Page 8

EIGHT

HARKIN

Run for Your Life - The Seige

T he video call disconnects, and the screen goes black. My chest expands as the deep sigh I’ve been holding for the last twenty minutes finally lets loose. The chair rocks when my weight slumps backward in defeat. Gone was the bubbly Martha Stewart homemaker my mother had always been. In her place, a disheveled shell of the woman I was expecting. She could barely string a coherent sentence together; an obvious mix of drugs and alcohol coursing through her veins, if the multiple open bottles of both on the kitchen counter were any indication.

I needed to go back to California. See her face to face and clear the house of substances. Shit, maybe even forcefully admit her to an inpatient facility. The memories of that time in my life are hazy at best, but therapy helped. Getting out of the environment that allowed me to drown in my pain was the only way out that left me alive on the other end.

The call was supposed to give me more answers and shed light on the situation with my father. Instead, it’d thrown a wrench in what little James and I had been able to piece together. We’ve only just arrived back in New York, so the last thing I want to do is leave Keira and go to the one place I’d rather ignore existed at all.

Fuck, telling Keira isn’t going to go over well. When I break it to my girl that I’m leaving her behind, I wouldn’t be surprised if she does more than swing on me this time. But how could I show up with Keira when my mother is already fragile. She’d croak on sight, seeing the ghost of girlfriends past walking into her home. Not to mention, I don’t know who has eyes on her place. If shit happens to me, that’s one thing, but I don’t want her father to get the drop on us across the country.

The woman in question pushes into my office but keeps her distance. She’s still pissed at me, and the cold shoulder she’s offering makes me want to tie her to my desk and fuck the attitude right out of her. Funny thing, we’ve tried that. Time and time again. It works for the moment, but her determination to be stubborn is stronger than my desire to extinguish the flame in her. Because at the end of the day, it’s ingrained in her DNA and the reason she kept me chasing after her ass.

“What’s the plan here?” She finally breaks the silence stirring between us.

“It’s changed. I need you to go stay with James and Stacey for a while.” Her hurt registers, but she quickly hides it behind a mask I don’t like on her beautiful face.

“Why’s that?”

“I need to go to California to check on things. My mom’s worse than I expected, and I need to get to the bottom of this shit with my dad.”

“You want to go without me?” she asks with raised eyebrows, questioning my judgement on the decision.

“I am going without you. It’ll be safer this way.”

“Oh, cut the shit. We both know this has very little to do with my safety and everything to do with the fact that mommy dearest can’t handle seeing me. Yeah, you know what? You go and figure your family mess. I’ll work on mine,” she spits, turning on her heels and slamming the door behind her.

My fist collides with the solid wood desk, pain ricocheting, up my forearm, but it feels good and centers me. I’ve waited and let her be, but the spark’s eaten through my fuse and it’s gone. I jolt out of the desk chair sending it crashing against the wall behind me. My footsteps crash against the wooden floors as I rush to catch up to her.

“Keira!” I bellow through the quiet house. Cinder perks up from the couch where she’s napping, but a quick command has her settling back in place.

The house doesn’t provide many places to escape, and Keira might be pissed but she’s not stupid, which tells me she won’t leave the house. I take the stairs two at a time and come face to face with a very furious Keira. Her small frame seems anything but as her dark aura takes up the landing.

“What?” she barks, arms crossed against her distracting chest as it heaves. Her hip pops to the side, accentuating her luscious curves.

“We’re not leaving it like that.” I take the final two stairs and crowd her space. She doesn’t pull back, an indestructible wall, or so she’d like me to think.

“I’m not doing this to hurt you,” I coax softly, pushing a wild hair behind her ear. “She’s in rough shape. What the real story is with my dad, it’s crushed her, sweetness. I need to go, find out if this has anything to do with your dad, and get her taken care of. I’ll be gone a couple days. Fuck, after months stuck together, just you and me, maybe you’ll enjoy the break.”

Her eyes soften, but she’s still stiff under my hand. “Is that what you want? A break?”

“Baby, I’d whisk you away to a deserted island and chain your ass to me permanently if I thought you’d let me get away with it.”

A small bubble of laughter breaks free from her, but she stifles it quickly, trying to remain unaffected in the moment. “I’m not happy about this.”

“Noted. Think of it this way, with me there working on that end of things and you here with James working on figuring out what the hell your dad wants, we’re closer to putting all of this behind us.”

“Don’t logic me right now,” she teases, finally relaxing into my hold. “When are you leaving?”

“I need to touch base with James, but as soon as possible. And hey, promise me you won’t do anything crazy while I’m gone. Don’t run off and find danger, okay?”

“It’s more like it finds me and I have no say in the matter.”

“You know that chain I mentioned earlier? Don’t make me use it now just to keep you safe.”

“Yes, Sir,” she says with a saucy smile.

The house of my childhood looms over me, my fingers dangling in the air in front of the doorbell. I’m hesitant to sound the alarm of my arrival. I could let myself in with my keys, but it feels wrong now that I don’t live here.

This is why I’m here. The sooner I get it started, the faster I can leave and get back to Keira. James wasn’t too happy with my decision to leave Keira behind, trying to point out that shit always seems to hit the fan when we’re parted. He’s not wrong, but I trust him to keep it together while I’m away.

Drawing in a deep breath, I shove my finger against the bell. The buzzing sounds throughout the house, loud enough that I can hear it on the stoop.

“Com”—the thud of something hitting the floor stalls her arrival—“ing.” She pulls the door open, leaving the smallest crack for her to peer through.

Surprise filters through the one eye I can see and her eyebrow skyrockets. “Harkin?” she whispers.

“Hey, Mom. You going to let me in, or?” I let the question hang between us before she pulls the door open the rest of the way to usher me in.

The moment the door latches shut, she whirls me around and her delicate frame wraps around me. “Oh, my sweet boy, where have you been? The mess your father’s made.” Her sobs are quiet, but the evidence of her distress is in the trail of tears streaming down her face.

I’ve never seen her like this, other than the other day over video chat. It’s just as off-putting in person as it was over a screen, if not more. Her strength dwindles, and I all but carry her into the sitting room.

“Can I get you something?”

I don’t know what she thinks she can do for me when she can barely sit up on her own. Her body’s slumped to the side, eyes half-mast and red. I’m hoping it’s from lack of sleep or crying, but from the stench wafting off her, that’s only making it worse.

“We need to talk. What the hell is going on? Where’s Dad?”

She flinches at my tone, but I’m too irritated to draw it in. I didn’t want to take this trip. I’m pissed there’s yet another piece of this damn puzzle I have to figure out. It’d be great if there was no relation between our stack of problems with Domenico and my dad’s disappearance, but the possibility is miniscule.

“I don’t know where your father is.” She sniffles and wipes at her eyes. “He’s gone, Harkin.”

“Gone, gone? Or missing? I need to know what I’m dealing with here.”

She ignores my question completely, getting up haphazardly from the place I dropped her on the couch before stumbling out of the room. I should probably go after her, make sure she didn’t run off to hide from me. I’ll give her a couple minutes before this becomes an unwarranted game of hide and seek.

When she returns, a small parcel is clutched between her shaking hands. I leave my phone forgotten on the arm of the couch and reach for it. The thin cardboard is cold to the touch. The box looks like something I’d get takeout in back in New York. Dread settles in my stomach when I notice the faded stain along the bottom.

“Where did this come from?” I ask, peeling the folding top back to reveal the contents. “Jesus fuck, Mom. You could have given me a little warning.” My shock radiates through the room, but it doesn’t faze her in the least.

“Mom. I need you to snap out of whatever the fuck little bullshit trance you’ve got going on and answer my fucking questions so I can figure this shit out. Where did this come from and when?”

“It was left at the front gate a couple of weeks ago. The gardener brought it up to the house.”

“And you’ve what? Just been keeping some fingers on ice in the freezer? Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did,” she shouts, jumping to her feet a little too quickly, since she sways to the left and almost takes another tumble to the floor. She has the sense to sit back down before continuing. “I did call. Your phone was shut off. So, I called James, and he said he’d get in touch with you. How was I supposed to know you wouldn’t get my message?”

“I’m assuming since they’re still here, you didn’t involve the police.”

“No! No, police, Harkin. They’ll kill him.”

“If he’s not already dead,” I whisper under my breath. “Has anyone called, emailed, shit sent a fucking carrier with a note? There’s got to be more than a box of fingers we can work with here.”

“In your father’s office, on his computer, there’s a message for you.”

I nod and leave her half zoned out in the sitting room. I’ll need to get James to send over someone he trusts before I leave. It’s not safe for her on her own. She’s as much of a threat to herself as Domenico could be. Maybe she’d be better off in rehab until he returns. If he returns.

His office is closed up and dark. I’m shocked it’s unlocked since he never left it that way when I was living here. Maybe she knows more about my father’s dealings than she let on. Or maybe I was the only one he was worried about stumbling in here and digging through his shady shit.

For someone who locked his room up tight, his computer is a different story. His password doesn’t even require my computer skills to break. I’m shocked to see the man who’s never shown me a modicum of emotional connection, chose my birthdate to keep people out. Then again, maybe that’s exactly why he chose it.

“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”

Mom must have been searching for something when the email came in, because the moment I click on the browser, the email is still up. The video is paused only seconds in. It doesn’t matter; I can tell from the freeze frame what to expect. I click back to the beginning and press play.

The video is pixelated, to the point I wonder if it was shot on an old flip phone. When the view changes, everything clears, and I sit forward to take it in. A man sits slumped in a metal chair that looks bolted to the cement floor. His feet are zip tied around the front legs and his hands are tied at the wrist, pulled above him and attached to a meat hook. The burlap sack over his head doesn’t conceal his identity. It’s pretty damn obvious the man being held and tortured is my father.

Another man rounds the camera and walks toward him, before ripping off the hood. Blood coats a third of his face, running from cuts and broken body parts. The swell of his eyes has them closed to a point, I’m not sure if he can even see. His complexion is no longer tan from the California sun, but black and blue from the deep bruising. Yet, with all that he’s suffered through, he’s still conscious, groaning and mumbling something unintelligible.

“Well, would you look at that! He’s finally awake,” someone says somewhere beyond the camera’s reach, as the man now standing behind my father chuckles.

I push the volume as loud as it’ll go. Once I get the file onto my computer, I can dissect every inch for clues and see if their microphone picked up more than they bargained for.

The problem with their setup, the man on camera isn’t hiding his identity. That means one of two things. My father’s dead or will be soon, or Domenico’s grasping at straws, looking for a pressure point to draw us out hiding. His biggest mistake is thinking my father offers adequate leverage for me to put Keira back into his orbit. That shit won’t happen until we can pinpoint what his plan is for her.

He spent years keeping tabs on her without her knowledge. All that time she spent on the streets, couch hopping, and working dead-end jobs just to afford a shitty apartment. And yet he did nothing but sit back in his little fortress, ruling his criminal empire. It was only when she disappeared from under his nose and his other daughter ran out of options that he came knocking.

There’s more to it than just Keira’s niece being sick—if that were the case, there’d be no need for all the theatrics. The real issue is something Keira won’t agree to. Over time, he’s learned enough about her and how she thinks, having watched from the shadows, to know that he’ll have to force it on her.

My fear… that key is me.

I pull my wandering thoughts back to the video when the man speaks again. “Mr. Greyson, it seems some of our contracts aren’t being fulfilled to the specifications you and our boss agreed on. Mr. Morelli isn’t feelin’ too confident in your services any longer.”

Well, that answers that.

“Lo”—a wet, hacking cough cuts my father’s rebuttal in half—“okay, I didn’t tell him anything. I haven’t spoken to Harkin in months. I don’t know where he is!”

The muted light in the room glints off a small object in the stranger’s hand. He brings it up to the hook holding my father’s hands above his head and slides it over a finger. Within seconds, a blood-curdling scream rips through the computer as I watch my father’s finger drop on to his chest and roll off to the floor, disappearing somewhere out of frame. Blood streams down his arm from what’s left of the nub on his finger. His screams turn into groans of pain as he fights to maintain consciousness.

“Let’s me rephrase my question. Maybe that’ll help jog your memory. I mean, I could do this all night. We still have nineteen more tries,” he says with the most nonchalance I’ve ever heard come out of a person. “Where’s Domenico’s daughter and that boy of yours?”

The man looks down and notices my father’s head lolling forward. I doubt he even heard his question. My father’s a businessman. I’m sure he got into his fair share of fist fights in his younger years, but I doubt he’s throwing punches down at the golf course. Which is his idea of a workout these days. This amount of pain is on a level my father would never fathom having to deal with outside of a freak accident. It’s no wonder he’s given in to his body’s coping mechanisms.

Mr. Snippy pulls the handkerchief from his pocket, then takes his sweet time folding it in half, just to shove it forcefully onto wound. The contact brings my father back to, his body jolting at the new stream of pain.

“And he’s back with us.”

“Please… stop. I don’t know anything.”

“You see, that’s just not something I can go back and tell my boss. I need information and you’re going to give me something one way or another, Mr. Greyson.”

The cutter comes down on the next finger and off pops another digit, joining its friend on the floor. My experience in torture is limited, but his plan seems flawed if information is the end goal. How is someone supposed to answer your incessant questions if they’re constantly passing out from the pain you're doling. It’s like he hears my thoughts, because he reties the handkerchief around both and steps away.

My father is out cold now, his body hanging limp. I fast forward through the rest of the thirty-minute video, but the shot doesn’t change, and it eventually clicks off.

“Fuck,” I draw out, wiping my hand down my face over the trimmed stubble Keira wouldn’t let me get rid of.

Exiting from the video, I’m surprised to see the encrypted email made it into the secure system I built for his company. Then again, they’ve probably always had access to him this way. If anything, it’s protected their conversations from being leaked to his higher ups and the press.

Random coordinates 40.816951, -73.9177496 are all that’s in the email message. I pop them into the search engine in two clicks I have the location. Back to New York I go.