Page 29 of All The Way Under

“Love it. Won a drinking contest sophomore year in college. I can open my throat and let it slip down. I was sick for the next forty-eight hours, so I won’t do it again, but it was worth the pain to be able to see Bianca’s face when I showed her the winning certificate.

I don’t drink often, but this feels like an occasion.

” I raise the stein, and he clinks with my water glass. “To surviving and thriving.”

We spend a couple of hours chatting in Café do Acaso. Chance Café . We talk about everything and nothing. Forever, and right now. It’s effortless banter, filled with full-chested promises that I believe.

It’s not like before, like with Archie, when he would talk about his future without mentioning me at all.

Brody includes we and us speak when he mentions anything, and I can tell it comes naturally.

He’s not even trying to impress me or allude in any way.

He asks me about work and my projects because that’s something we didn’t talk about much in captivity.

He knows so much about my work that he’s interested in the details that would bore most.

He kisses me passionately, fully making me wet in public, in front of the large bay window. Then we have security unlock the door and walk back to the hotel.

This will go down as the most perfect date of all time. Nothing bad happened, even though we were on alert.

No enemy was lying in wait.

Being next to Brody feels like it’s where I was always meant to be. It feels too good to be true. When I land back in the States, I’m terrified this will all be a dream bubble popped with the pinpoint needle of cruel reality.

“Do you have brothers, Brody?” Mom asks.

We’re sitting at a dining table in the hotel restaurant. I told Brody not to agree to dinner when Bianca asked, but he did. He said nothing blows his skirt up like a challenge. Now he’s privy, with a front row view, to Bianca Wyndham’s shit show.

Brody smiles at her question, knowing where my mom is going. Do you have any single siblings because you’re attractive?

“I have a twin brother, ma’am. Older by thirty-seven minutes. His name is Nolan.”

I haven’t told them much about his family life yet.

Mom sips from the water glass, puckers her lips, then announces, “Is this water from the tap? I can taste the public infrastructure.”

She hails a waiter and asks for Pellegrino.

Then, to Brody, she says, “Nolan is a lucky man to share genes with you. Tell us more about your home life. We know what you do for work. Save reckless women and protect our sovereign country. What about your free time?”

Brody can’t help but smile at her antics, even though I’m dying inside.

My former boyfriends have all been like her. In the company of Bianca’s friends and family, this is normal behavior. In front of Brody? This? This right here is true zoo animal behavior, I think.

“She wasn’t reckless,” he defends me. “I know reckless when I see it.”

His smile is coy and dimpled.

“Those pirates just needed to be put in line, so what happened to Saylor never happens to anyone else.” Brody clears his throat.

He’s uncomfortable speaking about himself.

“My family is close, so I spend a lot of time with them, but the truth is I work a lot, so my hobbies are slim. I have a dog, and I volunteer at my local dog shelter here and there. I like to blend tea in my free time.”

I nearly choke on my Aperol Spritz.

“Blend tea?” I ask, eyes wide.

“Caffeine messes with cortisol, Saylor. Don’t you know that?” Brody claps back, pressing his lips together. “I’m going to stop in the tea shop a few blocks over before I fly home. They have a chamomile that’s supposed to be unlike any of the other ones I’ve tried.”

“I…I…You keep surprising me,” I drawl, a smile on my face. “I like tea. Wouldn’t know the first thing about blending it, though.”

I didn’t know blending tea was a hobby. Does anyone know that blending tea is a hobby?

“Oh, I look forward to an afternoon tea daily,” Mom says. “That’s such an interesting hobby. You will have to make me a blend. Something to unwind and relax. The stress of life really gets to me some days.”

My dad rubs my mother’s back, trying to comfort her at the word stress, but we all know there is nothing resembling actual stress in her life.

The lines creasing my dad’s forehead worry me. He seems to have a lot on his mind that he’s not talking about. He carries the burden for the family, so perhaps it’s still just the mess I got myself in, and the impending circus when we touch down on US soil.

“I’d be happy to do so, ma’am. I’ll get to it right when we get home. I’m taking some time off when I return,” Brody replies. “The act itself is relaxing. What about you? What do you like to do to unwind?”

“I love reading. I would read a million books a day if it were humanly possible. Roger bought me a book on vacation when we were in our early twenties to pass the time at the beach, and it hooked me forever.”

Mom looks at Dad and smiles fondly. The only true gestures from my mom are the ones that involve my dad.

To my dad, she says, “Remember that book, darling? The black and gold cover with the grenade on it?”

My father grins in response.

“I’d have a book at the table right now if it were socially acceptable. No offense to you, of course.”

Mom does her best not to make him feel bad, but her best isn’t much.

Brody shakes his head, laying a hand on my thigh. “None taken.”

We order as soon as I can flag our waiter. I want to get dinner over with and spend the rest of the night with Brody. I plan to eat fast and ditch my parents as soon as we can, but the second I close my menu, the earsplitting sound of shattering glass echoes the expansive room.

The next popping sound confirms what I initially thought. Bullets.

The hotel is an old European structure. It seems to be a castle, with stone walls and stained-glass windows throughout. The restaurant is in the front, where the main street lies, so it’s easy to see the dining patrons from the window.

More bullets come whizzing so near that the air pattern changes next to my face. Brody is in action the next moment, tipping our rectangular table over, sending Mom’s twenty-euro bottle of sparkling water crashing to the marble floor. Other guests run from the room through a side door.

The scent of delicious food hangs in the air as I watch my dad and Brody eye each other in a knowing way, crouched behind the table.

It’s hard to grasp what’s happening as everything around us seems to move in slow motion.

Our security guards flank the walls, guns drawn and gaze trained where the threat looms.

“This table isn’t doing anything,” I hiss at my mom, who is having a full-on panic attack, mouth open, heavy breathing like some sort of dragon on acid.

Brody grabs my arm and pulls me over to him on the right side of the table.

“We’re moving to that stone wall,” he says, jutting his chin toward where one of the guards is firing a small pistol.

“That door,” he adds, speaking louder because my mother is screaming like an angry goat, while my dad tries to calm her. We’re the only ones left in here.

“Why didn’t we run instead of hiding behind a wooden table?” I scream, covering my ears when more shots ring out. “I understand,” I add, because I don’t want to be cumbersome. “Tell me when.”

Bianca is cumbersome, and there’s no stopping her.

“This is why I said they should have flown us to Capri!” Mom screeches. “No one ever gets killed in Capri. They just get divorced quietly!”

Her breathing sounds like a labored peacock.

“This wine was aggressively local. I knew we should have gone to a different restaurant.”

My dad has abandoned checking on our surroundings or communicating with Brody because he’s worried about my mother. She is in an agitated state.

“We’re going to have to make a run for it, darling,” Dad explains as I watch on, praying she gets her shit together before whoever is shooting into this room like a funnel reloads their weapons.

“Over there,” he says, slowly, pointing with a finger like he’s trying to show a toddler something magical. “Then we’ll move along the wall until we’re in the kitchen. There’s a door leading to the outside in the kitchen.”

How does he know that? Why did he have this place mapped out? Was he expecting this ambush?

“We have to run, though.”

“Run?” Bianca yowls. “I can’t run anywhere. I’m wearing Zanotti python skin heels and Wyndham self-respect, for god’s sake, Roger. Who do you think I am?”

Dad looks at me, furrows his brow in frustration, then grabs Mom under the arm and hoists her over his shoulder. I grab Brody’s hand, and we run, in my sensible shoes, across the glass-littered marble toward the guards who are covering us as we run.

My mom is hysterical by the time my dad allows her to stand on her own two feet in the kitchen. The chef is terrified, and the wait staff is huddled in a corner, sobbing.

“Is everyone okay?” Brody asks, eyeing me like he’s an x-ray machine.

“I’m fine,” I assure him. “Fine in a way one can be after being shot at while fine dining.”

Mom is staring at the waitstaff, targeting her mire and hysteria on to someone else other than Dad.

“Just breathe. Just breathe through it,” she chides, trying to calm them down. “That’s what I did when I had my second rhinoplasty.”

“Darling, I don’t think that’s the same thing,” Dad says, waving at the waiters in apology.

One is on the phone with the police, and Dad directs them on what to say. Then to us, he says, “We need to get somewhere safe. We’re sitting ducks in a hotel room. The police are on the way now. This will all be taken care of soon.”

“The guards are in the dining room and outside the kitchen door,” Brody chimes in. “They are covering. We’re safe here.”

Brody scans the expanse of the industrial kitchen.

“Saylor, stay with your parents. I’m going to do a sweep.”

“Brody,” my father says, placing a palm on the center of his chest, then lowering it a moment later, on better thought. “Guys,” he addresses us, peeking around the wall that is my man. “This is my fault.”

Mom cries. “What do you mean?” she replies, in between sniffles and shock.

It took her a while to lose her humor and understand the gravity of the situation we are in, but she arrived eventually.

“What is going on, Roger?” She wipes her nose.

I don’t speak. Brody doesn’t speak. You can hear a pin drop.

My dad looks down at the floor, then crouches, putting his hands on his head.

“Jennings Vansickle has hired someone to kill me,” he says.

I hear him clearly, even though his words are muffled.

Jennings is an attorney at the firm my dad has a close relationship with.

While he’s not my dad’s attorney outright, he’s always wanted in on Wyndham’s business deals, but my dad hasn’t allowed it, seeing through him as corrupt and money-hungry.

He has been after Dad for as long as I can remember.

Friendly competition turned sour sometime in the last two decades, but kill? That’s crazy talk.

Shaking my head, I say, “No, Dad. Jennings isn’t capable of that. Why would you say that?”

“The laws are different in other countries. He’s hired someone local to Portugal who is going to disappear when the deed is done—if the deed gets done—and there’s no trace tying this back to him, but security figured it out quickly.

This has been going on since you left, Saylor.

This has nothing to do with you or Brody.

There was a deal that I cut him out of. I changed law firms while you were being held hostage because we couldn’t agree on how your release and ransom money should be dealt with as a last straw.

Jennings was irate at the termination meeting.

He took the situation personally. The threats began rolling in after that, each one more menacing than the last. They should have known to cross me when it had to do with family.

” He looks at me. “When it had to do with my baby.”

Mom cries louder.

“The deed will not get done! Vansickle? Vansickle? Not even God’s PR team would touch that mess,” she cries. “Maura Vansickle is an ungrateful shrew. Wyndham is why she has anything at all! Her idea of refinement is putting truffle oil on everything!”

There she is. Bianca is back from her hysterical terror and ready to rip a new-money woman to shreds.

“Her husband made millions indirectly from your patent deals, Roger, and she still can’t figure out how to RSVP properly. The Vansickles throw money at things, hoping it’ll turn into class, but even the money is appalled. It just bounces off!”

I stare at my parents while they speak. Mostly it’s my father trying to calm my mom down, but he is also giving more details about the deal with Vansickle and the law firm, so I hone in.

Brody is talking to the police, and for not the first time this week, I’m left trying to sort out the absolute shit show of the current state of my life.

I zone out, watching the chaos play out around me like a movie, blankly staring at a pot on the stove that has red sauce bubbling over. I walk over, dodging police and a waiter, and turn the knob to turn off the stove.

I spin on my heel just in time to see Brody enter the kitchen. He seeks me out and frowns. I slide down the stove and wrap my arms around my knees. This. This is the breaking point.

“I want to go home.”