Chapter 23 #2
“Not right away,” he answered. “But Rod racked up enemies fast, and after one put a knife in his back and nearly killed him, I didn’t have a choice. At least, I didn’t feel as if I did.”
Cal hadn’t been drawn to the idea of being a gangster. He’d just been trying to protect his brother. From there, Fern could imagine how easily his involvement had deepened. As Rod rose in power, and his number of enemies increased, Cal probably felt there was no going back.
“Helen says you’ve done everything you can to help Rod, but there’s no saving him,” Fern said after a minute. His fingers began rubbing those soothing circles on her skin again. “Do you think she’s right?”
Fern didn’t lend her opinion—that she agreed with their aunt. It could be argued that she just wanted Cal away from someone as dangerous and manipulative as his brother.
“There’s no saving either of us,” he answered. “Not after all the things we’ve done.”
Fern lifted her head. He was staring up at the ceiling. He’d admitted to killing before, though she couldn’t believe he’d done anything in cold blood, unprovoked. Then again, he was a gunman. One with a reputation for cleaning up his brother’s messes.
“What have you done?” she whispered.
“You don’t want to know. And I don’t want to tell you,” he added before she could object. “I like the way you look at me now, like I could be a good man. If you know the things I’ve done, you’ll look at me differently.”
The reverberations of his voice streamed through her body, and her heart ached for him. She moved upward and kissed his mouth. “I see the real you, Cal. The same way you see the real me.”
He combed his fingers through her loose hair and brushed his thumb down her left cheek.
She couldn’t remember anyone ever touching her scarred half, except for herself.
Doctors and nurses had when she’d been younger, but their hands had been all business, assessing and quick.
Not Cal. He stroked her cheek, then the thicker weal of skin stretching the corner of her eye, and the fan of crepe-like skin on her forehead, with tenderness.
The swaths of pale, leathery skin allowed the barest tickle of his touch, and her eyes stung with tears.
“What do we do?” she asked. They couldn’t hide from Rod forever, even if here, in this stuffy, overly warm storeroom, it was all she wanted to do. Just be in Cal’s arms, away from the world.
He didn’t answer at first, only continued stroking her skin and wrapping curls of her hair around his fingers. It was so quiet, the sound of one boarder turning in his bed upstairs reached them.
“The sooner we leave Chicago, the better.”
Fern started, pushing herself up to stare at him. He was serious.
“Whatever Rod’s planning, it isn’t good for you. He still wants to destroy your brother and father. Maybe as much as he wants to take out Giacomo’s boys.”
Her ears caught on that name, but something else he’d said was more important. “You don’t hate my father and brother anymore?”
“I hate them more than I did before, now that I know how they’ve treated you. But they’re your blood.” He tucked a curl behind her ear. “I won’t touch ‘em.”
Because they were her family. Because he loved her. Fern’s eyes filled with tears, and she was glad for the dim lighting in the storeroom. Not that she should be ashamed to cry in front of Cal; he’d proved she could be honest, without judgment from him.
“Giacomo?” she said, the name still tugging at the back of her mind.
“Giacomo Bianchi. Runs the Jacky Boys.”
“Wait—” Her mind trampled backward to earlier in the day, when she’d spoken to her mother on the pay phone. “Mr. Bianchi. The restaurant owner?”
“Yeah, The Falcon on Dearborn. Why?”
Fern’s mother had mentioned the catering for the fete was from The Falcon. It was one of her parents’ favorite restaurants. Giacomo Bianchi. The first half of Giacomo sounded a little like ‘Jack.’ Jacky.
“I think he’s going to be at my father’s fete,” Fern said.
Cal pushed up onto his elbows, jostling her. “When?”
“Saturday.” When the sun rose, it would be Friday.
Cal’s taut muscles and sober expression—even more so than usual—put her on edge. This meant something to him. She thought she knew what. Her father, brother, and the head of the Jacky Boys were all going to be in one place at the same time. Her family’s home.
“Could Rod’s plans involve my father’s fete?”
Her mother. She would be there too. Fern’s stomach churned.
Cal pushed off the quilt and swung his legs over his side of the cot, showing Fern his back. He sat there a moment, rubbing his jaw.
“It’s a good opportunity.”
Fern’s eyes slipped to his hip, his naked thigh and knee. Desire for him mixed with worry.
“I have to stop it,” she said. “I have to warn them.”
“If word gets out that you let off a warning about Rod’s intended hit, I’ll be dead before I can even leave the North Side, let alone Chicago,” he said. “He’ll know I told you about it.”
Fern sat up behind Cal, her arms shaking as she held the quilt to her chest. “You think he’d kill you? But you’re his brother.”
“A traitor’s a traitor.”
“You’re not a traitor!”
Cal twisted around to look her in the eye. “I’m choosing you over him. I’m protecting you, not him. A traitor’s exactly what I am.”
The anguish in his eyes nearly turned Fern inside out. She shook her head. “I can’t let you do that.”
He gripped her wrist through the cotton quilt. “I made my choice. I love my brother, but I’m not giving you up, Fern.”
He never held back; Cal always said exactly what he felt without an ounce of sugar to coat the words. She loved him for that.
“I have to do something to protect my family,” she said.
As callous as they were toward her, Fern couldn’t turn her back and do nothing if they were in danger.
If Rod’s plans had to do with her father’s fete, and if he suspected Cal was lying to him, he might have kept Cal in the dark for that very reason.
If she couldn’t warn her family without endangering Cal, then the only other thing she could do would be to stop the fete from happening. Her father had already wanted to cancel once.
Cal faced forward again, releasing her wrist. “If you need to warn them, I understand.”
“No.” She shifted onto to her knees and hugged him from behind, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I…I think I have another idea. One that Rod won’t necessarily be able to trace back to you.”
The idea had hurtled into her head with desperation. Cal covered her hand with his and then kissed her knuckles. She’d chosen him, and he knew it now. He waited for her to go on.
“The photographs,” she said. He cocked his ear. In the rising light of the early morning, Fern saw his eyes shutter. He hated what he’d done to her.
“What about them?”
“If they were printed in the papers, the way Rod threatened—”
“No.”
His refusal was unexpectedly endearing.
“—my mother wouldn’t show her face for a month, maybe longer,” Fern continued.
Fern felt ill at the idea of those wretched photographs landing on the front page of every rag in the city. No doubt there would be a lurid headline and story to go along with them, all of it pure fiction. But if it drove her mother to cancel the fete, the humiliation would be worth it.
Cal reached for his pants, discarded on the floor, and started to get dressed. “I don’t want anyone seeing you like that. We’ll find another way.”
He launched up from the cot.
“We’re leaving Chicago, aren’t we? I won’t be here for the reporters to dog me.”
Cal tugged on his cotton undershirt, which Fern vividly remembered him tearing off not so long ago so their bare skin could touch. He hitched his hands on his hips, looking conflicted. He knew it would work, and yet he hated the idea of carrying through with his’s brother original threat.
“Where are the photographs?” she asked. Her father had been given copies, but he’d almost certainly have destroyed them by now. Rod would have held onto the originals. Or the negatives, at least.
Finally, Cal bent to grab his shirt from the floor. “They’re at the Den. In Rod’s office.”
Fern didn’t want him to go back there. The risk buzzed through her nerve endings more powerfully than the idea of those pictures being splashed across the front pages citywide.
“We leave Chicago tonight,” he said, buttoning up his shirt. “I need to take care of a few things first—get us some cash and new papers—”
“New papers?”
“From Hannah Levy.”
The small storeroom, hot and stifling, closed in around her. “Why would she have those?”
Cal tucked in his shirt and buttoned his pants. “She’s a forger. Talented and fast, and she likes you, so I know she’ll keep quiet about it.”
“But why do we need new papers?”
He paused hooking his belt. “So, Rod can’t find us, princess.”
He didn’t have to say what would happen if he did.
“I like my name.” She couldn’t imagine calling herself, or hearing anyone else call her, a different one.
Cal drew her up from the cot, the quilt wrapped loosely around her. “So do I.”
Fern ran her hands over his broad shoulders. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. However long it takes to talk to Hannah and drop the negatives at the American.”
“Not the Tribune?”
He shook his head. “Too uptight. The American will stop the presses for those pictures.” Again, he closed his eyes and exhaled, long and hard. “But only if you’re sure.”
She knew it would work. Her mother, utterly humiliated, would cancel the fete, spoiling Rod’s plans—if they did, in fact, involve the Adairs’ party. It was a gamble Fern had to take. She pushed up onto her toes and kissed Cal. “Be careful at the Den.”
He took the shoulder holster from where he’d laid it on the shelf and shrugged into it. Wherever they went after Chicago, Fern hoped Cal wouldn’t have to wear that revolver anymore.