Chapter Twenty-Two
Evelina Bianchi
Thirty-two hours and fifty minutes.
I hadn’t seen or heard from Zeke for almost thirty-three hours.
After the first five hours, Jaimie started making calls to all her past clientele and various people around the different factions of the underworld to learn what had happened to Zeke. Nobody had heard anything. Nothing. I wanted to believe that if he were truly dead, we would have heard something by now. His body would have been found, or his next of kin would have been notified…
Except he didn’t have a next of kin.
And it was just as easy to dump a body in the bay as it was to dump it in an alleyway somewhere.
“No news is good news,” Jaimie said, though I could tell she didn’t believe her own words much either. Especially not as she compulsively checked her phone every couple of minutes to see if any of her sources had gotten back to her. “Zeke is really good at hiding out when things get hairy.”
“Have you had someone go and check out and around Clide Newton’s house?”
“There’s nothing out of the ordinary,” she said. “All the guards are on their usual posts. The rumor mill suggests that two of his guards were killed within the week, but there’s no rumor of an attack.”
If Clide were dead, the rumor mill would be going crazy.
If he weren’t dead…
“Jaimie, something isn’t right. He would have contacted us by now. It’s been a day and a half, and he wouldn’t just disappear like this.”
Jaimie bounced her knee up and down before nodding in confirmation.
“I have done everything I can do from here.”
“Then go. Find him,” I demanded.
She shook her head. “If I leave you alone and you get taken because of it, I wouldn’t put it past Zeke to kill me for this. He doesn’t give a shit about being found. I see the way he cares for you, Evelina. If he were caught, he would do anything to ensure you stayed behind and remained protected.”
I stood and stomped. “That’s bullshit. I’m not someone to be protected when the life of someone I love is in danger. There’s got to be a way to figure this out. Someone has to know something.”
Jaimie looked at the floor, placing her head in her hands in exasperation. “We’re out of options. We’ve been out of options for a long fucking time, and Zeke knew it. That’s why he took this risk in the first place.”
“But we’re not,” I declared, pacing across the room. “There’s one person I can call and ask, and I’m sure he’ll have the answers. Or, at the very least, he’ll be able to get them.”
Jaimie’s brow furrowed for a moment before she realized exactly where my mind had gone. Then, she bolted to her feet alongside me. “Absolutely not. Not an option.”
“Encrypt your phone so nobody can track it, and I’ll call him.”
“No.”
“We will at least know if it’s worth continuing to look.”
“He will try to bargain with you, and he will end up with what he wants in the end. If you open up a line of communication with him, he will win. He’s manipulative and cunning. Hell, I’ve done jobs for the man in the past, and he lacks any empathy or compassion. He won’t care how you feel. He will take what he wants and leave nothing but death in the path.” She threw her hands up. “Hell, if he learns that you care about him, he might kill Zeke out of spite for you running away.”
That was something else I hadn’t considered—another variable in all of this.
“Do we really have another choice?”
“We can wait.”
“Wait for what?” I shouted. “Wait for him to be tortured to death? You want us to wait for someone to tell us what we already suspect has happened? If he has any chance, we need to find him.”
She rubbed a palm over her face as she stared at the ceiling.
“I don’t have a good plan, Evelina. I don’t know the best option.”
“I do, and I need your phone to do it.”
I sounded a lot more confident than I felt, but Jaimie handed me her phone with hesitation, which I had never seen from her. If I showed her how badly I didn’t want to call my father, though, she would never allow me to do this.
“Is there a signal scrambler?” I asked, recalling when Zeke had put it on his phone and then installed one on Jaimie’s for safe measure.
She nodded.
I dialed a familiar number and waited for it to ring. Blood rushed through my ears as I considered how close I had come to escaping him.
“What,” he answered.
“Dad,” I whispered, my voice quivering. I couldn’t push free any other words—not as I sharply inhaled and found a piercing pain in my chest from the anxiety of making this call.
His billowing laugh filled the line, and I flinched. “We’ve been trying to find a way to get a hold of you,” he shouted. “I overestimated you. I never thought you’d try to call me. How fucking foolish. Newton wasted his goddamned money.”
His words had never struck home. He didn’t know anything about me.
“I suppose you’re calling for this kid we found snooping around Newton’s house, huh?”
My heart skipped a beat, and I put it on speaker so Jaimie could hear the words he spoke. “What kid?” I asked.
Jaimie’s eyes hardened as he spoke again. “Andrew Coleman’s kid. He doesn’t live up to his dad’s legacy much, does he?”
My breathing grew quicker and shallower as the thought of him tied up and bloody flashed through my mind. All because of me. This was happening to him because of me. And there was nothing I could do to get him out of this—nothing short of turning myself over to those monsters.
“Is he alive?” I asked.
“Of course, he is, Evelina. You think we’d let our leverage go so fucking easily?”
Something loosened in my chest, but not enough to stop my palms from sweating and my face from heating. I met Jaimie’s eyes, and she gave me a small nod to continue.
“Prove it,” I told him. “Tell me where he is.”
“You need proof?” he asked. He shuffled on the other end, and I heard the moment the phone went on speakerphone. “What do you want to say to her?”
Silence.
Then, a grunt of pain followed. Zeke’s grunt.
Dad scoffed and took it off speaker. “He’s not the most cooperative, but I’ll break him. I always do.” He paused as I shook my head vigorously. “Unless you want to make a trade, of course.”
Jaimie reached for her phone, but I turned away. “What do you want?”
“Turn yourself into the man who bought you, and I’ll let the kid go. He’s of no significance to me, dead or alive. It’s a fair trade, and you know it.”
Jaimie reached forward and muted the phone. “Ask for a picture.”
Before I could reply, she unmuted it.
“I need a picture,” I said into the line. “Prove he’s alive.”
“Insolent bitch,” he mumbled as he went about doing as I asked.
It only took a moment before the picture came through, and I showed Jaimie. He was alive, and though he had a few bruises, he didn’t appear too badly injured. She grabbed the phone and began zooming in and out on the photo.
“If you don’t turn yourself in, he won’t be alive for long. Clide Newton’s house. That’s where you’ll find him, and that’s where we’ll be waiting for you.”
He ended the call, and I dropped the phone.
I couldn’t let Zeke die because of my selfishness, but if I turned myself in, would it really guarantee his safety? My father banked on my stupidity, but I wasn’t ignorant. I couldn’t turn myself in because he would never let Zeke go once he had me.
The second he had me in his sights, Zeke would be killed. It was too much of a risk to let him go.
“He’s alive,” I whispered, looking at the picture and exhaling. “But I don’t know how we’re going to get him out.”
“I was afraid I would have to convince you not to go after him.”
I gave Jaimie the coldest stare I could. “Everyone in my life has believed me to be socially unaware and ignorant. I thought you saw past that?”
“I do,” she said, standing her ground. “But I also see too much empathy. Reckless, self-sacrificing bullshit runs in your blood.”
I bit my bottom lip.
She was right. If it would get Zeke out of the situation, I would have happily given my life and well-being. He deserved an opportunity to heal and meet our daughter. He deserved so much more than what my bad fortune had gotten him.
I grabbed the phone from the ground and looked at the picture again, staring into Zeke's resilient and determined eyes. He would never want me to come for him. But he deserved something to be done.
My eyes drifted to a shelf over his shoulder where a small box sat, an empty photo frame on top of it.
I recognized the box.
“He’s not being held at Clide Newton’s house,” I said, thrusting the photo in front of her. “This is my father’s garage.”
That box had been sitting on the garage shelf for years. It was an old memento box of my mother’s—likely something that had fallen through the cracks when she’d escaped. I had always wanted to look inside but never had.
But it was unmistakable.
“He’s holding Zeke at my father’s house, and they plan on killing him when I turn myself into Clide. They never intended for me to see him alive,” I said, working through the angles in my head. “My dad will probably be waiting with Zeke, and Clide will be waiting for me at his house. We won’t be able to take out the biggest threat, but if I face my dad and kill him… Alonzo will be free to make his allegiances known, right?”
“You can’t go anywhere, Evelina.”
I pushed my phone into her hand. “How are you going to get into my father’s garage then?”
“You’re going to tell me how.”
“There is only one way into that house where we won’t get caught. And if they know we’re there, the plan is toast. We’re toast. You need me.”
“If they see you there, they’ll kill him on the spot. You’re not going.”
I smirked. “I am going, and I’m going to kill my father myself.”