by TL Gehr
“And Philip? What happens to Philip?”
A horrible grin spreads across her face. “If I promise you that your precious Philip will survive this, you’ll do whatever I ask, won’t you?”
It’s not a question, it’s a revelation.
45
Philip
The room is only about twenty square meters of cold concrete. It smells like a building site covered in urine. There’s a small bathroom that they’ve taken me to twice and very little ventilation. My face pounds from where Billy punched me earlier to shut me up. I knew describing the green light was too obvious, but I couldn’t think of a more subtle way to hint at my location. I gingerly prod my loose tooth with my tongue and shift position again. My legs and hands are bound with cable ties that cut into my skin every time I move, but they’re less uncomfortable than the hard floor.
Billy sits at the opposite corner from me at a little table. He’s brewing up some or other drug. It’s the third time I’ve watched this ritual today. He’s my primary guard, although every so often some other gang member joins him or takes his place. A gun sits just within reach of his fingers, a silent warning that I shouldn’t make any sudden moves. I know better than to try to escape. I don’t know where I am, but I can hear there are a lot more of them than there are of me and they’re likely to be armed.
Last time, I was ten. I knew my kidnapper. He was one of my teachers. He and his accomplice kept me bound and gagged in a tiny box, but when I heard them talking, they talked about money. They talked about negotiations, about how much they could get and how much they thought they would get. They discussed the price of my life.
Billy and Malena do not. Not once. Every so often one or the other of them will come in and use the laptop to make a call to my parents and they’ll argue with whichever consultant my parents hired to deal with this and then they’ll end the call and go about their business as if it didn’t even happen, as if it wasn’t even important, as if the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Now I can tell by the night sky in the window above Billy’s head that five o’clock, the deadline, has passed. I flex my fingers. How much longer will I have a complete set? The fear is a black hole inside me, swallowing every other emotion, every other thought. I can no longer tell if my limbs are numb from cold or from terror.
The door opens and I jump as Malena comes in, swinging a backpack. My breath catches when I realize who’s behind her.
“Brian?” I flush with warmth. He’s here. He found me. He followed my useless muddled clues and he came to save me. My heart soars and then crashes because he doesn’t look at me as he follows her in. He looks everywhere but at me. His eyebrows are drawn low and his lips are pressed together, thin.
Malena tosses the backpack to Billy. “Look at what my boy brought us.”
He unzips the bag and grins. “Good going. You want a hit?”
Brian’s hands clench at his sides, his whole attention on whatever Billy’s been brewing.
What’s Brian playing at?
He pulls up his left sleeve and offers his arm to Billy.
“Brian don’t…” I can’t help the warning. It comes out little more than a whisper, but in this tiny room that’s enough.
He swings around to face me. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
His sharpness is like an electric jolt through me. My insides leap. It doesn’t even sound like him, it’s so cold. Malena laughs. “You’d better explain to him, kid. He’s not getting it.”
Brian folds his arms in front of his chest. Now he’s looking at me, I wish he wasn’t. His eyes travel the length of me but there’s no warmth in his gaze. This isn’t the man who I held in my arms every night for a month, who I opened myself to soul and body. For only a moment I imagine he has a twin and that this is someone I’ve never met before, but I know him too well. I know the way he moves, the expressions that cross his features, the track marks on his arms and that leather jacket he never goes anywhere without.
“Brian?” A pitiful question, but I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
The corner of his mouth shifts into an almost smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Thank you for suggesting The Spindle safe. I wouldn’t have thought of that. You really are a genius… Although giving me security access to your entire home? Maybe not such a genius move.”
The black hole swallows my heart.
“You should have listened to your father, he knew what was up.” Brian looks at his hands. “But then he would, being ex-FBI.”
“What?”
Brian is like a character in one of those old comics colored in duotone, dressed in black with the swinging light bulb casting everything else in green. “So you didn’t know, then? Well, here’s a fun story. Your father is responsible for killing or incarcerating most of my family.” He holds out his arms to encompass his mother and Billy. “Before you stand the three remaining members of the Aurora clan.”
It feels like the floor drops out from beneath me, the bottom drops out of my world. The Aurora family, bloodier than The Godfather, which we watched snuggled up together a week ago. The Aurora family, creators of orphans, and Brian was only just dancing in my arms at a charity benefit in their honor. The Aurora family, spreaders of terror, Brian’s beautiful dark eyes staring up at me in the shower after the gala. “Is this really okay?”
“You’re going to ask me if I planned this,” Brian says now. “The answer is yes.”
Did his voice shake on the last word, or is it my imagination?
“You’re going to ask me if it was all a lie.” His voice definitely trembles there, but he bites down. His jaw twitches. “The answer is also yes.” He glances at his mother. “The truth is that we planned this all along. Ever since the Dragons figured out who your dad was. That’s why Malena applied for the job, that’s why she got you to hire me, that’s why the Dragons were always there, watching you and that’s why I…” his gaze slips down to his feet. “Seduced you.” He drags his eyes up to mine again. “You said you were an idiot for doubting me, you should learn to trust your instincts.”
I’ve seen glaciers break in nature documentaries, the tremendous crack, the deafening roar. It happens now. The ablation is across my heart, the roaring is my blood in my ears, the cold is the cold of realization that I was played, that what I thought too good to be true really was, that what felt like a dream was a dream. Love like that doesn’t really exist and I should have known better. He played me so well. He somehow knew exactly what to say and how to act to earn my trust.
Is he even gay or did he just put up with what I did to him to lure me into his trap? You’re really good at this. I saw what Chase said about you and it’s bullshit.
I won’t cry. I refuse to cry. Even though it feels like I’m being torn apart and turned inside out. I manage to hold myself together as I ask, “So what happens now?” I know too much. They’ve told me too much.
“Now your parents will negotiate the exchange. I will return to your home, distraught, and I will convince them you are dead,” he says.
Billy looks up from his drugs. Malena adds, “No need to kill him when we can simply convince his father of the fact.”
My heart skips. No need… I look between the two of them. The similarities seem obvious now. Brother and sister. They’d intended to kill me. They’d really intended to kill me to avenge the relatives that Dad apparently put away. Dad… an FBI agent? We’ve never been very close, it shouldn’t surprise me he had secrets. Apparently I’m the most gullible fool in all existence.
“So what are we going to do with him, then?” Billy asks. “Keep babysitting him for all eternity?”
“You think so small, Bill. A dead princeling is a finite resource. A princeling threatened with death… limitless. In a few months we’ll let the Arrigos know we still have him. Reward them with a video, maybe of their poor malnourished baby. You know who else has limitless resources? Billionaires. They can open doors for us, and they’ll be all too happy to when that’s the only
way they get to see their precious boy again.”
Brian is perfectly still. He’s listening to this as intently as I am. I’m almost certain it’s the first time he’s hearing the plan. “You’re never going to set him free?” he asks, so quietly that I know I’m not supposed to hear. It’s a question for his mother.
She eyes me. “Oh, I’m sure one day they’ll be able to do us a favor big enough. But on that day he does go home, he’ll be able to give all the names and faces he wants, including yours. Especially yours. After all you’ve done, kid, is that what you want?”
Especially yours.
I’m suddenly back in the hospital room. “Your own mother framed you to save her skin?”
I doubted Brian that day. I fell for Malena’s machinations then and I promised myself that I wouldn’t again. Yet here I am navigating the same dark thoughts, so quick to believe the worst of him. No. No, I won’t. I refuse.
“How much?” I ask, the question coming from my lips as soon as it occurs to me. I realize it sounds like I’m asking what Brian’s done, so I clarify, “How much was in the safe?”
Brian’s dark brows furrow at the topic change, but he answers, “About…” then something dawns in his gaze and he says instead, “Exactly thirty thousand, four hundred and fifty-nine dollars. I counted it myself.”
His gaze locks with mine for a long moment after and I try not to show the fireworks going off in my chest. “She wasn’t keeping it from you, she just doesn’t know”. He said, about his mom and his learning disability.
There would be no reason to make up something like that, especially when it kept him away from the money that would have been his goal. And if it was all a plot, if he was part of this massive crime family, then why would he make up such a complex story about not knowing his mom? It would have been easier just to make up a normal family relationship.
He snorts and looks away with a laugh. “Using the night we met as the safe code was pretty damn lame, even if you did want to kiss me.”
Feeling floods back to my extremities and I have to use all my control not to betray that in any way. I wasn’t the act, this is the act. Brian is still my Brian. The one who defended that kid in Central Park, who stood up to Chase, who told me I was wonderful, who screamed into the phone that he loved me.
They were going to kill me, and he know it, so he bargained. What? If they really are the Aurora crime family, they don’t need thirty thousand dollars. He must have bargained himself. He must have promised them his loyalty and that he would take the fall for my kidnapping. Part of their deal must have been that he convinced me that he was one of them, convinced me that he was responsible for the kidnapping so that one day when they give me back to my family, I put all the blame for everything on him. And then they’d probably throw him to the wolves, have him locked up for life. And he knows that, he must know that. “Prison was bad. I don’t like to think about it.” His deepest fear, and he’s willing to face it for me. His body thrashing in the night as he cries for mercy. He’s here for me. He followed my clues and he came here to save me.
But now he’s in as much danger as I am. I told him not to come alone. Did he miss that part of my message, or did he choose to ignore it?
“Now, where were we?” Brian turns away from me and offers his arm to Billy.
No… I watch helplessly as Billy fills a syringe and flicks it.
“Go easy on me,” Brian says. “I’ve been off the stuff a while.”
Why is he doing this? To steady his nerves? Or can he really just not resist the temptation if it’s right there? I want to scream at him not to do it, not to get high and leave me alone here. Billy loops tubing around Brian’s arm as a tourniquet.
“Mom, is there anything to eat around here? I haven’t eaten all day. For obvious reasons.”
Him calling Malena “mom” makes my stomach churn, or maybe that’s my own hunger. We ate breakfast together this morning on the terrace and not long after that I was bundled into a car with a bag over my head. How was that this morning? It feels like weeks ago already.
“I think the fellas got pizza. I’ll go see if there’s leftovers.”
“For Philip too.”
“Already making demands, huh?”
She leaves us with Billy. I tense, waiting for Brian to snatch the gun or make some grand gesture before Billy can pump him full of opioids, but the needle slides into Brian’s skin and he closes his eyes in an expression I know all too well from the bedroom: bliss.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Billy says with a leathery smile.
Brian’s shoulders slump as he sighs happily. He doesn’t move until Malena returns with a box of pizza.
She shoves it at him. “You wanna feed the lordling, you’re gonna have to share.”
“I thought malnourishment was step two of your plan?” Brian says.
He brings the box straight to me. As he kneels down, he stumbles forward and manages to catch himself just before he topples right into me. His right hand is splayed near my hip, his left somehow balances the pizza box, his face hovers very near mine as he laughs at his clumsiness. His dark eyes swim, unfocused, but his lips… they mouth the words, “Help is coming.”
He leans further into my space, so the pizza box bumps against my stomach and he kisses my cheek. I flinch away, as if revolted, keeping up the act. “Come now Philip, it wasn’t all bad.” He laughs again.
His right hand nudges mine. Somehow, he’s gotten it behind me, with his body blocking it from view. I clasp at his fingers, seeking reassurance, and touch metal. He’s passing me something. It slices across the tip of my index finger and I hiss, which to the others might look like I’m hissing at his unwelcome advances. I hear them making amused noises.
I take proper hold of what he’s given me. It’s a razorblade, one he must have nabbed from the drug table while Billy was distracted shooting him up. That’s why he allowed it.
Brian leans back on his haunches and offers me a slice of pizza. There’s no mockery in his expression now the other two can’t see it. Those eyebrows that I love so much tilt upwards, genuinely asking if I’m hungry. I open my mouth.
The pizza is cold, but I’m not about to complain. Behind Brian, Malena and Billy discuss the drugs he’s been preparing and then they call my parents. Once again, I don’t get to hear Mom or Dad, just the consultant. Now the conversation has moved from no money to negotiating them down. I start working on the cable ties while they’re distracted and Brian is shielding me from view.
Help is coming. What help and when? My hands come free and I have blessed circulation, but what do I do with them?
Malena ends the call after the consultant’s third “no” and yawns. “Maybe we should start with the fingers to make things a little interesting.”
I don’t know if she’s joking. Brian goes tense.
“I promised some of the boys first dibs,” Billy says.
My blood turns to ice. Brian’s eyes fill with panic. What does that mean?
“Philip is mine,” Brian stands abruptly.
“Kid’s been here five minutes and he’s putting on airs.” Malena comes up to him and takes the pizza box.
“You’re the one who called me a prince. I planned all this, didn’t I? I seduced him, I infiltrated his family, I got access to his safe, I got access to his garage or did you forget about the Beemer sitting outside?”
He brought a car. A getaway car. All we need to do is get out of this room and we’re safe.
He stares Malena down and repeats, “Philip is mine.”
She grabs hold of his chin, “Don’t push it. If your story ‘bout him being dead is gonna work we need to send the parents something to worry about. I have a group of drunk men out there raring for a party and I take care of my men.”
What does “first dibs” mean? What kind of assault? What would they consider a party?
“Let them take me instead,” Brian says, his facade dropping away completely.
&
nbsp; “And how will they respect you then? When it comes time for you to lead, huh? You need to toughen the fuck up.”
“Make him watch,” Billy suggests.
Brian’s wide eyes fly to him then back to Malena. My insides squirm as she drops his chin and goes to the door. She shouts out a bunch of names. Billy confirms which ones have won whatever sick reward this is.
Brian rushes at her. “No!” But she swings an elbow, connecting with his sternum and he doubles over as the first bulky figure comes through the door. It’s no one I know from The Spindle. He has lank russet hair and brass knuckles. My breath comes in short sharp gasps as another comes in, and then another. Three large men in leather with tattoos. One is another stranger with a bald head but the one I know from work. He’s always been a difficult customer and he grins when he sees Brian. “Hey, if it isn’t the barman.”
“Fuck you,” Brian wheezes.
“If you like.”
Brian lunges for him, but Malena instructs the skinhead to restrain him. There’s a brief scuffle and then Brian is pinned with his arms behind his back and the other two Dragons are advancing towards me.
We’ve missed our chance to flee. There are too many of them now.
Brian said help was coming. It’s going to need to come soon.
“What’s on the menu?” The russet-haired guy asks, pounding his knuckle busters into his open palm.
Malena shrugs. “Something that looks like they should have paid the two million dollars.”
“Wait!” Brian wriggles against the skinhead’s grip. “Please.”
“Shut up,” Malena snaps. “Kid you’re really trying my patience. Billy, give me a top-up, he needs a chill pill.”
It’s The Spindle customer who lands the first blow. It thwacks into the side of my face, hard enough to make me see stars, but not hard enough to break anything. My cheek burns and I taste blood.
Brian makes a small helpless sound and I see Malena emptying a second syringe into his arm. He slumps. No! No, not again. He’s going to overdose. I won’t be able to save him.
