by JM Darhower
Carmine felt the bile rising up. The thought of her being somewhere with Nunzio sickened him. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what she was going through.
“I’ll kill him,” Carmine said. “He'll pay for hurting her.”
“He will,” Vincent said. “But right now, we need to be more concerned with finding her. As soon as we get home, I’ll check her chip. Maybe we can head them off before they leave the area.”
The color drained from Carmine’s face. He was certain then. He was going to be sick. “I don’t think that’s gonna work,” he said, the words barely making their way past his lips. Dominic had messed with the software for her chip right before he left for college.
Vincent narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“Because,” Carmine said, “I think I fucked up.”
* * * *
It turned out to be a brisk night, a storm rolling in from the west making the waters of Aurora Lake more turbulent than usual. Vincent stood at the end of a long pier a few miles from the Barlow residence, huddled up in his coat as he tried to shield himself from the harsh winds.
Vincent could easily recall the first time he met Nicholas, a warm fall day out on the field at the local elementary school. Carmine had just turned ten, and it was the first time Vincent had made it to one of his football games. Between juggling his job at the hospital and managing his work with la famiglia, he had little time left over for his children.
But that day, he’d snuck out of the hospital early to watch. Toward the middle of the game, a scrawny boy with tanned skin took a nasty spill, and someone’s cleat gashed his cheek. It was a superficial wound, so Vincent grabbed a first-aid kit from the car, sparing the boy a trip to the ER. “Thanks, Doc,” he’d said. “Oh, that reminds me. What did the doctor say when the invisible man asked for an appointment?”
“I’m not sure. What did the doctor say?”
“Sorry, but I can’t see you today,” he said, laughing hysterically at his joke. “Get it? Can’t see you? You know, because he’s invisible!”
Vincent smiled. “I get it.”
Halftime began as he finished fixing the boy’s wound, and Carmine ran over. “Dad! You actually came!”
Intense guilt hit him. “I did.”
Carmine smiled brightly, throwing his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “This is my best friend, Nicholas.”
Those words caught Vincent off guard. Carmine's teachers all reported the same thing—he was closed off and shut down, so much so that it was almost as if he weren't even there.
Vincent’s pager went off as he stood there, the moment lost in that split second as the beeps rang out. The sparkle in Carmine’s eye dissipated, the child Vincent had grown accustomed to returning without a single word spoken.
But all hope was not lost, Vincent realized then, because Carmine had someone. Someone he could just be Carmine around—the young, innocent boy, haunted by demons others couldn’t see.
After their fallout, he watched as his son spiraled out of control. He was walking down the one path Vincent wanted him to stay far away from—the path that led straight to Chicago.
But then she happened. The girl who had never been able to call her life her own taught a boy who had the world at his fingertips exactly what it meant to live. He wasn’t alone anymore.
Nicholas, however, was.
Vincent never forgot the joke he’d told him that first day, because Nicholas was a lot like the invisible man. Drifting his way through life, unnoticed by most. Vincent saw him, though, even if he couldn’t fix him.
And as he stood on that pier under the cloak of darkness, he wished he would’ve done something more to help.
He gazed down at the water, his eyes fixated on the spot where Nicholas’s body had disappeared moments ago, and felt nothing but disgust. He’d watched the boy grow up and was sending him to a watery tomb like so many of his adversaries over the years. The heavy chains wrapped around his legs would ensure he'd never resurface. In time, his body would succumb to nature.
“Oggi uccidiamo, domani moriremo,” he said, his gloved hand making the sign of the cross. Today we kill, tomorrow we die.
Vincent headed to his car that was hidden in the trees, and he drove away from Aurora Lake without looking back. He’d already cleaned up the front of the house, having hosed down the driveway and redistributed the gravel to hide all signs of the incident, but he had bigger issues he needed to deal with.
* * * *
As soon as Vincent made it home, he slipped inside the room under the stairs and took a few deep breaths before heading down into the basement. The place was cleaned out, the crates relocated elsewhere, so he had no problem navigating the room. He reached the large bookcase along the back and opened a metal electrical box on the wall beside it. He slid a section of panel down, revealing a small keypad, and punched in the numbers 62373.
There was a loud click. He slid the panel back up, closing the electrical box as the bookshelf shifted a few inches on its own. It was a door leading into a safe room, or what he knew his youngest referred to as 'the dungeon'. It was a room, twelve feet wide and fourteen feet long, with steel reinforced walls layered with bullet-proof Kevlar.
It was the kind of room that few men went inside and even fewer came back out of alive.
He flicked a switch along the side. Florescent lights lit up the small space. He squinted and blocked out some of the blinding glare with his hand. Groans rang out from the corner where Johnny lay shackled to a table on the concrete floor.
“Good evening,” Vincent said stoically.
“Vincent.” The voice was barely audible. “Help me.”
“I will, but first you're going to have to help me.”
“I can't move. I can't feel my legs, Vincent.”
“I know. The bullet hit your spinal cord.”
“What? A bullet? I’m paralyzed! Oh God, my legs!”
Vincent sighed with annoyance. “Toughen up.”
“What happened?” Johnny struggled to move. “My fucking legs!”
“What happened?” Vincent asked. “I got a call that someone was at my house. I come home to investigate and find my son unconscious, his girlfriend missing, an innocent kid dead in my front yard, and you seriously injured. You, at the scene of an attack upon my family. So how about you tell me what happened.”
“I, uh, I don't know...”
“You don't know?”
“I got shot, and I don't know how or who...”
“I know both the how and who,” Vincent said, leaning against the table and crossing his arms over his chest. “I just need you to tell me why. I need you to tell me what you're doing in North Carolina and how you got into this situation. I understand how this life is. We all get drawn into things that get out of control, but it's not too late to fix it. I need you to tell me what he wants with the girl.”
“I can't!”
Vincent could sense his panic and fought to keep his expression calm so as not to alarm him any further. “You can. I know you have to be in pain, and you need your wound cleaned before infection takes hold. I’m your only option.”
“I can't tell you anything,” he said. “I don't know anything.”
“You're lying,” Vincent said. “You wouldn't go along with something unless you knew why you were doing it. Where did he take her?”
“You have to believe me, Vincent. I can't tell you!”
“Stop,” he said. “You can tell me, you just won't! There's a difference, and that difference is as vast as life and death.”
“Please!”
He shook his head. “Don't you dare beg! It's unbecoming of you. Be a man and tell me what I need to know.”
“You have to understand—”
“No, you have to understand. They've taken something important from me, and I’m not going to stop until I find her. If you want even the slightest chance of making it out of this room alive, you'll tell me what I need to know.”
“If I tell you any
thing, they'll kill me.”
“If you don't tell me, I'll kill you,” he said. “And I won't take mercy on you. Every minute she's out there, you're going to be right here, and I’m not going to end your suffering until she's back where she belongs.”
* * * *
The tension was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. Carmine had heard the phrase at least a hundred times, but it wasn’t until that moment, sitting in that immaculately clean car and fighting back nausea at the stench of fresh leather, that he finally understood what it meant. It was stifling, the hostility rolling from the man beside him almost too much to take.
He had a fractured rib, a broken nose, and a mildly sprained wrist on top of the concussion. Vincent had called in some favors, and one of his colleagues agreed to see him off the record. Despite Carmine’s insistence that he didn’t need any doctors, Vincent demanded he go, and when Vincent DeMarco demanded something, even Carmine couldn’t say no. So when Corrado arrived in town a few hours later, the two of them set out on the drive to the clinic while his father stayed back to deal with the devastation.
“You’re not gonna kill that doctor I just saw, are you?” Carmine asked, the heavy dose of morphine in his system clouding his thoughts. “I know you killed that other one, so I was just wondering.”
Corrado said nothing, and Carmine wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.
“I don’t think you should,” he said. “He’s just a doctor.”
“Carmine?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
Carmine decided then he should probably shut up.
Disoriented, he glanced at the clock on the dashboard and saw it was a few minutes until midnight. Haven had been gone for twelve hours, and the clock kept ticking as if the seconds didn’t matter.
He sighed, the strain in the car growing.
Carmine felt like he could breathe again when they reached the house, glad to put some space between them. The place looked vacant, no lights on that Carmine could see, but he was certain it wasn’t empty. It lacked something, though. Something important.
La mia bella ragazza... until she returned, nothing would feel right again.
The spot where Nicholas had fallen appeared normal, no sign of death or blood. Light-headed, Carmine swayed a bit, the uncertainty overwhelming him. Could he have survived?
He never thought he’d say it, but he fucking hoped so.
Carmine headed inside and paused in the foyer as his father stepped out of the room under the stairs. Corrado walked in and closed the front door. “Has he talked?”
Vincent shook his head. “He’s given me nothing.”
Corrado brushed past Carmine, giving Vincent a peculiar look before disappearing into the room. Vincent muttered something under his breath, refusing to even look at Carmine as he walked away.
Carmine stood there for a while, unsure of what to do, before heading for the stairs. He could hear his father’s raised voice when he hit the second floor. Carmine sat down on the steps, putting his head down when he heard his father shout Dominic’s name.
It was his fault. He’d gotten his brother involved.
Carmine sat there, rocking back and forth for a while, before he started pacing the hallway. Instead of calming down, his grip was fading. Eventually, he heard footsteps on the stairs as Corrado approached at the same time Vincent stepped back out of his office, both men stopping in the hallway. Carmine glanced between them, his last bit of control slipping. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you just standing there? Can’t you do something? Anything? Christ!”
Before the last word was even verbalized, Carmine was jerked by the back of his collar and slammed into the wall. He lost his breath as Corrado shoved a gun to his fractured rib. “Have you still not learned your lesson? Is one of us going to have to die before you realize this isn’t a game? These are our lives you’re messing with, and I, for one, will not tolerate you endangering me more than you already have! I don’t care whose child you are.”
Carmine’s heart pounded rapidly. He didn’t doubt for a second that his uncle would shoot him.
“Corrado,” Vincent said. “Let him go.”
Corrado let go of Carmine and swung around, turning the weapon on Vincent. Carmine inhaled sharply as he watched it play out. Vincent stood as still as a statue, not even blinking as stared down the barrel of Corrado’s gun.
“You keep pulling me in deeper and deeper, Vincent,” Corrado said, lowering his pistol.
“I know,” Vincent said.
Corrado turned to Carmine. “That mouth of yours is going to get every single one of us killed. If you can’t close it yourself, I’ll close it for you. You may not like our methods, but you need to accept the fact that some of us know better than you.”
* * * *
The next day was dawning when Carmine made his way up to the third floor, his chest constricting as he pushed open his bedroom door. He sat down on the edge of the bed and grabbed a pillow, clutching it to his chest as tears formed in his eyes.
Every bit of composure he had was ripped away as he inhaled Haven’s scent that lingered there. He didn’t care who heard him as he cried in agony.
The grief swallowed him, refusing to let go until his father interrupted in the middle of the afternoon. “We’re leaving for Chicago soon,” Vincent said.
Carmine set the pillow down and wiped his tears. He cringed at the torn, blood-splattered clothes he still wore. “I should change.”
“I prefer you to stay here in case she shows back up.”
Carmine laughed bitterly as he stood up. “She’s not a lost dog. She didn’t just wander out of the backyard and get lost in the woods somewhere. She was taken!”
“I understand, but you should reconsider. It’s dangerous and—”
“I’m going,” Carmine said, cutting him off. “If you don’t want me to go with you, I won’t, but I’ll be on the next goddamn plane whether you like it or not.”
“Fine, but you need to watch yourself, son. You can’t run off on a vigilante mission. I can’t focus on getting her back if you’re out there wreaking havoc and counteracting everything I’m doing.”
“I know. I’ll keep my mouth shut and let you all do what you do, but I have to be there.”
“I get why you feel that way, but we have no idea what set of circumstances we’re going to find her in.”
“I said I’m going. I’m not fucking naïve, I know what might be happening to her, but I need to be there, no matter what.”
Vincent pinched the bridge of his nose. ”We need to tie up some loose ends here, and then we’ll be leaving.”
Carmine gazed at him. “Loose ends? Is it, uh… you know, the guy that was shot, and…”
He couldn’t finish his thought, but he didn’t have to. Vincent understood. “We have Johnny in the basement. He hasn’t said much, but I injected him with sodium thiopental a few minutes ago.”
“Sodium what?”
“Sodium thiopental. It’s a barbiturate. It suppresses the higher cortical functions of the brain, and since lying is such a complex process and it’s easier to—”
“English, please.”
“Truth serum,” Vincent said. “Hypothetically, anyway.”
Carmine nodded. “And the other?”
Vincent stared at him, the look on his face the only answer Carmine needed. Even across the room, he could see the sorrow. “There wasn’t anything I could do.”
“Why him? Haven and I were standing right there. Why not us?”
“Because they intended to miss you,” Vincent said. “Nicholas was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a complication that could easily be erased, but it was different with you. I don’t know what part you play in this, but they kept you alive for a reason.”
Carmine’s heart felt like it was being ripped apart, his voice an agonized whisper. “Why did they have to take my hummingbird?”
Vincent stared at him for a moment befo
re sighing. “I don't know, son. I wish I had the answers you're looking for.”
Carmine wiped his face again. His eyes burned from crying.
“Anyway,” Vincent said, “I did a few things to buy us some time, but I'm sure the police will eventually come to you with questions. Your rivalry with Nicholas was no secret.”
Carmine tensed at the realization that his father didn't know everything. “They might come sooner than you think.”
“Why?”
“We got into a fistfight at the school yesterday.”
Vincent shook his head. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”
* * * *
Dawn broke as Vincent stood in the safe room, staring at a suffering Johnny. “Tell me where she is and this all will end.”
“I can’t,” he said for what had to be the hundredth time. He was persistent, even proclaiming ignorance with the truth serum coursing through his veins. Either he was stupid enough to go through with the plan without knowing why, or he was more conniving than Vincent realized.
Corrado approached, his dark eyes filled with rage. It wasn’t something Vincent saw often. It was a look that said someone was about to die.
Violently.
Vincent stepped out of the way and watched as Corrado walked over to the cabinet along the wall. He rifled through it, pulling out knives and pliers, methodically laying the tools on the steel worktable in the safe room. “While you're still alive, we're going to play a little game of 'eeny, meeny, miny, moe'.”
Unable to stomach what he knew was about to happen, Vincent walked away. A loud scream of agony echoed through the basement before he even made it to the steps.
Johnny would be leaving the room soon… in pieces.
Corrado resurfaced an hour later, drenched from the rain outside and splattered with blood. His face was unreadable once more. “Russians.”
