by Jonas Saul
She sat there and tried, but couldn’t for the life of her, figure out what was in the envelope.
Rosina glanced around at all the people seated close by. Then she looked up the aisle. Darwin still hadn’t boarded. She lifted the envelope and tried to peek through it.
Damn!
It was one of those security types with the crisscrosses on the inside, obscuring anything legible on the paper inside.
Oh, Darwin, what have you gone and done?
She thought maybe it could be tickets for a cruise. Or perhaps tickets to the theatre or an opera. Maybe he was going to fly her to New York next so they could tour Broadway, or possibly Las Vegas for a little gambling.
The suspense was driving her nuts. But then, that was why Darwin did his surprises.
She flipped the envelope over and noticed that it actually wasn’t sealed. The lip was pushed in the back, like a birthday card.
That’s right. Darwin doesn’t lick envelopes.
Over the course of their relationship, Darwin had opened up to her about his phobias, of which he had a few. He was afraid of the dark, which many people are, but his was an actual phobia. He had an irrational fear of it, like the dark was a living thing. They always slept with lights on. He also had a fear of sharp or pointy things. He couldn’t get a needle at the doctor. He would get too angry. They had to put him out to administer a needle. It was that bad. At a restaurant, he’d only use spoons or plastic utensils to eat with. No fork, no knife. And he didn’t lick envelopes because the paper could cut him.
He thought his stepmom had caused his phobias, he’d told her. He talked briefly about how she always had needles in the house and as punishment, she would leave him in a dark basement room for hours on end, waking him with a jab of a fork in his side when dinner was ready. He’d end up being awake most of the night, languishing in the dark as the house slept, crying, waiting to be poked. By the time he was twelve, his fear of sharp and pointy things had grown to where he wouldn’t enter the kitchen anymore.
His stepmother had died a horrible death. It was a freak accident, he’d told her, impaled on a pitchfork in a farmer’s barn. No one knew what she’d been doing there. No one was charged with any crime related to her death.
The flight attendants announced that the plane would be getting underway shortly. Rosina snapped up and sat rigid in her seat.
Darwin hadn’t returned yet.
She looked down at the envelope. A flight attendant walked by, counting the heads of the passengers, no doubt looking for the missing person.
Against better judgment, Rosina slipped her thumb under the lip of the envelope and flipped it open. She looked one more time to make sure Darwin wasn’t walking up right then, catching her in the act of sneaking a peek.
She pulled the paper out and opened it. A note. After scanning the beginning, her eyes raced to the bottom.
It said he was sorry, and that this was for the better. Stay on the plane. Do not get off. He would handle this on his own.
Baby, I love you, but those men aim to kill me and I can’t lead them to you anymore. Go to Athens. I’ll meet you there in a few days.
Run.
If you don’t, you could be hurt, or worse, killed.
Run.
DO NOT get off the plane!
Rosina looked up, her eyes watering. The attendants were shutting the plane’s doors.
“Wait!”
Everyone looked in her direction.
She got up, opened the overhead compartment, grabbed her backpack, and ran for the exit door.
“Wait. Let me off.”
“But ma’am, they’re getting ready to taxi out.”
“My husband is supposed to join me. He’s not here. I’m not leaving without him.”
She pushed past the woman to the door as the entry ramp was pulling away. Rosina looked down at the ground and saw how far it was. She looked back at the attendants and then the gaping passengers. She turned as if she would retake her seat, then quickly spun and ran and leapt over the open space, landing solidly on the ramp.
Rosina ran after her husband, having no idea where he was or where to start looking.
Darwin had stood off in the distance, watching the attendants board the plane. He’d seen his wife walk up, be processed and board just like everyone else.
And yet he waited. The final boarding call had been announced. Then he heard his name over the loudspeakers, asking him to come to gate C36 for immediate boarding. They did it a few times and then the attendants dispersed, assuming whatever it was they assumed when a checked-in passenger failed to show up for a flight.
He saw the ramp start to slide away from the plane and the plane’s door being shut.
Then he turned around and walked away, happy that Rosina was finally out of danger. She was safe. She would be in Athens soon. She had her purse, a credit card and a debit card attached to his bank account where over fifty-thousand dollars sat. Each and every month, Amazon deposited his royalties into his account. She would never want for money again. They were married. What was his was hers now.
If he made it out of this alive, they would reunite and share the rest of their lives together. But right now, he needed to remove the threat from their heads.
He walked back to security, told a guard he had only aided in the boarding of his four-year-old with his wife and that he needed to be let out now. The guard showed him to an exit and Darwin stepped through, walking back into the main part of the airport.
Travelers ran this way and that way without a single care in the world. At least not the kind he had. They moved to and fro, without fear of death, except for the people who feared flying, which he was glad wasn’t one of his phobias.
He had no idea what his next move was. All he knew, at that moment, was he needed to get Rosina away from the shit that he’d started. Now, with her safe and on her way to Greece, it was time to confront the men who were trying to kill him.
Calling the police was out of the question. What could they do? Protection? Some of the police were on the Fuccini payroll. That’s probably how they knew about the meeting in the hangar. The same hangar Darwin happened upon late that night while looking for a group therapy session.
No, the police wouldn’t do. He had to solve this on his own. Maybe an apology would suffice? Or maybe doing something for the family? Would that make things right?
He’d be willing to steal from someone, maybe pick a few pockets. Anything would be better than being hunted and tracked, or even killed.
Dejected about his options, Darwin made his way through the throng of travelers feeling a certain sadness. He already missed his wife and it had only been twenty minutes. And the idea that he’d been deceitful to her so early in their marriage made him feel about one inch tall. He loved Rosina with everything he had, but he just couldn’t bring himself to include her in his problem. More specifically, this problem. He started it and he would finish it.
Darwin hit the doors that led outside and decided to take the bus back to Termini Station and hang around there until they caught up with him. They had located the hotel, so they’ll not have a lot of trouble finding him at the station.
He didn’t get ten paces before two men walked up and grabbed both his arms.
“Don’t protest. Don’t say a word. Come with us or you die here.”
The man on his right opened his jacket and showed him the butt of a gun.
“No problem,” Darwin said. “I was hoping to find you guys. I want you to take me to your boss. We need to talk.”
They hustled him to a waiting van. The side door sat open.
“Oh, don’t worry. We’ll take you to our boss, but I don’t think he’ll be talking much.”
In unison, both brutes shoved Darwin inside the van so hard that he slid along the floor and slammed into the wall on the other side.
Rosina had made it through security and was searching everyone’s face. Darwin was nowhere in sight.
Could he hav
e left the airport? If so, where would he have gone?
She started for the doors that would take her to the bus she and Darwin had taken to the airport not an hour before.
That was when she saw him through the airport’s glass windows. Two men, one on either side of Darwin, appeared to force him along.
She ran for the large revolving doors, but was too late. The men threw her husband inside a van, slammed the side door shut and hopped in.
By the time she got outside, the van raced away, oblivious to her screams.
Rosina stood there in the departures section where families hugged and cried as they said goodbye to their loved ones.
She cried for another reason altogether. She should call the police, but what would she tell them? Her husband had deserted her. He left the airport with two other men in a van. Of course it was forceful, but she didn’t have a plate number. He wouldn’t be a missing person yet. There was nothing they would do. She was on her own.
After a few minutes, she collected herself, righted the backpack on her shoulders and walked toward the bus back to the Hotel Luigi by Termini Station. Darwin would know where to find her. She would never leave her husband. She wouldn’t abandon him in his time of need.
She didn’t recognize the men and she didn’t know what they wanted. She had nowhere to turn and nowhere to start.
All she could think of was the police. It was time to bring them in. She would show them the note and get them involved.
She had to do something.
Chapter 2
“Hey, there’s no reason to be so rough,” Darwin said, his hands bound with tight-fitting metal cuffs.
One of the men had jumped in the driver’s seat and now the van barreled out of the airport. The biggest one of the two made Darwin think of a man he’d seen on TV years ago, Andre the Giant. His hands looked like meat hooks. He’d flipped Darwin around and slapped handcuffs on him. Then he’d righted Darwin and shoved him back down.
“Shut up,” the giant grunted.
“Whatever you say, Andre,” Darwin said, his temper flaring.
He came to them. He could’ve gotten on that plane. He could’ve been miles away by now, but he came to clear things up and they were acting like he was a common thug.
The giant didn’t respond to the reference to the old wrestler’s name. All he did was look forward and stare out the windshield as they entered the highway, heading back into Rome.
“You know Andre the Giant?” Darwin asked.
The large man turned around. “Hey, kid, you got some balls. Shut your fucking mouth. This ride ain’t a social one.”
“Take it easy. Just take it easy. I came to you guys, remember. Show some respect. I could’ve stayed on that flight.”
Now I have regrets. I should’ve gone to Greece. Now Rosina is pissed and I’m going who-knows-where.
Andre kept staring forward, not baited into conversation.
The van was a normal utility unit with metal walls, two doors at the back and two seats in the front. Large pieces of plywood had been laid down on the bed of the van.
There were broken, splintered parts. Dark stains circled those areas. He leaned in closer. The wood smelled horrible.
“What the hell is that smell?” he muttered.
Andre spun around fast, dropped to one knee and brought his meat-hook hand across Darwin’s face.
The smack was so fast, he only had time to shut his eyes. He fell to the plywood and rolled to the back door, banging into it with his knees.
Instantly his face lit up. The pins and needles, flaring pain and heat, all worked to remind him what the consequences were for speaking when he wasn’t supposed to.
It also pissed him off.
Ever since he was a kid, something else he blamed on his stepmother, he hated pain. He would react in anger. Nothing fired him up more than pain.
A thought flashed through his mind while he lay at the back of the van, scrunched up against the pain: Will Andre attack again?
He was in this now, to the end. They aimed to kill him. It was the mafia, after all, and he had killed one of their men. Accident or not, a ‘made’ man was dead because Darwin was behind the wheel that night.
He knew this on some level last week, but he wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. Not with Rosina around, anyway.
But now it was him and them. Fitting how twenty-five hundred years ago, prisoners fought to the death in Rome, and now he got to experience the same pleasures, first hand.
With nothing left to lose, Darwin said, “It was an accident.”
He rolled over and looked up at Andre.
“What? What did you say? You’re joking right? This is a fucking joke? After a bitch slap like that and you want to risk talking?”
“I’m just saying, it was an accident. I didn’t try to kill anybody.”
Darwin braced himself. At any second Andre would come. Darwin felt real fear and he had no idea what he would do. All he knew was that he had to do something. He wasn’t cattle. He wasn’t going to sit idle while they delivered him to slaughter.
No fucking way. What kind of man would I be for Rosina if I willingly walked into my execution?
“Tell your theories about it being an accident to the boss,” the driver said.
Andre laughed. “Yeah, see what the boss says about you killing his only son and successor. It’ll go over just fine, I’m sure.”
His son? His successor? Oh shit, oh shit, oh fuck. This is worse than I thought. I’m in over my head. I need out. I need help.
“Is he a reasonable man?” Darwin asked, his voice cracking.
“Oh sure,” Andre said. “He’ll make sure you’re reasonably dead.” Andre turned around and looked back at Darwin. “Seriously man, what did you think? That he’d just walk away? Let it go? Man, do you believe in Santa Claus too?”
Okay, I need out of here. I need my temper. I need anger. It’s the only way. If I can get out from under my stepmother, I can deal with these common hoods.
“Tell me Andre, do you have a knife on you?”
Andre looked over at the driver and then back to Darwin.
“What’s it to you?”
“I need to see one. Anything pointy. That kind of thing really pisses me off.”
Andre laughed, a deep, guttural laugh. He held his stomach and leaned into the back of the passenger seat. After he finished, he wiped his eyes and looked back at the driver.
“Hey, Joe, we got a knife so we can piss our guest off? Do we have anything on us that’ll make him angry?”
The driver laughed too, but not as long or hard.
“You are a piece of work.” Andre’s face hardened again. “You want a knife? You wanna be pissed off, is that it? Then what you gonna do? Hurt us? Steal the van, huh? Take us out? Fuck you and your little fantasy world. I’ll show you a knife.”
Here we go.
Andre leaned over and lifted his pant leg up, revealing a brown sheath with a hilt sticking out. Andre wrapped his finger around the hilt and slid out a four inch knife.
“Here, here’s your knife. Nice, huh?”
Andre edged closer on his knees, staying low, the knife extended.
Darwin felt something akin to a chemical change take place. A dark shade of red blurred his vision. Nothing mattered in that moment. Death became an answer, not a question. Choices left him, options died. Nothing remained but anger so vile that an absolute rage coursed through him. Fear became him. Darwin was rage, and rage was Darwin.
He spun in place, landed on his knees, placed a foot on the plywood floor and lunged with every ounce of his one hundred and eighty pound frame. His shoulder hit Andre in the stomach and propelled him forward.
Odds couldn’t have played a better role in that second. As he connected with Andre, the driver who’d been watching in the rear view mirror, applied the brakes at the same exact second, propelling them toward the backs of the front seats.
Andre had been in the center. He continued forward, bet
ween the seats, his back smashing into the dashboard.
By this time, Darwin was a mask of rage so intense that his actions didn’t register on a conscious level. He turned with his mouth open and clamped down on the driver’s right ear. He bit so hard and so fast that his teeth severed the floppy top, cartilage and all, blood splattering his face.
