7. Mia
7
MIA
“ C heck your phone,” he says, his eyes settling on me. He doesn’t smile at me like he used to - the crooked smile he had when he was fifteen—a little lopsided, completely disarming. Back then, I had thought it was perfect; now it looks like he hasn’t smiled in so long, he wouldn’t know how to.
I retrieve my phone from the kitchen counter where it’s been charging, then power it on. I’d hoped my sisters would have made their way back to the apartment after their disappearing act, but there’s no sign they’ve been here since we left.
I try to be as discreet as possible as I flick my eyes in Brando’s direction. He runs a hand through his hair the way he always did, and I’m surprised he still does that. My eyes are glued to him, mesmerized by every movement he makes.
Everything around us blurs into obscurity, his voice smooth like aged whiskey when he speaks again. It’s all I can do not to fall completely under his spell again—but this time I know better than to believe in fairy tales. Yet here I stand, like I’m fifteen again, staring up into the eyes of the boy I never thought I’d see again.
“What is it?” he asks, as I frown down at the phone when it comes alive.
“Five missed calls,” I gasp, looking up at him. I know my color changes because that’s what happens to me when nausea overtakes me. The scent of fear assails me as my fingers hesitate over the screen. My lips are a thin line, wavering as I try to steady my breath.
“Frank.” My voice trembles as if the name itself might shatter the air between us.
I hand the phone to Brando, and he sees it for himself: Frank Falcone's name glaring back from the screen like a bad omen in an SMS asking me to call him. He calls me princess. I feel like I’m about to hurl the contents of my stomach again. Brando looks like he could punch the wall with the rage simmering through him; he’s the last person either of us want or need to think about now, but for different reasons.
He hands the phone back to me, and I take it from his outstretched arm, my heart hammering in my chest.
“Why would he call you now?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I murmur, running a shaky hand through my hair. “We haven’t spoken in years. Not since?—”
Not since we were in high school and… I want to finish, but I don’t.
I stop, falter, at a loss for words as Mason crowds me, demanding answers. He too, wants to know why the boy I dated in high school is calling me now.
My eyes dart around as if looking for an escape or perhaps bracing for an impact.
“What does he want?” I whisper, with a sudden urgency that tightens my stomach into knots. I shake my head slightly, unable to fathom why Frank Falcone, of all people, would choose this day to reach back into my life. “I don’t understand,” I continue, my brow furrowed in confusion. “Why now? Why today?”
Brando watches me closely, and I can feel a mix of protection and curiosity swelling within him. The mention of Frank Falcone washes over me like a bad omen; even though it was years ago, and we were just kids, I don’t like to think about the history we share, because I lived it. And I hated every damn minute of it.
“What are you going to do?” Mason asks, after watching my silent contemplation. He’s the only one that knows about my past. The only one I could trust to keep my secret. And for some reason, the one I trusted most when I needed it most.
It makes me damn angry that Falcone would choose today of all days to reach out to me. And all too quickly, I’m on high alert as my suspicions are awakened. We haven’t spoken since school, so how did he get my number?
“Call him,” Brando says.
I shake my head, and my hands start to shake as fear takes over me.
“ Call . Him.”
His voice is firm, stone cold and commanding, leaving no room for argument. A tone that says I’ll call him if I know what’s good for me. Brando has an itch to know what the dumb fucker wants.
“Brando…”
My uncle’s voice is more a plea than a command, begging him to spare me the added trauma of calling a man I want nothing to do with.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
He squints, his curious eyes watching me carefully for every move, every twitch. He’s not going to back down without me giving him a valid reason to do so. I do the only thing I can do while still saving face.
With shaking hands, I finally press the callback button, my fingers quivering slightly as I raise the phone to my ear, even though I have it on speaker, like Brando requested. Silence envelops us, thick and heavy, as we wait for Frank’s voice to spill into the space. The ringtone echoes mockingly until finally, there's a click.
“Mia.” Frank’s voice comes through, smooth and syrupy, like he’s engaging in an act of foreplay with me through the connection. He knew I’d call; he was almost certain of it.
“What do you want, Frank?” My tone is cold, my protective barriers rising instantly.
“Touchy Mia. I like. That’s no way to greet an old love now, is it?”
“What do you want, Frank? And how did you get my number?”
True to style, he ignores the question he doesn’t want to answer and tells me we need to meet.
“Why?” I counter sharply. “Why are you calling me after all this time?”
I make a point of looking at Brando as I talk, sizing him up. I would give anything to know what he’s thinking as he watches me while listening intently to the conversation.
Mason shifts listlessly on his feet, his anxiety radiating off him in waves, a seismic eruption about to erupt.
“One little birdy told me you’re missing two little birdies.” I stiffen at Frank’s words, my lips parting slightly as I absorb his words. Fear courses through my veins as I dissect his words and come to the same conclusion as the other two men in the room. The timing is off; there is only one reason why Falcone is contacting me after all these years.
“Do you have my sisters?” I ask. I look toward Brando briefly, seeking an anchor in the storm I feel is coming.
“Meet me at our spot tomorrow at midday.”
It’s the last thing he says before the line clicks over and static fills the room. My eyes collide with Brando’s for a split moment as we’re transported back in time, to a place we no longer belong.
‘Our spot.’
It had always been our spot, until it wasn’t.
That beautiful little slice of nirvana had belonged to us, until Falcone tainted it. Like he tainted everything else in my life.
I’m silent for a beat before I put down my phone slowly and turn to face the room. I feel the colour draining from my face as I sway on my feet.
“Worse,” I gasp. “This is so much worse than I imagined.”
In all the years I’d known Brando Gatti in my past life, I never knew him to be unreasonable. Never saw a lick of possession. Contrary, it stung like a bitch when he watched me walk away with Frank Falcone and he let it happen. It just happened. And he accepted it without a fight. Tore my insides to shreds then clobbered them until I thought I couldn’t breathe.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, in my daydreams and fantasies, I had always believed that Brando and I were destined for each other. He just got me. He just knew me inside out, like no-one else could or ever would. He accepted me the way I was, with all my flaws and fears, and he never tried to change the way I am. It was just a given, in my mind at least, that we would somehow end up together. But eventually, our friendship waned to something resembling ‘casual friends’ at best, until the situation became so awkward that we went out of our way to avoid each other. How mistaken my foolish heart had been, because we didn’t end up together, and Brando ended up leaving me altogether. That Summer when Frank slipped his hand into mine and paraded us across the schoolyard, wordlessly telling everyone and anyone who had eyes that we were an item, that was the summer that Brando and I died. Well, what was left of us, anyway.
Brando paces back and forth across the room, running his hands through his beautifully dishevelled hair. Even in anger, I can’t help but be mesmerized by him. He’s so beautiful, he makes my heart stutter.
“Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on?” Uncle Mason screeches, not for the first time.
Frank’s call has literally sent Brando over the edge. He’s crazy mad, and he’s already put a hole in the wall after I hung up. The guy is not even supposed to be here, and now he’s putting holes in walls. He’s already taken Frank’s number and programmed it into his phone, God only knows for what, but the man is being impossible with his unjustified anger right now.
“What does he want from you?” Brando asks. He looks at me with a certain level of mistrust, not altogether believing that we haven’t been in contact for the better part of a decade. He never did like Frank, and he never did trust him, either. But the thought that I could somehow be working with Frank against Brando tears at my insides like acid would.
“You were right there when I called him, Brando. You know what he wants.”
“Why now? And why the fuck would you turn our spot into your spot ?”
“What the fuck, Brando. Are you fifteen again?”
“You two are fucked in the head,” Uncle Mason says, indicating the space between us. “If you think I can keep up with you two, I can’t! My brain is too small for your drama.”
“I need air,” Brando says, heading for the front door.
“Brando…”
He holds up his hand to stop me, even without turning around, then pauses at the threshold, before he shakes his head slightly and continues out the door.
“Let him cool off,” my uncle says, even as tears threaten to rush me. “Tell me what’s going on.” He throws me a concerned look, his hands on his hips in that way that tells me he means business and he’s becoming impatient.
“Brando and I met when we were kids. Just before high school. And we became friends.”
“Not an all too uncommon concept,” he says, when I pause for too long.
“I really don’t need your grief right now. This is painful enough as it is.”
Uncle Mason’s eyebrows shoot up as he stalks towards me. It would seem we’re all teetering on the edge of breakdown right now. He points a spindly finger in my direction, nods it up and down in warning.
“Don’t forget why we’re here, Mia. Your sisters are missing. Now is not the time for you to be getting all sensitive on me.”
“Leave us.” The command from the doorway is curt, short, and we both turn to find Brando standing there, hands in his pockets. He’s undone the top buttons of his shirt to reveal more ink climbing up his chest, his hair a moppy mess that sends my heart racing. “I need a few minutes with Mia,” he tells my uncle, before he shifts his eyes back to me again.
When my uncle brushes past him, he walks into the room slowly, his eyes never leaving me. He lets out a heavy sigh and scrubs a hand down his face.
“I’m going to forget everything I know about the past, because we have to do that in order to find your sisters and make sure they’re safe. Once they’re back, I will get you on a private flight out of here. But until then, you need to take direction from me if you’re to find them; not listening to me will only prolong this longer than it has to be.”
“You’re the one acting like a crazy, psycho ex,” I remind him.
“No. That would be your actual crazy, psycho ex.” His sarcasm hits me like a slap to my face. “I don’t want to have anything to do with him. If you choose to have him in your life, that’s your decision, but I can’t be a part of that.”
“He’s not in my life, Brando. He hasn’t been for years.”
“Then why now?”
“You’d have to ask him that.”
He sighs and rubs a hand across the back of his neck, exhaustion radiating off him in waves.
“You’ll go to the meeting,” he says, after an extended silence passes between us. “The fact that he’s popped up now and he mentioned your sisters is too convenient.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“You don’t have an option, Mia. Mason will take you. I’ll arrange for some back up to go with you to ensure you’ll be safe at all times. He’ll have an address where to drop you off when you’re done.”
“I don’t want to meet with him, Brando.”
He gives me a long, curious look, as though assessing my words. “Why not?”
“I just don’t want to.”
“I would’ve thought you’d go running into his arms, Mia.”
His words, the very animosity in them, slices through my heart. I shrug. Little does he know. I can’t tell him why I don’t want to meet one on one with Frank. I can’t tell him why I ended it, and why I swore I’d never sit in a room with the man again. I’ve been carrying my own demons for years, and I know it’s time I unload them, but this is neither the time nor the place.
“We didn’t end on good terms,” I tell him. It’s the truth…somewhat.
“Then tell me why he insists on seeing you. And how the fuck he got your number.”
Brando leaves after I don’t give him the answers he needs. Because I can’t. I don’t know the reasons why Frank has reached out to me, and I don’t have the answer to how he got my number. I don’t know anything past the fact that my life as I know it is currently falling apart – I feel like I’m in a speeding car going 300 miles an hour and there’s no way of stopping it. One minute, my future is so clear, the next, I’m running from the Maltese mob and trying to find my sisters in a sea of unfamiliar faces.
“You okay, kiddo?” Uncle Mason looms above me as I sit at the small dining table, head in my hands. My tears have all but dried as I look up at him.
“Have you found anything?” I ask, grasping at straws, clinging to the hope that we’ll find my sisters. He gives me a small, sad shake of his head, his lips pursed into a thin line. I think if he gets his hands on my sisters before I do, he’ll kill them himself. Irresponsible bitches.
“Everything’s set for tomorrow. I’ll stay here the night; I’ll take the couch.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I whisper.
“I’m not going to leave you alone, Mia. I’ve already lost two of you, I’m not going to risk you, as well.”
He removes two guns from the back of his pants and sets them down on the counter, ensuring the safety is on. His eyebrows rise in curiosity as he sees me eyeing the pistols.
“You still know how to handle a gun?” he asks. The smile that forms on his lips tells me he’s carried away to a memory from a forgotten time. I snort in response, then return his smile; I know we’re remembering the same memory.
“Are you kidding me? I’ll never forget the hiding I got from mom when I was six and she found out you’d been giving me lessons.”
My mother had been incensed that I had handled a gun. After she’d almost skinned me alive, she’d ripped into Uncle Mason, screaming and lashing out at him. Something about breaking the trust she’d put in him. I didn’t think it pertinent to tell her that I’d been handling a gun for almost a year.
“I think she was secretly pleased that you knew how to handle yourself,” he tells me. The wistful look he gives me tells me he’s lost himself to his memories. I frown and something niggles at the back of my mind as I continue to watch him go back in time. Me at five, learning to shoot a gun with Uncle Mason. At seven, he taught me how to ride a horse. At nine, I lost my mother. From birth to the age of nine, I could count on two hands the number of memories I had with my own father, but I didn’t have enough digits to compile the memory box that was Uncle Mason. I’d never given it much thought, but it feels strange now to think of it – when I think of Uncle Mason, he’s been a stronger presence in my life than my own dad. Yet when I remember my father, the twins are always in those memories. He gave them more of his time than he gave him, and that fact strikes me as odd now when I think about it.
“You were always there with me, teaching me something new.”
He takes the chair opposite me and settles into it with a sigh.
“Your father wasn’t the fatherly type,” he tells me, as though certain of that thought that’s lingering in my mind. “He only changed with the twins after he lost your mother.”
“He changed with the twins.”
“Don’t do that, Mia. He loved you very much. He just thought you were independent enough to take care of yourself. The twins needed him more.”
“How could you have been so selfless that you took those hours to teach me, nurture me, make sure I had a strong male presence in my life? When my own father didn’t.”
The realization hits me like a freight train. It never mattered, though it stings now that I won’t have the chance to make the same memories with him as the ones I have with Uncle Mason. Uncle Mason who never married. Never had children of his own. Gave selflessly of his own time to be a surrogate father to me when my own father wouldn’t step up to the plate for me.
I watch as he swallows past a thick lump in his throat.
“Your father was a very complicated man.”
“Aren’t we all? Life is a complication, but that doesn’t mean we deprive the ones we purport to love of their most basic human needs.”
“You were loved.” His voice is hoarse as he reaches out his hands. I look down at the table where his hands lay on top of mine; an odd spark zaps through me as I finally understand that despite everything that has come to pass and everything yet to come, Uncle Mason has been more a father to me than my own flesh and blood.