by Ellie Jean
“Chuck.” Sal growls out my name.
I don’t turn.
Who are these men who have been with me from the start? They’re complete strangers to me.
“Ciro Basilio…” The ferocity hits my ears.
I stop but look dead ahead at the doorway.
“I will give you a day to come to terms with this. Our family is potent and commanding and I expect no less from my son. You have much to learn and it has to be done quickly. Sal and Nizo will bring you to me on Tuesday.”
Launching through the archway, I’m furious, crazed and wondering what the hell just happened. My legs carry me to the exit and the cars who followed us here are still lined up. One of the men nod at me.
“Keys.” I open my palm.
“I have orders to take you back to your place.” Striding to the car door, it beeps and I fall into the back of the SUV. Closing my eyes, the engine starts and I brace my elbows on my knees and hold my head between my hands. My head is revolving like it used to when I would spin uncontrollably on the back lawns of the house I grew up in, stopping when my body would fall to the ground, me laughing at the same time. Only this time, I’m not laughing, my stomach is ready to unload its contents anytime now and I have a feeling this is only the beginning of this uncontrollable sensation.
So many questions.
Why did this man, a fucking mafia boss think I was his son? How did he know my mother’s name? Why would they lie to me, their son? If he is my father, why is he alive and not dead like I believed for the past twenty-eight years of my life?
He’s not my dad.
My throat starts to expand slightly and I heave in air to my depleted lungs.
My hands itch to pound something. Anything.
Fuck…
Straightening in my seat, I watch the world flash by as we go back into the city as though a nuclear bomb hasn’t just been dropped in my stratosphere.
There is only one person who can clear this darkness away.
I need to see Fiorella.
I need answers to their lies.
None of this can be true.
“Mother.”
It had taken a few hours to calm myself down enough to be capable of speaking without throwing a punch at a wall. Thrashing it out on my punching bag til my clothes were soaked, knuckles were red, and my limbs were weakened, the answers were no closer to coming. I had to speak to my mother.
Walking into the modest house Mom lived in since I was twelve, I couldn’t see her anywhere. “Mom. We need to talk.” My throat gruff and the scowl on my face felt permanent.
The kitchen and living areas were empty, so I continued out to the back yard, where she spends the majority of her days. Her slim figure is crouched over the garden bed, her dark straight hair pulled high on her head in a single band. Watching her for a minute before I change the course of both of our lives, her peacefulness and grace still stun me. Poised and refined, after hard years of trying to control me, while working and sacrificing her young age and life for mine, my insides catapult knowing the destruction my words are going to create. Whether they be truth or a lie, our close relationship will take a hit. I pray it’s the lesser of the two evils and she is only devastated due to me not believing in her words.
My feet crunch on the rocks underneath as I proceed.
Lifting her chin slowly, the same honey-colored eyes as mine gaze up toward me. The sun shining behind her making her glow majestically. “Chuck. What a lovely surprise.” Releasing her spade, she pushes off the ground and I quickly step to her, reaching for her hand to help her.
“You’re looking lovely today. It’s a beautiful day to be out in the sunshine.” I try and smile but it’s a fake one.
“Any day’s a good day.” Embracing her small shoulders, I kiss each side of her cheek and take her hand, leading her toward the white wrought iron garden settee. A small fountain with cupid and his bow in full view.
“Come and sit down, Mom. We need to talk.” Keeping my voice normal is difficult. Has this woman deceived me for twenty-eight years? Raising her eyebrows, a look of apprehension flashes across them.
“Would you like some cold juice or punch? I just made some.” Soft and sweet, her voice could rival Snow White’s. Trying to untangle herself from my grasp, I hold it still and guide her to sit down.
“Not just yet.”
Lowering herself down, worry appears in her eyes and doesn’t leave.
“Aren’t you going to sit down?”
I study my mother and notice her clasped hands. A telltale sign of her discomfort.
There’s no way I can sit. I’m like a stick of dynamite and the fuse has been lit ready to detonate.
My mouth can’t hold back any longer. “I met a man today.” Her eyes look down, then back to mine. Turbulence is swirling in her brown pits, Mom’s mouth is tight. “Tomme Basilio.”
Paleness sweeps across her soft tanned face but her eyes remain steady on mine. Long thick lashes move up and down and her eyes blur slightly. It’s obvious she knows the name.
Dragging my hands down the fronts of my pants, sweat starts to form on my palms. My mouth has a sour taste in it. “Do you know him?” I pause and watch. “Because he knows you, and a hell of a lot about me.” My voice rises slightly, but not like I want. My lungs are ready to burst with fierceness, my body rigid and ready to take on my opponent, except this time, that opponent is my mother. The one who wiped my nose when I had a cold, took me to the hospital before my appendix burst, taught me how to be a gentleman on my first date at seventeen. How the fuck am I supposed to kick her in the mouth and take her body down if these revelations from this morning are true?
Silence slides around our bodies. Neither one of us willing to talk. My chest heavy, I wait. Wait to hear Fiorella’s singsong voice which could pull me out of any darkness except the way the invisible web is weaving its way from my toes around my limbs and choking my abs. I think for once, there will be no protection. Instead entanglement with a stranger, a criminal, no doubt a killer, a fucking mafia boss.
My father.
“I knew him once.” A whisper falls and my fallen eyes dart to my mother’s lips. Her eyes skyward. “He was the kindest, gentlest boy. Someone I could confide in, wrap my arms around, be embraced and consumed wholly by and spend every hour thinking about. My protector. My first love. My only love.” My legs tremble, heavy and unable to move, so I take a seat next to a woman I don’t clearly know. “Tomme was our savior.”
And there it is. She knew him. A knife stabbing me in the heart couldn’t hurt any more than the pain radiating from my chest.
With trepidation, Fiorella looks to me. A single tear stuck on her plump cheek, but a shine in her eyes tells me this man held my mother’s heart at one stage in her life. Holding my breath, again, heat spreads behind my eyelids in anger, disappointment, sadness? I wait for her to continue. My rage subdues to a rolling simmer.
“Tomme and I were young when I crashed in to him, literally. Riding my glitter pink push-bike, no hands and eyes closed seemed like a rebellious and great thing to do, but not so good when the pavement had a fork in it. Both of us adrift in our own worlds. Then bam. Lost gray eyes connected with mine immediately. My body grazed and bruised, yet a thousand popping candies exploded in my stomach at once. An intense warmth spread and it wasn’t from the blood spilling from my cuts, but from his sincere look of worry and wonder as he assessed what occurred.” Hands joined together, she composes herself after a sniffle and a hint of smile disappears.
“At age thirteen, we were inseparable. Where Tomme went, I went. What I did, Tomme did. It didn’t matter he was two years older than me and a boy, we became soulmates from that fateful day. They were such innocent and joyful times.”
I push her glass of water toward her. She takes a dainty sip and my gut rolls in anticipation of the but…
As kind and pure-hearted as my mother is, the anger slowly bubbling inside won’t let me think any empathic thoughts. My sh
oulders tense, my jaw ready to crack from holding it still and clenched when her pleading eyes look across at mine.
“But it didn’t last. It couldn’t last. He was from a family brought up in a different world to me. They were different. Tomme was different but hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it until it was forced upon him.” A wistful sigh makes me blink. “The day before his eighteenth birthday, I baked him a banana cake. I was a child, with nothing to give him except how I felt for him. He’d been acting strange for weeks and I couldn’t seem to reach him completely. That night, determined to find the boy I fell for, the one who made my heart skip a beat each time I looked in his gray eyes, the one who protected me from the bullies at school who called me trash because we were poorer than them, the boy who turned into a man before my eyes each passing week but still had time to take me for ice cream and doughnuts.” Her hand touches her heart and mine gallops full steam ahead, thumping from within.
“We’d met up late. His clothes were immaculate, dress pants and button-up collared shirt, his hair groomed with oil but his beautiful smile was not lightening up his strong features when he finally got to our special meeting spot. I’d been waiting for hours. I wouldn’t leave until I saw him. My gut knew a change was coming. The lost look in his eyes scared me. It was going to happen. I’d be left alone for his duties if the talk of the town was correct. I knew about his family and what they did. I’d been naive and stupid; an ostrich with its head in the sand. We embraced and held each other in silence for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t want to let him go. To be truthful, I knew he didn’t want to let me go either. Minutes passed and then hours and we clung to each other, giving ourselves to each other completely. We were in love and it was being ripped away from both of us, but this… this was us, us making our own final decision and one we would remember forever.”
“Fuck.” My hand slams on the table, making Mom’s shoulders jolt up.
Desperation oozes through her voice. “I was sixteen, nearly seventeen, when my mother worked out I was pregnant. I’d been sick and after three months she’d taken me to the doctor who confirmed our fears. I was alone, my father could hardly look at me and my sister had no clue what was happening. Tomme was gone. I couldn’t reach him. His family put him in seclusion and my faith-filled family was going to send me away to my aunt’s as soon as I started showing to stop any gossip ruining their good name.”
“You didn’t think you should have told me this before, instead of my father is dead story?”
“Desperate and nowhere to turn, I bribed a guy who hung around him to hand a note to Tomme to meet me any night he could at our secret place. It took two weeks of nightly visits without him coming, until one rainy night, I’d been huddled in a dry corner crying again when the door opened to the old shed on the abandoned property. There was no dying acclamation of love for each other, this guy wasn’t the Tomme I knew except for his eyes which told me he was still in there somewhere but the goodness had been beat out of him, his boyhood gone from the scenes he’d witnessed and things he’d been made to do. He told me I had to leave him in our past, had to pretend this child was not his if I went through with the pregnancy. It couldn’t have his last name or be associated with his life because he didn’t want a son or daughter brought into his world of pain and destruction. He didn’t want a child put through what he was going through and if someone from his enemy list knew about his child, they would kill them just to torture him or his family. Tomme made it clear I was to have no contact but somehow, when he could, he would provide for us.” Strength returns to her voice. “We did what we had to.” Lifting her chin, she spears me with a look of determination. “Protecting you was my main priority and the sacrifice your father made, showed it was his main priority as well.”
Standing abruptly, I don’t want to listen. It’s been fucking confirmed I actually have a father who is alive and now wants to take me from my life.
“Protecting me? Who the fuck protected you? And for what? Now, twenty-eight years later, I’m being summoned anyway?” I can’t remember the last time I yelled at Fiorella, but a dam bursts from within and I can’t hold back. “I’ve had a lifetime without a father figure, I’ve put you through hell and back and I’ve watched you break because you didn’t have a person to lean on and now it’s okay to know I have a father because it suits him?”
“There must be a reason he has reached out to you.” Fiddling with her hair, a troubled look appears. “The last time I saw him was at your baptism, where it was the priest and I surrounding a small basin in a small town church. I’d caught a glimpse of him leaving after I declared your name Ciro Tomme Basilio. My one ray of sunshine in a cruel world. But to everyone else and on your birth papers you would be known as Chuck Sansone. I’ve known he has been present over the years, taking notice of our lives, staying true to his word helping me out with money, but for him to be revealing himself to you, there must be something serious happening.”
“I don’t fucking care what is happening in his life, but he’s not going to come into mine and ruin it.” I shouldn’t be dropping the ‘f’ bomb speaking to Mom, but I can’t hold back. She’s lied to me for twenty-eight years. The biggest lie a child can be told. Growing up without a father was hard, traumatic and terrifying at times but to find out it was a conspiracy between my mother and very much alive father is too much to process in a five-minute garden meeting with Mom.
Fuck.
Staring at wet lashes and arms being held out to me, it’s too much. My body sags and I turn away from my mother. “I’m out of here.”
Shaking my head, I stride out of the house listening to my mother sobbing. “Chuck, please. Wait.”
I know the fucking truth, there’s nothing more to be said that won’t end up hurting us both more.
There’s only one thing I need.
My boxing bag.
Caroline
I’m such an idiot.
“What do you mean you still have ties with them?”
My father explained to me years back he left the underworld behind. He’d lied straight to my face. And I’d trusted him.
Stupid, stupid girl.
But deep down perhaps I always knew, but ignored my gut.
A rage flows through me, threatening to overflow.
“Once you deal with these guys, there’s no getting out completely.” Shoulders sagging for a second, my father straightens himself. “I have tried. But I will owe them forever for helping me with the kidnap situation.”
Kidnapped…
A blackness clouds my eyes.
A sprinkle of rain touches my cheek. Waiting for my driver to pick me up from school, he is never late but today he is. Attending a private school from the age of six, I am accustomed to security, timetables and people wanting to harm me because of my father’s wealth. It is what it is. I couldn’t change it. It’s my obligation to do what I am told. With Mother gone, choosing to leave me for more wealth and fame, I attended school, read books and searched the internet for the latest cool boy band to adorn my room with.
The teacher on duty didn’t see me waiting by the concrete pillar when he went inside to grab his umbrella, I presume, leaving me by myself. But the strong hand wrapped around my mouth and the other around my waist, I knew this person saw me, waiting for the right opportunity. Hot against my body, his glove presses on my lips. My blood like ice, terrified at what is to come. Trying to grasp for air, I’m hurled quickly into a waiting black car which looks exactly like my security details. No one is the wiser.
He didn’t speak to me but kept his eyes forward on the driver. Talk is impossible. My throat constricts from lack of air and panic. My fingers slid through the door handle, pulling on it as though my life depends on it, which it did. But it’s locked of course. The interior of the car closed in on me. Darkness, dread and an internal hysteria took over my body until I couldn’t breathe.
Blackness…
Waking up, tied to a small bed by my hands, I scream.
Blood curdling and shrill until someone finally came into the room placing a piece of cloth in my mouth to shut me up. Again no words are spoken.
Hours came and went, sandwiches placed with a cup of milk next to me daily. When my hands were free, my legs were bound. I couldn’t escape even if I had the strength, as the door is key locked each time they left me in the darkness. Time crawls by, tears dried up because I had nothing left inside to shed. Creaks at the door hold me on edge so sleep eludes me in case the predator tries to overpower me. With no energy, I’d still try and conquer if they tried to rape me. I pledge to myself never again will I be a helpless little girl if I get out.
Nine days held prisoner.
Nine days is how long it took for my dad to get me out.
One kidnapping changed my father’s business.
One girl who would never be the same ten-year-old again.
In an anticlimactic business exchange, wrapped in my loving father’s arms only to be told within the first five minutes we needed to move on like nothing happened.
It was to be forgotten.
“Caroline?” My father’s concerned voice draws me back.
Rubbing my hands through my hair, I come back to planet earth. “But it was over sixteen years ago.” My stance softens slightly as I realize what pressure my father is constantly under. “We’ve paid them back.”
“You never truly pay them back, sweetheart. But having you here is all I need to know. I made the correct decision bringing them in to get you back.”
Being kidnapped at ten isn’t something we brought up every day. I’d lived it, been tortured, tied up and starved for nine long days but lived to see the other side of it. I’m a lucky survivor. I wasn’t raped and my scars were deep within, only surfacing on the odd occasion when confronted with the reality from long ago. Being the kid of a wealthy tycoon, it was always a possibility and one day it became a reality.
