Chapter 36 – Renzo
Chapter Thirty-Six
Renzo
Devil’s Hole, Niagara Falls
“What the hell are you doing over there?”
“Please… come get me…” her voice sounds strained and tired over the phone.
I fight the urge to ask her to spill everything.
Clearly, there are witnesses and I don’t know what Geralynn has gone through tonight.
She’s alive. I fought Luigi’s command to head back to Buffalo even if he promised me we could return after regrouping with Flora Corsini.
It turns out we’re at least heading in the same direction as Geralynn’s current location. I maintain a death grip around my cell phone and listen to her quiet, slow breathing on the other end of the line.
“I’ll be there. Don’t talk to anyone.”
“Hurry,” she says. “Please.”
I have more questions than answers. Who took her? Where the hell is my sister? Our leads took us towards Pittsburgh, but the only person we found when we got down there was Flora. She ran away and got a message to Peter when we were about thirty minutes away from downtown Pittsburgh.
Luigi got a concerning message from Lewis, claiming that he ended things with Angela and they were still in touch but she suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. All those small details lend themselves to some bigger conspiracy. I can’t blame Luigi for wanting us to get distance.
One of them kidnapped Flora. That’s all we know so far based on the condition we found her in.
The Pittsburgh mobsters are currently involved in some type of power play and this means Geralynn’s life is very much at risk.
She’s the mother of my child and although I might not have any direct enemies in the Pittsburgh mob…
that might not be true if they have help from their Amalfi Coast cousins.
When I hang up, Gino turns to me with a face that mirrors my concern. I resent how easy it is to criticize a face that has identical features to mine and looking over at him just makes me angry instantaneously.
“Was that Geralynn?” he asks. “Where is she?”
He expresses my internal panic with so much ease that I resent my brother’s comfort with his emotions. I still feel mildly numb, followed up with a deep desire to cause harm to whoever dared lay a hand on Geralynn.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on tonight,” I confess to him. “She’s at Devil’s Hole.”
“Fuck. Near Niagara?”
“Yes.”
“How the fuck did she end up there?”
“I didn’t ask. She’s with the park staff, but I doubt she wants to hang around the park office with a bunch of pothead park rangers all night.”
Gino pauses for longer than a few seconds and I make the mistake of expecting him to say something insightful.
“It doesn’t sound that bad honestly.”
“We need to make a detour,” I command my brother. “Now.”
For us to do that, I need Luigi’s approval. Gino refuses to change our course until I call Luigi up and plead with him for permission to rescue Geralynn. Truthfully, I’m lucky he gave us permission, because I would have been willing to shoot my brother and drive the car towards Devil’s Hole myself.
Gino changes course and the rest of our drive is fraught with silent tension. Neither of us want to speculate on what we witnessed tonight. Yet. I have to stop myself from jumping out of the moving car once we get to the Devil’s Hole State Park office.
The park ranger seems pleasantly surprised when an Escalade parks outside their office and he holds onto my handshake for a long time when I greet him and thank him for keeping my fiancée safe.
I don’t know why I call her that. The word just slips out naturally as Geralynn leaves the park ranger’s side and moves closer to me, reaching her arms out with quiet yearning for physical contact – proof that the ordeal is over.
Gino waits in the car while I thank the park ranger and assure him that we don’t need to call the police.
He looks over my shoulder at the car and nods.
He might not assume that I’m in the mafia but he assumes that I have enough money to make my problems go away without the police. A fair assumption.
I open the backseat and help Geralynn inside.
“Hungry?”
“Yes,” she says with a shaky voice that fills me with barely contained rage.
Whoever held her captive couldn’t even feed her.
I can tell from the blank yet exhausted expression on her face that whatever she must have seen has utterly transformed her.
Gino looks at her in the rearview mirror, his face immediately coloring with concern.
“We’re close to McDonald’s, Ger. Don’t worry. A big mac and a diet coke can cure just about anything.”
“Yeah,” Geralynn mutters aimlessly. “And French fries.”
I take my seat again across from Gino, who hasn’t said much since we picked up Geralynn, but has obviously noticed the same details that I have. The faraway look in her eyes. The way her voice sounds like she’s been screaming. He doesn’t want to ask, but we both have the same concerns.
Did someone touch her? How badly did they hurt her?
We won’t find out until we get her fed tonight. But even then, I’m just happy that when I look behind me, she’s there.
“Roman is okay?” Geralynn asks before the car starts. “I know you wouldn’t be this calm if Roman were hurt.”
“He’s fine,” I mutter. “You’re both fine now.”