Chapter 4
My mom was excited for me to get out of her place and go to “work,” which she put in air quotes.
I didn’t want to leave her just yet, though, knowing she was having all these problems with breathing.
I was waiting for her to have a coughing episode before I went, but she didn’t.
It had become a little predictable—she ate her meal, and then after thirty minutes, a heavy cough would erupt, and I’d have to make sure she had her steams and medication to hand.
It was COPD, and she hadn’t always been upfront or honest about it with me.
In fact, the moment she was, I went home and made sure she had everything she could need, but then I was needed back at work and her conditioned worsened.
At my “work,” I waited for my mom to call.
I was on speed dial, so I was an easy call away.
It was getting in the way of me being able to see if there was anything around that I could use to start an investigation.
To get something concrete on them would help me stay here, and let me stay near my mom for a while.
Lorna, the bar manager, called me over with a big smile.
“Rocco wants you to take him this,” she said, pushing forward a large gin glass.
It was full and slowly turning purple from the little bits floating around in it.
I was doing my best to avoid Rocco, knowing he’d warned me away from being here, but I also knew being near him was the best way to uncover anything useful.
The moment I got near the office, he called me in, and I clocked the camera pointing at the door from above.
I walked right in with a smile, placed the new glass down on his desk, and grabbed the empty one.
My eyes darted everywhere behind and around him, obsessively blinking like I was snapping pictures.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then why are you still standing there?” Rocco leaned back in his office chair. It creaked and brought a smile to both our faces, as if to say he’d just let one rip. “Actually, the food was nice.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve worked in kitchens and bars.”
Rocco rolled his eyes. “The kitchen part, I can believe, but the bars . . . I don’t think Lorna’s going to let you get busy behind ours,” he said.
“Because I know you’re still trying your best to get your seedy Fed fingers all over my books, trying to see if we’re shady. Everything here is above board.”
I nodded, my jaw clenching, and I hoped he wasn’t seeing it on my face. “I’m not trying to do anything,” I said. “All I’m really doing is trying to make some cash so I can be by my mom’s side.”
“Tell me, Kalen,” Rocco said, pushing out of his chair to stand. He looked at the open office door. “Does the FBI even know you’re here?”
Fuck. He’d clocked me. He was good. I thought he was good when he’d immediately called me a Fed, but to call out the fact that this wasn’t a sanctioned investigation .
. . I wasn’t going to break and crumble under the pressure, though, I was trained for worse, and I didn’t have a weapon or a badge on me, so he had nothing.
“Silence speaks volumes,” he snickered. “You can go now. I know everything I need to know.”
I’d been holding my breath, and I could see my face had turned pink red in the reflection of the chrome paneling of the wall outside his office when I left.
The door swung shut behind me. Another server walked past me in a hurry, carrying a serving tray on the tips of their fingers.
Okay, so maybe I couldn’t do that, but I could smile and serve people, and deliver them drinks—well, I could pour them too, if they didn’t mind a heavy hand.
Rocco didn’t approach or speak to me for the rest of the night.
I ended up going home with a handful of cash, and the recollection of memories where Rocco had called me out.
It was going to be a tough sell, telling my immediate supervisors about what I’d been doing and hoping they’d let me continue.
It would be bad if they already had someone on him, and I was ruining it.
I knew of people who’d managed to make these big swings, and I really wanted to be one of them.
I really wanted something to go right in my life.
My mom was sleeping in bed when I got home.
She was in her bed, which was nice, because I’d almost been convinced she was making her chest worse with some of the positions she slept in on the sofa.
I’d listened at the door, trying to hear if she was having any trouble breathing before I allowed myself to get into my bed, where I had my small plush cat tucked in my arm.
I couldn’t shut my brain off completely.
It had been so long since I’d been able to regress and play, too long maybe.
I was exhausted not to have a complete output of fun—with the exception of making dinner last night, that had been nice.
But maybe my mom was right. Maybe I needed to rent a place, or just go back to my place in New York and commute every single day just to make sure she was okay, to make sure her condition wasn’t worsening, and that she wasn’t missing any more doctor’s appointments.
Eventually, I must’ve slept, because I found myself waking to a pain in my shoulder, from where it had been jammed into the side of the sofa. Light streamed in through the gap in the curtains, and I yawned, looking around for my phone to check the time.
My mom was still in bed, sound asleep. I made coffee, and she was still in bed when it was brewed, so I took her a cup and sat it on the nightstand.
“You don’t need to,” she grumbled. “I’m getting up now.”
“You want breakfast?” I asked. “Thinking of making some porridge oats. I bought that good maple syrup too.”
Her face changed, and she smiled at me. “I’m still getting up,” she said.
“Good, because you bought all that yarn yesterday,” I said. “And I think I need another plush for my collection.”
“As long as you can wait a couple of months for it.”
“As long as it takes,” I said. “I’ll make breakfast, and I’ll take your coffee through so it’s all set up on the coffee table.”
She glanced at me, and I could see that flicker in her emotions, as if she was going to turn on me.
My heart skipped a little, forcing a big smile to combat it.
The look passed as I left the bedroom with her coffee, but the small trickle of sweat traveling down my back had my teeth biting into the tip of my tongue.
* * *
The apartment was becoming cramped with my mom’s wild emotions and my people pleasing. I left her after breakfast and took a walk to clear my head, and to potentially look at some nearby hotels for availability. I needed something—or someone—to just be my rock right now.
In a light jacket and jeans, I really wasn’t dressed to weather the Boston springtime.
I managed to get around two blocks before removing the jacket, then a further block before I was rushing to put it back on.
Pausing at a large piece of sheet wood, I looked at the graffiti covering it.
It had been tagged with B symbol. That meant it was Bianchi territory, at least from my research, which wasn’t anything I’d managed to use the FBI resources for.
It was difficult trying to do all this in secret and on my so-called vacation.
A black car pulled up, and I headed on. It idled beside me until the back window rolled down, and there was Rocco Bianchi, grinning at me like a fool. “Are you interested in the community center as well?” he asked. “It’s all legitimate. You’ll have to do better.”
“Hi, boss,” I said.
“Don’t—I’m not your boss,” he said, leaning on an arm out of the window. “But I do want you to get in this car.”
I shook my head. “I’m good walking, thanks.”
“Come on, get in, it looks like it’s going to rain,” he said, glancing up at the dark clouds gathering above us. “And the last thing you want is to be caught out in the rain.”
“I’ll take my chances, actually,” I said, continuing to walk on.
The car turned, cornering me at the end of the sidewalk. The door popped open and Rocco scooched himself along to the other side. “Get in,” he called out. “You don’t want to make it weird.”
It was already weird, he didn’t need to do anything to make it that way, but I couldn’t say no now.
If I wasn’t an analyst for the Bureau, I’d have been in the car at the first offer, anyone would.
It was clearly about to rain, and my only other option was to find shelter in one of the buildings—most of them office buildings.
Rocco’s face grew a little more menacing in the shadows of the back seat of the car.
His driver wasn’t paying attention, but that didn’t give me any confidence.
He was going to try and break me, to try and get me to give up my secrets.
I was trained for this—but I didn’t have backup.
There was no help on the way. I was alone, and now I was with the enemy.
“Well,” he said, patting the leather seat.
“Are you waiting for the rain to start? Or is someone coming to pick you up?” His brows rose.
There was a playfulness behind his eyes, and I’d teased him before, but now it seemed like he was about to do something about it.
“Maybe the police? You are on a street corner, and I guess this looks a lot like solicitation.”
He might as well have yanked my arm and pulled me inside with the way he spoke. I climbed into the passenger seat, sitting beside him and looking into the rearview mirror to lock eyes with his driver. I closed the door and the car started a slow drive off.
“Roland, my driver, he’s not going to say a word, and he’s definitely not going to sympathize with you no matter what I’ve got to say to you,” Rocco said.
I grabbed the seat belt, unsure whether or not I wanted to actually buckle myself in, more for safety than anything else. “So, this is a threat?”