3. Chapter Three
~Cara~
The security checks when I got home had, unfortunately, become routine to me since I started going out to work. An airport-style x-ray machine searched my bag while a full body scanner checked me personally for any metal or electronics or to see if I carried anything internally. The checks were done for anyone who wanted to enter the house, with no exceptions, not even me. When I complained about having to go through the search every time I entered the house, Marco explained that someone might try to plant something on me to bring into the compound while I remained completely unaware of it. He insisted he trusted me, but the rest of the world was a different story.
“Why would people want to plant something on me?” I asked when he had the security system installed.
“My business is extremely competitive and my competitors can be ruthless. If they thought they could find a way to spy on me to get a competitive advantage, they’d do it.”
That kind of stuff only happened in movies, didn’t it? “That sounds paranoid, Marco. Would you spy on them?”
He gave a humourless laugh. “Of course I would. How do you think I know it’s necessary?”
When he said things like that, I never knew just how seriously I should take him.
“Look at it this way: you can either do the checks or I can have security with you at all times,” he offered. “Which will it be, Cara?”
Put that way, I chose the checks.
He already had my phone tracked, which explained how his men found me in the park that night, but I didn’t need them breathing down my neck while I tried to go about my life. The anonymity I had while riding the tube to work or going shopping afterwards was precious to me, and if I had to give up a few minutes of my time whenever I got home in order to have it, it seemed worth the trade-off.
“Clean,” the man at the machine announced. One of the men who accompanied me from the park handed my bag back to me while the other held the door open that led into the foyer.
“Welcome home, Ms Russo.”
“Thanks.” It would feel a lot more welcoming if they hadn’t just dragged me away from my dinner date in the park.
Not that it had been a date, I quickly admonished myself. I could only call it a casual dinner with a stranger who I would never see again. That thought disappointed me far more than it should have considering I hardly knew a thing about him. It must have been a sign of my social isolation. Normal women probably had encounters like that on a regular basis. It only felt special to me because it had never happened to me before.
Our living quarters took up the first two floors of one side of our building in the central London neighbourhood of St James’s. The other side of the building, the side which faced the busier St James’s Street, had a shop and offices in it which helped to pay the council taxes on the property. What was above us on the top two floors, I’d never been entirely certain. The only way in and out of our apartment was the top-security entrance I’d just used on a quiet back street, and from the outside, you’d never expect anything other than a typical house behind the door.
“Cara.”
Marco’s voice called out to me as I passed his open office door on the way to my room. I didn’t stop in unless he called for me; usually, he didn’t like to be interrupted.
When he called me, however, he expected me to drop everything and go to him, as I did then, putting the smile on my face that he liked to see. “Hi, Marco. Have you been outside today? It’s nice out. Summer will be here before we know it”
My brother sat behind his desk in his expensive suit, three computer screens set up in front of him. Their light cast a pale glow on his dark, handsome face with the scar down one cheek that he’d got in a bar fight when he was younger. His eyes looked darker and slightly more menacing than usual with the computer light reflecting on them.
I didn’t understand what Marco did for a living any more than I understood my own boss’ business, but whatever he did, he must have been very good at it. He made a lot of money and had a lot of power, which explained all the security precautions. He always said you couldn’t be at the top of your game without making a few people jealous, and since he knew a lot more about the business world than I did, I took him at his word.
“It must be nice out.” His voice had that slight edge it took on whenever he was unhappy about something, making my stomach sink. “So nice that you eat outside with strangers?”
He turned one of the screens so that I could see the picture on it: a picture of Kian in the park, looking confused, my arm next to him in the photo.
“Are there cameras in your thugs’ sunglasses?” I demanded, remembering the way one of them had stared at Kian. Could I really not have even a moment’s privacy? “Why are they following me? You agreed I didn’t have to have security.”
“I agreed you didn’t have to be followed so long as you followed my rules. Does this look like following the rules, Cara?” Marco gestured to the screen again as if it contained something harmful rather than a man eating a grocery store sandwich in public. “Who is he? How did he approach you?”
“He didn’t ‘approach me’. He’s a musician, I heard him busking in the tube station this morning. We spoke a little bit and I invited him to eat with me in the park. It was perfectly safe, Marco. You didn’t have to send your goons to scare him off.”
“You don’t know that he’s safe. You don’t know anything about him.” Marco turned the screen back around before jabbing at the keyboard. “What’s his name?”
“Why?” I asked, even though I knew why. He was going to dig into the poor man’s past until he found some reason to forbid me from ever seeing him again. He’d done it before with people I met through my music, on the rare occasion I ever actually started to become friendly with anyone.
“I can track him down just as well from the photo, Cara. Tell me his name and we can get through it faster.”
Exhaling in frustration, I gave in. “It’s Kian but I don’t know his surname. He never said, and I never gave him mine either. Despite what you want to believe, there was nothing sinister about it.”
“And despite what you want to believe, people aren’t always what they seem.” He tapped away on the keyboard a while longer, his brow furrowed in concentration as he stared at the screen. “There we are. Kian Murphy.”
A proper Irish name. It didn’t surprise me.
“Have fun,” I muttered under my breath before turning around to head to my room.
“Don’t you want to see what I find?” Marco’s voice called out after me.
“No.”
Whatever happened to simply getting to know someone? I couldn’t imagine Kian hiding any kind of deep, dark secret, and even if he was, it didn’t have anything to do with me. After the way things ended that day, he’d probably stay as far away from me as possible. In a city of millions, it wouldn’t be hard to do.
Shutting the door to my room behind me, I exhaled again, letting go of the frustration I’d felt ever since Marco’s men arrived. It did me no good to get worked up over things I couldn’t change, and Marco’s rules were there to stay. Life would be easier if I simply accepted them as I had always tried to do before.
After changing out of my work clothes, I headed to the kitchen to get some tea, my steps slowing for a moment as I passed the darkened music room. Not that long ago, I spent most of my waking hours inside it, but I hadn’t been in there for months.
Maybe I should stop avoiding it. Hearing Kian’s song had awoken something in me, something that yearned to get back some of the joy I used to find in music, and almost before I knew it, I found myself opening the door and letting myself in before I could second guess my decision.
Despite its lack of use, the room still smelled fresh and clean. The cleaning staff took as much care with it now as they ever had, and the grand piano in the centre of the room gleamed with fresh polish.
Gingerly, I sat down on the bench that creaked beneath my weight, and lifted the lid over the keys. My foot found the pedal as naturally as if it had been there yesterday, like slipping into an old, comfortable shoe, warm and familiar.
With my index finger, softly and quietly, I picked out the melody of the Shostakovich piece that Kian had played on his guitar earlier today. In my mind, I could hear it again, complementing my simple tune. My other fingers itched to fill out the sound, to play all the notes the way it was meant to be played, and in a moment of foolish optimism, I gave in to the temptation.
I only made it through three chords before a searing pain shot through my right hand, making me cry out in pain. Biting my lip to keep from crying, I lowered my head as the pain continued to throb, and as my frustration built, I pounded the keys hard with the palm of my left hand, taking my anger out on the innocent strings deep in the piano’s heart.
The dissonant echoes slowly faded into the air around me as I breathed deeply, waiting for the pain to pass. It would, eventually, but the ache in my heart remained. First, my parents were taken from me, and then, my music. Nothing seemed to last, so perhaps in the long run, it would be better that I wouldn’t see Kian again. He was one less thing I would have to worry about losing.
~Kian~
In the end, I waited two days before I returned to Green Park station, managing to swap shifts with the guy who had that spot scheduled at the time that Cara usually left for work. Without Thomas in my ear and hacked into the CCTV footage to tell me when Cara got to the station, I couldn’t time my music to her arrival as I had the other day. I played a mix of classical and popular music instead, hoping to catch her ear while maintaining my cover at the same time.
It ended up being part way through ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ that I caught sight of her, her long blonde hair and high heels catching my eye first in my peripheral vision as she slowed to a stop in front of me. She looked stunning in a lilac suit with a silky white blouse underneath, and I gave her a smile as I kept singing, waiting until the song had ended to greet her properly.
“So, you don’t stop just for Shostakovich. Good to know.” My greeting was carefully calculated to be casual while still showing her I remembered everything about our previous encounter. It put the ball back in her court, inviting her to make the next move.
“I told you that you’d do better with those kinds of songs,” she reminded me, peering into my guitar case which had a good scattering of coins in it so far. “I’m glad to see you again, though. I wanted to apologize for the abrupt end to our dinner the other night.”
I waved her apology away as I took a swig from my water bottle, getting some moisture back in my mouth since the stuffy air in the underground hallway seemed to suck it all away while I sang. “You do have me wondering if you’re some kind of celebrity. I have to admit my pop culture knowledge is pretty limited. Did I secretly eat a sandwich in the park with a star?”
Cara shook her head with a soft smile on her face. “Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid. Thanks for understanding. I should let you get back to it, I know you’re working.”
As she started to walk away, I quickly called out after her. “Hey, listen. I’ll be teaching a session this weekend at that charity I told you about, the one helping kids get instruments. It’s near here, so if you want to stop by…”
I let the sentence trail off, letting her fill in the blank, and she flashed me another almost-shy smile. “Maybe.”
That wasn’t much of a commitment, and I called out one more time as she took a few more steps away. “I haven’t told you the name of it yet.”
I knew she knew it, but she didn’t know I knew. I had to remember what she”d told me and what I knew through research so I didn”t slip up.
“Little Hands?” she asked, and I let a surprised smile spread across my face.
“How did you know that?”
“Magic,” she replied with a laugh, her smile a little more mischievous this time. “Have a good day, Kian.”
“You too.”
She walked off with more determination that time and I let her go, feeling pretty good about how that had gone. She hadn’t promised to be there, but at least she knew where to find me. If she didn’t show up, I’d just have to come up with another plan. I was nothing if not adaptable.
Busking hadn’t been our original idea to make contact. Originally, I planned to meet her at Little Hands, Big Dreams, the charity I knew she occasionally volunteered for. I’d signed up to volunteer there myself about four months ago, but in all that time, Cara hadn’t made an appearance. Needing a new plan, Thomas and I came up with the busking cover instead. However, my time with Little Hands wouldn’t be in vain since it provided me with another avenue to spend time with her, and another thing that Marco could check into and find me to be exactly who I claimed to be.
That would obviously be useful, as when I launched into my next song, I noticed one of the men from the park the other day watching me as he walked by among the steady stream of commuters. Was he following Cara or checking on me? Either way, it seemed a clear sign that suspicions had been raised and I would be watched. I’d need to take even more care than I already did.
I could still remember the first time I saw a picture of Cara. Thomas and I had gone to visit Matt’s widow for coffee, as we’d done every Sunday since the funeral, and as we left her house, Thomas handed me a copy of a local paper. He’d circled a photograph of a beautiful young woman dressed in an evening gown, her hair pulled back and a jewelled necklace glittering on her chest as she stood on stage next to a grand piano.
“What’s this?” I asked, scanning the article for some kind of clue about why he might be showing it to me. It seemed to be describing a charity gala at the Royal College of Music. I was a musician, sure, but not of that calibre. I didn’t get the connection.
“That’s our way in. That’s how we get justice for Matt.”
I still didn’t understand until I got to the part that talked about the woman in the picture and saw her surname: Russo.
My eyes snapped up to Thomas’. “A relative?”
“His sister. She lives in the same house. It’s rare for her to appear in public like this.”
I looked back at the picture, wishing the quality was better so I could really see her face. Her posture made her look humble and almost shy, but that didn’t fit with anything I knew of the Russo family.
“Have you gone to Robinson with this?”
“I did and he told me to drop it. Again. He said if we don’t let it go, we’ll face discipline.”
We had only stumbled across the name Russo after Matt’s death. Our commanding officer didn’t know it either, but when he spoke to his own superiors, he quickly came back with orders for us to move on. “The NCA is aware of the family. They’ve got their own investigation, they don’t want us interfering.”
The National Crime Agency dealt with organized crime across the country and there would be members of the Metropolitan Police involved. When we asked to be put in touch with them, we were told again that it was too far above our pay grade.
“These guys know what they’re doing,” Robinson tried to reassure us. “I’ve passed on everything you’ve told me and they’ll deal with it.”
As far as we could see, they weren’t doing a very good job of dealing with it at all, and sooner or later, we’d have to make a decision: did we let it go, or did we help Matt and his family the only way we knew how?
The more we learned about Cara, the more the second option called to us, and after all this time, we were finally underway.
On Saturday morning, I got to the charity early just in case Cara decided to come ahead of time to chat with me. There was no sign of her when I walked in, but the charity’s director, Beatrice, caught sight of me instead and I soon found myself in one of her famously warm hugs.
“Am I ever glad to see you, Kian.” She ruffled my hair affectionately, reinforcing the mother/son vibe we’d had since our first meeting. Although Beatrice was approaching 60, I’d never met anyone so full of energy. “John had to cancel this morning and I was wondering…”
“Say no more.” John usually led the guitar session for the very young children while I dealt with the older, surlier ones. “I’m yours as long as you need me today.”
“You’re an angel is what you are.” She planted a kiss on my cheek, pulling me down to her height so she could reach. “What would I do without you?”
“You’ve been running this place for thirty years and I’ve been here for four months,” I pointed out with a laugh. “I’m sure you’d manage without me somehow.”
“Not today we wouldn’t,” she argued, already moving on to the next problem to be solved. “I’ll switch the sessions so they’re in the same room back-to-back. You won’t have to move.”
“Got it,” I called out after her but she’d already left the room. A few of the other volunteers were milling about, chatting over a cup of tea and a biscuit, and I greeted them with a smile before taking a seat at the piano bench.
My new song still haunted me, not quite finished yet. The verses and the chorus were pretty good but it needed a bridge and nothing I tried seemed to fit. While I had the chance, I plucked out the melody on the piano keys, trying to fill in the blanks in my mind.
“Do you play piano as well?”
Cara’s voice from behind me took me completely by surprise. I’d been so lost in the music in my head, I hadn’t noticed her come in. That didn’t speak well of my undercover skills.
Unlike the other days I’d spoken to her when she was on her way to or from work, she had dressed far more casually that day, though still with plenty of style in skinny jeans and a soft wool jumper. A loose braid held back her blonde hair and somehow, I found her even more appealing that way than in her professional attire. She held a light jacket in her hands, a bag slung over her shoulder.
Although I’d hoped she would come, I hadn’t been at all sure she would, and triumph flowed through me as I gave her a friendly, welcoming smile.
“What you’ve just seen is about as good as it gets,” I admitted, holding up my index finger. “One finger only.”
“I didn’t recognize the song.” She phrased it as a statement but I heard the question behind her words. She obviously had an ear for music, as her challenge to me the other day showed, and she must have been annoyed that she couldn’t place it.
“There’s no reason you should. That’s one of my own and it’s still a work-in-progress.”
“You write?” The interest in her eyes was clear and we’d obviously have a lot to talk about if we had the time, but unfortunately, at the moment, I didn’t.
“I do, but right now, I’ve got to go give a bunch of cocky teenagers their first guitar lesson. They might watch their language a bit more if a beautiful woman were in the room too. What do you say? Can I tempt you to join me?”
A blush crept into her cheeks as I called her beautiful, and I could hardly believe how innocent she seemed in some ways, yet cool and confident in others. She was far more like the shy-looking girl in that newspaper photo than I had expected, which became clearer every time we talked.
“I’d love to see you in action,” she agreed. “Lead the way.”
~Cara~
I couldn’t help looking back over my shoulder as I followed Kian into the music room, checking to see if anyone was behind me. Thankfully, I seemed to be on my own.
When I saw Kian at the tube station again the other morning, I almost didn’t stop. It seemed pointless and potentially embarrassing if he’d been turned off by what happened in the park, but I couldn’t seem to stop my feet from slowing down anyway, and when he looked over at me and smiled, my body immediately rooted to the spot. That smile felt like the warmth of the sun on my skin, a smile that said he didn’t blame me for the strange ending to our previous encounter, a smile that said he’d give me another chance if I wanted it.
Even so, I only planned to apologize and nothing else. Marco wouldn’t approve of anything more, and as I’d already decided, life would be easier if I followed his rules. But living under Marco’s rules had never made my heart beat faster the way it did when Kian invited me to join him at Little Hands. I told him I’d think about it, hiding my smile as I walked away and headed to the tube.
What were the odds that he would volunteer at the same charity I used to give my time to? I’d always read books and watched stories on TV about people whose lives happened to magically intertwine, fate bringing them together, but I never thought it would happen to me. Fate only ever brought me bad things, not good ones, but maybe, after all this time, my luck might finally be changing.
I couldn’t make any promises, though, not when I needed to get Marco’s permission to go out on the weekend.
I waited until he came to the kitchen to get some food on Friday before going out for the night. He was always out late on the weekends. He said he got most of his work done over drinks with his business associates, whatever that meant. It went without saying that I never got invited.
“I’d like to go back to the charity I volunteered with before the accident,” I told him, trying to sound casual about it as I leaned against the kitchen island. The large, well-equipped kitchen would never be used at all if it were up to the two of us. I had never learned to cook and Marco considered it unworthy of his time. We had a personal chef who prepared all our meals, and Marco went to the fridge to pull out his usual plate that had been prepared for him before he went out. “They’re having a teaching day tomorrow. I wouldn’t be volunteering, I’m not sure if I’m ready for that yet, but I thought I could watch and see how I feel.”
“Is that the real reason you want to go?” Marco pulled the plastic wrap off his plate and began to pick at the food, never taking his eyes off me.
I had never been good at lying to my brother. He had a way of staring at me that made me feel like he could read my thoughts. My heart began to beat faster, my hands started to sweat, and my throat closed up whenever he fixed those unblinking, dark eyes on me. I gave myself away every single time. Through my panic, I tried to imagine how he could possibly know the real reason behind my request, but I soon figured it out.
The background check.
He told me he would look into Kian and he must have found out that he volunteered there. I would have to come clean.
“The musician I met earlier this week told me he volunteers there. When he mentioned it, it reminded me of how much I used to enjoy it. Like I said, I’m not sure I’m ready to return to it, but this would be a risk-free way to test the waters.”
He said nothing to that, still watching me as he chewed his food, slowly and methodically.
As I always did in the situations when he kept staring at me, I kept talking. “You must not have found anything on him or you would have told me already, so what does it matter to you if he’s there or not?”
Finally, he looked away, grabbing a bottle of water off the counter to take a drink. “No, I didn’t find anything. He’s clean. Maybe too clean.”
I groaned in frustration. “You’ve got to be kidding. He’s a good guy, so that makes him dangerous?”
“He seems like a good guy. For now, all we really know is that he’s an unknown,” Marco said firmly, as if that answered everything. “It’s not worth the risk.”
I could almost feel Kian slipping away, the door closing in front of me before I had a chance to step through it, and tears began to gather in the corners of my eyes. For the first time in months, I had felt something other than emptiness, and my brother wanted to snatch it away from me for no good reason, or at least not any that I could see.
He almost never changed his mind, but when he glanced back over at me and saw the tears, his expression softened. For a moment, I could almost see the little boy he used to be, before the weight of responsibility fell on his shoulders. “Don’t cry, Cara. It’s for your own good.”
“How is it ‘good’ that I have no friends? How is it ‘good’ that I have no one to talk to?”
“You have me,” he tried to say, but I scoffed in disagreement.
“You’re working almost all the time. You go out and leave me here alone, all the time. You said you would let me work when I couldn’t play anymore, but even at work, I have no one to talk to. This man is nice, Marco. I can talk to him. He’s a musician. He volunteers to teach kids how to play. Music is in him just like it’s in me. Or at least like it used to be.”
Marco looked away from me, like he always did when I brought up the fact that I couldn’t play anymore. He had always said it didn’t feel like home unless he could hear me playing, and I knew he felt bad that I had lost something that meant so much to me. Maybe it was manipulative to bring that up now, but every word I spoke was true.
“He doesn’t care about your business. This is not about you! Why can’t you see that and just let me have one thing in my life that doesn’t have anything to do with you?”
My voice had grown louder the longer I went on so that by the end, I was nearly shouting at him, my whole body shaking.
Marco looked shaken too. I hadn’t raised my voice to him for a very long time, not since I hid away after our parents died, playing the piano for so many hours a day that my fingers bled, and he forced me to stop and deal with the grief I didn’t want to face.
That time, he helped me, but this time, he was the one standing in my way, and I honestly didn’t know how he’d react to my outburst.
For a long moment, he didn’t say anything at all, letting the sound of my shouting linger in the air just as the piano chords had the other night.
Finally, he exhaled a long, slow, continuous breath. “Alright. If it means that much to you, we can compromise.”
My heart leapt in anticipation, even as I tried not to get my hopes up too high. “What does that mean?”
“It means you can go to the event tomorrow. Security will follow you there and check the building.”
That sounded reasonable enough, but I suspected there must be more, and I was soon proven right.
“If you want to see him again after that, I want to talk to him first. Alone.”
“Marco,” I groaned, but on this point, he held firm.
“That’s non-negotiable, Cara. Do you think I would protect our home but not you? You’re more precious to me than anything else in this world, so if he wants to spend time with you, he can prove to me that he deserves it. You can let me know after tomorrow if you think it’s worth it.”
That ended our conversation. Overall, I counted it as a victory, but anxiety followed me into the Little Hands building. What could I possibly say that would adequately prepare Kian to meet Marco? Would anyone think it was worth being interrogated by the rather intimidating brother of a woman he’d just met?
I’d have to figure that out before we parted ways, but as I watched him teaching the kids their chords with the same mix of humour, sarcasm and genuine interest he’d shown me, I couldn’t help hoping that his answer would be yes.