“So there is no way you will help?” I asked in dismay.
“We can put out a missing person’s report on your girl, would you like us to do that?”
“Technically she isn’t missing; I mean, I know where she is.”
The officer looked less than enthusiastic to be still dealing with me, and I decided it was time for me to think up a new plan. Certainly, the local police weren’t going to get involved. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that they probably got paid off with tons of cash by Aldo throughout the years. None of them were going to want to risk their bonus side money that he gave them.
“That’s all I can offer you for right now?”
“Okay, thanks,” I said as I got up to leave.
Officer Reynolds walked me out to the front lobby and then grabbed my arm to say one last thing.
“You should just forget about all of this. It’s not worth it, you know.”
“Abby is worth it,” I said as I turned to leave.
Reluctantly, I headed over to Jack’s house to talk with him and Isabella and tell them what was going on. Neither of them were going to be happy with me. Jack was certainly not going to like the idea that I had just gone to the police, and Isabella wasn’t going to like what I had to tell her about what was going on with Abby and Aldo. But they were the only two I could talk to about everything, and I needed their help. There was no way I was leaving Abby with Aldo, even if I ended up in jail, it would be worth it.
I had made the walk down Fifth Avenue many nights before, but on that specific evening, I paid more attention to the people around. The couples that walked together holding hands looked like they were in a world all of their own. Admittedly, I didn’t know if Abby and I would ever have such a relationship, but she was the first woman I had met who actually made me think about that kind of future.
When I arrived at Jack’s house, I prepared to tell him everything that had happened with the dinner and Aldo. He was a good friend; we had been close for so many years, and I had hope that in the end he would understand my choices.
“Hey Theo, what’s up?” Jack said as I got to his condo.
“Man, that dinner with Aldo was a trip. He threatened Abby or something and basically said he was keeping her.”
“Now, that’s some kind of shit. What did you do?”
“I tried to fight for her, but they pulled a gun on me. All over a girl. I can’t believe Aldo would go this crazy over a girl.”
“Isn’t it the same girl that you want to drop your entire life for?” Jack said with a grin.
It was the truth; I knew exactly why Aldo wanted Abby. She had the ability to make him feel good; not just physically good, which I hoped she hadn’t been doing. Abby had a way of making me feel like I was a good man, a good person, someone who could do whatever I wanted in my life. The way she could forgive and still care was remarkable. The way she could connect with anyone no matter what walk of life they were in; she had a gift that resonated with me.
“So what’s next?” Jack asked as we sat in the living room.
“I went to the police and offered to turn Aldo in and tell them everything I know about him.”
“You did what?” Jack said as he stood up. “Shit, you are going to get us killed!”
“Stop worrying. The cops wouldn’t even talk to me. They don’t want to arrest Aldo. They are just as scared of him as we are.”
“Theo, I’ve gone along with this game of yours, and if you want to blow up your own life, that’s your business. But you’ve just made life really dangerous; not just for you but for everyone involved with you. In fact, you might have just gotten Abby killed.”
“Jack, I’m trying to get her away from him. He’s taking her back to his house and has threatened her with something. I wanted to get Aldo arrested so I could help her, I’m not going to get her killed,” I said.
“The police didn’t want to deal with you because they are in Aldo’s back pocket, right?”
“Yeah, exactly. They aren’t going to go arrest a guy that is giving them payoffs and shit.”
“Then doesn’t it make sense that they would go and tell him that you showed up and were trying to have him arrested? That way they look like the good guys, and he’ll give them more payoffs.”
“Oh shit,” I mumbled as I realized what Jack was saying. “They have probably already called him and told him I was there. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“I’ve got an idea. But it means we all need to be okay with dropping everything and running away if it doesn’t work,” Jack said calmly as he sat down next to me.
“Anything Jack. I need to fix this.”
Jack took a minute and wrote down a name on a piece of paper and a phone number. He didn’t tell me anything else but just handed me the paper.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Only call that number if you’re ready to give this all up. I’m serious, Theo, like everything would be gone. I won’t work for you. The escort business won’t exist anymore. Everything,” Jack said with an unfamiliar serious expression on his face. “You should get back to your house now. If Aldo is looking for you, I don’t want him coming here. Have Mario at your front door for protection tonight.”
“You’re not going to tell me who this is?” I asked, standing up to leave.
“No, I told you the consequences of calling him; that’s all I can say.”
“Alright, I’ll think about it,” I said as I left.
It was odd the mystery that Jack had behind calling this guy. Jack and I had always been really open with each other. He had been my right-hand man and more than willing to step up and help out whenever possible. I didn’t think we really had any secrets between the two of us, but I figured maybe I didn’t know as much as I thought.
There wasn’t time to think about things, though, and I certainly didn’t want to think about what Aldo might do to Abby when he found out that I had tried to turn him in. I dialed the number as I walked toward my building.
“Hello,” the man on the phone answered.
“Hello, is Harrison Stone available?” I asked.
“Who is calling?”
The voice on the other end of the phone was calm, yet I could tell he was really interested in knowing who I was. Normally, I wouldn’t have been so willing to give my name to a complete stranger, but I didn’t have a choice any longer. Time was running out, and I needed someone to help me get Abby out of Aldo’s house.
I didn’t know what Aldo was going to do with Abby, but I knew he had no problem with killing people, and his wife had already pulled a gun on me and pointed it at Abby’s head. I was desperate for help, even if it came from some anonymous person I had called as a last resort.
“Theodore Stern, my friend Jack gave me this number. I have a situation. Who are you? What kind of work do you do? Can you help me?”
“Where are you? I’ll be right there,” the man said as if he knew exactly who I was and didn’t have a problem coming to meet me in the middle of the night.
“Um. I’m on my way home, I could …”
“I’ll meet you there in ten minutes,” the man interrupted and then hung up the phone.
I felt like a clandestine agent from some sort of spy movie. Who was this guy, and how did he know where I lived? Better yet, how did Jack know this guy? I picked up a pace as I hurried home so I could at least beat him there and talk to Kimberly before he arrived.
“Kim, you need to get your things together and go stay with one of your friends,” I said as I hurried into the apartment.
“What? Now?” she asked, bewildered.
“Yes, like now, this second now!” I said as I went into her room and started throwing her things into a bag.
“What’s going on?”
“Aldo is going to try and kill me, and probably Abby too; you need to get away from me.”
I didn’t feel like going into all the details about trying to tu
rn Aldo in or the strange man who was coming to my apartment any minute. I just needed to get Kimberly as far away from me as possible, for her own safety.
Then there was a knock at the door.
“Now, take what you have here and go,” I said as I pressed the bag into her hand and pulled her toward the door.
As I opened the door, I pushed Kimberly out and past the strange man that stood in front of me. He wasn’t much older than I was, maybe in his early 40s. He was around six feet tall and had on an ominous black suit that matched his jet-black hair. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was straight out of one of those spy movies.
“Harrison?” I asked.
“Mr. Stone, if we are going to act we need to act right now. There isn’t time to think about anything if you want to get Abigail out of there safely. But you’re going to have to agree to cooperate fully and to testify.”
“Wait? Who are you? Testify … I went to the police, and they refused to talk to me.”
“The FBI has been following Aldo Gioacchino for the last ten years trying to make a case against him. He’s always smart about who he uses and how dirty his hands get. If you’ll agree to testify, we believe we can use the testimony in combination with the evidence we have to put him away for the rest of his life.”
“You’ve been following Aldo?”
“Yes.”
“So you’ve been following me too?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.”
“Mr. Stern, we really don’t have time for all of this. If my intel is correct, Mr. Gioacchino has already learned that you went to the police. It’s only a matter of time before he sends someone here for you. I also cannot assure the safety of Ms. Tessaro at all at this point.”
“Wow, you guys really do see everything. Why haven’t you arrested Aldo yet?”
“Originally, our case was centered on you until information gave us some good pieces of evidence that you weren’t the biggest fish and we should look more at Mr. Gioacchino. But it was a large amount of cash that you sent home to your family that first tipped us off all those years ago.”
“What do you need from me?”
“Everything. You’re going to have to give us every dirty detail of your business and your dealings with Aldo. Because we are in a time sensitive situation, I’ll take a sworn video statement of the basic information. Then we can work on more detailed information later.”
“Will I be arrested?’
“It’s possible if your information is good enough that we will be able to work out a deal, but I can’t guarantee it since we won’t have time to verify the information. I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Stern, you’re going to have to do this with the understanding that you might end up with charges and going to jail.”
I needed his help, and he was the only person in the world that was willing to go up against Aldo. There wasn’t anything for me to think about. I was going to be murdered and so was Abby if I didn’t make the deal. Life in prison sounded like a much better life than getting murdered.
“I understand,” I said although I certainly didn’t fully understand what was going on.
“Okay,” he said as he dialed a number on his phone. “Mr. Stern is on board, we are a go.”
Chapter 27
ABBY
“He did what!” Aldo screamed into his phone as I came out of the bathroom. “I’ll fucking kill him.”
I looked over toward Nicole, and the concerned expression on her face told me that she also had no idea what Aldo was talking about. But Nicole had been married long enough to the man that she didn’t bother to ask him at all. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stand not knowing.
“What’s going on? Anything I can help with?” I asked as I tried to make myself useful.
“What is wrong with you? Why do you look disgusting,” Aldo yelled at me.
“Aldo, she was in the bathroom vomiting, give the poor girl a break,” Nicole interjected.
“Take her to her room; I don’t want to see her,” Aldo said with a look of disgust.
I hadn’t quite seen a look like that on Aldo toward me before, and I felt like it had something to do with whatever was going on with his phone call. My stomach churned for real as Nicole walked me to the room they wanted me to stay in. Everything felt like it was falling apart. In the span of only a few hours, I had gone from thinking that life was great, to being scared for my own life.
Sometimes, I had to wonder what was going on in my head and why I made the decisions I did. As I sat on the well-adorned bed and Nicole shut the door to leave me there, I felt real fear for what was going to happen next. Aldo hadn’t actually liked me, it was obvious by how quickly he had turned against me as soon as something went wrong. I shouldn’t have agreed to go out with Aldo in the first place. That very first day when I was with Theo and Aldo had made me the offer of ten thousand dollars. It was that moment that I regretted the most.
Even when I sent the money home to my sisters, I knew that it was money that I shouldn’t have earned the way I did. Sure, I talked myself into it and made myself believe that everything was fine, but deep down I felt like shit taking Aldo’s money. It felt like a snake was circling around me, and I was trying to ignore the fact that he could kill me at any moment. The horrible part of it all was that I knew better. I wasn’t stupid, I had been in New York for years. I knew better than to get involved in the kind of shit that I had gotten myself into. But the money had blinded me.
Even Theo was the kind of guy that I should have avoided when I started seeing him throwing his money around on the trip to Vegas. I knew better than to trust a guy who would spend that kind of money on a woman he hardly knew. But I was starting to have feelings for Theo that I hadn’t had before, and it was too hard for me to just walk away from him.
But as I sat there on the bed, locked in a room at Aldo’s house, I finally realized that money really couldn’t buy you any sort of happiness. Just looking at Aldo and his wife, you could see that it didn’t matter how much money they had, it was never enough, and they weren’t happy. At that moment, I decided I needed to be with my sisters. The years of me hiding from the reality of life had to end. I was a jerk for leaving them and never going back for them. Sending money to them wasn’t at all like being there to support them. They were my sisters and I loved them, and I obviously wasn’t going to make it big in New York; so I needed to go home to them. That was if I could get myself out of the situation I had gotten into.
“I should just fucking kill her!” I heard Aldo scream as he threw something in the living room.
I could hear that Nicole was talking to him softly, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Whatever was going on was pretty huge and it had pissed him off enough that he was talking about killing me. I was scared. More scared than I could ever remember feeling, and I had been in some pretty shady situations over the years. Aldo was the kind of guy who could kill anyone he wanted; I was more sure of that now than I had been when Theo had talked about him. If only I could figure out why he was so damn angry, maybe there would have been a way to calm him down.
But my ways of manipulating people in my favor only worked so well and only worked when I knew what was going on. At that moment, I had no idea what was going on or why Aldo was so damn angry with me.
I looked out the window to see if there was any way to escape the room they had put me in, but we were up in a high-rise and there were no balconies. Even if I could have opened the window, it surely would have been the death of me if I had jumped. No, I decided I was just going to have to wait and hope that Nicole could calm her husband down. Or hope that whatever had pissed him off so much would calm him down.
I tried to listen at the door to hear what was going on, but I couldn’t hear anything. There was no more screaming and no more throwing things around. It was either a good sign or a really bad one, and I decided to sit in the corner and see if I could reach Theo.
> When I pulled my phone out, I saw that Theo had tried to call me. It was far too dangerous for me to be on the telephone at all, and I certainly couldn’t call him back. I text him again.
“Aldo says he’s going to kill me. Please, if there is anything you can do. Help me,” I sent to him.
Instantly, I could see that he had read the message and was responding. I waited in anticipation for his message to appear in return. I didn’t know Theo much better than I knew Aldo, but there was one thing I knew for sure; Theo wouldn’t hurt me. He cared about me, and I knew it in my soul. Whatever else happened before or after that moment, I knew that Theo would try and help me.
“Coming there now, hide if you can,” Theo responded. “Can’t text anymore. Do whatever you have to. I’m coming for you.”
I felt relieved when I read his message, although logically, I knew I was still in a lot of danger. It wouldn’t take Aldo very long to kill me if that was really what he wanted to do. Certainly, one bullet to my brain would only take a few seconds once he got into the room I was in. I decided I had to start putting all the furniture in front of the door. Anything necessary so I could slow down the process.
As soon as I had pushed the nightstand in front of the door, I heard the jiggling of the handle. The fear inside of me was so much that I felt like my whole body go cold and was unable to move as I stared at the door handle and waited for my killer to force himself into my room.
“It’s me,” I heard Nicole say.
Although Nicole had been the one who held the gun up to my head in the restaurant, I didn’t feel like she actually wanted to hurt me. The move had seemed more like something she was doing to impress her husband and to scare Theo. She was the only person I could hope to help me, so I pushed the nightstand out of the way and let her in.
“Why does he want to kill me?” I asked as Nicole came into the room and closed the door.
“It’s Theo, he went to the police and tried to turn Aldo in. The police wouldn’t deal with him, so hopefully, everything is fine. But Aldo doesn’t want to deal with you anymore. I’ve convinced him to give you to Briggs. I know it’s not ideal. I’m sorry.”
The Deal Page 48
