"When you finish up, change into something comfortable, okay?"
Good thing we'd already showered—separately—or we could have gotten distracted.
"Um…" she frowned, confused, but her eyes were still anxious. "Where are we going again?"
"To get new IDs. Technically all we need are photos. I keep one of me in my phone, from when I was signing up for college, but you'll need to have one taken."
The names would change again, which was why I hadn't bothered to do more than glance through the documents I got from Belt. I could even add a few more documents to show we were married so we could use the same surname, since she was pregnant…
"But didn’t we already—"
"Those were placeholders. I don’t want anyone coming after us. I took the IDs to assure the FBI, but how they think, we are easily accessible because their new information on us is in their database. I'm gonna have to leave an electronic trail for them to track to give us a head start, but I want a life away from all of it."
Just because I'd needed their help didn’t mean I suddenly trusted them.
Destiny looked startled. "What about that agent, Belt? What if he tries to look for you?"
Her words implied he would look for me in a capacity outside the job. I didn’t doubt he'd at least be tempted to check up on me, he always had before.
"Belt… is a sort of friend. But I can get in touch with him whenever I want, if ever I feel like it. He won't care if I don't, though, he knows I'll be just fine. Besides, this was always the plan, and he knew that."
Her eyes widened in surprise. "He did?"
"He'd have to be an idiot, and know me a lot less, not to realize. I won't take any chances, not if the stakes are too high. The mafia could have links everywhere, including the FBI. This was why I took that money, because I knew we'd need it. The FBI would gladly hand us over new identities, but the money they left us wasn’t a lot. They had jobs set up, but nothing well paying, because my education history was entirely wiped out. I'd have to work my way from the ground up, and I've already done that. I refuse to repeat it."
"But," she frowned again, "where did you even keep it? And how are we going to get to it?"
"I had some idea where Belt would be sending us. Mexico is close to and easily accessible from the United States. Plenty of flights come down here and we would have been lost in one of them, so harder to track if anyone was looking for it." I could have been wrong, but thankfully, I wasn’t. "So I set up a business account with a local bank. I asked a few friends to deposit the cash in their accounts and send them to that account."
Even though I had to send each with a little extra and threaten with sending them to prison if they thought to take off with the cash. I had a reputation; they didn’t dare double cross me.
"And you can just go withdraw it?"
"I don’t have to. So long as I call in and give them the details they need, the money will be transferred to wherever I want."
"Over the phone?"
"Yes. I can do that right now, I probably should anyway, no point in waiting. I already have a new account where the money will be going. Once the old account is left empty for a while, it will be closed. We can pick up the money a little at a time until it's all gone, then open another account with our new identities where we're going to end up."
I got a call on my phone, and I answered it. I was on and off the phone for a while, Destiny had finished her meal and gone to change, and she ended up sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the TV screen, even though is wasn’t turned on. It took maybe a couple of hours before I was free to focus on her. When she noticed my attention was on her, she stood up and strolled over to the curtains, in the same position from earlier in the morning, looking outside.
"We're moving again," she commented.
She must have inferred as much from the flurry of phone calls. It must have been fast for her, we'd only just arrived a few hours ago, and it wasn't even early evening.
I strolled over to her and kissed her bare shoulder, wrapping my arms around her, across her chest. I felt her body shiver against mine as my hard forearm touched her nipples through the flimsy blouse she wore. But she didn’t let it distract her. I made a valid effort, myself.
"Yeah, we are. We have a few days here to cool our heels, so you can relax a little. I want us to be somewhere safe, somewhere we could live in peace. With a baby on the way, we have to get settled a lot earlier than I'd originally planned."
I'd have to handle the new IDs, but lucky me, I knew plenty of people. This time, I could set it up so instead of just being a couple moving around together, we would be married. We already had a child on the way. One of my hands, without my permission, slid down her body until it touched her stomach.
I was gonna be a dad. Huh. I wondered what the old man, or Belt, would have thought about that. Dad would probably laugh his head off, and Belt would likely be horrified at the thought of me parenting a child. I almost snickered out loud.
"Alex, I'm missing something." I was broken out of my happy day dreaming by Destiny turning around to face me.
"What is it?"
"How are we going to get these new identities. And all the documents we're going to need…"
I could understand her reluctance, but even if I hadn't gotten a basic idea from what Belt got for us, I knew what we would need, and the ways to go about getting all of it.
"I have a few contacts here."
"In Mexico?" she sounded skeptic.
"Yeah. I never left Chicago since I was born there, but I know people from all over. Some of them through my dad, some of them moved, some I met online. I always thought I was smarter than my dad, but just in case, I had to be prepared for something to go wrong. This guy was from the US, he had a problem and I helped him out. So, he owes me."
"Will that be enough to get him to help you?" Destiny worried.
"It's not like it's free, I still have to pay up, though for the sake of the favor he owes me, I'm only paying half of what I would have been paying otherwise. He's good, if not better than even the FBI, at what he does," I reassured her.
I pulled my arms away, turning her around to face me.
"Why don’t we go and find a place to take a professional head shot, hmm? I just need to send him the pictures to start the process. We can come back here and relax for the week before we need to go anywhere."
When she nodded, I smiled at her, reassuring, and tugged her back into my arms for a short moment, before we left the room.
I was going to be a dad.
I still didn’t know how to feel about it, besides becoming even more protective of Destiny.
Chapter 22
Destiny
Everything was moving way too fast.
Not so long ago, we were in our hotel room, and I was sleeping in Alex's arms; but now we were getting on a bus, and it wouldn’t be the only public vehicle we would board. I'd vaguely listened to Alex when he plotted out loud the route we would take moving further south. He even bought a map just so he could draw it out with a pencil and show it to me.
We were leaving the continent; moving down to Brazil.
"We'll be making a few stops along the way, so I can cover our backs as we move," he explained.
"So we can't just rent a car, because it could get back to the FBI."
"Exactly. We can't just take a flight for the same reason. Going on the ground isn’t going to be easy, but…"
"You've thought of everything." Just like always. "The safest route available that would get us there in no time, right? But do we have to leave the continent?" I whined a little, but he just took it in stride.
"It's perfect. Rio is so crowded we'd practically disappear right off the radar if we moved there. The place we'll settle will be a boring old suburb, but it's in a crowded area, so we'll still be relatively hidden among the masses. A little less excitement would do us good."
I could agree to that. "Hear, hear."
He'd grinned
at me and gone on musing his plans out loud. I was almost surprised, just how far he'd thought it all out. But then I remembered this was Alex; he lived for making plans, and I was growing to learn very few of his plans failed.
He booked us on several tours that would lead us progressively south instead of going in a straight line. Even then, we'd still make it in about a week, by his estimates.
We kept the conversations inane while we were in the bus, as we were surrounded by strangers. But the first chance we got, when I felt like I'd managed to catch up to what was going on, I questioned him. The tour group was just taking a break, but we would be waiting for a different one. We sat outside a restaurant, with food paid for by the tour, thankfully with enough space around us so no one would overhear us, so long as we were relatively quiet.
I wanted to know exactly how Alex was going to manage this, and if he could do it in the first place, why we'd had to go through the FBI anyway when we could have just avoided them.
"I had my buddy working on this since I made the deal with Belt. I wanted it to be good, and he would have been just fine with a rush job, but I wanted everything to be perfect." He dipped a chip in his sauce and popped it in his mouth, then took a bite of his main dish. "Besides, we were both already on their radar. If we'd just disappeared, I can't say a search wouldn’t have been made for either one of us. If it were just me, I could have run; but Angelo needed to be put away, and direct information is always better than stuff sent in anonymously."
Which meant he'd basically stuck around for my sake. I'd already guessed as much, but hearing it made me feel a little sorry for causing him the trouble, even though I was grateful for it.
"And we're picking up our IDs in Brazil? Shouldn’t we ditch the current ones before we get there?"
"Not necessary. We're paying everything via cash, we'll only need our identities processed once we cross continents. I can confuse the electronic trail, lead us around the country, then take us outside and all over the place, then flying up north to Canada. And that is if they get past the first one."
"What do you mean?"
He waited for a couple passing near our table to walk away before he answered, leaning close so he could murmur near my ear.
"I already have something set up."
Of course, he did.
"As far as the FBI is concerned, currently, our personas are settling down in their new area, their new jobs, their new lives. Before they realize it's a set-up, the other virtual trail will be done, perfect and airtight."
"And will we live in Brazil?" I asked slowly.
I didn’t know about living there, any more than Mexico. I barely knew any Spanish, but I sure as hell didn’t know any Brazilian. Or did they speak Spanish, too? I didn’t think so…
Alex distracted me, clarifying.
"Just for a few weeks, to tie up every loose string. When we leave to start a new life, I want to start fresh; that means all this crap needs to go out the window first. We're really just here to pick up the papers and so I can scrap our former identities."
I felt my body shiver at how final that sounded. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s a little like growing up, when you stop being a teenager and become an adult.
Yeah, I couldn’t buy that one. I didn’t get to stop being a teenager when I hit eighteen; it happened at twenty-four when I deliberately sought the attention of a man I should have run away from on sight.
"Where will we be going?"
He chewed thoughtfully on his food, and I looked up to catch him looking off into the distance, then his eyes turned to me.
"Well, as our personas take a flight to Canada, we'll be taking one to England in the UK. To a tiny, quaint little town, just outside London."
"It sounds lovely," I murmured, wistful.
"From what I've researched on it, it is. I am going to be a computer teacher in a local school in London, a bit of a drive every day but nothing that would kill me. You, will be my lovely, and heavily pregnant, wife."
I smacked his shoulder and he laughed. Not just a low chuckle either, but loud enough to turn heads. It made me realize I'd never seen or heard him sound so… happy.
But still… "Are you sure?" I pressed.
He'd had an actual life, unlike me; a college education, a prestigious job. A life to look forward to. He was giving it all up, and I knew the motivation was more than just me, but I played a big part in it nonetheless.
He hugged me closer to his body his arm around my shoulders, kissing my temple with a loud smacking sound that made me blush. But when he spoke, it was impossible not to believe the honest fervor behind his words.
"I've never been more sure of anything than this, just leading a normal life. It's what I worked so hard for, back in college. I even got close to getting it until…"
The issue with Frank Senior and Alex’s dad happened, then Angelo came into the picture; and then he met me. I didn’t say it out loud, but no doubt all he had to do was see the expression on my face to know I got it.
"Exactly. Of course, I always expected to be going at it alone, but I'm glad that I have you."
He called a name that wasn’t mine, and I was startled for a second, until I realized that was the name on my current ID.
"Our meeting wasn’t the best, and the circumstances could have been better. But never doubt this; I am so fucking glad I met you."
Chapter 23
Alex
Did I do everything all wrong?
It was a thought I couldn’t wipe from my mind, since it took root and settled there. I'd been living on mostly adrenaline for the past few weeks, using it to drive me forward, and now that I could do nothing more than sit and wait, I got to thinking.
Maybe I had rushed. I hadn't stopped once to ask Destiny what her opinion was, because I knew she would choose to go with me anyway, but that was an egotistic assumption to make. I was looking forward to a blank slate, for the both of us, but it was useless if she wasn’t satisfied.
Did she even want this really? My initial giddiness had lessened as my thoughts shifted focus from us to her; once I’d taken care of covering our trail and I could allow myself to think beyond the next week. We ended up staying in Brazil longer than anticipated, what if she'd wanted to stay there? Or go somewhere else? London was a good place, but the weather, from what I'd heard, wasn’t all that great. Less wind than Chicago, but still cold.
She should have been my priority to begin with, not whatever imaginary life I'd had floating in my head.
It’s a little late to be thinking about this now, idiot. You're already in London.
We'd only just gotten off the plane, and she looked exhausted. We took a connecting flight, where we had to run to make it in time. I'd thought before, when we flew to Mexico, that her unease had kept her from sleeping, but I was starting to think she just couldn’t sleep on planes that well.
I stopped her outside of baggage claim, before we went any further. I steered her out of the way of the other people in the airport, lugging most of our stuff behind me as she pulled one small suitcase. We'd stocked up on some stuff, so we had quite a bit of luggage with us compared to when we left Chicago. I wasn’t sure what would seem strange—I could have made excuses, like we were having our stuff mailed to us—but I was being overcautious. I had hidden our trail well enough that whoever tried to track us down would need hounds just to track what wasn’t us. Those hounds would need to be digital ones, and even so I'd made it all as difficult as possible, to make sure we were truly secure.
"D—Lizzie," I grimaced. I'd have to get used to the new name, again. Which was a pity, because I liked her real name. "Are you sure about this? I know I should have asked you before but, is this the life that you want?"
I didn’t want her to be miserable with me. I didn’t have idiotic imaginings of us flying off into the sunset and everything being all perfect thereafter, but when it came down to it, she was the only thing I had left that mattered. I didn’t want to lose her. I remembere
d her asking me the same question as we left Mexico.
You should have asked her opinion, too, you idiot.
But she just smiled, dispelling my anxiety, the hand not holding the suitcase handle going to her stomach. We'd had her checked at a hospital to confirm the pregnancy, and a couple more times to check the progress, to be sure everything was fine. Even knowing a child was growing in her, it still came as a surprise when I noticed she was suddenly swelling around the middle. Her baby bump wasn’t big, and she'd gotten good at hiding it behind her clothes, but in the shapeless dress she wore, she did look slightly rounded.
"Of course I'm sure. I wouldn’t just follow you blindly Alex, I learned my lesson with that. I do want this with you."
I could feel my chest relax in my relief. She might change her mind later, but so long as she was still okay… I could work with that.
I held her chin in my hand, gave her a quick, hard kiss, and we headed for the exit.
I'd called ahead, and someone would be there to pick us up. The man that would be meeting us worked for the school I would be teaching at. It was a university, thank God, because I didn’t think I could survive teaching basic computer to a bunch of teenagers. I would be bored out of my mind in no time, and likely turn to finding inventive ways to amuse myself. I saw him once we were outside, holding a sign with our new surname. I passed over him for a second before I remembered.
When we were close enough to him, I dropped a bag to raise my hand and wave to get his attention. I'd sent a couple of photos beforehand so he recognized us easily. Both Destiny and I were dark haired, and I'd briefly toyed with the idea of changing our hair colors, or at least one of us. But I didn’t want her to change, and she had threatened to walk away if I died my hair blond. It didn’t matter anyway; it would have been strange if we both changed hair colors and the baby was born with dark hair.
Dirty Money: A Dark Mafia Romance (Alpha Men Book 1) Page 14
