Chapter 4 Falco
FALCO
I can’t take my eyes off her.
From obligation and a growing personal desire that’s crept up over the past week we’ve been together.
I live my life balanced on a knife’s edge.
Working for the Paramattis as an enforcer gave me an outlet for the pent-up anger and frustration that lives buried inside my chest.
A handful of sleepless nights, a spike of fear at someone slamming their car door too loudly, and I can usually work it all out by beating up someone who isn’t doing what they’re told.
Mercenary work was my only answer when I finally turned my back on the army.
Civilian life wasn’t in my blood anymore, especially not when an attack of my PTSD put my ex-girlfriend at risk.
Despite my fury toward her and her betrayal, she didn’t deserve to take the brunt of the sharp edge I’d become during my time in the military.
When you leave, they tell you it will be hard. They tell you to seek help.
Then they dump you back in the middle of a concrete jungle with a number that doesn’t connect and enough trauma that a plastic bag blowing across the street can make you pull your gun on several people just walking home in the street.
You see a roadside bomb or a grenade being thrown your way, they see a crazed man with a gun.
Three nights I spent in jail before the cops finally set me loose with a sympathetic smile.
Crime wasn’t my planned path, but it’s just how things turned out. It’s the only way I can sleep at night, if I’m ever lucky enough to do that.
Until now.
This past week, after spending my entire waking time with Aerin, I’ve been sleeping. It’s only been a few snatched hours here and there, but I can’t remember the last time I consistently fell asleep four nights in a row.
It’s not the job. It can’t be. This isn’t the first time I’ve run security detail.
It’s certainly not the fact they gave me a room inside the Paramatti estate to sleep in because I don’t trust the layout of the house enough to relax.
It’s got to be her.
Aerin.
I see her even when I close my eyes.
That moment when she froze in front of me at the restaurant with her hair cascading down around her beautiful face in sweeping waves, her bright eyes alive with fear and adrenaline. It’s imprinted on me.
But Guido’s words always follow every single flash of her in my mind.
She’s off-limits.
She’s my responsibility, not my fantasy.
Never mind that she’s so much younger than me.
I watch her like a hawk while neon lights above try to blind me, while smoke from fog machines creeps along the floor creating a ground I can’t trust because I can’t see.
I let her have three drinks before I ordered Hank to ensure her drinks were non-alcoholic going forward.
He almost refused until I threatened to put him through the bar.
This is her first time and she’s the textbook definition of a lightweight.
I still watch Hank pour every single drink he makes her, ensuring he doesn’t slip her any alcohol, and I track every glass that passes her lips while her new friends swarm her like a hive.
They’re not friends.
They’re leeches.
They picked her out like a pack of lions approaching a lone gazelle and their toying with her.
Acting like they’re all best friends while she buys their drinks with her credit card.
Giacomo melted away into the crowd at some point with a blonde woman on his arm. All that effort to bring Aerin out to celebrate her birthday and he immediately abandons her to strangers.
Little rat.
And then…she’s gone.
It happens so fast that it almost slips by me.
Almost.
The crowd closes in around her with a series of cheers and clapping, and Aerin vanishes from sight.
I sit up a little straighter, seeking a glimpse of her hair through the small group, but I see nothing. My heart stutters ever so slightly, but the crowd doesn’t part. They stay packed together for too long.
I’m off my seat in a flash, closing the gap and grabbing the sweaty, joined shoulders of two men.
Ripping them apart, the crowd stumbles apart with a chorus of drunken laughs and cheers. The middle of the group is empty.
Aerin is gone.
“Sorry, Grandpa!” laughs one of the men next to me. “Better luck next time!”
“Where did she go?” Grabbing him by the collar of his black net shirt, I drag him close to me as his eyes widen in alarm. “Where the fuck did she go?”
“Hey, hey! Easy! Let me go, man. What the fuck?”
“Where?” I yell over the music, drawing the alarmed gaze of several other dancers nearby.
“The fuck, let me go!”
“Not until you tell me where the hell she went.”
Another man tries to grab my arm to help his friend, but all it takes is one vicious shove to send him crashing to the floor.
“Hey, take it easy!” gasps the man in my grip. “I dunno, okay? They said they were gonna move the party elsewhere. That’s all I know, I swear!”
If the thick, alcoholic smog drifting from his lips is anything to go by then I’m not getting anything else out of him.
“Hey!” Hank yells from behind the bar. “Don’t make me call security!”
Releasing the drunk lad, I step over the cowering man on the floor and shove through the crowd.
Protocol dictates I have to call it in the second I lose sight of Aerin.
I can’t.
Guido was pretty clear about what would happen to me if anything happened to his daughter, and I don’t plan on handing myself in for an execution because she decided to try and shake me.
I’ll get her back. If that still gets me killed, then so be it.
I check the bathrooms, the private rooms, and the coat rooms, but there’s no sign of her.
By the time I’ve scoured the entire club from top to bottom, there’s been no sign of her for twenty-three minutes.
That’s twenty-three minutes too long.
Giacomo also appears to have vanished into the night.
“Shit. Shit.”
Everything is too loud.
The music.
The thump of people’s feet on the dance floor.
The clatter of obnoxiously large jewelry and the clink of glasses.
It’s all too loud and the air’s too close.
My chest tightens like a rubber band is squeezing my lungs from the inside and it doesn’t ease even as I make it outside the club and dial the only number I trust.
He answers on the third ring.
“This better be good,” croaks a sleepy voice as the sound of fabric rustling follows. “Wait… Falco? Is that you?”
“Pidge.”
“How did you get this number?”
“It was on the back of a coaster,” I reply, giving the second half of our code.
“Shit. Why you calling me this late? I don’t have anything for you.”
“I’m not looking for work. I need your help.” The street in front of the club is empty of all cars except the three that we arrived in. A few drunken people stumble down the sidewalk toward a local takeout place, but the stink of grease turns my stomach.
“What do you need?” Pidge asks, yawning widely. “If it’s fun then I’ll wave the charge.”
“A club called Syrup. I need you in their CCTV telling me when a woman left.”
“This is a really creepy way to find a date.”
“Pidge.”
“Alright, alright. What she look like?”
“It’s Aerin Paramatti.”
“Shit.” Pidge’s voice suddenly loses all of his relaxed softness. “You lost her?”
“Temporarily misplaced.”
“Lost.”
“Pidge.”
“I’m looking, I’m looking.” The clack of keys follows.
Unable to stand still, I hurry toward the car Aerin and I drove here to check if by some chance she simply climbed inside and fell asleep.
The car’s empty.
Giacomo’s car is also empty, and the third car with extra security holds only the driver, whose cap is pulled down low over his eyes.
She could have walked right past him.
“Alright. She left your club with four people. A woman and two men. They got in a cab.”
“Can you track the cab?”
“You insult me.” Pidge sighs. “I might charge you extra.”
“Charge me whatever you need.” Sliding into my car, I start the engine and turn the wheel while waiting for Pidge’s direction.
“Alright she took the cab ten blocks south.”
“What’s ten blocks south? Another club?” The tires spin against the tarmac, metal screeching from how hard I pull the wheel. I race off down the street, following every detail of Pidge’s directions.
“Looks like they stopped at a pizza place. She paid by card. Let me just…” Pidge hums to himself while he works. “Yeah, she paid the cab fare too. Her next purchase was— hold on, take a right here, you’ll get there faster.”
I do as instructed, screeching through a red light to a cacophony of angry horn blares and squealing brakes.
It’s been too long.
I’m taking too long.
All it takes is a second. One second to take a life.
Why the fuck didn’t she just stay where I told her to? Is she seriously lacking that much in self-preservation?
“So,” Pidge speaks up. “What did you do to get landed with princess duty?”
“I saved her life.”
“And this is your punishment?”
“Fucking feels like it,” I mutter. “I was right there. I was right beside her and these drunken fucks just…” I trail off into a low grumble.
“It happens. This isn’t like out there,” Pidge says, his voice low. “People in the real world are fucking stupid and reckless. They don’t understand danger like we do.”
“I’ve never lost a mark, Pidge. Not ever.”
“Does this really count?”
“If she dies, I die.”
“Dramatic,” Pidge snorts. “But yeah…that’s why they call princess duty a death sentence.”
“Oh they do, do they?” I snap. “You’re so wrapped up in how the mafia works maybe we should switch places.”
“Depends. How are your computer skills?”
I curse under my breath, streaking through the next red light and speeding down several streets until Pidge finally locates the cab’s last stop.
It drove to the edge of the city near the water and Pidge’s only proof that Aerin got out of the cab is that the driver picked up another fare ten minutes later.
My heart sinks.
“There’s nothing there,” Pidge says. “The place is a deadzone. There are a couple of abandoned warehouses that used to belong to a bakery company that went bust five years ago, but that’s it. No clubs. Nothing. Maybe an underground party?”
“Maybe.”