Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Christian
“Capo don’t tell me you’ve been here all night, you look like shit,” Georgiou says chuckling.
He walks into my office and looks at me. He’s probably right about what I look like. I feel like shit. It’s the perfect word to describe how I feel and I don’t want to talk about it.
I also don’t want to admit that I’ve been here since yesterday morning and this is my second day here.
“I’m busy Georgiou, unless you want something…” My voice trails off because I don’t want to be rude to him.
He gives me a long hard stare warning me to watch myself.
“I’m not fucking off if that’s what you mean to tell me, prick,” he sneers. “What the fuck is with you?”
“Nothing.”
“I noticed that all the new contracts have been worked on and signed off. You really did work all night didn’t you?”
“Yeah I did, happy?”
“Christian no, I’m not happy about it. It’s not all about work. I’d thought you’d be less work like and maybe spend more time with Lilly.” He gives me a hopeful smile.
I look at him and I don’t know what to say about Lilly.
What is the right thing? that I chickened out and took on the role of coward when she practically told me how she felt about me, or that I was an ass to her and fucked things up when I told her she could leave when she wanted.
I bring my hands up to my head and shake it.
Every time I remember that part, I can’t believe I actually said that. The fucking thing about it was she was right. there wasn’t anything that she said that wasn’t right, or the right way to think about the fucking relationship we have.
She threw me a rope and I never caught it.
“Christian, what’s going on man?” Georgiou asks and it’s time like these when I’m grateful that he’s who he is because if it was one of the others they would have landed a fist in my face for impliedly telling them to fuck off.
“I don’t know what to do about Lilly,” I confess and he looks me over with curiosity. “I’m not a fucking coward Georgiou but when it comes to her I don’t know what to do or how to behave. I don’t know how to feel.”
He relaxes his shoulders and shakes his head.
“Christian, that’s because the last time you loved you were burned so badly it’s taken you years to open your heart to someone else,” he states and I stare back at him.
He can see straight through me and I’m that transparent.
“I can’t stand in your shoes and guess how you must feel because I know it broke you to lose Amelia.
The way that you lost her is… it’s dark and painful.
Christian you were eighteen years old. She died eighteen years ago.
You never let anybody get close after that.
Weeks ago was the first time I realized how you felt about Lilly because a man doesn’t just pack a woman up and her child and move them in with him if he doesn’t love them both. ”
Georgiou can be many things. One thing he’s damn good at is cutting to the shit. Getting to the shit you haven’t even come face to face with in your mind.
I blow out a ragged breath and bring my hand up to my head.
“I’m right aren’t I?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I answer and he smiles.
“Well, I guess you should do something about that then,” he says and he backs away out the door.
I reach for my phone and switch it back on. There are a few missed calls from Lilly, no messages though.
I call her but the phone goes straight to voicemail.
Sighing I put my phone back in my pocket.
Maybe hers is switched off too and it would serve my ass right for acting like a juvenile prick.
I shut down my computer, grab my jacket and take one step to go to the door, but stop when my phone starts ringing.
Thinking it’s Lilly I retrieve it from my back pocket, but I narrow my eyes when I see it’s Vera calling me. She never calls me for anything.
“Hey Vera, everything okay?” I ask.
“No,” she cries, her voice is choked with sobs. “Christian I’m so sorry. I’ve looked everywhere but I can’t find Rosie.”
A tremor of shock bolts through me and everything in my body freezes.
“Vera, what do you mean? Tell me what happened,” I say trying to keep the panic from consuming me.
“We were in the park with the playgroup. She was playing with the kids. I took my off her for one minute then she was gone. My God. Oh Jesus. She’s gone. We’ve been looking for her for over two hours. I can’t find Rosie. Christian, I think someone took her. And Lilly isn’t answering her phone.”
That’s all I hear. Someone took her and the icy tendrils of something I never truly feel seeps into my soul. It’s fear.
Vera thinks someone took Rosie and Lilly’s not answering her phone.
In my world that can only mean exactly what it sounds like.
Trouble…
Trouble has knocked on the door.
My girl and my kid are in trouble.
* * *
“Tell us again what happened,” Vincent says.
Vera has been sitting in her chair sobbing for the last two hours. I rushed home to check the place out and everyone met me here.
Me, Vincent and Georgiou are in the living room with Vera trying to go over what happened. Salvatore is in the other room on the phone. Nick and Gabe are rallying the men to search. Gibbs is doing what he can.
So far all we’ve managed to find is Lilly’s phone in a dumpster by the subway in town. And Lilly’s abandoned car about a mile away from where the phone was found.
That’s all I was able to find out. Nothing more, just a confirmation of trouble.
I’m just not sure what kind yet.
We think Rosie was taken and it’s looking the same way for Lilly.
Lilly is the kind of woman who knows where her child is twenty four-seven. She wouldn’t just go anywhere without telling anyone and all the evidence points to something sinister.
“Maybe we missed something,” Vincent adds with a nod, cutting into my thoughts.
“Vincent, I told you everything,” Vera stutters, wiping away fresh tears with the heel of her hand.
“We went to the park with the playgroup and the kids were playing. Rosie couldn’t have just wondered off.
There were three of us watching the kids from the group.
I just don’t know … I don’t know what happened, or how. ”
Vincent sighs. I can see the worry rippling off him in waves. It’s a taste of what I feel. I glance at Georgiou who hasn’t said much since he got here. That means he feels bad for me. I’m looking at him and he’s giving me another secret message. This one though was one I saw one time only.
It was just before Amelia died. We were looking for her and he knew to prepare for the worse.
My brother was the only person I confided in at the time because I needed him to help me find Amelia.
The look he’s giving me now is the very same, telling me to prep for the worse and be careful.
He looks away and I bite the inside of my lip.
“I’m so sorry, I blame myself,” Vera states focusing on me.
I force myself to calm the fuck down. I know she feels terrible. Vera looks like she’s added another hundred years to her sixty. Guilt has consumed her but I’m still enraged. I’m pissed. There were guards who would have been with her who didn’t see shit, and she didn’t see shit either.
Fuck. I’m fucking pissed at myself. When I got in and saw the guards I’m had to restrain myself from popping a fucking bullet in someone.
The three guards looked on at me in fear knowing messing up like this could only mean death.
I would have doled out death too but their saving grace was that the three of them had worked for me for years, and I might need them .
“We’ll keep looking,” I say to her. My voice sounds nothing like it usually does. I’m nothing close to the controlled man I normally am.
Both Rosie and Lilly have been missing for hours now and I’m going crazy with worry. We got nothing to work with, no lead to follow and what we have leads nowhere. I don’t know what to do.
Vincent straightens up and looks at me. “Christian it’s clear they were both taken,” Vincent says. It’s harsh truth I have to accept. “Everything points to the fact that they were both taken by someone.”
Who though?
Who the fuck would do this?
The first person I thought of was Lev. That he might have done this shit by way of retaliation for killing his men and screwing with his business.
It’s enough motive for sure, but Lev is small time.
He was told to stay away from Lilly. He wouldn’t go against a warning from a boss like Vincent. It would mean death for him.
So who is it then?
I’m about to say something when Gibbs walks through the door. A solemn expression is on his face. A tell that he’s got something I’m not gonna like.
“What did you find?” I ask.
He pulls a picture from the inside of his jacket and hands it to me.
My damn mouth falls open and my breath seizes right up in my chest when I look at the man on the image sitting in the back of a black Sedan. I recognize him.
It’s Miguel Diaz.
Lilly’s supposedly dead husband.
He’s not dead.
Vincent takes the image from me and looks at it.
“Want to fill me in on who this fucker is?” Vincent says.
“Miguel Diaz, Cartel leader,” Gibbs answers shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “Died last year in a police shootout in Columbia leaving behind a wife and a child. Except that picture shows he’s very much alive.”
“Where did you get it Gibbs?” I rasp.
“One of my hackers scanned over the area where Lilly’s car was parked. She saw that. The Sedan looked out of place in the parking lot. We ran facial recognition and found out who he was, and who he was to Lilly,” Gibbs explains. “Obviously he took her and took the kid too.”
Fuck.
Jesus Christ. This isn’t happening. And damn it Miguel got to them both when they were open for attack. The park and parking lot.
The man isn’t dead and he took his family back.
He has them, and what do I think is gonna happen to them in his care?
Lilly told me enough. I can’t allow him to keep them.
“What now boss?” Gibbs asks Vincent.
Fuck, Vincent isn’t gonna want shit on his head with the fucking Columbian cartel. The mystery is solved. The man took his family back. it’s just me who’s going to feel like they weren’t his to take.
They were mine.
Vincent looks to me hesitant.
“I’ll get her back, don’t put anyone in danger for me. Don’t do it,” I tell him and I look at each of them. Vincent, Georgiou, Gibbs.
“Christian—" Vincent starts but I cut him off.
“He’ll kill her, or she’ll die from some shit he’ll do to her. Fuck knows what he’ll do to the baby. I can’t let my girl and my kid go through that,” I state my case and Vincent and Georgiou exchange shocked glances.
I grab my jacket and Vincent grabs me. I don’t have time for a fight of shit, but if I have to fight I will.
“Stand down, capo,” Vincent shouts. “Fuck. Did I say we wouldn’t help? When has it ever come to that?”
He loosens his grip on me and I stare back feeling my nerves scatter all over the fucking place. I’m at a loss here and I don’t know where to start looking, or where to go. I just know I have to get Lilly and back.
Vincent looks over my shoulder at Gibbs.
“Report this to the police so they can alert border control and other officials in case they try to leave the country. If he’s here though he got in somehow and how he’ll get out,” Vincent says to Gibbs.
“Got it. I’m on it now,” Gibbs replies. “I’ll get the hackers to try and track the Sedan if we can.”
“Thanks Gibbs,” Vincent answers and Gibbs leaves. Vincent fixes his attention on me. “I’ll get everyone on the case. More eyes less work, more chance of someone finding them.”
“Thank you,” I tell him meaning that because I know I can’t do this by myself. No matter what skills I personally have, it’s not going to help me now if I don’t know where Miguel took Rosie and Lilly.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Christian.”
“Not gonna,” I answer.
“Cool off for a little while and we’ll go out on the street in an hour,” he says and walks out.
I run my hand over my beard and ball my fists. Vera is still sobbing and shaking, probably with fear of what I’ll do to her.
“Vera go home to your family,” I tell her.
“Am… I fired?” she asks. Her hands tremble and she swallows hard.
“Have I fired anyone yet today?”
She shakes her head.
“Then no, just go and come back tomorrow.”
She gets up quickly and leaves, leaving me with Georgiou.
He comes closer to me and rests his hand on my shoulder for reassurance.
“Try not to worry, brother. You know we’ll do our best,” he offers.
“I know… I just wish I didn’t fuck things up. Lilly called me Georgiou and I never answered the fucking phone.”
“Don’t think about that. You can’t. You gotta stay focused so you can concentrate.”
I bring my hand to my head in frustration. It’s ironic that we were talking about Lilly earlier back at the office. Me in my stupidity was so blind I thought I didn’t know what to do with her.
The last time we spoke we argued. I’d never argued with her before. She fucking spelled her feelings out to me by saying it would be hard for her to walk away from me when the time came.
I was such an ass.
I think back to her question again— what are we to you?
The answer was everything.