I laughed. “I know what you mean. I was so enamored with my parents. They were so wise. We weren’t, like, some sitcom from the fifties or sixties. We just had a really stable life, and parents who were always involved when we needed them to be. Even if we didn’t always want them to be.”
“Where’s this coming from? Your parents didn’t do anything wrong.”
I shook my head. “Oh, I know. I’m not trying to figure out how something like this could happen, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“So what made you think of that?”
I sighed. It was the sound of my heartache. “They were always the ones who protected me from the world. Now I have to protect them. It’s weird.”
“I know. Growing up sucks that way.”
“Doesn’t it?” I looked to him for comfort, but he had very little to give. There wasn’t much he could say to make it all better, anyway. I had gotten used to that. Only Ricardo understood the pain I felt, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t pushing for me to make the call.
“Do you think you can do this and be convincing?”
“Could I convince a stranger? Sure. My brother? Eh.” I held my hand out and wiggled it back and forth to show how uncertain I was. He knew me better than most people, didn’t he? Even though we hadn’t spent as much time together in the years since he got involved with the Demarcos.
“You just have to try. That’s all you can do.”
“Yeah. I just have to try.” But I didn’t want to try. Why didn’t anybody understand that? Couldn’t they follow him around and corner him that way? What was this plan that nobody wanted to tell me about? They insisted it was for my own good. The less I knew, and the less I could slip up and tell him, the better. So they told me.
I was tired of being told by other people what I should do. How I should feel. How it wasn’t my fault, following him. Seeing what he did, taking pictures like an idiot. God, I was so stupid. But no, it wasn’t my fault according to them. They didn’t know how it felt. It was so easy for people who didn’t know what I was struggling with to tell me to let it go.
He must’ve sensed my thoughts bouncing off each other. “You know what bugged me the most when I came home after my last tour?”
It seemed to come out of nowhere, but anything was better than stewing in my own self-doubt. “No. What?”
“The way everybody acted like they knew how I felt. They would get really quiet when I came into the room, you know? Like they were afraid to talk around me. They didn’t want to say anything they thought would offend me, but they had no idea what that might be, either. So they just shut up. And when I seemed a little on-edge—wouldn’t you?—they would get that look on their face. I don’t know how to describe it, really. Like they expected it. Like they were gonna indulge me because they felt so sorry for me. It was insulting and infuriating. I wanted to tell them to leave me the hell alone and pick another cause to care about. Or to, God forbid, ask me how I felt rather than assume.”
“Yes. Yes! I know what you mean.” And that was the point, and that was why he brought it up.
“So how do you really feel about going through with this?” he asked.
I took a deep breath and told myself it was okay to be honest. “Like my parents are going to hate me forever if they know I did this. Will they find out? What will it do to them?”
“They don’t ever have to know.”
“But what if they find out? You can’t tell the future. You don’t know that this is going to go exactly the way the detectives have it planned out.”
“I know. Sometimes things don’t work out the right way, but we have to try in case they do work out okay. And I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t try to get this right just because it could go wrong. Your safety is what really hangs in the balance here, not just the way your parents feel about you. How can they feel any way about you if something happens because you wouldn’t make that call?” His jaw tightened. “Your safety is what matters most. That’s all that matters to—to us.”
We looked at each other for a long time, and the way he stuttered a little scared and thrilled me at the same time. What was happening with us? I wished I had the time and emotional bandwidth to handle it right then. He deserved that much.
But there was something else I had to do first.
I leaned over to pick up the phone and found my brother’s number in my contact list. My hands shook so hard, I could barely dial his number into the untraceable phone Ricardo had given me to use. “After all this, watch him not pick up,” I whispered with a shaky laugh. “Wouldn’t that be perfect?”
“I think he will when he sees your name, if it’s possible at all.”
I knew he was right. I was probably the one person he wanted to talk to more than anybody else just then.
“Hello?”
I closed my eyes and bit the side of my fist to hold back the rush of emotion when I heard his voice. “Mikey.”
There was a long pause. “Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that. You know I can’t tell you that.”
“I wanna see you, Moll.” He was almost whispering. Where was he? I had probably interrupted a meeting or something shady. Maybe he had killed somebody else or was disposing of a body somewhere.
“I want to see you, too. We have to meet up someplace. Soon.”
“What do you want to see me about?” he asked, and the suspicion in his voice was thick enough to cut.
“We’ll talk about it then. But I want to see you face-to-face. I need to actually see you, brother.”
“Not through the lens of a camera this time?”
My blood ran cold. I glanced up at Brett, who didn’t know exactly what Michael was saying but nodded firmly just the same. “No. Not that way. You know what I’m saying.”
He was quiet for a while. I started to wonder what he was thinking, and who was with him right about then. Or was he trying to pick a place where he knew he could ambush me, hide his friends, whatever. The uncertainty was eating me alive.
“There’s an abandoned warehouse a block down from where you saw me the last time,” he said. “It was used for car parts—there’s an old sign out front. MacNeil’s Automotive. We’ll be alone there. Tomorrow, noon.” The line went dead.
I stared at the phone for a long time. “Well?” Brett prompted.
“It looks like I have a date at noon tomorrow.” I dropped the phone on the floor when I jumped up and ran for the bathroom as my stomach returned everything in it.
ChapterEighteen – Molly
The warehouse was dark, deserted. The perfect place for a meeting like the one I was about to have.
My heart went like a trip hammer as I stepped inside. Outside, it was bright and sunny. In there it was dark, cold. A shiver ran down my spine. Goosebumps stood out on my arms. I was pretty sure my bladder might let go at any moment.
I wasn’t alone. I had to keep reminding myself of what Brett told me before we parted ways.
“I’ll be with you all the time,” he’d said. “You’re not alone in there.”
I had to remember it. He was with me. Him and Pax and Ricardo and a bunch of others. They were all around. And they were sure Michael had come alone—a handful of Ricardo’s team members had been staking the place out all day, just to be sure it would be only me and my brother.
He didn’t want them to know who I was, or so he’d said. He wouldn’t have brought any of them. I hoped my brother was telling the truth when he promised me that. I took another step further into the cavernous interior of the old building, the echoes of my footsteps muffled by layers of dust. I cleared my throat, and the sound reverberated to the rafters. I craned my neck to look up—there was a hole in the ceiling through which years of rain and snow had made their way inside, and the cement was cracked and broken beneath it. I wondered how long it took for something like that to happen, for water to seep into a material as hard as concrete and break it up. Likely it had frozen in there during win
ter and expanded, over and over as the years passed. Terror sent my thoughts wandering like that.
There’s nothing to be scared of, I reminded myself in the firmest interior voice I could muster. This was my brother I was meeting with. He wasn’t some stranger. He wouldn’t hurt me. I had to believe that.
Once I got to the center of the floor, or what seemed like the center, I stopped. There were too many shadows along the walls. Deep, dark shadows. Anything…anybody…could be back there. How sure was Ricardo that there were no members of my brother’s new family hiding in those shadowy crevices? My imagination ran away with me. I looked up at that hole in the ceiling again and watched as dust motes danced though the beams of sunlight pouring through it. I had to remind myself that the light was there. It wasn’t all dark inside. I might have gone crazy if it were.
A throat cleared. It wasn’t mine that time. I spun in the direction of the sound and as soon as my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I saw a dark figure standing at the top of a metal staircase, outside the door of what was probably an office at some time. Was that office empty? I could only hope so.
“You look good,” I said as evenly as I could. He wore all black, just the way I had expected him to. My heart ached when I saw him standing there like that. The loneliest person I knew, probably. He could’ve had the entire world, but he chose the way he chose. I couldn’t do anything about that.
“You, too. Protection looks good on you.”
I smirked, hands on my hips. “Please, don’t rub that in my face. I wouldn’t have sought protection if I wasn’t scared half to death—I didn’t know whether any of your friends saw me that night.”
“They didn’t,” he reminded me. “That’s the truth. If they had, you wouldn’t be here anymore.”
I rolled my eyes like I didn’t believe it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he might be right. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I asked with a smirk. I had to show him it didn’t bother me that he talked that way. “I mean, you’re my brother. You shouldn’t threaten me like that.”
“I’m not threatening. It’s a fact.” His voice sounded flat, dead. He was only telling me what he knew. Another chill ran its way up my spine.
“Come down,” I called. “Please. I hate that you’re so far from me.”
“I like it better up here.” His hands tightened around the rusted railing.
“All right. I’ll ask you from down here, then.”
“Ask me what?”
“To turn yourself in.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he spat with a ragged laugh.
“Mikey!”
“Don’t Mikey me,” he shot back. “You think it’s that easy? Just another example of how you have no fucking clue what I’m in. How deep I am.” There was a rough edge to his voice, one I had never heard before. His mafia persona? It was leaking through the more agitated he became. He looked down at his hands, and he reminded me of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Mikey, look at me.”
“Don’t call me that.” But he looked at me just the same. The torment on his face was staggering. It crushed me. He tried hard to be tough, untouchable, but he was breaking up inside. I wanted so much to hold him and tell him how much I loved him. My arms ached with need.
I only shrugged. “Why not? I’ve been calling you that my entire life. Why should I stop now?”
“Because that’s not who I am now. I’m not Mikey San Lorenzo, everybody’s best friend. I’m a mile away from that guy. Don’t you see it?”
I nodded slowly. “I see it. But in here?” I placed my hand over my chest. “In here, you’ll always be him to me. And I think he’s still in there for you, too.”
“Bullshit. You don’t know anything.”
“Why don’t you try telling me, then? Why did you shut us all out the way you did? I’ve missed you so much.”
His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, but I saw it. Maybe only I would’ve seen it. “It was for the best that I did.”
“You didn’t have to do any of this, Mikey.”
His eyes flashed fire. “I told you not to call me that.”
I held my hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry. Michael. You didn’t have to do any of this to begin with. We begged you not to. We warned you.”
“Just like I’m sure you warned yourself against following me that night. Did you listen?”
I sighed. “No, I didn’t.”
“I guess it runs in the family.”
“Our family,” I said, my voice strong. “It’s our family that matters. We love you. We want you back.”
He shook his head. “You know that’s not possible now.”
“Why not? Michael, please. It’s not too late.”
“It’s way too late,” he insisted. “I couldn’t get away even if I wanted to. Not knowing everything that I know. It’s funny.” He smiled a little. “At first, I thought it was cool to be on the inside, you know? Learning things, hearing things. I thought it was a sign of respect. They saw me as one of them. But you know what it really was? They were trapping me. Once I knew enough, there was no getting out. And they made sure I understood, believe me.”
“Michael. I’m so sorry.” My eyes welled up at the thought of him realizing he was trapped for good. I wished I could kill all of them, every single one. I wanted them to pay for what they’d done to my brother.That was what they did, wasn’t it? They were like a bunch of spiders, weaving a web some naïve kid like Michael couldn’t escape. Despicable.
“It is what it is. That’s life. So why did you have to follow me? Why couldn’t you let me live my life?”
Tears welled up in my eyes. “Because I love you so much. I can’t just let you go without trying to help you.”
“I’m telling you, it’s too late.”
I couldn’t help snickered. “Well. Maybe we should’ve had this discussion a long time ago. I wouldn’t have followed you if I had known what you were really doing.”
“Do you think I could tell you? Do you think it’s easy to live with myself knowing you know?”
I sighed. “It would be better for you if you cut ties with us, then. Not that we want you to, but it would be easier for you. I know how torn you are.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“You just told me it’s not easy for you to know that I know what you did. You can’t tell me I don’t know. Do you think it’s easy for me to live with myself knowing what I did to you?”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he insisted. “You jumped to conclusions.”
“How was I supposed to know? You didn’t call me, you didn’t text. Maybe if you had, I would’ve known you didn’t mean to hurt me that night. I didn’t even know it was you, Michael. It could’ve been anybody trying to break in. You could’ve told me you wanted to talk. I would’ve found a way.”
“After what you saw?”
I spread my palms, shrugging. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Like that matters. I know why you’re really here.”
My pulse picked up, and it was already going at light speed. “I told you I just wanted to talk.”
“And your friends wanted to listen.” The nastiness in his voice made me think of a stranger. I didn’t know him when he sounded like that.
“My friends?”
“Please. All of a sudden, you wanted to meet here with me? Don’t pretend the cops have nothing to do with it. Don’t insult me like that.” He narrowed his eyes. “Not me, Moll.”
It took every bit of self-control in my body to keep from shifting my weight from one foot to another. I clenched my teeth and counted to five before replying, and when I did, my voice was even. “They don’t have anything to do with this.”
“Why are you LYING to me?” His voice cut through the space, bouncing back and forth. I held my hands up to my ears and winced. I was pushing him too far. I couldn’t keep lying.
Once the echo quieted, I lowered my hands. “Why did you
agree to come, then, if that’s what you thought this was all about? Why bother?”
“I just wanted you to understand.” His shoulders slumped. One of his hands slid inside his jacket pocket. “I wanted to explain it to you beforehand. I needed you to know I don’t want to do this.”
And out came a shiny gun. I didn’t know one gun from another. I just knew what they did. His hand was steady as he aimed at me.
“How can you even pretend you’re going to shoot me?” My voice was unnaturally calm as I stood with my hands up. He hadn’t even asked me to raise them, but it seemed to be in my best interest to do it just then.
“I’m not pretending,” he muttered. “This isn’t a joke.”
“So do it, then. Shoot me. Kill me here.” I shrugged. “I mean, seriously. If that’s what this was all about, go for it.”
“Shut up. Just shut up.” His hand shook, but only a little.
“I need you to always remember how much I love you,” I said with tears in my eyes again. I didn’t want to underestimate him—he might very well have shot me dead, for all I knew. His eyes had a desperate gleam. That gleam didn’t give me confidence.
“I told you to shut up, Molly.”
“Michael. You won’t do this. I know you too well. You’ll let me leave, and you’ll keep your connections from knowing it was me who witnessed the hit. I know that because you’re my big brother—” my voice cracked, “—and you wouldn’t let anybody hurt me.”
His chin quivered, his nostrils flared. “Just shut up,” he whispered. “Stop talking. I can’t stand this. Just stop, okay? You don’t know what I’m up against.” He let out a tortured, strangled cry. “They’ll kill me, Moll. They’ll make it painful, too. That’s what they do to rats and people who get them in trouble. They’ll find out it’s you, and that I didn’t do anything to shut you up, and they’ll kill me for it.”
“But Mikey,” I said, calling him by his nickname before I could stop myself, “it’s too late. They have the memory card. They know it was you. So it’s only a matter of time.”
“But I can still show them I did what I had to do. You can’t testify now. And there’s always ways for them to get the pictures back—they have lots of people on the payroll.”
Lewis Security Page 28
