Footsteps

by Susan Fanetti

  “He is strong, Carlo.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been so pissed at him. I’ve been treating him like shit for weeks because he got me tangled up with the Uncles. But it’s my fault. I’ve always bailed him out of everything. We all have. Maybe if we made him fight his own fights, he’d have known better what to do today.”

  “What could he have done?”

  “Had a gun with him. Realized faster that an unfamiliar car on Carmen’s road is trouble. I don’t know. Something. I can’t believe Jenny managed all this chaos. Half the time, she could barely manage a trip to the market.”

  “This is why we’ll find Trey. Yes? Because she’s under the water?”

  He turned and gave her a quizzical look, and she wondered if she had said something wrong, but then his expression changed, reforming into despair again. “Or it’s why he’s already dead. Because she’s in over her head and terrified.”

  “To think that way is to give up, Carlo. It’s too soon to give up.”

  He nodded without seeming persuaded. “Yeah. Okay, I need to talk to Uncle Ben.” He bent down and kissed his brother’s forehead. “Fight, you shithead. Fight your fight.”

  ~ 23 ~

  When they went back out into the waiting room, Carlo released Bina’s hand and went to Uncle Ben and Uncle Lorrie. They’d been sitting in a group with everyone—his siblings and father, their wives—and they’d both stood as he’d come into the room.

  He released her hand, but she didn’t leave his side right away. She was with him. Despite the way he’d let his fear and rage unspool and lash out at her, despite the fact that he knew he’d hurt her, she was still with him, at his side. Though smiles were hard to find, he found one now for her. “It’s okay. I need to talk to them alone.”

  She nodded and tipped her chin up. She wanted a kiss. He gave her one, and she crossed the room to his—their—family. As she passed Uncle Ben, the old man gave her arm an affectionate squeeze.

  Uncle Ben took Carlo’s elbow and led him to a quiet corner of the room. One of their soldiers stood nearby; with a look, Uncle Lorrie sent him out of earshot.

  “Sit, Junior.” Uncle Ben pushed Carlo to sit before he himself did. “We need to talk about what the law knows, and what they tell you they’re doing. And we need to talk about how we’re proceeding and what part you wish to play.”

  “Law doesn’t know anything, far as they told me. They have somebody watching her apartment in New York. That’s it. Do you have news? Do you know anything?”

  “No. Not yet. But we will find her. A woman who holds a gun to her own child’s head has few friends. And many enemies. She will have nowhere to turn soon enough.”

  “That’s not reassuring, Uncle. If she panics, if she thinks she can’t get away…” He couldn’t say it. It was all he could think about, what Jenny would do to Trey if she felt cornered, but he couldn’t say the words out loud, not to his Uncles. With every second that crawled by without his son, though, Carlo was more sure that he had seen him for the last time. “I can’t believe we’re all just sitting here!”

  “We’re not, Junior.” Uncle Lorrie’s voice was dark and gruff. “This is our top job right now. Finding your boy. We’ve got everybody on it.”

  “Is this another debt I’ll owe?” He didn’t care if it was—he’d do anything to get Trey back. Anything. But he shouldn’t have asked; the words had come out anyway.

  Uncle Ben’s only reaction was a narrowing of his eyes. “You insult us, nephew.”

  “Sorry. I just…sorry. Thank you. I’m grateful.”

  Uncle Ben regarded him stiffly for a moment, then nodded. “It’s true that your affairs and ours are recently intersecting more than they have in the past. Your life is complicated these days, it seems.”

  Carlo snorted bitterly. “Yeah.”

  “Auberon left a vacancy in our world that has made things interesting for business. No matter for you—that became a family matter when I made it family. But this is family from the start, Junior. This isn’t business, unless you make it so. I think what you might owe will depend on what part you play next.”

  To Carlo, it seemed like his uncle was talking in riddles, and he didn’t have time or patience for it. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you have a request for how this problem is resolved?”

  “What? I want Trey home. Obviously.”

  “And the woman who took him? And the man she was with?”

  He was starting to understand, he thought. “Are you asking me if I want them dead?”

  Uncle Ben shook his head. “No. That’s been decided. If we get them before our friends in the bad suits do—and we will—then their fate is sealed. I’m asking if you want a hand in it. You make that choice, nephew, and you cross a line. I want you to see the line, see it clearly.”

  “Think about it first, Junior.” Uncle Lorrie had been standing quietly. “We’re offering you the respect of the choice. But if you choose it, there’s no going back.”

  And again with the riddles. Or maybe Carlo was simply too distracted and worried to think clearly. “I don’t understand. I’m sorry, but I just don’t.”

  “A kill makes you one of us. It weaves your life with ours—your interests with ours. If we bring you into that, then we will come to you when we need you. And not just once. This is the way on, as you and your brothers and sisters say, the other side of the pews.”

  “Can we even talk about this here?” Carlo looked around; they were in a public waiting room—empty of anyone not there for Joey, but public nonetheless.

  “We swept the room after the cops left, Junior. We can speak freely for now.” Uncle Lorrie looked over toward the rest of the family. “Quietly, but freely.”

  Carlo thought. The Uncles were telling him that if he participated in dealing with Jenny and whoever had been with her, he would be coming into their fold. He very much did not want that. But he knew for a certainty that he wanted her dead. It wasn’t even vengeance he was after. As furious and full of hate as he was, she was too unstable for him to feel a need for revenge. But he needed security for Trey, and he wouldn’t have it if she lived.

  But could he just farm that job out? This was all his responsibility—he had married her, had a child with her, underestimated her, left Sabina and Trey alone with his fuckup baby brother as ‘protection.’

  “It should be me. It’s my responsibility, isn’t it? But why would it make me one of you? I mean no disrespect, but I don’t see my future in your business.”

  Uncle Ben put his hand on Carlo’s arm. “Then let us handle the situation. Because there’s no avoiding the entanglement if you’re involved in that way. And I know you see why—if you looked, you’d see.”

  But he didn’t see. He was too fucking tired to see. Trey was gone. Trey was fucking gone, and he was sitting here having a surreal conversation with his Uncles, apparently preparing to sign on for a life of crime.

  Uncle Ben sighed. Uncle Lorrie leaned over and answered his unasked question. “You commit murder, on our watch, with our help, that’s us…entangled. You don’t get loose from that. So think and make your choice. But if things go right, you don’t have a lot of time to make the choice. When we find Trey, you gotta know.”

  Carlo sat back, his head pounding. “I need to think.”

  “Yes, you do.” The Uncles stood and left the waiting room, going to stand in the hallway with their bodyguard.

  Bina came over immediately and stood before him. “Would you prefer company or to be alone?”

  He looked up at her and held out his hand. “Stay with me.” She put her hand in his and sat at his side.

  “Have they news?”

  “No. But they seem confident. I wish I could share it.” His head full of his talk with the Uncles, Carlo pulled Bina’s hand into his lap. “I need…I don’t know. Help. Advice?”

  “I understand. You should seek help where you need it.”

  He smiled a little at her deference. “I meant you, Bina. I
need to talk something out.”

  “Yes, of course.” She blushed, a faint pink rising on her cheeks.

  “You understand what the Uncles will do when they have Jenny?” She nodded. That was all he needed—of course she would understand. They had solved her trouble in a similar way. “They have offered me the chance, when they find Trey, to…to kill Jenny myself.”

  Again, she nodded—and that surprised him. He’d expected surprise from her. “Yes. I wondered.”

  “You did?”

  “Carlo. I understand the way of your uncles. Their way helped me to be here with you—to be here at all, maybe. I think to offer you that is respect, yes? And you said earlier that you would kill her.”

  He nodded. “I want her dead. She needs to be dead. Even if I get Trey back—”

  “When. You must think ‘when,’ not ‘if.’”

  He waved that away. “Even then, he won’t be safe as long as she’s alive. And what she did—I’m to blame for a lot of it. Making the situation possible.”

  “No. I don’t agree.”

  “It’s my responsibility. I can’t just slough that off. But that brings me into the business. I don’t understand exactly how, but however, I never wanted that.”

  “May I say my opinion?”

  “Yes. That’s what advice is.”

  “Please don’t, Carlo. You’re not that man, but I think you would become that if you did this yourself. You carry enough already on your shoulders. But you are not hard. You are not ruthless. Let your uncles do what they do. They have offered this, too?”

  “Yes.” In fact, Carlo felt sure that Uncle Ben would prefer him to stay on his father’s side of the family.

  She clutched his hand in both of hers. “Then don’t do this thing. Trey will come home to you, and your family will see to it that he is safe. It’s not your responsibility. To take care of Trey is. Let your family do what they do to take care of you. Please.”

  Carlo looked into Bina’s hazel eyes. The strength he saw in them was resolute. “If…If I do, if I make that choice, will you stay? Could you stay with me even then?”

  “I’m here, Carlo. With you. Make the choice you must, and I will be here still. But please think smart. You are, right now, the best kind of man. The best kind of father. You are who Trey needs. Who I need.”

  He fed his hand into her hair. She’d had it in a ponytail earlier, but at some point she’d taken it down, and the silk of her long locks curled around his fingers. She tipped her head to the side, resting on his hand, and something inside him gave way.

  Since he’d talked to Luca, while he was still in Providence, and found out what had happened—hours ago, now—Carlo had felt a disabling sense of internal division. Even as his head and heart had rampaged with fury and terror for his son, he had seemed to become numb at the same time. By the time he’d hurt Bina, the break inside had been complete. He’d felt like a cardboard cutout of himself, like he was standing in for himself as he watched his life fall apart from some point in the distance.

  But this small gesture, his hand in her hair, her head resting on his hand, shattered the barrier inside him, and brought the terror and fury full force to suffuse him, body, heart, and mind. “Fuck. Bina, oh fuck. Trey. My boy.”

  She must have heard the crisis in his words, because she dropped to her knees on the floor in front of him and pulled him into her arms. He tucked his head into the crook of her warm shoulder and wept while she combed her fingers through his hair and made loving murmurs at his ear.

  His boy. His boy was gone. Trey was gone.

  ~oOo~

  Carlo had settled but he and Bina had not moved when there was activity elsewhere in the room. He looked up to see Joey’s doctor. Carlo’s father and siblings were moving to circle the man, as they had before. This time, Carlo stood, too, and joined them, taking Bina by the hand and keeping her close.

  “He’s going to the ICU now,” the doctor was saying as Carlo moved in. “He’s not stable yet, but his vitals are stronger, and he’s fighting. I’d say there’s more reason for hope now than there was an hour ago.” As a whole, the group relaxed, but the doctor wasn’t finished. “Until he regains consciousness, if he does, we won’t know the full extent of the damage from not only the bullet but the blood loss and shock.”

  Carmen asked what Carlo assumed they were all thinking. “Are you saying there could be problems?”

  “I’m saying that it’s likely there will be. But I can’t tell you more than that at this point. For now, let’s focus on getting him stable. Then we’ll focus on getting him awake. And then we’ll see.” He looked at the large group of Joey’s family surrounding him. “The ICU rooms are very small, and there is a lot of equipment. The doctors and nurses there are doing serious work with very ill patients. I’m sorry, but we can’t have so many of you even in the ward at once. Two at a time, please.”

  “I’ll go up with Pop.” John put his hand on their father’s shoulder. “Okay, Pop?”

  Carlo Sr. nodded, and Carlo realized that, although he himself had been distracted and out of it, he wasn’t sure he remembered the last time their father had spoken. That thought brought with it a powerful sense of bitter nostalgia. Their father had disappeared into himself for years after their mother died, and his absent presence, as much as the loss of their wonderful mother, had changed all their lives.

  As John took their father and followed the doctor, Luca and Carmen came over to Carlo and Bina. Carmen tugged on Bina’s hand. “Come with me to the bathroom?”

  Bina nodded and took her hand from his to follow Carmen. Carlo was surprised. Carmen was not the kind of woman who needed a powder room partner. But then he looked at Luca and understood.

  Luca gave Carlo and appraising look. “You pull yourself together okay?”

  “Yeah. I just…I need to do something. Standing here while Trey’s out there makes no fucking sense.”

  “What would you do, Carlo? What could you do? People are on it. The Uncles, too, I guess, right?”

  “Yeah.” He knew Luca was right. He knew they were all right—he was helpless. There was nothing he could do but sit. Maybe that was one reason he felt so compelled to be the one who handled Jenny. Because he needed to do something. Because he needed to act on her the way she was acting on him and Trey.

  Luca huffed. “Christ. They’ll tear Jenny apart.”

  “No, they won’t. They won’t make her suffer. Uncle Ben wouldn’t tolerate it. I don’t think there’s anything a woman could do that would make him hurt her. They’ll put a bullet in her head and bury her deep.” He hesitated and then added, “Or I will.”

  “Fuck, Carlo. I knew it. They want to bring you in. Don’t do it.”

  “This is why you had Carmen take Bina off, right? She could have stayed. I told her about this.”

  Luca’s brows went up in surprise at that, but then he nodded. “You don’t think clearly when people you love are fucked up. I’m putting myself between you and a stupid decision you’ll regret. Think what you need here.”

  “I need my son back, and I need her gone for good.”

  “Exactly. The Uncles can handle that. Shit, the cops could handle it, too. They could put her away.”

  “Right. They have a great track record with justice.”

  “Then leave it to Ben and Lorrie. What you don’t need is to send your life down the tubes out of some idiotic idea of responsibility. You’re not a killer, big brother. And Trey’s father shouldn’t be. Let the people who know how to carry that shit carry it.”