She choked up, “I won’t let you down. I tried not to think about what if, what if they came for me. It tried to creep in but I just put the baby first, I…” she stopped and shrugged.
“Leese, you’re family. You’re pregnant with my brother or sister. My sisters love you. Me and Tommy would never let anything happen to you.”
Her face went sour.
“What?”
She shook her head, “Tommy.”
My scalp prickled and I knew by her face what she was referring to.
“Hey. You do not speak of that. You do not know. You think you know but you fucking don’t.”
“I loved your father,” she said, “I know what you think of what he did, buying me, and buying her for you. But he gave me so much. He saved me, Dare. I loved him and Tommy took---”
“Shut up,” I warned. This was dangerous, “You and I are gonna need to talk about where you’re getting your information but we won’t talk about it here and now. All you need to know is that he’s gone. You don’t need other details but you need to shut your fucking mouth about my brother.”
She stopped talking. Her face went stony. She was guarding her emotions now, doing what she’d been taught at Kruna.
“Fuck,” I said and then reached into my pocket for my cigarettes.
“Dario, the baby,” she said as I lit one. I gave her an apologetic look and walked in the other direction, taking a few quick drags and then dropping it and stepping on it. I walked back to her and sat beside her on the bench.
“No one’s feeding me info, Dare. I have two eyes and a brain. Tessa and Luc know, too. No one talks about it but we can all guess what went down.”
“What’s your real name?” I asked her, ignoring what she’d just said.
“Shayla Townsend,” she whispered.
“How’d they get you?”
She took a deep breath, “They stole me off a cruise ship. I was 17. I had almost no family left, no one really close. My daddy died when I was little. Mom took us on a cruise when they found out her Cancer was inoperable. It was a girls’ trip together for us to make memories before her health declined. I checked after your father saved me. She’d reported me missing. They’d said I probably fell overboard. It didn’t take long for it to just be a cold case and she died a few months later so there was no one to push for answers.”
I put my arm around her and she put her head on my shoulder. But she didn’t cry. Poor Leese. Stolen and forced to live knowing her Ma was dying not knowing what happened to her. I shook my head and let out a slow breath.
We were quiet a minute. When I asked Felicia about her family she shook her head. Maybe there was no one. Maybe that was a requirement for these guys before they took a girl. Maybe they made sure a mark had no one to look for her. Felicia had said they blackmailed her. I didn’t know the details yet. I’d find out.
I got to my feet, “Carry on as normal. I have to figure out what to do about this situation. I may ask for your help with her. For info about them. I dunno yet.”
She nodded, “I am very grateful to be a part of this family. I won the lottery as far as being a Kruna girl goes. I’m sorry for what I said about your brother. You’re right. I don’t know what happened. I just miss my husband. I know your father was a man with secrets, more secrets than any of us knew about. I also know that he loved you all and wanted you to be happy. He wasn’t perfect but family was so important to him. I guess he bought Felicia to make that happen for you. He told me he was worried about how cold your heart was after your engagement broke off. He was so happy that Tommy and Athena fell in love and wanted love for you, too. He got me away from there and made my life better. And I did my best to make him happy. You can do the same for her and she for you. You can give her a beautiful life the way your father gave one to me. You can have that too, be her winning lottery ticket, let her be the gift Tom intended and believe there was nothing underhanded about it.” She shrugged and put her hand protectively over her belly, which wasn’t even rounded yet.
Nothing underhanded? My Pop profited off the misery that Lisa, Felicia, and those other girls endured, for fuck sakes. Fucking basement holes and torture rooms and fear and rape. Now I’d imagined Lisa and Felicia in those fucking solitary cells naked, cold, dirty, hungry, and fucking broken. And then I imagined my father sitting in those dining rooms and luxurious suites laughing and drinking and smoking a stogy like king of the fucking world with Lisa at his feet waiting for him to feed her table scraps.
Fuck.
“Let’s get you home,” I said through clenched teeth and we headed back to the car.
As we pulled up to the house she said, “Look at your brother. It doesn’t always start out right but it can get there.”
I didn’t reply. I passed her the keys and watched her walk to the house. I texted Nino to ask him if he could swing by and give me a lift home. I Skype called my brother from my phone. He didn’t answer.
As I was waiting it dawned that when I’d had dinner the last night at Kruna they’d said there would be “play” in the Townsend room. Lisa’s real name was Shayla Townsend. I decided to add Lisa’s details to the puzzle, to give the information to Zack and see if it helped him get us more information.
Felicia
He was gone until after lunchtime. I’d gotten up, got dressed in a black pair of dress pants and a black blouse, put make-up on and flat ironed my hair, and I was sitting on the terrace with a cup of coffee and the cashmere throw from the sofa over me. It was getting chilly. The leaves were starting to change color. I hadn’t dealt with cold weather in 2 years and while I’d spent the previous almost decade in the frigid frozen tundra, this was an adjustment. I caught something from the corner of my eye. He was back. He was standing at the patio doors, leaning against the wall, staring at me. He was in jeans and a t-shirt and his hair was wet. He must’ve been back a while and grabbed a shower.
His face looked hard, pissed. I swallowed past a lump in my throat and got to my feet. He opened the door for me and I went inside. He closed the door behind me. I gave him a tentative smile but my eyes quickly darted toward my feet when I saw the hard look on his face. I walked to the kitchen sink and rinsed my cup and then put it in the dishwasher. When I turned around he was standing behind me, leaning against the island with his arms folded across his chest.