that they were sleeping.
“Thank God.” After the initial shock of what had been happening, my mind started thinking back to what I had done that might have given away my identity as an online vigilante. This was bad for many reasons. This might lead back to Doriana and The Friar. Luckily, the laptop that the masked man took was the secondary laptop I brought out. I could still get them what they wanted, but there was less compromising information on it.
The hard wallet the masked man took had around fifty thousand in its ledger. That would buy me time. Elias was too valuable for them to kill, but Nessa was expendable, and she was who I feared for the most.
They loaded us into the vehicle. The house was dark, and I saw a couple of guards slumped on the grounds. I hoped they weren’t dead.
As the collateral damage of what I’d done mounted, our convoy exited the estate and turned away from the highway that led to Chicago.
After five minutes on the road, fields of corn surrounded us.
I heard the whistling. Then a boom sounded behind us simultaneously with a flash of light. Our vehicle skidded and swerved. The men were yelling. My body curled around Elias in a protective instinct that I’d give him the best chance of survival.
The SUV slammed into a tree. The seat belt bit into my shoulder, and through some miracle, I found the focus to spring into action. Nessa and I were fumbling with each other. Elias started screaming. The two men were groaning.
I mouthed, “Out.”
I wasn’t waiting to see if whoever shot at the Russians were our friends either. My first priority was to hide my son. We weren’t far from the estate. We could walk back if we had to. Thankfully, the door wasn’t jammed. Nessa and I eased out of the vehicle and ran straight into the cornfields.
The Russian man shouted at us to stop. I handed Elias to Nessa and told her to run ahead while I kept to the rear. They were less likely to shoot me.
The moon was bright, and it wasn’t lost on me that in movies, bad things happened in cornfields. Nessa paused at a clearing. She was panting hard and not used to running. I wasn’t either, and my lungs were about to burst.
I dragged her to a crouch and took Elias from her. He had settled down to cooing. Apparently, he had enjoyed our jog. We crouched and walked to a line of trees.
“I’m going to check what’s going on.”
Nessa was shaking her head.
“I need you to keep my son safe.” I fought back the emotions that wanted to break free. I was going to fix this. Both of them didn’t deserve this. My son didn’t deserve to have his life threatened.
I removed the locket from my neck. “In case…” The words caught in my throat.
Nessa was shaking her head vigorously. The dam broke, and a river of tears fell from her eyes.
I bit my fist to stop myself from making a loud sob.
“I’ll be back, my love,” I told Elias. He was staring up at me. I kissed him on the forehead.
Nessa and I stared at each other.
Our mouths pressed into tight lines. We exchanged brief nods.
Then, before I lost the will to leave them, I got up and plunged back into the cornfield.
I was thankful that harvest had come late and the stalks provided cover. I slowed my progress as I approached the road.
Two gunshots rang through the night.
I froze for a microsecond before instinct made me crouch low. The droopy leaves of corn provided cover, but they also made me itchy, like a thousand ants were crawling over my skin. Despite the cool November air, sweat beaded my upper lip.
“They’re not here!” someone yelled.
I inched closer, parting the stalks to see who was talking. Two newly arrived black SUVs. Four black-clad men with masks walked between the length of the disabled car Nessa and I rode in. They were armed, and it looked like those two gunshots were for our two Russian abductors.
Friend or foe?
Foe. They wouldn’t be wearing masks if they were coming to save us.
Elias’s cry split the night.
“There!” One man raised his arm in the direction of the sound while another was already sprinting toward it.
No. No. No.
I ran parallel with him, lungs filled with fear and air that I couldn’t exhale, yet I kept on running.
My son was screaming.
Tears streaked down my face, and I kept down the hysteria fighting to break free from my throat. When I reached Nessa and Elias, the man had them cornered. She had moved further from the spot where I’d left them, but she must have realized it was futile to run with my baby crying.
“I found the child and Nessa! Natalya’s not with them.”
My brain tried to process the familiarity with how he said our names. I’d heard that voice before. I picked up a rock and approached. Nessa spotted me.
I couldn’t see her expression, and even as I hoped she wouldn’t give me away, I did it on my own.
My son’s timing was horrible.
He stopped crying just as I stepped on the proverbial twig.
I was an arm’s length away, too far to swing my arm.
The man spun around and pain exploded at my temple.
Blackness came and went, along with voices and the sound of my baby’s cry.
