Chapter 19 Gia
NINETEEN
GIA
Gia: Age Five.
Gia arrived at the park with Ma, just the two of them. Marc was at his friend’s house, and Daddy was busy. He was always busy, but Gia didn’t mind. She secretly liked Ma better, even though she wasn’t supposed to like one parent more than the other. Ma was never mean. Never scary.
“We’re going to meet my friend all the way over by the trees,” Ma said as they walked away from the car.
“Ugh. That’s far,” Gia whined, even though she liked the trees.
“I know, sweetie. Once we get there, we’re going for a ride. It was a surprise, so I didn’t tell you before. We’re going on a secret trip.”
Gia jumped, clapping her hands, all annoyance about the long walk forgotten. “Just you and me?”
“You and me, and my friend, Jeff.”
“Okay.” Gia had met Jeff before. He was as nice as Ma and did the best magic tricks.
They walked across the huge park, over the grass, past the playground and soccer field, on and on. It wasn’t a bad walk, but Ma didn’t seem to be having fun yet. She looked over her shoulder again and again.
Gia hated when Ma was scared. It scared her, even if she didn’t know what was wrong.
At last, they reached the trees, and Ma looked around one more time before continuing on.
“Where’s Jeff? I thought we were meeting here.”
“A little farther, Gia, sweetie.” Ma scooped her up, cradling her against her chest as she kept walking.
They came upon a back road. Gia had never been this far into the trees and didn’t even know cars could drive through here. Going into the forest was usually out of bounds when they went to the park.
A car was parked on the road with its rear door open. They reached it, and Ma slid right in, closing the door behind her as she kept Gia tucked close.
“Hey,” Jeff said from the driver’s seat as he pulled away from the curb.
“Wait! We don’t have our seatbelts on!” Gia cried. The car was moving!
“I’ll buckle you in.” Ma set her in a car seat and quickly did the buckle.
“You’re not safe,” Gia protested. Ma didn’t have her seatbelt fastened, and she’d told Gia to never be in a moving car without one on.
“Here.” Ma buckled in. Her smile didn’t look happy. “See, we’re both safe.”
Gia wasn’t so sure. Jeff drove fast, like Daddy did sometimes, and Ma didn’t like speeding. She wasn’t convinced this trip would be fun anymore.
Gia gasped, her eyes popping open. She was in Edward Ramirez’s office, a twenty-five-year-old woman, but her childhood self felt so close she could still taste the innocent confusion.
“Gia.” Aurora was in front of her, face fearful, her form flickering in and out. “Breathe.”
Gia was crying. When had she started crying?
The rest of the memory flooded her mind. The car that had smashed into them. Flashes of light. An explosion. The yelling. Gunshots. Franco standing over Jeffrey. Her mother bleeding in the street. Salvator pulling her from the smashed car as she screamed bloody murder.
“I remember them killing her,” she told Aurora. “I was there. I didn’t go to the park with the nanny. Ma took me. To run away.”
“They must have planted part of a false memory,” Viv said, and Gia jumped. She’d forgotten the vampire completely. “Giving you something to remember is less suspicious than a complete hole.”
Sure. Fine. But knowing Viv had been in her head, Gia wanted to get as far away from her as she could. “Can you see what I’m remembering?”
“No,” Viv said more gently than Gia thought she was capable of. “I can see evidence of the hypnosis well enough to undo it, but I can’t see what I’m uncovering. Do you want me to keep going?”
Gia nodded, marginally reassured.
“I’ll try my best to work from oldest to newest. Unless there’s a time you want me to focus on?”
Gia’s heart sank, and it had been pretty low to begin with. “There’s a lot missing, isn’t there?”
Viv grimaced. “I’ve never seen someone with such a heavily altered mind.”
Aurora made a small, pained sound. “I’m so sorry, Gia.”
She wanted to fall into Aurora, kick everyone out of the room, and talk to her alone, share all of her frantic thoughts, ask why, even when she didn’t expect an answer. But she couldn’t be derailed from her task, or she might never return to it.
“Can we uncover the first memory blackout?” she asked Viv. “Is that the next oldest one? Can you tell?”
Viv fixed her gaze on Gia, eyes glowing as her vampire power flared. “There’s a tangle of altered memories before we get to the first complete erasure.”
The holes in Gia’s memory loomed like wraiths, threatening to drag her down.
She needed them gone, even if she didn’t want to know.
But things already didn’t make sense. There was no reason to make it harder for herself by jumping around and targeting her first blackout if there was more to uncover from her younger days.
“Is it possible to uncover things in chronological order?”
Viv promised to do her best and brought Gia into a trancelike state, her glowing eyes blurring and fading away, the rest of the office melting along with them.
Scenes flashed before Gia. Franco talking about what happened in the park.
Mentions of Jeffrey that she’d caught while men talked around her.
Franco discussing a new strategy to advance his position in the organization.
Memories of her mother. The day she met Jeffrey.
All the times he’d popped into her childhood before that fateful day.
So many little details had been smoothed out and replaced with mundane alternatives. It was a thorough cover-up, and a small miracle that any hint of Jeffrey Lockwood had escaped the purge. If Gia hadn’t made a habit of listening outside doors undetected, she wouldn’t have had a single clue.
As the memories unfurled, Gia got progressively older.
The only constant was Franco, a figure on the periphery of each scene, but never the direct focus.
He didn’t address Gia at all until one memory surfaced.
This was no longer something altered, but a picture she knew in her gut had been completely erased.
Gia: Ten Years Old.
She sat on a hard chair in a huge, unfamiliar, empty room, Franco in front of her, his eyes glowing orange.
“Gianna, my dear, it’s time to get started.”
“I don’t want—”
“Don’t speak,” Franco ordered, and her words clogged in her throat. “Don’t move,” he added.
And Gia couldn’t. It was as if Franco’s words held her spellbound, controlling her. She couldn’t even lift a pinky or shake her head. Dread settled over her, almost as potent as the bone-deep confusion that plagued her ever since they got here.
“Don’t worry. You won’t remember,” Franco said blandly, flicking open a pocket knife. “Hold out your hand.”
She desperately wanted to disobey. To run away and never return. But the strange power held her without mercy, and her hand was drawn out in front of her, like it belonged to someone else.
Franco cut her palm, and she screamed.
“Silence!”
Gia’s voice shriveled. What was happening to her? Why were her father’s eyes glowing? Was this a dream? Please let it be a dream. Please let me wake up.
She didn’t wake.
Franco swiped at her bloody palm with a finger and brought it to his mouth, opening wide.
Sharp fangs that Gia had never seen before caught the light.
The urge to scream had her wanting to crawl out of her skin, but Franco’s commands held firm.
She couldn’t make a sound or move a muscle.
All she could do was watch as Franco put his finger in his mouth, tasting her blood.
“I told you feeding isn’t necessary,” said a deep voice from behind Franco.
Gia strained to see and could barely make out an unfamiliar man standing at the edge of the illuminated area, half cast in shadow.
“How could I pass up a taste of the magic given to her by the fool who thought he could steal my wife?”
There was a heavy sigh. “Hypnosis will be enough to control her. Now that you know the spells, you can cast them through her. Command her magic as you command her voice, her body, but you must get her to repeat the spells. She must call on her magic, and you must tell her to do so.”
“Yes, yes. We’ve been over this.”
The man continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, sounding dangerously bored in the face of Franco’s short temper.
“Once you’re adept at hypnosis, you can prep her and issue nonverbal commands, causing her to act out predesignated spells with nothing more than a wave of your hand or snap of your fingers. ”
She? Were they talking about her? Magic wasn’t real. But then why couldn’t she speak? If this were a dream, why wasn’t she waking up?
“Salvator, bring in the first subject,” Franco ordered.
A door opened and closed behind Gia, and her heart skipped. The sound of footsteps echoed through the room, and Franco slowly rotated her chair, the legs scraping along the concrete floor.
Salvator emerged from the shadows, dragging a man Gia had seen among her father’s friends. At least, she’d thought it had been among Franco’s friends. She must have been wrong because the man was bound and bruised.
“My father will skin you alive for this,” the man spat, struggling against his bindings.
Salvator kicked him in the stomach, and he doubled over. “This better work, boss.” He kicked the man closer to where Gia sat. “Nabbing this little shit just started a war.”
“One we will win.” Franco put a hand on Gia’s shoulder. “It will take everyone a while to figure out it wasn’t the Russians who took poor Rosco’s son. And by then, I’ll have the support I need to take over. Once Rosco is out of the way.”
Salvator nodded.
“You’re deluded!” the bound man yelled. “You don’t know what you’re up against. You’re no one. Disposable grunts. You can’t overthrow my father.”
“I can if I have magic.” Franco’s hand tightened painfully, and his face filled Gia’s vision. “Look at me.”
It was an odd request. She already was.
Her father’s eyes flared orange once more. “Find the power within you, harness it, and repeat after me.”
A string of nonsense words followed, and Gia was overcome with the sense of something swelling inside her. What is that? What did the power within mean?
She repeated the words as she’d been told.
Before Gia could get a handle on the sensation swelling in her gut, something within her burst forth. She couldn’t see it, and would have thought she’d imagined it, but somehow, she knew it was real. It felt alive, this invisible thing, as it twisted to the shape of words her father had chosen.
The man on the floor screamed so loud, Gia’s ears rang.
After a moment, he stopped, his voice hoarse as he whimpered.
“Excellent,” Franco said, and Salvator smiled.
Tears streamed down Gia’s face. Had she…?
“Look at me, Gia,” Franco commanded, and she obeyed. “Find the power within and repeat after me.”
It happened again. And again. Terrible things befell the man on the floor each time. Blood ran from his eyes, his nose. He turned ashen, cuts appearing on his skin out of nowhere.
Gia wanted desperately to look away. To run. To stop because she was doing these things. That living, pulsing thing inside her was doing it, guided by the words her father put in her mouth.
Gia could hardly see through her silent tears as the man finally died. Her mind was anything but silent. It had never been so loud, and Gia didn’t think she’d survive it.
“Now, Gia.” Franco crouched in front of her. “It’s time to forget.”