I’ve lost so much time with both of them and the blame can be spread around to several people, but when it comes down to it, I’m responsible for that loss. It would have been so easy to chase Samantha to Omaha and beg her to come home again—she probably would have agreed in a second. Instead I stayed here and wallowed in self pity for years on end. More recently, I’ve chosen to trust others over her, to keep things from her over and over again, to push her away. That part of my life is done. There is nobody I trust more than Samantha.
After our very unhealthy lunch of graham crackers, half-burnt marshmallows, and chocolate, we retreated into the house to escape the snow that started falling and spent our afternoon in the basement watching movies. Well, Tyler and I watched movies. Samantha napped. All in all, I can’t remember ever having a more perfect Sunday.
That thought lasts until Tyler is tucked into bed and Sam and I are heading back to our bedroom in a fashion that makes me feel like we’re teenagers sneaking around behind our parents’ backs. We walk past my office and my good mood slips when I hear my phone ring from behind the doors. I know immediately who is calling; only a handful of people call that rather than my cell and only when something is wrong. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. I glance down at Samantha who stares at the door with the same level of disappointment and annoyance I’m currently feeling. For a moment I consider just letting it ring and go to voicemail, though every part of me says to answer it.
“Go,” she urges softly, squeezing my upper arm. “I was going to grab a glass of water anyway.”
I nod. “I won’t be long,” I promise her, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
She grins suggestively and walks away, intentionally exaggerating the way her hips move for my sole benefit. Groaning, I head into my office. This woman will be the death of me. And what a wonderful death it will be.
“This better be really fucking good,” I snap when I answer the phone.
There’s a slightly muffled snort of laughter on the other end. “Good to hear your voice too, Young,” Marcus responds. “Sorry if I’m interrupting, but I thought you’d want to be aware of the developments.”
“Thought you weren’t going to apprise me of anything unless it was important.” I close my eyes and sink into my office chair at his silence, knowing that’s why he’s calling. “What happened?”
Marcus sighs. “We’re having some trouble trailing Frank Marone,” he tells me. “One of his aliases popped up this morning in San Diego. Four hours later, another one in Miami. There was one in Oklahoma City, another in Vancouver, Canada, and a fifth in Sydney, Australia. You get the idea…”
“Were any of them real?” I ask, pinching the bridge of my nose as I feel an oncoming headache.
“Not from what we could tell,” Marcus responds. “That’s why I wanted to touch base with you, make sure you’ve got your guard up. That fucker could be anywhere right now and apparently he knows enough to evade our search efforts. I don’t know what his intentions are, and if you do, now is the time to tell me, because then I’ll know what I’m looking for.”
I sigh in return. “Honestly, Marcus, I don’t know what he wants. Bad business dealings shouldn’t lead to this sort of bullshit. This is personal and I don’t know whether it’s about Leo or something else entirely, but he’s dangerous.”
“Now that I agree with,” Marcus says tiredly. “Like I said, keep your eyes open. I don’t know what sort of security arrangements you’ve got for Samantha and your son, but you probably want to increase it, whatever it is.”
“They’re here with me,” I tell him. “At home. They’re safe.” I try not to think about that statement too much; they’ve already been taken from here once, so who’s to say it can’t happen again. I swallow hard at the thought. “Security has been increased already and I’ve got half the town on high alert. Marone comes back and they’ll know.”
“We’ll see,” Marcus says grimly. “And I’m glad to hear you’ve got your family back, Matt. Keep them close. Keep them safe. I’ll do whatever I can from my end and we’ll get together sometime this week to discuss our next moves.”
“I will,” I reply. “Thanks for calling.”
A moment later the line goes dead and with a heavy sigh, I drop the handset back onto its base and look up at the door to my office, which I left standing open. Samantha is there, holding her glass of water, her expression wary. I sigh heavily and push myself out of my chair to go to her. “How much did you hear?” I ask her softly.
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop,” she insists in a whisper. “I was heading back to bed and wanted to see if you were going to be much longer.”
I smile at her. “It’s fine,” I tell her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “How much did you hear?”
“Not much. Something about Frank.”
I nod, taking her hand and leading her into the room. “So more than enough to concern you,” I declare.
She shrugs. “I suppose. Should I even bother asking you what’s going on?” she asks. “Or reminding you everything we said last night about not keeping anymore secrets?”
“No, I don’t need the reminder,” I answer. “I was waiting to tell you what I knew until there was something to actually tell you.” We walk over to sit in the armchairs across from my aquarium. “I don’t want to keep things from you, Sam, not after everything we’ve been through. At the same time, though, every fiber of my being is telling me to protect you from this as much as I can.”
“And I appreciate that,” she says sincerely, “but I want to help. Whether that means trying to help you figure things out or just being your sounding board, I want to do whatever I can.”
I smile slightly, bringing her fingers to my lips to kiss. “And I appreciate that,” I reply with a wink. Taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly, I think through everything I’ve learned and how to best explain it without scaring her anymore than she needs to be. I don’t want her scared; I want her content and happy, but she needs all the facts to know what it is we’re facing. Even if I don’t know exactly what’s going on. Sighing heavily, I focus on my fish swimming around as though they haven’t a care in the world. Never thought I’d be jealous of a Goddamned fish…
“When I got word that you were working at the travel agency in town with Frank, I nearly went ballistic,” I tell her. “Punched a hole in a wall and everything. That was the moment I realized there was more going into all this bullshit than I originally thought. I hated the idea that he was so close to you when I was so far away. I couldn’t be there to protect you from him. I know you saw all those files in his desk with pictures of you, of Tyler, and of Saunders, and all that information he’s gathered on you over the last five years or however fucking long it’s been. He’s dangerous and unpredictable at best. At worst, he’s psychotic. We don’t know the lengths he’ll go to in order to get what he wants and I don’t think he’s done.”
Samantha remains silent for a moment and when I glance at her, I’m slightly impressed to find no sign of fear in her eyes. I’m sure she’s come to all these conclusions about Frank on her own, but she and I haven’t really discussed him in-depth yet. She doesn’t know the whole story. “He scares you,” she states quietly. My eyes widen as I turn to look at her. She seems so certain.
I nod very slightly. “Yes, he does.”
She sighs. “What happened between the two of you?” she wonders aloud. “Why does he seem to hate you so much?”
There’s a loaded question if I never heard one before… “I never trusted him,” I begin. “Never particularly liked him and after everything went down between us, I was left wishing I’d never met him to begin with. Frank is,” I pause, rolling my eyes at myself, “was Leo’s cousin. They didn’t grow up together or anything and I don’t think Leo knew he existed until Frank popped up one day. Anyway, I don’t know if Frank sought Leo out because of his connection to me or for some other reason. What I do know is that Frank had a business proposition for me and at
the time it felt like a no-brainer for me. He had some very powerful connections and I thought if I could get in good with them, I’d be set for life business-wise.”
“What was the proposition?” Sam asks quietly.
“A contract with the CIA that I’d been trying to get on my own, but didn’t have the pull to get my foot in the door,” I answer. “Frank had the connections he needed to secure the contract, but he didn’t have the tools at his disposal to give them exactly what they wanted. I did have those tools; I just didn’t have the necessary connections. So we thought we’d go after it together. And for a while, that worked. We got the contract and it was fantastic, so of course I decided to continue doing business with Frank. But the more we did together, the more I saw how he truly operated. He’s very much an any means necessary guy. And those any means very nearly cost me my company. He was lying and stealing and cheating his way to get what he wanted. I don’t have any proof to back this up, but we suspected he might have killed a rival for one of the contracts we’d gone after. After some time, it got to the point people didn’t want to deal with me anymore because I associated with Frank. He’d become reckless and dangerous, and I did what I had to do and cut him out on one of the deals we were working on together. Well, he didn’t like that. Not at all. He started throwing around accusations that I’d stolen patents from him for things my company developed, things I oversaw directly. Leo tried to talk me into just letting bygones be bygones and that the positives far outweighed the negatives. I disagreed. I think that’s when Frank started coming after me with everything he had… when he started trailing your movements.”
I look over at her to gauge how she’s taking all this to find her hanging on my every word. “You met him once,” I say, squeezing her fingers. “Before you went to work for him, I mean. It was this party we attended when Tyler was only a few months old—the first time we spent an evening away from him. I remember you fretting the entire drive about how he was doing and whether he calmed down after we walked out of the house and if Bonnie would be able to get him to sleep. And I remember how incredible you looked that night in your dress with your hair and makeup done.” I smile at the memory of her walking down the stairs to meet me and how she knocked the breath out of me with only a smile on her face. “Anyway, you’d ducked out at some point to call and check-in on Ty, then headed to the bar for a couple drinks. I watched every move you made, never let you out of my sight. Then I saw Frank approach you. I don’t think he knew who you were or that you were my wife; he probably just saw an opportunity with a pretty girl. Either way, you hardly gave him the time of day and I decided to intervene before he tried anything more. The moment he realized we were married, I swear, Sam, his eyes lit up. Knowing you were mine made him want you all the more. He spent the rest of the night with his eyes glued to you, probably mentally undressing you, and I wanted to beat the shit out of him.”
“I remember that,” she says, her brow furrowed slightly. “I was distracted thinking about Tyler, but I remember him hitting on me a couple times during the night. I didn’t think anything of it and I certainly had no interest in him.” She frowns at me. “Was this before or after you cut him out of your business deal?”
“After,” I respond. “A few months after that party, Frank disappeared for a while. Years, actually. He got in touch with Leo a couple years back saying he’d gotten into some trouble and needed help getting out. Leo convinced me to help him; I didn’t want to. I should’ve just let the bastard get himself killed. Would have saved all of us trouble.”
“Do you think Frank was involved in what’s happened over the last few months?” she asks. “The whole business with the chip and the Russians and the plane crash…”
I nod slowly. “That and a whole lot more,” I say quietly. I remain quiet, wondering if she’ll connect the dots the way I’ve been connecting them. If she hasn’t, I’m not sure I want to do it for her.
Realization dawns slowly and her complexion pales. “The bombing?” she breathes. I nod tersely. “That was Frank?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I say quickly. “About any of it, really. There are a lot of coincidences when it comes to Frank and the things he’s been up to over the last year or so. The back of his travel agency—and I use that term very loosely—has been cleaned out of guns and drugs and a million other illegal items. I half-expected to be told he was trafficking girls.” I shake my head in disgust. “There is nothing I would ever put past him. But yes, he is currently a suspect in the plane crash and I consider him one in the bombing. Now he’s God knows where and nobody seems able to keep tabs on him. That’s what the phone call was about tonight. I got one yesterday around the time I got to Claire’s for our date telling me there’s a possibility Frank might be back in the state. Incidentally, Natalie is being extradited from Pennsylvania to New York to face kidnapping and murder charges. That’s the good news in all of this.
“What I do know is that if Frank shows his face anywhere near here, I’m going to know about it,” I say, turning in my chair to fully face her. “I also know that I will do whatever it takes to keep you, Tyler, and our baby safe. He’s not going to touch you so long as I’m around. You know that, don’t you?”
She nods. “I know,” she whispers. “Matt, I know you’re scared to tell me these things because you’re afraid I’ll run.” When I open my mouth to argue, despite her being dead right in her assumptions, she shakes her head and I keep quiet. “I can’t blame you for that. But I’m not going anywhere. I’m not letting them tear us apart again. I love you, and you are stuck with me until your last dying breath.”
Her words surprise a laugh out of me when all I can really focus on is how incredible this woman really is and wondering why the hell she’s wasting her time with me. She told you, dumbass. She loves you. Inwardly, I’m rolling my eyes at myself. Outwardly, I’m leaning over the arm of my chair and crushing my lips to hers, desperate for the contact so I can attempt to convey what it means to me that she puts up with this life and with me.
When she somehow ends up in my lap, straddling my hips, I assume our conversation is over for now and I take the opportunity to resume our plans from earlier.
––––-o––––-
Life is good right now. I’m content for a change when not long ago I assumed my life had gone to complete hell and that there was no more reason to wake up in the morning. Now that I’m somewhat recovered from that, I’m incredibly ashamed of some of the thoughts that ran through my head. I’ve never been at such a low a point of my life that I ever considered suicide as a final option. Samantha would never forgive me for that, for taking myself away from my children and never giving my daughter the option to know me or giving Tyler the right to have his father in his life. I don’t know whether it was one thing in particular that set those thoughts in motion or a combination of the events. Whatever it was, it was unacceptable and I’ll never be able to tell Claire how thankful I am that she showed up when she did to get some sense into me. If she hadn’t, I might have gone through with my thoughts and I might not be here right now.
We’re now two weeks away from Christmas and our wedding. Between Claire and Samantha every last detail has been finalized and the girls are getting their dresses fitted today. Of course, there’s the matter of Sam’s ever-growing belly so she’ll have to have her dress refitted the day of the actual wedding to ensure it fits her properly. I’d be fine with her showing up in sweatpants and one of my shirts, but I’ve learned to keep this opinion to myself—the one time I dared mention it, she gave me a glare that I’m pretty sure killed the potted plants all around the house.
Samantha’s little sister Lily has joined the fray as well. She flew out early after some audition she’d tried out for in Hollywood fell through. I didn’t listen too closely to the details, but from what I gathered, she’d mistakenly accepted an audition invitation for an adult film. After I heard that, Tyler and I retreated to the basement for a couple hours to avoid list
ening to Samantha’s shouted lecture about Lily being far too trusting and needing to be more careful. There are just some things neither my son nor I need to hear.
Marcus has returned to town to update me on things he’s already updated me on—Frank is still on the run; Natalie is under heavy security at my insistence. It would be far too predictable if she managed to escape police custody right before our wedding and it’s not a risk worth taking at this point. Marcus further suspects I haven’t weeded out all the moles in my company. We’re currently planning deeper investigations after the New Year.
“I don’t want this affecting my wedding,” I tell him firmly. “And I realize that’s probably incredibly unrealistic, but this has to go perfectly for Samantha.”
He nods understandingly. “I’ll do everything I can. You know that. I’ve got a security team arranged, people I’ve checked myself and you are free to accept them or deny them for any reason. That’s your call. I know you’re having some trust issues right now and I get why. Trust me or not, I do have your best interests at heart. I’m not going to let anything happen to you or your family if I have anything to do with it.”
I smile. “Yeah, I know,” I tell him quietly. “And I appreciate all of it. I really do. You’re coming to the wedding, right?”
He snorts a laugh. “Of course I am. Someone’s gotta get video of you trying to dance to post on YouTube.”
“Gee, thanks,” I grumble as the intercom on my desk buzzes. “Yes, Sandra?”
“There’s a Bonnie Harris here to see you,” her voice replies. I grin at the exasperation in her voice and know exactly where this is headed. “She doesn’t have an appointment.” I know Bonnie is grinning too.
“That’s fine, send her in,” I say, trying to keep the laughter in my voice.
I hear a sigh on the other end of the intercom and can imagine my receptionist pinching the bridge of her nose. “You know, I’m really starting to wonder what my role in this company is if people who don’t have appointments can just show up and be seen. It’s mayhem, Matt.”
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