Baron Dolce
“What do you mean, she’s not in Tennessee?” Duke asks, scowling at me. “Then why were you there all that time?”
He’s answered his own question, but I know he needs a minute to put it all together, to process this new information. I keep driving, not that the Lotus needs much help.
I hit the button to roll down the window, as if I can catch a different girl’s scent on the air in the place, mingling with dirt and wet leaves. But everything is different now, lush and bursting with life, not just the spring green outside the car but flowers of a half dozen colors, birds, butterflies. It looks like a paradise. No one would guess I picked her up in this place, in a barren wasteland of leafless trees. That’s why someone so alive felt vibrant in comparison, bright as plumage against the drab grey winter, stark as crimson droplets of blood left on a world muffled with snow.
“Well, where is she?” Duke demands after realizing I’m not going to answer.
“She’s on the East Coast,” I say, bringing my mind back to the girl who is the goal. “She spends her summers there.”
“Doing what?”
“Visiting an aunt.”
“So she changed her name trying to run from her family, but then she goes to stay with them every summer in New England? Why would she do that? It doesn’t make sense.”
Mabel is nothing if not sensible.
“What difference does it make?” I ask, since I can’t answer his question. That’s the interesting thing about people, the fun part. Figuring out why they do what they do, seemingly at random. It almost never is, though. The motivations and drives behind their decisions are usually pretty similar once you figure them out. Humanity likes to believe we’re complicated, complex beings that have evolved beyond animals, but most people are simple at their core.
Once you figure out what they want, you can give it to them, and then you can get them to do anything. In truth, you never have to give them anything if you can convince them they already have it—or that it’s on the way.
Love. Money. Fame. Freedom. Pleasure. Belonging.
Everyone thinks they want one of those things, that it’s what drives them, that it’ll make them happy. Intelligent people know what they really desire, the most important motivator of all.
Power.
That’s what it all boils down to, what everything else leads to. That’s what everyone really wants, even if they’re not smart enough to realize it. They’re busy chasing their more basic desires, and they’ll hand over power in favor of instant gratification. If they’re simple, they’re even happy that way. If they’re smart, they realize that all the love, money, fame, freedom, pleasure, or belonging in the world can’t make them happy if they’re powerless. By then, it’s too late for most of them. By then, someone more intelligent has the power.
“You have your shit in Tennessee, right?” Duke asks.
“That’s right,” I agree.
He doesn’t ask how I know where she is. I came here for her, and even though I saved her for when we could get her together, he knows I wouldn’t wait for everything. I’ve been watching her, learning her habits, tracking her every step.
“So what do we do now?”
“The plan doesn’t change. We go get her. It’s a few more days of driving, that’s all.”
“But it’s not all, is it?” he grumbles, glowering at me from the passenger seat.
“She was in Tennessee,” I point out. “Now she’s not.”
“She’s mine too, you know,” he says. “If you found out something new about her, I have a right to know. Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
So much more.
I don’t want to tell him, but I recognize that the impulse to guard secrets is a primitive one. I still have the same instincts and urges as any other man. I’m just smart enough not to let them rule me. Duke is my brother, though, and family is more important than ever now that we have less of it around. Not to mention, he’s right about Mabel. She belongs to both of us.
And since we don’t lie to each other, I tell him everything I’ve learned from the time I left Faulkner until now. What I’ve found out by watching her work. What I’ve seen and done. How I found her, the measures I put in place to keep track of her without her knowing I’m following, watching her every move. I tell him about her classes, her apartment, the men she meets online.
Men who never show up for a second date.
After all, he’s my brother, my twin, the other half of me. We’ve always told each other everything—almost everything.
“You don’t think she would have noticed?” he asks after a long stretch of silence. “When every guy she tried to date ghosted her?”
I scowl at him. “It’s not me, Duke.”
“Then who is it?” he asks, looking at me like he thinks I have the answers.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I haven’t been able to catch her. She’s slipped surveillance a few times.”
“You think it’s her?” he asks.
“I don’t have enough evidence yet,” I say. “But I’m leaning towards it.”
“You need to be careful,” he says, his tone quiet, the most serious I’ve heard it in a long time. “She could be setting you up. If someone found all the surveillance stuff, they’d think it was you killing them. And if she’s behind all those disappearances…”
“I’m careful.” It eases my mind that he believes me without question, that he hasn’t let irrational emotions about me leaving cause him to lose trust in me. I’m certain that he’s right—anyone else would think I was responsible for the disappearances, that I was a jealous creep following her and picking off her dates one by one. But Duke’s always trusted me because I never had a reason to lie to him. He’s more worried that she’ll take me out next.
“Good,” he says. “Because it’s bad enough to lose Dad, but I did it. It was bad enough to lose Crystal. I can’t lose you. Not again.”
“You didn’t lose me.”
“You left.”
“I had to put our plan in motion,” I point out. “To build the foundation we needed to set up our new life.”
“You could have taken me with you.”
“You needed to graduate high school,” I remind him. “I already had all my credits.”
He’s quiet for a minute, fiddling with the audio. “You won’t leave again?” he asks at last.
“If I have to go somewhere… I won’t leave you behind. How’s that?”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
“Good,” he says, nodding to himself. “Because you’re my brother. I need you. Our family doesn’t work without you. I don’t work without you.”
“And our new family doesn’t work without you,” I say. “You and Mabel and me. That’s what works.”
I know now that I would be fine without either of them. I was on my own, and I thrived just as I always have. But they keep me in check. Duke reminds me that I’m human. Mabel satisfies that side of me.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Duke asks, staring out the side window as we pass another exit to another boring town. “What if she can’t love us anymore?”
“We’ll make it work,” I assure him. “And she’ll love us. She has to.”
This is neither a lie nor foolish pride. I don’t care about love, but Duke needs it, so I will make it happen, even if I have to force her to do it.
He’s silent as we leave the small town behind us, coming up on the last stretch of woods before the state line. Images flash in my mind, and I adjust myself, my pulse picking up speed and my cock stirring at the memories.
A bare thigh. A missing shoe. Her throat under my palms, her life at my fingertips.
On the radio, a news report comes on from Memphis.
“Another body has been recovered, likely a victim of what the police are now calling the Black Widow Killer…”
I don’t like it. I switch to my classical playlist. When we stop, I’ll look into what the cops have found.
“Thank you,” Duke says, not turning from the window. “For not going to get her for yourself. I know you could have.”
“You’re my brother, Duke. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Yeah,” he says. “But you don’t need me.”
I think that over a minute. “We all need each other, balance each other. That’s why it works.”
We’re both right in a way. They both need me more, but that’s something I need as much as they need what I provide. I hold the power.
“Right,” Duke says glumly. “We’re brothers. We share everything.”
“Exactly.”
Almost everything, anyway. I keep a few things for myself. Dad made sure we were individuals as well as having a bond of brotherhood that could never be broken.
“Family is important, but being your own man is too.”
That’s what he said when he took us for our weekly outings with him, each of us getting some time with him. It was private, something he said we were not to share with anyone else, not even each other. Only he and I knew what we did during our father-son time, when he encouraged me to explore the reaches of my mind, my curiosity, my proclivities. It was during those times that I was able to start my operation, to develop the system for making Alice in Wonderland. I was the chemist, so I designed the drug. Dad was the businessman, so he showed me how to make it profitable.
“What did you do during your time with Dad?” I ask as we cross the long bridge arching over the Mississippi River, so different to the one that featured in too many important days in our lives in Faulkner, and yet, similar in obvious ways.
“There was no time,” Duke says. “He died the night you left.”
“Before that,” I clarify. “Your father-son time.”
I know enough about Royal and King’s assignments to make an educated guess about what Dad used them for, what they did for him. I’m less sure about my twin.
“That’s the one thing we don’t share,” he reminds me, staring out the window with a scowl.
“He’s gone now,” I point out. “What’s the big secret? I already know you went to Thorncrown with him. I have your location.”
He shrugs, not turning my way. “I made sure the church stayed in his pocket.”
“You blackmailed them?” I clarify. “What did you have on them?”
“I fucked a nun. Then I went with him to make sure they were staying in line.”
“Damn.” I study him, but he doesn’t turn from the window. I know his tell, and he knows I know it. It makes me wonder if that’s why he won’t look at me. If he’s lying.
I let it go, though. Dad’s gone, and Duke’s always been sentimental. If he wants to keep whatever they had between them, I don’t fault him. I never told him about the scale of the Alice operation until he saw it for himself. Even now, I have things that are just for me.
The hitchhiker I picked up on the way out of town. The motel. The experiments.
I will, but not quite yet.
Maybe he’s better off not knowing, but I don’t like secrets between us. He’s too sensitive about certain things, though he’d never want to admit that weakness. He covers it with clowning and partying and drinking, with chaos and debauchery. And I’ve always protected him, kept his secret, because I know the survival of his ego depends on it. So I protect him again now, not by hiding his weakness from others, but by respecting him enough to know what he’s capable of handling and not pushing him beyond that. I don’t make him tap out, admit his failings or acknowledge them aloud, even to me. I keep his secrets and allow him to keep his dignity.
And for a few more hours, I keep mine, something just for me.
The hitchhiker has no relevance to him, anyway.