by Holly Hart
The kid: my kid.
The truth hasn’t hit me yet. I’m going to be a father. I’m not ready for it, but I guess no one ever asked if I was. It’s not like they have a test for parenthood, though I think maybe they should. I’ll do the best damn job I can, if Sofia lets me.
“Eyes on the prize, boyo,” I mutter, my face set. I’ll have all the time in the world to mope around if I don’t find Sofia soon. If I’m ever going to be able to fix things with her, there’s no better time than now. I’ll go down on my knees, if that’s what it takes.
I look left and right down my street. Thick, wet snowflakes are falling – the kind you get right at the start of a snowstorm. In a couple of hours, this street will be unrecognizable: covered by a half-foot thick blanket of white.
I don’t see a damn thing. Just glittering shop fronts, some still covered with belated Christmas decorations, and the glow of streetlights. Sofia can’t have got far: not unless she was running. My throat squeezes shut. I can picture it now :Sofia’s feet pounding the asphalt, just trying to get as far away from me as possible.
I see a navy colored van out of the corner of my vision. I dismiss it. It’s driving fast – too fast for this kind of weather. I wouldn’t be surprised if it skids round a corner and slams into a fire hydrant.
“Not my fecking problem,” I growl, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets for warmth. I ain’t no traffic cop. If some punk wants to speed in the middle of a snowstorm, it’s their funeral.
I hear footsteps behind me, sloshing through the light covering of slushy snow left behind as the first flakes melt against the asphalt. I spin, hoping against all hell that it’s Sofia.
It’s not.
“You,” I growl, pointing at the man walking towards me. His head is swallowed up in a thick woolen beanie hat, his hands stuffed as far into his coat as they’ll reach. He doesn’t look up.
“Hey – you,” I yell again. This time, the man glances up. I notice white ear buds dangling from his ears. I stride towards him.
“You tawkin’ ta me?” The guy mutters, his face scrunched up with surprise. He takes an involuntary step back as I walk towards him. I hold my palms up, to show I’m coming in peace. I don’t want a fight. I don’t have time for a fight. I just need to ask him a couple of questions.
I nod. A couple of snowflakes land my face, and I wipe them away with the back of my arm – now freezing droplets of water. I pull my phone from my jacket pocket, and flick through a couple of screens. I press it in front of the man’s face. “You seen this girl?” I growl, studying the man’s face for any hint that he recognizes Sofia. I’m already spinning away by the time he replies. He knows nothing.
“Sorry man,” the guy calls to me. “I hope you find your girlfriend, though. It’s a cold night to be out on the streets.”
I grimace. The expression on my face is only the tip of the iceberg. I’m twisted up inside. What the man’s saying is doubly true. Sofia wouldn’t have fled to my place if she had anywhere else to go. They might call her the Ice Queen, but I know the truth. Sofia is so much more than that. She’s smart, and sweet, and sexy and funny – and most of all, she’s one hardy lady. If she was a plant, she would be a weed. Not because she’s not hot as all hell – because she is – but because once she digs in, she never gives up.
So I’m not going to give up on her.
I go door to door, flashing Sofia’s picture in front of face after face. Every time I do, I catch a glimpse of her long, russet-red hair, and those deep brown eyes that tell a story of a lifetime. Every time I see it, my stomach twists a little further. I must ask more than thirty passersby – but not one recognizes her face.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“I hope you find her!”
All I get is rejection. I don’t get how no one has seen her.
I start hitting the bars, just in case Sofia went to find shelter from the snow. The longer I do this, the more I realize that I don’t know anything about Sofia Morello: not really. I only know what I chose to ask, and what I chose to look at: her face, her body. I should have dug further while I had the chance.
The first bar I enter is buzzing with life. Men and women swarm around each other in various stages of intoxication. I see hands on thighs, fingers trailing up bodies.
“Hey, buddy,” I say, jerking my head towards a harried bartender. I’ve never met him, but apparently he knows who I am. You can always tell when they do. A queue of half a dozen thirsty drinkers groan as he steps away from them, wiping his fingers on a rag hanging off his belt.
“Can I help ye, boss man?” The man asks. He’s young, and Irish – at least partly, and I know he’ll help. He’ll do whatever he can.
I show the bartender Sofia’s picture. It feels like the hundredth time, but I’ll give it a thousand times more, if that’s what it takes. “Ye seen this gal?” I ask, desperate for any hint of recognition on the man’s face.
But he shakes his head, just like all the rest of them. “Sorry, boss. Not seen ‘er.”
“Feck,” I grunt. I’m already turning to leave, to get back on the hunt, when an idea strikes me. “Ye got something to write on? And the pen?”
The young bartender nods, waving away cries from the growing queue of impatient drinkers. He hands me a napkin, and pulls a pen from behind his ear. All I got, boss,” he says, flashing me an apologetic frown.
“It’s fine.” I scribble the number of my burner phone onto the scrap of white, and press it against the bartender’s chest. “Ye see her, ye call me right tha’ second. Understood?”
The young man nods. He’s a decent guy. The world needs more like him. “Will do, boss. I hope you find her,” he says.
“Me too,” I whisper. I don’t know if the kid behind me hears. I don’t know why, but I’ve got a terrible feeling brewing in my stomach. Sofia is a big girl, but she’s a girl who’s in trouble. I just hope it hasn’t found her yet.
I step back into the cold street. The snow is heavier now, pounding down with no respite in sight. My shoulders are coated with a thin layer of snow within seconds. I look left and right, searching for somewhere – anywhere, to go next. A feeling of hopelessness is growing inside me. I’m not used to it.
Thick, heavy droplets of water fall from my hair down my face. One drips down the back of my neck, but I ignore it. Whatever discomfort I’m experiencing right now, I sure as hell deserve it. I’m lost in my own world. The thick blanket of snow drowns out the sounds of the city, and my eyes glaze over.
Accept it, a traitorous part of my brain whispers. She’s gone.
Headlights cast a glowing beam through the snow. A vehicle is moving faster than any has a right to: especially in these conditions. I react on instinct. I’m still weighed down by my guilt, but my fingers close around the handle of my gun, and I take a step back: just in case.
An SUV squeals to a halt in front of me. I draw my weapon, keeping it low, but ready to fire at a second’s notice. It’s not a Byrne vehicle, I know that much.
The rear passenger door closest to me swings open. My gun flickers up, searching for a target, but all I see is a middle-aged man, his thick gut straining against the seatbelt. He’s still pulling himself upright from pushing the door open. He glances up at me, and I recognize him – I’m just not sure where from.
“Get in,” he grunts, “and put that peashooter away before someone gets hurt.”
I chew my lip. “Who are ye?” I growl. “What have ye done with my girl?”
The man’s eyes narrow. My brain plucks his name from some far-off memory and supplies it to me – Matteo.
“Your girl,” he mutters, eyebrow raised, “is up to her eyelids in trouble. If you want to do anything about it, you can come with me. If not, I can leave you to have this dick measuring contest on your own.”
I don’t get the sense that I’m in danger. But Matteo’s unexpected intrusion into this whole screwed up event is proof that Sofia is. I drop the weapon, and
shove it into the small of my back.
“Fine,” I grunt, hopping into the SUV. “Tell me where the hell she is.”
Matteo doesn’t say a word. His eyes flicker left and right. I can tell that this isn’t his first rodeo. He’s a dangerous man. I would do well to stay on his good side. Still, I would run through a brick wall to get Sofia back. One middle-aged gangster and his driver – no matter how good the kid probably is with a weapon – won’t be enough to stop me.
“Get our boy,” Matteo barks. The SUV’s powerful engine grumbles, and the vehicle jumps forward through the snow. The driver’s eyes dart right and left. He’s looking for something. I just wish I knew what that was.
“You better tell me what the hell is going on,” I growl, staring at Matteo’s cheek, “because I’m not in no mood to be messed around.”
“Have some patience, boy,” Matteo grunts. I search my brain for everything it knows about this gangster. It’s not a lot. All I know is that he was one of Sofia’s father’s right-hand men. Then again, as far as I knew he was retired … Clearly I can’t trust what I thought I knew about him. I bite the inside of my lip, heart racing. I know that for whatever is happening, Matteo holds the key. If I have to start shooting to get the answers, I will.
The dark SUV screeches to a halt, wheels spitting up snow from either side. I brace myself against the head rest of the front passenger seat.
“Slide up,” Matteo grunts. I’m still looking to my right as a freezing teenage kid pulls the passenger door open, blue fingers tented over a huge, long lensed SLR camera. Now I seriously have no idea what’s going on, but I do as Matteo says. Finally it seems like I might get some answers. The kid climbs in.
“Jake, show me what you got,” Matteo says. His voice is softer around the kid. “You catch everything?”
Jake nods, blowing hot air through his hands to warm them up. “Yes, sir: everything. I could have stopped it, maybe –.”
Matteo reaches across me and ruffles the kid’s soaking, snow-coated hair. “No, kid: you did good. No sense in getting yourself killed out there. You couldn’t have done a damn thing.”
Matteo flicks the camera on. Its screen flickers to life. I lean in, desperate for a clue – anything really – to Sofia’s whereabouts.
The old man glances up at me and shoots me a grin. The sense of foreboding is growing in my stomach. I don’t know how he can be so cheery. “Let’s see what we got, shall we?”
He keys through dozens of shots of my apartment. I bite down on a cold sense of anger. “You were tailing me?” I mutter quietly. It’s against every rule in the book. The families aren’t supposed to mess with one another: unless they are already at war. There’s a damn good reason for it, too. If I caught the kid sitting to my left, I might easily have killed him.
Matteo shakes his head. “I was keeping tabs on Sofia. And apparently…” He mutters, sticking his tongue out in concentration. “I was right to.” He shows me the camera. I’m struck down. I reach over and grab the freezing black device from Matteo’s fingers. He doesn’t resist. I pull it over, strap trailing across my legs.
“No,” I moan. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s true, then this sequence of photos deserves pride of place in the Library of Congress. It’s the story of my failure.
I page through the photos, watching as Sofia steps in slow motion out of my apartment building, face clenched and taut, trying not to cry. I watch as she turns, as a van pulls up, as she runs. I watch as two men drag Sofia’s flailing limbs through the snow, and dump her like a sack of flour into the back of the van. I let the camera collapse onto my lap. Matteo reaches over and plucks it from me.
“I saw that van,” I groan. “I could’ve done something: saved her.”
I feel the weight of failure beating down on my shoulders. You can draw a line straight from me throwing Sofia out of my apartment to her kidnap. Hell, it’d be a short one. I might as well have served her up on a silver platter.
“Who has her?” I ask. My mind is numb. I can’t think. The only thing I can see is Sofia’s accusing face flashing up in my vision.
“Look down,” Matteo growls, with ice in his veins. I force myself to do as he says. There’s one last photo – shot as the van’s sliding door is closing. Three men sit on the same, long bench down the far side, with a girl held down on the floor between them. I know them.
“That’s Mickey,” I breathe, “her brother. And –”
“The detective,” Matteo spits, with disgust in his voice. “Upholding the letter of the law, it seems… and some punk called Tony Bianchi: just a hood rat.”
“We’ve met,” I growl in a tone that invites no questions.
I turn to Matteo. He seems like the only person with any idea about what is going on. I’m lost. My world just got flipped upside down. I’ll do, shoot, kill whatever and whoever it takes to get Sofia back. I’m a weapon. Someone just needs to point me in the right direction.
“What the hell is going on, Matteo? No games.”
“We don’t have time for them,” the gangster grunts, waving his hand. “You ever see The First 48?”
My face scrunches up. “The TV show?”
Matteo nods. “We’ve got a whole lot less than forty-eight hours to save Sofia’s life. I don’t know the details of Mickey’s plan, but there’s no way he’s keeping her alive: not for long. Sofia is his only rival for head of the Family. He can’t let her live.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it, still bowled over by what Matteo just shared with me. It feels like the buzzing of a gnat, or a fly.
“You gonna get that?” Matteo asks.
The comment springs me into action. My fingers close around my phone. What the hell was I thinking? It could be Sofia.
It is Sofia: a text message. It reads: “Stay away. I don’t feel safe around you anymore.” I read it, and I re-read it: again and again. It doesn’t make any sense. I know that Sofia was taken: kidnapped. Her fingers didn’t tap out that message. Who is sending this to me, and for what purpose?
Matteo grabs the screen from my fingers. He grunts as his eyes flicker to read the small black text.
“What?” I demand. “Ye know what the hell is going on?”
The gangster claps me on the back. “They’re trying to set you up, Kieran my boy: oldest trick in the book. Let’s try and stop that happening, shall we?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sofia
The first thing I notice, when my eyes flicker open, is that I actually fell asleep. I don’t know how the heck that happened. When I was younger, we had a dog: a golden retriever called Holly. Whenever thunder – or fireworks on the Fourth – freaked her out, she’d curl up in her bed. A few minutes later, I’d realize that she had stopped trembling, and started snoring!
I guess that’s what happened to me; I guess shock really can put you to sleep. Not that I feel refreshed in the slightest. Add to that the fact that I’m freezing; someone took away my jacket and left me in a warehouse that could easily be used to store fresh meat. Add the fact that I’m wearing half-soeaked sweatpants … well you get the picture.
The second thing I notice is that I’m in a whole heap of trouble. I’m in a hole so deep I can’t even see a scrap of light at the top. I don’t even know if there is a top. I’m tied to a wooden chair, hands bound by rope behind my back. The rope’s fibers are biting into my wrists.
“Sleeping beauty,” Mickey grins. He must’ve seen me stir, “So nice of you to join us again.”
I look up. My neck aches. It sends shooting signals of pain that tingle down every nerve ending. “Where,” I croak because my tongue and lips rival the dryness of the Sahara. “Where am I?”
Mickey shrugs. Tony, to his left, looks utterly bored. The detective, dressed in gray suit pants and what looks like a waterproof hiking jacket, looks somewhere in between embarrassed and deeply depressed. He looks more like a geography teacher than a kidnapper.
“A little place
I know. What does it matter?”
I let my head slump forward.
“I guess it doesn’t, much,” I say. I speak with as little energy as I can. The weaker they think I am, the more likely I will – might – be able to find a moment of opportunity. It might just be for a second when they drop their guard. I’ll have to be ready; but I will take my chance. “What are you going to do with me?” I mutter. “You owe me that much.”
Mickey beams and claps his hands together. I haven’t seen him this genuinely excited since we were kids. But now, right here, it’s sickening. “I’m glad you asked,” he says, like any movie bad guy desperate to reveal his plan. “You’re gonna love it: really.”
I glance up at the animal wearing my brother’s body. I roll my eyes. “I doubt that: very much.”
“You say tomato, I say tomato,” Mickey says, saying both words exactly the same. He stares at me the whole time. It’s some kind of oblique threat. I don’t know why he bothers. It’s not like I have a choice in what happens to me now.
“Get on with it, Mickey,” I grunt. I’m in no mood to listen to my brother’s grandstanding. The knowledge that I’m about to die has definitely lowered my tolerance for bullshit.
My brother jerks his thumb at the detective, who’s doing his best to disappear into the gray concrete surroundings. Mackey looks embarrassed, maybe even ashamed, to suddenly be the center of attention.
“You see, I’m not the idiot you think I am, So-fi-a,” my brother hisses. “I know this Family doesn’t stand a chance in a straight up war with the Byrnes’.” He strokes my chin, and I shudder. “Especially,” Mickey continues with a clipped, aggressive tone, “now that you have whispered your poison into Matteo Lorenzi’s ears.”
