“Well, you’ve done a bang-up job of that.” I gave a bit of fake applause. “He kidnapped one daughter and had me chasing assassins around Italy!”
“You handled yourself quite nicely, I must say. Very impressive.” My dad actually sounded proud, like I’d hit a grand slam in little league.
Who are these people?
“Since you brought up the CIA.” Mom shifted gears, signaling to my dad that it was time. For what, I didn’t know, but I sensed I wouldn’t like what I was about to find out. I never did. “You haven’t asked the big question yet, darling. Don’t you want to know where we’ve been?”
She was right. I hadn’t asked. It wasn’t because I didn’t want to know; it was because I hadn’t thought to bring my notecards to better organize the questions I had regarding their betrayal.
She paused, the odd look on her face adding to the intentional drama. Then finally, she stepped beside my father, hand on his shoulder in solidarity. They were in this together. Them against me.
“We’ve been in CIA custody for almost two years now,” she revealed. “We’re in Rio, because we finally broke ourselves out.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
As a teenager, there are a lot of things you aren’t expected to easily understand: advanced quantum physics, open heart surgery, and Russian literature, to name a few. But nowhere on that list should be the whereabouts of your parents and your own government’s reasoning for letting you think they were dead.
“You’ve been in CIA custody.” The sentence was so heavy, it was hard to push out. I sat in an interrogation room, in Italy, with the Deputy Director of the CIA. Martin Bittman gave Keira and me falsified passports, he paid for our hotel rooms, he periodically called to “check in,” and never in all of those conversations did he happen to mention that he knew for a fact that our parents were alive, because he held the keys to their cells for two years.
My eyes shot toward Allen Cross, who was still splayed on the floor of the entryway. “I thought you said they were in Cuba! Was everything you told me bullshit?”
“They were in Cuba!” he shouted with a slur in his voice. “In a top-secret black site used as a prison for high-level international criminals. Why do you think Martin Bittman was so willing to help when I called him into Venice? His most high-level prisoners had just escaped custody.”
“You broke out of Gitmo?” The reality of my parents being put in the same category as Al Qaeda terrorists made me swallow down vomit.
“We weren’t in Guantanamo Bay. Please.” My mom scoffed like it was absurd, like out of all the things I heard today, that was the one that was unbelievable. “We were being held in a warehouse, off book. It wasn’t exactly the best accommodations.”
“Oh, gee, I’m so sorry for your discomfort,” I replied sarcastically.
“After your father and I went into hiding—”
“You mean faked your deaths, in a fiery car accident, with charred bodies, that we buried,” I interrupted.
She looked at me like it was time to shut up. And I did, because I needed to hear this, not because she deserved my obedience.
“We were hiding out, moving around the world, trying to stay ahead of the authorities…” she went on.
“But they caught up to us about two years ago,” my father finished, “in Burma. They knew everything, had us on everything. So it was either cooperate or be thrown down a dark pit where no one would ever look.”
“You should’ve gone with the pit,” Cross hissed, his head flopping like a bobblehead.
“We chose to cooperate,” my mother continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “And what they wanted was Randolph Urban. And Department D. They wanted to bring down the whole enterprise.”
“This was two years ago?” My brow knitted in confusion. “Then why didn’t you succeed already? Because it would have saved Keira and me a whole lot of kidnapping.”
“Turns out we’re not very good snitches,” my dad quipped, like it was funny, like everything that had happened because of their choices (my sister in the trunk of a car, Tyson being murdered) was now a clever anecdote, something to be chuckled about over cocktails.
This could have been prevented, all of it, if they had done what the CIA wanted.
I stared him down, steam seeping from my head so intensely I was surprised the condo windows didn’t fog. My father flinched.
“Darling, understand—Urban may have tried to kill us, but we were trying to overthrow him at the time…” My mom waggled her head back and forth like potato pahtatto. She sounded flippant about her own life. “We had a history with Urban, most of it good, and it wasn’t like the CIA was our ally. So our loyalties were a bit divided.”
“You have loyalties?” Cross jibed, needing a ba-dum-bump from a comedic drummer.
“The biggest factor,” Dad said, ignoring him, “was what the CIA promised in return.” He forced me to meet his eyes. “You and your sister. They said if we helped them, then you would never know about our pasts. They would keep you in the dark, you would have normal lives, and they would protect you at all costs, against our enemies. We believed them.”
“Until Urban kidnapped Keira and the CIA did nothing,” I pointed out.
Dad nodded, as if pleased I was catching on and he no longer had to build the edges of the puzzle for me.
“The CIA was getting impatient with our lack of progress,” Mom continued, pacing the marble entry, her sky-high heels with red-soled bottoms clanking loudly. For having recently escaped prison, she seemed to have plenty of time for designer shoes and eyebrow waxing. “They told us about Keira’s DNA test in Boston, and they had no intention of stopping her from running it. She would have learned everything, which completely went against their promise to keep you out of it. Instead, the CIA used her as a way of motivating us. They wanted us to talk faster, provide more evidence, build their case—so they showed us pictures of Keira with Craig Bernard; they threatened to let Keira learn the truth about our work and to make sure Randolph knew that she knew. That would have made both of you easy targets. So we escaped, went to Boston to stop the test, only we ran into Luis Basso first.”
They were trying to protect us.
I didn’t know how I felt about that. There was a sizable part of my jaded heart that swelled at the thought of parents who broke out of prison for us. But there was another part of me so blackened, nothing would ever be enough and everything would always be too late.
“You were in Boston,” I repeated, my mind catching up with the timeline of events. “That test was run before Keira was taken. So where were you when she was kidnapped? Where were you when I was running around Italy trying to get her back? Where were you when Keira was being held by assassins?” I shouted, rage burning away any conflicting emotion.
Cross grunted from the floor beside me, rolling his eyes like he knew I wouldn’t like the answer.
“We couldn’t get involved,” Dad said it as if it were a legitimate excuse. “We’d just broken out of an undisclosed black site. Rumors were spreading that we were alive.”
“So you were worried about yourselves, about getting caught?” Their selfishness burst the tiny bubble of hope I’d felt that they might have escaped for us. Cross tsked in agreement.
“We didn’t think Urban would hurt you or Keira. He was angry, but he was angry with us. So our involvement would only set him off more. We thought eventually he’d cool down, stop acting so erratically…”
“You faked your deaths and lied to him about his long-lost daughter! I don’t think he’s getting over that anytime soon.” The words tasted rancid. I couldn’t believe I was being put in a position where I had to defend that man. “Let’s be honest—you stayed in hiding to protect your asses. You let us take the fall…”
“No.” My father held up a finger. “We tried to intervene in Venice before you got there. We saw those proof of lifes of Keira, we knew what Urban was planning, but things didn’t go well. We barely got out alive. Did you k
now he intended to lure us to that soccer stadium in Venice so he could blow us up? Thankfully, you were a step ahead. And baby, we are so proud!” He held up a hand like he expected a high-five for fighting Craig Bernard alone on a bridge so I could unchain my sister from a bathroom sink before they strapped a bomb to her. The CIA had hinted at those plans, but I didn’t know Randolph Urban really desired to turn my sister into a suicide bomber who would blow up our parents.
“What is wrong with you people?” All air and reason expelled from my body.
“Urban’s usually not that emotional,” Mom explained, like Crazy Uncle Urban had simply overreacted. With a suicide vest. “After he found out you were his daughter, that was pretty much the tipping point. The only other time he was that unhinged was when he learned of our plot to overthrow him.” She gazed at me, nudging me to think hard. “You were there, when we first arrived in Boston, when he gave us that housewarming present.”
My mind flicked back to my entire intact family, standing on the curb outside of our new Brookline brownstone when Urban pulled up in his flashy red sports car and presented my parents with a gift. “The framed embroidery. The latitude and longitude coordinates,” I recalled. What ever happened to that gift?
“That wasn’t the coordinates of our home, sweetheart.” Dad cocked his head. “Those were the coordinates for the meeting we secretly held to wage a coup with Department D staff loyal to us…”
“And where did that loyalty get us?” Cross butted in.
My father ignored him again. “Randolph knew everything.”
“It was a threat,” Mom added. “We started planning our escape the next day.”
“Yes, with my help!” Cross spat, waving his drunk hand around before clutching the jeweled dagger from the ground. “And how did you repay me? By killing my wife!”
Cross hobbled to his feet, waving the weapon wildly, his eyes looking rabid. “I should have let him kill you!” He pointed the knife at my dad, who knocked him off balance with a single swipe.
Cross fell to the ground, but before his round belly hit, he swung out his outstretched arm and sliced my father’s calf. Dad went down, blood pouring out of his torn flesh onto the white marble floor. He gripped his leg, his face grimacing. Cross stumbled back up and charged at my mother, screaming like a warrior invading the enemy camp.
I watched, stunned, as my mom’s arm shot out with a speed that seemed inhuman. She grabbed an antique chair resting near the entry, turned it on its side, and stomped down like a professional wrestler, snapping off a wooden leg. Then she swung the pointed piece of wood at Cross, smacking him so hard and precisely on the wrist, he dropped the knife he was holding. The heavy metal clattered loudly onto the marble.
I had never seen my parents fight before.
I had never seen them move this fast before.
It was as if my mom’s body was reacting to the threat with no conscious decisions—and the spectacle felt uncomfortably familiar, like when I tripped Wyatt Burns, attacked Luis Basso, and nearly killed Craig Bernard. On some primal level, maybe I was like them. I hated that thought.
Cross stormed at my mom, weaponless, panting through his nostrils like a wild beast. Mom rapidly struck him on the forehead with the broken chair leg, and Cross went down, falling onto this back. Then she stepped over him, straddling his body and raising the jagged end of the wooden stick above his chest, ready to come down in a deathblow.
“Stop!” I yelled, racing toward her, finally joining the chaos. “Mom! Stop! Please!”
She halted with her weapon midair, peering at me in confusion as if just remembering I was still in the room, as if only now returning to her body.
“You can’t kill him,” I insisted, taking in the old man on the ground, the old spy who helped me get back my sister, the old friend who gave me the answers when no one else would. Yes, he faked my parents’ deaths, and yes, he almost killed Marcus, but he helped me, too. He stepped up for me in Italy when my parents were too busy protecting themselves. What I felt for him was complicated. Wasn’t everything? “Let. Him. Go.”
She gracefully stepped away with an empty look of remorse.
My mother was a murderer. I could see it now. She was going to kill him. Right in front of me.
“What he said about his wife, it didn’t happen like that,” she pleaded quickly, palms raised, eyes not liking what she saw. She was losing me. We both knew it. She stared down at Cross. “Esther was very sick. You know that.”
“Don’t you talk about her! Don’t you dare say her name!” Cross moaned, not getting up.
“Anastasia, it’s true,” said my father, now bare chested. His gray T-shirt was ripped into strips and tied around his bleeding leg. His khaki shorts were splattered with dark maroon stains, and so were his boat shoes. Gore puddled around him, but his face looked calm, like it didn’t hurt, like he’d been through much worse and had this completely under control. “Once Randolph realized that Allen helped you in Italy, that he helped us fake our deaths, he was livid. He threatened Allen’s wife.”
“Stop talking about her!” Cross shouted.
But my mom continued. “A few weeks ago, after Venice, Randolph took a picture of Esther sitting on a park bench, proof that he could get to her whenever he wanted.”
“And he could have!” Cross shouted.
“Allen…” My mom took on the scolding tone every disappointed parent learned to master in the nursery. “You were ready to flip sides, go back to Department D, and give us up. You were unhinged. Look at you!” She pointed to his sloppy appearance. If I could see how far he’d tumbled in a few weeks, then so could my parents who’d spent a lifetime with the man.
“At least I care about what happens to my loved ones.” Cross sat up, suddenly seeming less drunk, as if the fight was a strong cup of coffee.
Mom’s jaw tightened. “They were using Esther to get to you…”
“So you killed her!”
“It was what she would have wanted.” Dad said this with a straight face, as if this were a solid argument and he were pleading his case to me. Seriously? “Esther had early onset Alzheimer’s. She was living in a nursing home, and she had no idea who she was, where she was. She would have hated that. You know that, Allen. You weren’t abiding by her wishes. We did what she would have wanted. It was a peaceful end.”
“You had no right!” Cross staggered to his feet, his ailing tired legs barely able to hold him. “You weren’t thinking of her. You were thinking of yourselves.”
“We were thinking about what was best for everyone,” Dad reasoned.
“What about me? What about what I wanted? After everything I did for you. You didn’t even let me say goodbye!”
He pulled out the knife once more, no one even realized he’d lifted it from the ground, and he lunged at my mother, aiming the blade at the vacant space where her heart should be. He wanted her dead. Both of them. He wanted revenge. And with good reason.
My mom lifted the broken chair leg still gripped in her hand and smacked the dagger from Cross’s fist. Before the weapon even hit the floor, she moved behind him, wrapped the wooden leg around his neck, and squeezed him in a chokehold. Cross gagged, his liver-spotted face turning purple, his hazel eyes bulging inhumanly. I raced forward, trying to intervene, but I didn’t make it two steps.
I watched my father grab the dagger from the ground and plunge it into Allen Cross’s chest.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Is he okay? He’s not dead, is he?” I heard my mouth yelp, my voice two octaves too high and my eyes seemingly incapable of blinking. “He can’t be dead.”
Only there was a jewel-encrusted dagger sticking out of Allen Cross’s chest, and his eyes were open, glassy and lifeless, as they pointed toward the recessed lights in the ceiling. The shiny white room reeked of death, a tacky mix of blood, salt air, and sweat. I could taste it, or maybe I was chewing the inside of my cheek so hard my mouth was filling with my own blood.
“We did
n’t want to do that.” Dad sounded like a boss during layoffs. We regret to inform you… Meanwhile, he was wiping his bloody hands on his already bloody shorts, and it was his death blow that put a dagger in a man’s chest.
“We tried to reason with him before you got here. That’s why we came,” Mom said. “Our intel was that you and Keira would be in Rio, and we wanted to intercept you. We wanted you nowhere near Paolo Striker, or whatever he’s calling himself.”
She sounded as if her explanation mattered. They’d just killed a man.
“Then you showed up with Marcus Rey.” My dad twisted the name like a curse. Marcus’s name. The boy lying in a hospital bed. One of the only people I had any faith in anymore. My dad was cursing him. “We knew about Antonio, and we had to get you away from those boys, that family. We thought we could get Cross to back off, to stay away from you, to stop this stupid plan of his…”
“But by the time we got here, Cross was already a bottle of scotch deep. He didn’t take it well when he learned what happened to your boyfriend.” Mom didn’t roll her eyes as she said the word, but she looked like she wanted to, like I’d picked a real winner.
Meanwhile, she strangled a man with a chair leg, a senior citizen with liver spots, a friend they’d cherished for decades, a man who put Christmas presents in my stocking. She was still wearing her heels. She was barely sweating. Her husband was wiping a murder weapon of his fingerprints, and her ex-lover held my sister hostage for months and left me to dig through her blood.
And she was criticizing me?
“Are you kidding me right now?” I screeched, baring my teeth. “Marcus was poisoned tonight! He’s hooked up to tubes right now! And you just murdered your best friend!”
“You don’t know the Reys. That entire family can burn for all I care.”
Her words hit me so hard I feared they’d leave a bruise. This woman gave birth to me, to my sister. These people raised me, for thirteen years at least. How had I not seen the Mommy Dearest in her or the Darth Vader in my father? In either of my fathers. For all the harping I did about my gut, about how I was the only one who knew Keira was alive, I was so completely wrong about them. My entire life. What else was I wrong about? What else had they done?
Lies That Bind Page 24
