The Italian Deception

by Darby Philips

  “And you took self-defense to make sure you could protect yourself?” he said.

  She paused, as if the question made her look inside herself. “I want to…be able to handle myself. To be self-sufficient. And I don’t ever want to have to rely on a man to save me.”

  That independence was what every undercover agent trained for and needed to master to survive. “I get it. So if you can’t reach a knife, you want to be able to use anything you can grab as a weapon.”

  She turned, grasped his forearm, and said excitedly. “Exactly. Can you teach me how to do that?”

  He enjoyed knowing he’d made her smile. “Sure. In reality, anything can be a weapon.”

  “Anything?”

  “Yeah,” he said. Their breath made clouds of warm air as they spoke. “Coffee creamer can be turned into a flame thrower. Vinegar and baking soda can be a grenade.”

  “You’re joking.”

  He laughed. “No. Even your shoes can be a weapon. If you wear them like gloves, they can deflect knives. If they’re high heels, you can use the stem as a stabbing weapon.”

  “I don’t know if I could do that to my Jimmy Choos.”

  “Well, you would ruin them. But that’s a small price to pay for your life.”

  She became wide-eyed and grabbed his forearm again. “But they’re Jimmy Choos!”

  He knew she was playing with him. “I will never understand women’s fascination with shoes.”

  “You’re a guy. It’s forgivable.”

  They came to a fork in the brick path. Going right led to the female dorms. The boys’ dorms were to the left. The light from an old lamppost illuminated them.

  As he stood there, looking at the Christmas lights hung in students’ rooms, he realized he’d spoken more honestly to her, and for a longer time, than almost anyone since he left the recovery facility.

  “Tomorrow night?” she asked.

  He thought there was anticipation in her voice. “Yeah. Start around seven thirty? You can run me ‘til I drop, then I can show you some Jiu-Jitsu.”

  “Sounds great. See you then.” She headed toward the girls’ dorm. After a few steps she turned around. “I still don’t know about you Paul Taylor. I think you’re too closed off. But we’ll see.” She turned back around and continued toward the girls’ dorm.

  He stood there watching her walk away and feeling the cold air on his face. The stars shone down on him, and the moon had begun to rise. Paul knew she was right. He wondered if he could blame it on his undercover work or what happened in high school.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Shelly was an hour late. Frank had called earlier and asked to meet at their old house, now his house, at 7:00 p.m. He promised a casual conversation without any lawyers. She thought she knew what he wanted to discuss and regretted being late. She needed him in a good mood.

  She’d become so involved in reviewing the documents Tom had given her that she’d lost track of time. Unfortunately, after all her work, she’d found nothing. No cellphone communication overseas. No emails to unusual people. Their bank accounts, credit cards, online activity, and every other piece of digital information the government collected all showed that the agents were clean. She had then checked the cell towers near each suspect for unusual overseas calls to see if any of the potential traitors had used burner phones. Again, she’d come up empty.

  It was frustrating. She had wanted to scream or hit something. Instead, she’d stood up and walked around the small room. As she circled her desk, waiting for Tom to respond with Abelie’s whereabouts, she realized she’d remembered dinner with Frank.

  As she pulled into her old driveway, the smell of Chinese takeout wafting through her car, old memories resurfaced.

  They’d bought the house when Frank was working on Wall Street. It was a large colonial structure an hour into the suburbs of New York City. Frank’s mother had insisted on decorating the whole house. Shelly had been pregnant and working for the FBI and had agreed because she didn’t have the time for it. Also, she had the distinct pleasure of coming home during those pregnant days and telling her mother-in-law that she needed to make a few changes.

  Shelly grabbed her purse, the plastic bag of food, and trotted up to the house.

  As she entered the kitchen, the canned laughter of a sitcom blared from the other room.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Shelly yelled. She imagined Frank was sitting on the sofa, watching his favorite comedy about a dog turning into a man. She didn’t understand it.

  Frank strolled in with his scotch on the rocks. He wore a dress shirt and dark slacks with expensive shoes. He still looked good at forty-seven with a rugged jaw, light eyes, and gray tinted brown hair.

  “Will you pour me a glass of wine?” Shelly asked, as she placed the containers of food on the sideboard and grabbed plates from the cupboard. She remembered Frank’s mother had wanted a mammoth space with an industrial-sized oven and a walk-in cupboard. Shelly had insisted on a smaller, more intimate area with warm wallpaper that reflected the morning sunshine through the bay window, white tile floors, and a white center island where the family could sit for breakfast. But Shelly didn’t live here anymore. And with Tiffany at Hillcrest, it felt like someone else’s house.

  Frank poured her a glass and said in a snippy voice, “How was your day? Oh, wait. You can’t say.”

  Shelly inspected his scotch. It was almost empty. She wondered how many he’d had while waiting for her. But there was something unusual in the way he’d said it. Almost like he’d been trying to needle her. “We’ve talked about this,” she said. “Many times. You know what I do. I can’t talk about the specifics of ongoing operations.” She hadn’t mentioned that she was suspended. She thought Frank would use it against her in the divorce.

  Even though they were getting a divorce, they’d fallen into familiar routines. It was odd. She wanted a clean break with their past, but their years of living together made it hard to break old patterns.

  “I bet you could with Paul,” he said, grabbing a fortune cookie, unwrapping it, and popping it into his mouth. He crunched it loudly.

  Shelly grabbed the wine and took a large sip. She thought she’d need it to deal with Frank tonight. He was in one of his moods where he was angry at her for having a career and expressed his jealousy for Paul. If it hadn’t been for the possibility that Frank might agree to an amicable custody agreement, she would have left. “You know I can’t talk to him about any of that either. He’s teaching at Hillcrest.” She wanted to avoid a fight. “How’s the new job?” she asked. If she got him talking about himself, she knew, he’d get in a good mood.

  “They’re really excited to have me,” he began, “I think there’s real potential for me….” As he spoke about how great his job was, she recalled how things had changed in the last year. Shelly had moved out the previous December. To allow Tiffany some consistency, Shelly had allowed her to live with Frank until she found a permanent place to live. That had been a bad decision.

  “They’re having me analyze the financials of a company they’re interested in purchasing. Simple stuff. I could do more if they’d let me.”

  Uh oh, Shelly thought. Frank was starting a pity party. She needed to change the subject before it swamped him. “Tiffany seems to be doing much better.” She spoke about her trip up to Hillcrest.

  “That’s good. She’s much better off there than here.”

  Frank sounded happy she was gone. She thought about the time Tiffany had lived with him. How he’d left her alone instead of spending time with her, and how he’d hid that fact from her by allowing Tiffany to do whatever she wanted, like staying out too late and hanging out with students much too old for her.

  Shelly believed those actions played a direct role in Tiffany joining a bad group and getting involved in drugs. The more these thoughts flashed through her mind, the angrier she became. Her next words exploded out of her mouth, “If you’d focused more on our daughter and less on yourself, we would
n’t have had to send her away!”

  Frank scowled. He opened his mouth, no doubt to yell at her, but grabbed his drink instead. He stood up and swallowed the last of his scotch in one big gulp and said, “So much for a civil fucking dinner.”

  Shelly bit down her reply and shoved the Chinese food toward him. “I’m sorry. What did you want to talk about?”

  He cleared his throat. An action he took when he’d rehearsed a speech. “I think it’s best if I have sole custody of Tiffany.”

  Shelly was dumbstruck. She didn’t see how Frank could think that was a good idea. “No fucking way. You’re the reason she got involved in drugs!”

  “That wasn’t me and you know it.”

  “It was you. She was thirteen and you left her alone every evening while you went drinking with your friends. What did you think was going to happen?”

  “Well, if you hadn’t of been so busy with work and Paul, she wouldn’t have been alone.”

  Frank remembered a completely fictional history. She had called both of them every day to confirm things were going well. Tiffany’s lies about her father being there she could almost understand. After all, the girl was a teenager. But Frank’s lies about staying home with Tiffany when he was out drinking had been unforgiveable. And the fact that he now ignored his culpability in Tiffany’s downward spiral was the same narcissistic behavior that made her leave him. It was almost like he was trying to deliberately provoke her. “We’re done,” she said, and stood to leave.

  “No, we’re not,” he said, grabbing her arm.

  Instinct and training made her spin around and prepare to knock him on his ass. She noticed, however, that Frank had already flinched in preparation for a blow. Shelly froze as she understood why Frank had tried to provoke her.

  She yanked her wrist out of his hand. “This whole night was a setup. You wanted me to hit you.”

  Frank opened his eyes and straightened. “I want my daughter, Shelly. And I’ll do anything to get her.”

  Shelly left quickly. She knew this whole evening hadn’t been about Frank trying to be an active parent, but about him trying to take Tiffany away from her. Shelly realized their legal battles had entered an entirely new phase. And if he was willing to trick her into physical assault as an opening salvo, what was he going to do next?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Erin Randolph walked into her room on the third floor of the female dorm and tossed her laptop on her chair. She’d half-heartedly tried to make this cramped, one-room living space into a home, but she didn’t consider it one. The pictures on the wall were photographs of her post-college trip to Europe. The small refrigerator held nothing but a vodka bottle for those days when she really needed to unwind. And the furniture was all IKEA brand, and inherited from the last teacher who lived here—a woman who’d become engaged and moved back to New York to start her life with her stockbroker fiancée.

  Erin sighed. The woman had been twenty-four, three years younger than her. That fact shouldn’t have annoyed her, she didn’t even know the woman, but it did. Now was the season when her friends were focusing on careers or getting married and she was…here. She glanced around the room again. Suddenly, it felt depressing.

  She originally came here to find what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. Her parent’s friend had been quite insistent that a year at Hillcrest would help her organize her future. The problem with teaching, however, other than the lack of money, was that you didn’t get any experience doing anything else. A teacher’s skill set didn’t translate to too many jobs in the real world. So the longer she stayed here, the more trapped she felt.

  A knock on the door broke her reverie. “Ms. Randolph?”

  One thing Erin enjoyed was helping students, making a difference in their lives. That meant being available to them at all hours. “Come in.”

  Tiffany Evans skulked into the room, eyes gulping the surroundings.

  Erin had had Tiffany in her third period class. She was bright enough, but seemed to be caught up in socializing with the ‘right’ people more than studying. Erin smiled to herself as she realized that, as a teenager, she’d done the same thing.

  After a few moments of silence, Erin said, “What’s up?”

  “That’s France, isn’t it?” Tiffany said, pointing to a picture just above her reading chair.

  “Yeah. A group of us went on a backpacking tour through Europe after college.”

  “My dad took me to Paris once. I liked the food. And the Eiffel Tower. But, in the morning, the city smelled like diesel engines.” She paused and inspected the other photographs. Erin thought she was either delaying a conversation she wanted to have, or checking to see if Erin was worthy enough to talk to.

  “Did you like Europe?” Tiffany asked.

  “I did. I think it’s good to see how other people live. It gives you perspective.” Whatever Tiffany’s reason for inspecting her room, Erin thought, she needed a push. “What can I help you with?”

  Tiffany sat down on the edge of the chair. Leaning back, she plopped her hands in her lap, and crossed her legs at her ankles. The pose made her seem younger. Her eyes swept the room, as if pointedly not looking at Erin. “Do you ever wonder what boys really think?”

  Erin stifled a laugh. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that that question is one women have wondered since people lived in caves.”

  “You mean you don’t know when you get older?” she asked.

  “It’s not that simple. The problem is that men and women think differently.”

  Tiffany gave her a questioning look.

  “I guess if you boiled it down to one statement, it would be this: men generally mean what they say, while women generally mean more than they say.”

  “So if a guy says he likes you, he does?”

  Erin sat down, knowing this wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. “Usually, yes. But one thing you only learn through experience is that a guy can say one thing, and then do another.”

  “You mean like lying?”

  “That, but it’s more subtle than that.” Erin thought back to her recent relationship with Haverford and suddenly realized that, even though she’d dated since high school and, unfortunately made the same mistakes several times since then, she’d only recently learned what she was attempting to explain. “I’ll give you an example. I dated a guy who was very attractive and smart. He said he loved me, but every time we were together, he always talked about himself. He never asked me what I thought, never wanted to do the things I wanted to do, and always expected me to just follow him around. Guys like that may say they like you, but their actions prove they only like themselves. And to have a relationship, a real relationship, the other person has to treat you with respect and want to help you achieve what you want, just like you’d help them achieve their goals.”

  Erin stopped and realized she was crystalizing what she had conveyed to Paul last night. She still didn’t know why Paul was a times distant while at others compassionate. She’d never met a man quite like him. She suspected there was something in his past that changed him. And she still didn’t know if she wanted to deal with someone like that. Yet she remembered how he’d cared enough to help a socially awkward boy protect himself and risk his job. That was someone who had potential.

  She stared at Tiffany and couldn’t determine if the girl could learn that lesson by discussion, or whether she’d have to have experience teach her. Erin thought that, since she was a teacher, she could at least try words and hopefully save the girl heartache.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Erin said, sitting on the edge of her bed. “How do you want a guy to treat you?”

  Erin didn’t know why, but Tiffany looked surprised.

  “Weird, Uncle Paul asked me the same thing.”

  “Uncle Paul?”

  “Mr. Taylor,” Tiffany said. “He’s my godfather. He and my mom have been friends like forever.”

  Erin wondered about that. She had no
idea about this part of Paul’s life. She wanted to ask him about it and wondered if he’d be open about it.

  “Well, what did you tell him?”

  She shrugged and swung her leg up and down. “I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what he meant.” She looked pensive.

  “Did you think about it?”

  Tiffany nodded. “I want him to be nice, and popular, and smart, and hot.” She said it all in one quick sentence, but it sounded half-hearted, like she wanted it because that’s what she thought she should have.

  “Those are all qualities. None of it describes how you want him to treat you.”

  Tiffany cocked her head and seemed to think long and hard. She started swinging both legs back and forth as she considered the answer. “I want him to listen to me. I want him to do things I want to do. And I want him to not talk about himself all the time.”

  Erin couldn’t help smiling. She pretended to scratch her nose to hide the expression. She guessed Tiffany was talking about Kevin and marveled at the parallel between he and Carlyle Haverford—one she hadn’t seen until now. “That’s a very good start,” Erin said. “Now, what boys treat you like that?”

  Tiffany kept swinging her legs to and fro. She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it.

  Erin thought back to her own teenage years and thought she knew exactly what Tiffany was thinking. She wanted to say the boy’s name, but didn’t know if Erin would think he was ‘cool’ or ‘hot.’ Erin leaned forward. “You need to realize that boys who treat you like you want might not be the hottest guys or the most popular. What you need to ask yourself is which is more important: hanging out with someone who treats you well and isn’t the homecoming king, or someone who treats you poorly and is?”

  “Does it have to be one or the other?”

  “No,” Erin said. “But by determining how you want to be treated, and not settling for anything less than that, you’ll be happier.”