Gerry had developed a relationship with the therapist at the home when he had been there. Katrina had helped him come to terms with the loss of Kerry, and I hoped she’d be able to help us now.
“I need to make a call,” I whispered to Harley. He nodded his head.
I slid from the bed as gently as I could so as not to disturb Gerry and crept to the bedroom door. As I opened it, Evelyn was pacing the hall. She looked over, her tear stained face and red-rimmed eyes had aged her. We met halfway and I pulled her into a hug.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
“I don’t know, he hasn’t spoken. I think we need Katrina. Can you arrange that? I did ask Mack to call a doctor but she’d be better.”
“Of course.”
“Is there any news on Robert?”
“Not yet. Mack headed back out after he dropped you off. The girls are upstairs waiting.”
I nodded my head. “He’ll be here as soon as he can, you know that,” she added.
“I need to get back to Gerry. Is it strange that I want to bathe him? I want to wash the smell of that place from him but right now he’s sleeping, I think. I don’t want to disturb him.”
“I don’t know what’s strange and what’s normal, to be honest. I guess I’d want to do the same.”
I gave her one final hug and walked back to the bedroom. Nothing had changed, the boys were still in the exact same position. I pulled the chair close to the bed and sat, running my hand over Gerry’s head and back as he laid facing away from me. I wanted to gather him up, to have him sit in my lap, to hold him to me but I wanted him to sleep as well. If he slept, I believed for that short period of time he wouldn’t remember.
The room darkened as the night drew in. I had no idea of how much time had passed before the bedroom door opened again. I looked over my shoulder to see Robert.
He walked across the room and crouched down beside me. He placed his hands on the bed but seemed hesitant to touch Gerry. He hadn’t looked at me, his focus was solely on his son. Harley raised his head from the pillow. He gave Robert a small smile before gently moving off the bed.
“He’ll be okay,” he said as he began to walk to the bedroom door.
I looked at him. Tears had started to fall. He was another one who would need some help. I reached out to him and he touched my hand with his but continued to walk.
“I want my dad,” he whispered before he left the room. I hoped Evelyn was still outside.
Robert slid across the bed and took Harley’s place. As he laid his head on the pillow and wrapped his arms around Gerry, I saw the tears. Robert silently cried.
I slid on the bed, sandwiching Gerry between us and placed my arm across both of them.
“Dad?” I heard. It was little more than a whisper.
“I’m here, son.”
“Did you kill them?”
“Yes,” Robert’s voice cracked.
“Good,” Gerry said.
My already fragile heart shattered some more. My son, the person I loved more than life, wasn’t an innocent anymore. Way before he should have, he had been forced, immersed, into Robert’s world. I closed my eyes to hide the pain and sorrow.
****
A high-pitched scream woke me. Instinctively, I tightened my arm around Gerry and raised my head with alarm. Gerry had turned in his sleep and was facing me, his eyes were still closed but he writhed in my arms. Robert was nowhere to be seen.
“Sshh, it’s okay, baby, I’m here,” I whispered.
He must have been having a nightmare. He opened his eyes.
“Mom?” he said, his voice was hoarse.
“I’m here. It’s okay, you’re safe now,” I said.
He settled into me just as the bedroom door opened. I didn’t need to look to know it was Robert. I felt the bed dip as he sat and watched as his hand reached over me to stroke Gerry’s head.
“It was a nightmare,” I whispered.
“Do you want to get something to eat? I can take over,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“Nearly mid-day.”
I had been lying on the bed with Gerry for over twelve hours. I gently pulled my arm from under his neck and rolled to the edge of the bed, sliding my legs off and sitting up. My back was stiff and my arm numb. I tried to stretch and winced as my muscles cramped.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“They’ve gone home now. Sam came in to see you but you were sleeping. He didn’t want to disturb you or Gerry. He sat with you for a while.”
We were cautious around each other. There was no touching and no comforting. We were unsure how to behave, how to re-connect.
As I stood, Gerry opened his eyes.
“Hey, buddy. How are you doing?” Robert said.
I turned to look.
“You killed them, right? They’re not coming back, are they?” he asked.
There was a pause. Robert glanced at me before he answered. I shook my head.
“Do you think you can eat something?” Robert said.
Gerry shook his head. “Thirsty,” was all he said.
“Can we get you in the bath, darling?” I asked.
The smell of urine, of the dirt and grime of what he had been subjected to, had permeated through the room. Gerry sat up, wincing as he did.
“Do you hurt anywhere?” Robert asked.
“My legs ache,” he replied.
I rushed to the bathroom and started to fill the bath. If there was one mark on my son’s body, I was going to flip. Robert carried Gerry to the bathroom and we undressed him. I tried to not to show that I was inspecting his body and thanked God there were no marks. He hadn’t been beaten at least.
Gerry climbed into the bath and sat as Robert washed him down. A pang of jealously washed over me. I wanted to be doing that. I wanted to be doing everything. I knew it was irrational but it should be my hands that cleansed him, not the hands of the man who got him dirty in the first place.
Perhaps Robert had seen a look on my face, perhaps he had seen my body tense, because he stood and handed me the sponge.
“How about your mom bathes you. I’ll go and get some drinks.”
There was sadness to his voice and sadness to his eyes when he looked at me. I took the sponge without a word and knelt by the bath. I blinked back tears.
“Is Harley okay?” Gerry asked after a few minutes.
“He is. He came and sat with you for ages when you got home. Do you remember?”
“Yeah. Can I see him?”
“I think you need a day to rest first. You need to eat something. Did you eat at all?”
I struggled to bring up the words. Part of me didn’t want to talk about it, part of me needed to know what happened to him.
“Yes, she had cold pizza. It was disgusting. I spat it at her.”
I didn’t need to ask who ‘she’ was.
“Why did they take me?” he asked, his voice low.
“They wanted to scare Dad and me, and they did.”
“I want my dad,” he whispered.
“He’ll be here in a minute. He’s just gone to get you a drink.”
“Can you call him?”
“I don’t want to leave you on your own,” I replied.
It hurt to know he wanted Robert and not me at that moment.
He hung his head, his chin resting on his chest. I soaked the sponge and squeezed it over his head, running it down his back, then again over his shoulders. I let the sponge float on the water and stood, wiping my hands on a towel.
“How about I go get your dad,” I said.
Gerry looked up at me and nodded. There was a ghost of a smile on his lips.
“I love you so much,” I said as I walked to the bathroom door.
“Love you more,” he whispered. It was our usual exchange at bedtime and would go on for about a minute, delaying the ‘lights out’.
I climbed the stairs and walked towards the kitchen. Evelyn jumped from a stool at the breakfast ba
r. She ran across the room and threw her arms around me.
“How is he?” she asked.
“He’s in the bath. He wants you, not me,” I said with some bitterness and looking over to Robert.
He was in the process of loading some sandwiches, cold drinks and a cup of tea on a tray.
“He wants us both, Brooke,” he gently said as he passed.
“Sit for a moment. I can tell you what Katrina said,” Evelyn said.
I took a seat, rested my elbows on the breakfast bar and lowered my face to my palms. Evelyn placed her hand on my back as she sat beside me.
“Katrina wants to visit later today. She’s already spoken to Robert.”
I snorted. Of course she had already spoken to Robert. Evelyn paused she looked at me before she continued.
“What happened in there?”
I was about to answer and then realised I couldn’t. Fuck! The memory of Rocco surfaced. I shivered as I remembered him, the power that he exuded from his body, from his words.
“I…erm… Can we talk about this later?”
“Of course, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Robert has already told me some. I don’t want to press.”
“It’s okay. I just want to process it all first.” I found it hard to meet her eyes.
“I’m making some meals for you all. I wanted to bake a cake for Gerry, his favourite.”
It seemed a strange thing to do but I smiled.
“I don’t know what to do, to help. I can’t stop thinking about it all.”
“Oh, Ev, don’t cry. He’s home now and it’s a great idea to make his favourite cake. Come and sit with him for a moment, tell him.”
I picked up her tea and we walked down the stairs together. Gerry was sitting on the bed nibbling on a sandwich, Robert beside him. As soon as he saw Evelyn, he reached out for her. She sat beside him and gathered him into her arms.
“Am I glad to see you,” she said.
“I’m not going to cry anymore,” he said as he released her.
“You cry as much as you want, darling,” I said, wondering what he meant by that.
I sat beside him on the bed. “Are you ready to talk about it?” I asked.
He didn’t look up; his focus was on the crusts he’d left on his plate.
“I don’t remember,” he quietly said.
“That’s okay, you don’t need to tell us anything until you’re ready,” Robert said.
“I’m really tired,” Gerry said.
I stood and took the tray from the bed, he was in his pj’s after his bath so I pulled the covers back and he slid under. Robert lowered the blinds and switched on his bedside lamp.
“I’ll take these up,” Evelyn said as she took the tray from me.
Robert left the room and came back with a second chair; I’d already taken the one by the bed. He placed it alongside mine but with enough of a gap that we weren’t close. I sighed. We sat in silence for a little while until Gerry’s eyelids finally closed and he fell asleep.
“Why did you tell him you killed them?” I whispered. Robert telling Gerry that had been on my mind.
“Because he asked.”
“He didn’t need to know.”
“I disagree. He needed to know the bad men are gone, never coming back.”
“He’s a bloody child, for Christ’s sake.”
“He’s a child that had been fucking kidnapped. He’s a child that saw men with guns, a child that saw his worst nightmare. He needed to know that wouldn’t happen again.”
The tension in the room was mounting.
“Let’s hope he is asleep and didn’t hear that reminder,” I spat.
Robert turned to me in his chair. “Listen, you blame me, you’re always going to blame me, and that’s okay. You can’t blame me more than I blame myself so, bring it on. I can take it. But before we finally destroy each other, let’s work on him first.”
We stared at each for a while.
“What’s happening to us?” I whispered.
He reached over and took my hand in his. His thumb ran across my knuckles as he turned his gaze back to Gerry.
“Our worst nightmare came true, and we’re struggling with it.”
****
An hour or so later there was a gentle knock on the bedroom door. Evelyn opened it and popped her head through the gap.
“Katrina is on her way. She’ll be here in an hour.”
Robert looked over to me, his brow furrowed in question.
“We need help in how to handle this,” I said.
“Good idea but there’s a lot that can’t be said, Brooke. She might be bound by confidentiality where the patient is concerned but she’s also duty bound to inform the police if she knows a crime has been committed.”
“I know that, but I need help, Robert. I don’t know what to do for the best, what to say to him. I don’t know whether to ask him questions, encourage him to talk or not.”
“Ev, will you sit with him for a while? I don’t want him to wake up alone,” Robert asked.
“Of course I will, and I do think you two need to talk things through. The tension between you is obvious, and he’ll pick up on that soon enough,” she replied.
Robert and I stood. Evelyn took the chair closest to the bed. I hesitated; other than to get Gerry’s food, I hadn’t left him alone, and I didn’t want to. Evelyn was right though. Robert and I needed to talk.
We made our way upstairs and Robert took a bottle from the cooler. He pulled two glasses from a cupboard and uncorked the wine.
“I don’t know if I can drink. I’ve hardly eaten in two days,” I said.
“Do you want me to make you something? Evelyn has filled the fridge.”
“Maybe later.”
He took the seat beside me at the breakfast bar.
“What happened in there?” I asked.
“You want to know everything? I’ll tell you if you ask, and you’ll hate me more after.”
“I don’t think I could ever hate you, Robert.”
“You don’t think?”
“I know I could never hate you.”
“Do you remember the words to the song we danced to at our wedding?”
“Every word,” I replied.
“That song could have been written for you. Every word is how I feel. Remember that song, remember the words.”
We had danced to Ellie Goulding’s How Long Will I Love You, and I remembered Robert singing the lyrics softly to me.
“When you left, Travis had Matteo’s guys kneel facing him and Lucia. There were four. I shot each one in the back of the head while I smiled at Lucia. She cried, she begged for forgiveness. It was her idea—she wanted Luca’s businesses back and Matteo was the fool she pretended to fall in love with so he would help her. The guys out in the yard? Rocco’s men dispatched them. People had been in position for hours before we got there. It’s why we had to wait before we went in.”
He paused to take a sip of his wine, keeping eye contact with me.
“When there was no one left except Matteo and Lucia, Rocco took over. It was his duty to deal with them. They had disrespected him, and he’s not a man to ever get on the wrong side of.”
“What did he do to her?”
“I forced her to her knees and held her there. I made her watch Rocco while he sliced Matteo from neck to navel. Not deep enough to kill him instantly. He then slashed him from nipple to nipple. He carved the sign of the cross on him. He cut off his fingers one at a time and stuffed most of them in his mouth until he choked. And then he died.”
The look on my face must have been one of pure horror.
“He’s the most powerful man in Italy, Brooke. Forget the Prime Minister. It’s Rocco’s organisation that runs that country. And he’s a man that believes in punishment—the correct punishment. Disrespect him, disrespect the power that he is and you might as well be disrespecting God.”
“You said most of them. What happened to his fingers?”
&
nbsp; “He wore a signet ring. That finger will be sent back to his family, the ones left alive, with a note.”
“And Lucia?” I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer but asked the question anyway.
“He asked her if she wanted a quick death or to be sliced like her lover, something like that anyway. He was speaking a dialect I only just understood. She chose quick. He stood in front of her, placed his gun to her forehead so she could watch and he pulled the trigger.”
I closed my eyes. I was unsure how I felt about Lucia. Did I feel just the slightest sadness because she was a woman? I didn’t know. I had no feelings towards Matteo, although the thought of his demise turned my stomach.
“You were on your knees, were they going to kill you?” I whispered.
“Yes. A life for a life, remember? I chose to give my life for Gerry’s. I hoped Rocco would turn up in time to stop that, of course. But I was prepared to die.”
I covered my mouth with my hands as the image of Robert on his knees flooded my brain. Tears formed and I choked back a sob.
“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered.
“There’s nothing to say. I’ve told you before I will die before you, and I’d gladly give my life for you or Gerry. My biggest fear was that Matteo wouldn’t honour his pledge, which was why Franco contacted Rocco and asked for assistance. He was to secure your safety after I was gone. If you’re under his protection, which you and Gerry now are, you will never be harmed, you will never be threatened again.”
“And you?”
“He called me ‘Compare’. That means he views me as his equal. But as for protection, that’s reserved for you and Gerry. Other families now know we’re close allies though.”
“What do we do about Rocco?”
“What do you mean? He’s already left, and he’s on his way back to Rome.”
“Do we tell Evelyn? I can’t bear the thought that he’s alive and she doesn’t know.”
“It was part of the deal that we say nothing. It’s how he wants it. He came to America to see her. He saw her wearing an engagement ring so he left again. He believed her to be settled and married. He just wanted to know she was happy.”
Fallen Angel, Part 4 - A Mafia Romance: Fallen Angel Series Page 14
