by Saba Kapur
The chaos around me became a blur as I focused on Jack and his lifeless body. He lay next to my stunned father, who thankfully seemed fine, albeit a little bruised. A police officer knelt down and helped my father up, as two more crouched down near Jack. It was Detective Reynolds. I pulled my gaze back to Frank, my ears unable to register any sound around me. There were two men dress in black from head to toe holstering their guns, pulling Frank to his feet. I assumed somewhere behind me, Ao Jie Kai was getting the same treatment. Everyone’s lips were moving but I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t feel anything. All I knew was Jack had been shot, a pool of blood escaping from beneath his body.
I felt someone place a hand on my shoulder, but I didn’t move. They were asking me if I could stand up, whether or not I was injured. There were voices speaking above me, but I couldn’t stop staring. It was like I had momentarily forgotten how to function. Then suddenly Milo came into view, kneeling down in front of me with concern.
“Gia,” he said as calmly as he could. “You’re in shock right now; it’s perfectly normal. But we need to get you out of here. Do you think you’re okay to stand?”
I blinked, snapping back to attention. Suddenly every sound in the warehouse was crashing against my ears. I could hear the officers and agents scattered everywhere, calling out instructions, handcuffs clicking into place, someone calling for an ambulance. Everything was catching up with me so quickly, it felt like I was suffocating.
“J—Jack!” I cried, and I realized I was crying.
Milo cupped my face in his hands and looked at me straight in my eyes. “Gia, I want you to listen to me.” He said, sounding more strained. “I’m going to need you to stand up for me. Can you do that?”
I wrapped my hands around his wrists and shook my head frantically. “Milo, we can’t just leave him here! We have to help him! We have to—”
“He’ll be fine, Gia! The ambulance is right outside. So are the FBI.” Milo interrupted before I could argue. “Right now, you need to get out of here. Are you listening?”
I nodded meekly, and Milo removed my hands from my face. He took my hands and helped me to my feet slowly. Ten seconds ago I was ready to make the floor my permanent home, but now I was desperate to break through the walls. Milo put his arm around my waist, holding me upright as I hobbled forward in my heels. An officer who I vaguely recognized held my other arm supportively, watching me apprehensively as if I were going to collapse any second.
“Careful,” Milo said, like I was made of glass. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to his colleague or me.
I let them lead me out the exit without a second look back. I was already having a hard time breathing, and I didn’t entirely trust what my heart would do if I did sneak a glance of the scene behind me.
Milo and the officer exchanged wary glances. Neither of them mentioned the grim possibility looming over our heads. Neither of them acknowledged that Jack might be dead.
Chapter Twenty-Five
For the second time that evening, I awoke in a complete daze. Thankfully this time I hadn’t been drugged; my body had just decided I had been freaking out way too much lately and needed a minute or two to reboot. My vision steadied as my gaze fell onto Milo, who was looking down at me with furrowed eyebrows.
“Gia?” he said softly, and I felt a hand rest carefully on my shoulder.
I looked past Milo’s head. It was all black, with only specs of silver scattered around. I tried to lift my head but it felt like it weighed a ton. I dropped it back again, resting it on something surprisingly soft. I heard footsteps hitting the floor as someone came running up.
“Oh good, she’s awake,” said a voice I didn’t recognize.
I turned my head to the side slowly, groaning in pain and confusion. Milo, who was evidently the soft object I had been resting on, carefully propped me up to a sitting position. I looked up at him and he gave me a tight smile.
“What happened?” I asked.
Before he could answer, my brain snapped into action and everything hit me like a tsunami. Frank, the lanterns, a gun, three loud bangs, handcuffs and being unable to breathe. It seemed like weeks ago, but I knew it had only just happened.
“You fainted,” Milo told me. “I think you had a bit of a panic attack.”
“Oh.”
I turned my head in the direction of where the unfamiliar voice had come from a moment before. There was a middle-aged paramedic standing in uniform with a bottle of water in one hand. She gave me a warm smile and knelt down next to me.
“Hey, honey,” she said kindly. “Here, have some water.”
She handed me the water bottle but my hands stayed by my side, looking down to examine where I was. I seemed to be lying on the pavement, right where I had fainted before. Which, may I add, is not exactly the same as landing on Egyptian cotton sheets. Either I hadn’t been unconscious long, or no one had bothered to move me to a more comfortable position. Milo’s right arm was wrapped around my waist; his left hand reaching over to take the water bottle from the paramedic. I mumbled a thank you as I took the water bottle from him, and the paramedic rose to her feet. She told us she would send someone to assess me and walked off toward the flashing lights, coming from the police cars and ambulance vans.
“How long have I been out?” I asked Milo, uncapping the water bottle with shaky hands.
I tried to sit up a little straighter; suddenly feeling very conscious of the position Milo and I were sitting in. But he didn’t budge. Instead he tightened his grip around my waist, and my body stiffened.
“About a minute the first time,” he replied.
I put the water bottle to my lips, but paused before taking a sip. “First time?”
“Yeah,” Milo said. “You woke up and then kind of collapsed again. But you haven’t been out long.”
I took a sip of water and gulped it down. I felt the water go down my throat slowly, and I put a hand to my chest as I choked it down. I forced another few sips into me and immediately began to feel a bit better. I capped the bottle and placed it on the floor next to me, watching as a police car slowly backed out of the parking lot and drove off out of sight.
“Was that—”
“Frank,” Milo finished for me, and I turned to look at him. “Ao Jie Kai is probably in one of the other cars. We’ll be taking them to the station now.”
“So . . . it’s over.”
“It’s over.”
“My dad!” I suddenly exclaimed, remembering that the last time I had seen him was on the floor in the warehouse behind me.
I slapped my palms to the floor, knocking the water bottle over as I attempted to push myself off the ground. Milo pulled me closer to him, lifting my hand up from the concrete floor and squeezing it in his own.
“Gia, calm down! He’s safe. He’s getting checked by the ambulance over there.”
Milo cocked his head to the left and I followed his gaze past all the police cars and chaos until my eyes finally caught my dad sitting on the edge of an open ambulance van, talking to Detective Reynolds and Kenny. His face looked weary and exhausted, like he had just walked a hundred miles in a desert without stopping. I felt relief crash over me.
“My mother?” I asked.
“On her way,” Milo told me. “She should be here any minute.”
“Is Mike okay?”
“He’s still at your aunt’s house. He’s safe, we just checked.”
I looked at Milo. There was one person still unaccounted for, but I was nervous to even ask about.
“What about Jack?”
Milo let out a soft sigh and I prepared myself for the worst. I hadn’t seen him anywhere around, so either he had already been carted off in an ambulance or he hadn’t been moved out of the set yet. Or worse, but I didn’t want to think about that.
“He was shot,” Milo said cautiously, and my heart s
ank further into the pit of my stomach.
“But he’s okay?”
Milo opened his mouth to reply, but a voice behind me answered for him.
“Well I mean, that depends,” Jack said and I looked up. “I took the bullet, so it’s okay for you. But my arm is killing me!”
He smiled as I examined him frantically. His tuxedo jacket had been taken off, and his white shirtsleeves were rolled up over half way up his arms. His right arm was bandaged a bit above his elbow, the rim of his rolled sleeve stained with his blood. The cut above his eye was no longer bleeding. I pulled my hand out of Milo’s grasp and pushed myself to my feet before anyone could stop me. Half tripping over my dress, I threw my arms around Jack, pulling him into the tightest hug I had ever given anyone.
“Ow!” Jack exclaimed, and I pulled back almost instantly. “My arm, Gia!”
“I’m so sorry!” I cried, taking a step back. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!”
Jack shook his head and laughed lightly. “It’s fine! Don’t worry.”
Milo stood up awkwardly, dusting off his uniform. He straightened his cuffs and gave me a tight smile.
“I’m going to go check on your dad and make sure everything’s alright.”
I gave him a warm smile in reply, my emotions still on dangerous highs, and watched him walk toward the sea of uniforms.
“He seems overly enthusiastic about my safe condition” Jack said sarcastically.
“I can’t believe you!” I cried, giving Jack a light shove. Oh fantastic, the waterworks were back. “Can you imagine if you had died? Can you imagine what that would have felt like for me?”
“Hey!” Jack said, catching onto my hand that was braced to shove him once more. He tightened his grip and pulled me closer to him. “Can you imagine what that would have felt like for me?”
I pulled my arm away and gave him another hug, careful not to injure his arm any further. Who would have thought Jack Anderson and I would be hugging in a parking lot, blood and smudged makeup everywhere?
“I can’t believe you’re alive.”
“The bullet-proof vests were a good idea, I’m not going to lie,” Jack said, patting my hair comfortingly.
I broke away from the embrace and looked at him. “You were wearing a vest?”
Jack nodded and said, “So was your dad. I guess our pal AJ isn’t too great at checking for these things.”
I wiped my wet cheeks with the back of my palms, wincing at the sight of my injured wrists. “That’s so smart!”
“Well, I still caught a bullet!”
“Yeah, but it could have been worse!”
“True. But Milo wasn’t wrong about the vests; they’re freaking uncomfortable! Thank God, they just pulled mine off.”
“Uncomfortable?” I repeated, giving him an incredulous look. “They saved your life! Wait a second. When I looked over at you after Frank fired the shots, you looked dead. Like, big time dead. You weren’t moving at all!”
Two FBI agents immersed in conversation walked past us, without even giving us a second glance. Jack waited for them to pass before he spoke.
He lowered his voice and said, “Don’t tell anyone ‘cause it hurts my manhood. But I passed out. I hit my head on the floor really hard and freaked, and I guess I just fainted for a second.”
I put a hand over my mouth, desperately trying to stifle my laughter. “Wow. I really feel for your manhood.”
“Shut up!” Jack replied, but he was smiling so I knew he was playing along with the joke. “You fainted twice!”
“Yeah, but I had a legit reason!”
“I got shot in the arm! Isn’t that legit enough?”
I looked at his arm with a grimace. Even through the bandage you could see the blood from where the bullet had hit him. “You should go to a hospital,” I told him, my smile fading.
Jack looked back at the ambulance vans and said, “Yeah, they’re trying to get me to go. Apparently I got lucky; the bullet just grazed the skin and didn’t actually go through. But I probably should get some morphine or something.”
I winced as he described his wound, imagining a bullet hitting his arm in slow motion.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Hey, Jack I’m sorry for ever—”
“Don’t even worry about it.”
I shook my head at him firmly and said, “No! I was way out of line.”
“Gia,” Jack said, looking troubled. “That money . . . It’s complicated. It’s not mine. I mean it is. But I don’t use it.”
I waited for him to continue, but it looked like he was kind of struggling so I cut him off. “Jack, I don’t need to know. It’s your business, and I completely trust you.”
Actually I was majorly curious and I would probably be Googling this later. But it was his business, and he had saved my life and taken a bullet for my father. I wasn’t really in a position to ask for anything more.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” Jack said, looking serious. “But I guess I’ve just been putting it off.”
My heart picked up speed. “Yes?”
“I . . .” Jack paused, looking at his shoes dramatically.
Dear God, was this the moment I had been waiting for? Was Jack about to say what I thought he was? I wasn’t sure I was ready for this.
“Go on,” I said nervously.
“Ivan Moore.”
I blinked at him in confusion. Did he say Ivan Moore or “I want more” in a really weird Russian accent? There was so much noise in the background, I couldn’t be too certain.
“I’m sorry, what now?” I asked.
“Ivan Moore,” he repeated with a grin. “The mystery father of the Golden Globes baby. And get this, he’s her agent’s younger brother.”
My jaw dropped. Not quite what I was hoping to hear, but I can’t say I was too disappointed.
“No. Freaking. Way!”
“Yes freaking way.”
“NO.”
“Yeah. Apparently they met at some luncheon or a party or something. Anyway, the rest was history.”
“This is like, life changing. Seriously. Why hasn’t MTV made a TV show about their lives yet?”
“They’re clearly missing out.”
“GIA!” My dad called out from somewhere in the distance. I turned to see him half-sprinting toward me in his ripped shirt, Kenny close behind him.
I ignored my tortured feet, still squeezed into the heels, and ran up to him. I launched at him with so much force, he stumbled a bit as he hugged me back.
“You’re okay,” he whispered, as he ran his hand soothingly down my now completely loose hair. “You’re alright, sweetheart. You’re safe now.”
I pulled apart from him a little, still resting my hands on his shoulders. The tears were definitely on their way, but I held them in. Mom had once told me that crying a lot creates wrinkles. I wasn’t about to be kidnapped and look ten years older all in one night. No thank you, sir.
“Dad!” I exclaimed. “You’re safe! For a minute there I was sure I had lost you!”
“I’m not going anywhere, Gia.”
I removed my hands from his shoulders and looked at him square in the eye. “Dad I’m really sorry! I’ve been so difficult lately. Lashing out, not listening to you, hiding things from you. You’re the best father anyone could ever have, and I’m just sorry for everything.”
Dad opened his mouth to say something and closed it again. He was silent for a few seconds before he smiled and patted my arm with the hand that wasn’t bandaged.
“Thank you.” He looked over my head to where Jack was standing and added, “And you too, Jack. You saved my life; pushing me out of harm’s way like that. That was very brave. I’m forever indebted.”
“It was my job, sir,” Jack replied, with a gracious nod. “And my pleasure.”
Jack had officially beaten me on the list of people my father loves, and rightfully so. Pushing him out of the way of three bullets and catching one himself kind of puts him in first place. I mouthed thank you to him and he winked at me, his lips curving into a half smile.
Almost as if it were a sixth sense, I could suddenly feel that my mother had finally arrived. Sure enough, just a few seconds later I could hear her frantically calling out my name, rushing toward me. Jack, Kenny, Dad and I watched her run toward us, half-waddling because of her heels and the train on her gown.
“Oh my gosh!” she cried, practically slamming into me. She hugged me so tight I could barely breathe. “My baby!”
“I’m okay, Mom!” I assured her, my voice muffled amongst her still perfect looking hair.
Mom pulled away from me before I had a chance to hug her back, examining me up and down just as I had done to Jack when I realized he was alive.
“Are you hurt?” she practically yelled. “Turn around! Are you alright? I am going to murder that man!”
A police officer walking past stopped momentarily, an eyebrow raised.
“She’s kidding,” Kenny said. “Nothing to see here.”
“Mom, I’m okay!” I replied, pulling my arm out of her reach so she couldn’t turn me around.
“You!” She cried to a paramedic coming up next to her.
“Y—Yes?”
I gave the paramedic an apologetic look. She looked too young and inexperienced to be dealing with my mother’s harassment.
“Check her!” Mom demanded, pointing at me. She stopped, eyes fixated on the hem of my dress. “Is that . . . blood on your Monique Lhuillier gown?”
