In Too Deep

4. Chapter Four

~Kian~

As I told her it would, Cara’s presence made quite an impact on the group of teenage boys who came to my lesson that day. Everyone sat up a little straighter and paid more attention, trying to impress her.

“Yo, Kee, is that your girl?” one of the return attendees asked when I went to sit next to him to help him with some fingering, looking over at Cara with naked jealousy. “What’s your secret, man?”

“The guitar,” I told him, which was half true. That had been the key to connecting with her even if she wasn’t ‘my girl’. “Keep practicing and you never know what might happen.”

I’d never seen the boys work so hard as they did after that.

When the session ended, a few of them lingered, trying to work up the nerve to talk to Cara, and my younger students, John’s usual group, began to filter in, some with their parents to carry the guitar because the kids couldn’t manage the cases on their own.

I motioned to Cara to come over to me when she’d finally seen off the last of her potential Romeos, and she stepped up to the front of the room hesitantly.

“I don’t usually work with the younger kids,” I admitted. “Are you up on what songs kids like these days? You got any younger brothers or sisters or cousins I could pick your brain about?”

I knew she didn’t, but as part of keeping my cover, she had to believe I didn’t know anything more about her than what she’d already told me.

However, she surprised me by coming up with a suggestion. “I don’t know any kids personally, but there’s a young pianist I got to know, a real prodigy, and she has a YouTube channel where kids ask her to play their favourite songs. I could see what the most requested songs are?”

I flashed her a grateful smile that felt almost entirely genuine. “You’re a genius.”

Her cheeks turning slightly pink at the compliment, she returned to her seat at the back of the room, scrolling through her phone while I got the kids started with some basic warm-ups. By the time I was ready to dive into the meat of the lesson, Cara had a list of songs ready to go for me. I let the kids vote on the one they wanted to learn, and we spent the rest of the lesson playing that one together. It sounded terrible, naturally, but they all seemed to have fun and Cara’s smile matched the ones on the kids’ faces as they filed out at the end of the session.

“You’re great with kids. Are you sure you don’t do this all the time?”

I laughed as I put my own guitar away, still sitting on my stool. “No, but I’ve had enough experience over the years that I should have picked up a few tricks here and there. Five brothers, remember? And a whole lot of cousins too.”

“I remember.” Her smile made it clear she did, harkening back to her reaction when I’d mentioned my siblings in the first place.

“I’m finished here for the day now, but I’m going to head out and grab some lunch. You’re welcome to join me if you like.” After two hours of being surrounded by other people, I really wanted a chance to speak to her in private again.

Before she could reply, Beatrice’s head popped through the open door. “Thanks again, Kian, I heard it went great.”

“Checking up on me, were you?” I teased, and she laughed before catching sight of Cara. Her head swivelled in a double take before her grin widened.

“Why, Cara! We haven’t seen you in ages. How are you, sweetie?”

Cara had no choice but to allow herself to be swept up in one of Beatrice’s unstoppable hugs.

“I’m doing alright, thank you, Beatrice. I just came to observe today, but maybe I can come back and volunteer again sometime soon.”

“You take as much time as you need. There’s no pressure here,” Beatrice assured her before looking between Cara and me curiously. “How do you two know each other?”

Cara looked unsure about what to say, so I filled in the blanks. “She left a tip in my guitar case a few days and has been following me around ever since.”

“Wh-what? I didn’t… that’s not what…” Cara stuttered in surprise while Beatrice let out a delighted cackle.

“Don’t take anything this one says to heart, dearie,” the older woman told Cara, shaking her head at me affectionately. “He’s a smooth talker and a musician, nothing but trouble.”

“You spend your whole life surrounded by musicians,” I pointed out. “What does that say about you?”

“That I like trouble.” Beatrice reached over to tousle my hair like I was a little boy. “Have you ever heard Cara play, Kian?”

I shook my head truthfully. I knew she’d played, but no matter how hard I searched, I’d never been able to find a video.

“You’re missing out. I’ve been in this business a long time and I’ve never heard anything like this girl on the piano.”

Cara blushed again, but that time from discomfort as she directed her gaze to the floor. Her inability to play probably lay behind that embarrassment.

The Kian she met at the tube station wouldn’t know that, however, so I had to ask her about it, even though I knew it would be painful for her to talk about. “Well, there’s a piano right next door. I’m free now. I’d love to listen to you.”

Cara’s eyes raised to me unhappily while Beatrice looked uncharacteristically flustered herself. “Oh, well, that was before, of course. I don’t know how things are going now.”

“It’s alright, Beatrice.” Cara did her best to give her a smile but it came across as obviously fake. With a deep breath, she turned to me. “I don’t play anymore, but I have some recordings at home. Maybe I can show you one sometime.”

“Oh, you should put them online,” Beatrice encouraged her. “They deserve to be seen.”

“My brother doesn’t like sharing anything online,” she explained softly, and I had to fight to keep from reacting to that. Marco Russo was good at keeping things hidden, that much I knew. “He’s always talking about identity theft and video cloning and all kinds of things I don’t really understand.”

Beatrice could only shrug. “Well, if someone wants my identity, they can have it. Then they’d have to run this place and I could take a holiday!”

We all smiled, knowing she didn’t mean that. Beatrice was the heart of this place and it owned her heart too.

“Alright, enough of me wasting your time. You’ve done your time, go off and enjoy the rest of your Saturday, Kian. Cara, it was lovely to see you.”

“You too,” Cara replied, waving as Beatrice walked out of the room. We could hear her already talking to someone else as she walked down the hall.

“Is it just me, or does it feel like a vacuum every time she leaves a room?” I wondered out loud, and when Cara smiled that time, it looked more natural.

“I was a little bit terrified of her the first time I came here,” she admitted. “I kind of still am.”

I picked up my guitar case, getting to my feet. “Well, now I’m even more flattered that you came to hang out with me today. How about lunch, then?”

“I’m not supposed to go anywhere other than here today.” Her reply was so quiet, I had to lean forward to hear her.

“Says who?” I asked with a smile, still playing my part even though I could guess exactly who we were talking about.

“My brother’s a little overprotective.” Her eyes pleaded with me to understand. “It’s a long story, but that’s why I had the security the other night too. They’re waiting for me outside.”

That didn’t really surprise me. Going out seemed to be out of the question, then, but I wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop me. “Well, what if we order some food here? As long as we stay inside, they won’t know the difference, will they?”

Cara’s expression lightened, her eyes filling with gratitude and hope. “You don’t mind? I know it’s weird, but…”

“If it means I get to know you a bit better, I don’t mind at all.”

I meant that, too. Just maybe not entirely the way she wanted me to.

~Cara~

I had been certain Kian would decide that hanging out with me was more trouble than it was worth when I explained that I couldn’t leave the building other than to go home. It sounded ridiculous even to me, and I had been living that kind of life for years. To someone as free and independent and comfortable with people as he seemed to be, it must have sounded absolutely absurd.

And yet, he made me feel like it made no difference at all. Still smiling and kind, he led me to the volunteer break room, where he seemed to know everybody by name, and he sat next to me on the sofa as we scrolled through his phone to look at delivery options.

“I know you like crayfish,” he mused. “How do you feel about sushi?”

It made me unreasonably happy that he remembered what I’d eaten the other day. I could remember every detail too, but I thought it had to do with the fact that the whole encounter had been so unusual for me. He didn’t have the same excuse, and yet he remembered anyway.

“I’ve never tried it,” I admitted, and Kian looked up at me in surprise.

“How is that possible? There are sushi places on just about every corner in London.”

“I don’t really eat out much.”

Although true, that didn’t tell the whole story. I could buy it from the supermarket or our chef could prepare it, but Marco had added it to the list of banned foods. Anything that might cause food poisoning was deemed too risky, another of those things that had never particularly bothered me before, mostly because I had always been too busy with my music to really pay attention, but Kian’s reaction told me that he found it unusual.

Luckily, he didn’t ask me to explain any further. He simply made me an offer instead. “Do you want to try it?”

“Sure, if you like it.” What Marco didn’t know couldn’t hurt him… I hoped. “What do you suggest?”

He picked out a few things, probably more than we needed, but he said we could always share any leftovers with the other volunteers. There would be a variety for me to try, at least. When I offered to chip in for the cost, he refused. “I thought you only carried 50s anyway,” he teased.

He had me there. “I do have a bank card, though.”

I didn’t know how I could transfer money to Kian since I’d never done it before, but he probably knew a way. However, he wouldn’t even consider it. “Don’t worry about it, Cara. I’m still in your debt for the other day.”

He slipped his phone back into his pocket after placing the order and turned to me with an open, interested expression.

“Now, you can tell me not to pry if you want, but after what Beatrice said, I have to ask: why don’t you play the piano anymore?”

I should have expected that question. It had caught me off guard when Beatrice brought it up, but to be fair to her, I had kind of let it slip earlier too when I mentioned the young YouTuber that I played with. He already knew I recognized classical music, and he had given me every indication that he paid attention to the things I said, so he would have picked up on it sooner or later. I might as well tell him the truth and get it over with.

Even so, my chest began to tighten as I tried to get the words out, my eyes darting around the room at everyone else whose attention suddenly seemed to focus on me, and Kian quickly put his hand on my arm as he noticed my breathing start to quicken and it became a struggle for me to get enough air in. “Come with me.”

Without any further explanation, he pulled me to my feet and took me down the hall. The charity’s headquarters used to be a lodging house and a lot of small rooms lined the corridor. He took me to one of those, an office of some sort, pulling me inside and closing the door behind us.

“Sit down here and put your head down,” he advised, his voice calm and soothing as he directed me to one of the chairs by the desk. “Breathe nice and deep, in and out.”

Somehow, he knew just what would help. After just a few breaths, the tightening began to ease and I could breathe easier.

“Better?” he asked when I raised my head, his blue eyes warm and concerned.

I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak before I had a chance to clear my throat. Again, anticipating my need, he found an unopened bottle of water on the desk and handed it to me. Wordlessly, I took a drink, still breathing deeply, until my body felt normal again.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing I said. “I don’t know what happened. That’s never happened to me before.”

“It can be a sign of post-traumatic stress,” he explained, still calm and unflustered. “I’ve got friends in stressful jobs and I’ve seen it before. It’s perfectly normal.”

It didn’t feel normal.

Very little about my life felt normal.

“You don’t have to tell me if it’s upsetting,” he added, reminding me about why I had panicked in the first place. “I don’t want you to be in any distress.”

“No… no, I’d like to tell you.” I never told anyone about it, other than Marco when it happened. He went ballistic. I’d never seen him so upset, other than the night our parents died. Whenever I had to explain it to anyone else, like Beatrice, I simply said I’d had an accident, but with Kian, I wanted to tell him more. “Just… forgive me if I struggle a bit with it, please.”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” He sat down next to me, giving me his full attention again. “You can tell me as much or as little as you like.”

Taking another deep breath, my hands gripping the bottle tightly, I took myself back to that day. “I was at the Royal Albert Hall, preparing for a concert. I’d been invited to take part after a recital I did at the Royal College of Music. It would be my first time performing in front of a large crowd like that, and I was pretty nervous.”

Kian smiled sympathetically, though I couldn’t imagine him being nervous about anything. He played in front of thousands of people every day, though they usually only listened to him for a few seconds at a time as they walked by.

“After the rehearsal, I left to go back to the college, where I’d left some of my sheet music. I don’t know if you know the area, but it’s just across the street, on the other side from Kensington Gardens.”

He nodded in confirmation, encouraging me to go on. “I know it.”

“As I was walking towards the street, this little girl ran into the street ahead of me. At the same time, out of nowhere, a motorcycle turned onto the street, going far too fast.”

I could still hear the squeal of the motorcycle’s brakes, the mother’s scream from the side of the road, and the sickening crack of the bike hitting the ground.

My breathing had started to accelerate again and Kian placed his hand on top of mine, very gently. “Take your time, Cara.”

I nodded as I tried to push the more visceral memories down and focus on the facts instead. “I ran over to see if there was anything I could do. A few other people did too, but I was one of the closest. Luckily, the driver hadn’t actually hit her, but when he stopped so suddenly, he was thrown off, and the bike fell onto the little girl.”

“Shit,” he breathed out, not so much a word as a horrified sigh, and I nodded, keeping my eyes down on the water bottle.”

“There were two other men right there with me, and together, we managed to lift the bike off her and pull her out. She seemed to be okay; injured and terrified, but okay. Her mother was hysterical, holding her and kissing her, and the little girl was crying too. She kept pointing back at the motorcycle, and finally, we realized that she’d dropped her doll underneath it.”

I closed my eyes to try to block out the memories that came, the little girl’s screams, the mother trying to calm her, people on their phones calling for help, the man who had been on the bike not moving.

“The men who helped me lift the bike told me they could hold it while I reached under to grab the doll. I tried to be quick but…”

My breath caught as I saw the moment again in slow motion, my hands beneath the bike, the doll’s arm just out of reach, the ambulance siren in the distance, the men encouraging me to stretch just a little farther, and then…

“I don’t know exactly what happened. Somehow, they lost their grip. The bike fell and it landed on me. On my hands. Both of them, but the right one got it worse.”

“Fuck, Cara.” Kian’s arm circled my shoulder, pulling me closer to him. In my anxious state, I barely even noticed how natural it felt or how the scent of his cologne helped to calm the pounding of my heart.

I summarized the rest as clinically as I could. “They were broken. Badly. The bike weighed over two hundred kilos. Some of the bone was crushed rather than broken. My brother got the very best doctors and they worked on them for hours. Honestly, the fact that I didn’t lose any fingers and that they work at all is a miracle.”

“But they’ll never be like they were,” he whispered quietly, understanding completely.

“No. They’ll never work the same, and I’ll never be able to play the way I did. That’s why I don’t play anymore.”

I still left some things out. I didn’t tell him how Marco ranted and raged, how I heard him shouting at his men outside my hospital room door. Apparently, the men who accidentally dropped the bike on me had disappeared, no one was able to find them again. The mother and daughter went missing too. The police questioned me, but they weren’t able to tell me anything except that it had all been an unfortunate accident.

I didn’t tell Kian about that, and he didn’t say anything else either. He simply held me against him, his body warm and supportive, until the screams in my head quietened and the throbbing phantom pains in my hands went away.

~Kian~

As I held Cara next to me, comforting her over what must have been a terrible experience, no matter what the extenuating circumstances were, the feelings of compassion and perhaps even pity that swelled up inside me were stronger than I expected.

When I asked Cara why she didn’t play the piano anymore, I thought she would give me the condensed answer: that she had an accident which affected her hands and leave it at that. So when she started to have a panic attack and told me about the day in detail, it took me completely by surprise.

She was opening up to me at a surprisingly quick pace, far faster than I’d anticipated, and I wondered how much it had to do with having very few other people in her life. It felt genuine and not manipulative in any way, but I had to keep my guard up anyway, especially since she’d left out a rather big part of the events of that day.

Most of what she told me, I already knew. The incident with the motorcycle happened after Thomas and I had already identified Cara as a potential target for our operation, and he’d set up an alert to notify him of any mention of her in the press or in the police system. Needless to say, his phone lit up like a Christmas tree that day.

What she told me matched with the statement she’d given to the police almost exactly. The accident in the street, the child under the bike, the men coming to help, I knew all of it. I’d seen the CCTV footage and the mobile phone video taken by a passerby.

But what she didn’t tell me, the part that didn’t come up in our conversation, was that it hadn’t been an accident at all.

According to the police investigation, the whole thing had been an elaborate setup, with Cara herself as the intended victim. The motorcyclist was a stunt driver, the ‘mother’ an actor. Whether the child was in on it or not couldn’t be conclusively proven, but the investigating officers felt she must have been, that it would have had to have been rehearsed to ensure that the child wasn’t actually injured. The men who helped Cara to lift the motorcycle were two local thugs with tenuous connections to David Park, the name used by one of the city’s most notorious Korean crime bosses.

As far as the officers in charge had been able to tell, Marco Russo did something that upset his rival and the other man decided to send Marco a message the only way these bastards seemed to know how: through brutal, heartless violence.

When those men let go of the motorcycle, crushing Cara Russo’s hands beneath it, that was exactly what they’d set out to do. Everything had been orchestrated to lead to that moment.

The ‘accident’ was a message from David Park to Marco Russo, telling him to back off. It was a warning that next time, he wouldn’t stop at just her hands. To the outside world, it might have seemed unplanned, but nothing about it was accidental, and in the process, Cara lost the one thing that meant more to her than anything else.

The woman and child never gave a statement. The police could never locate them because they didn’t want to be found.

The two men who’d dropped the bike were found with bullet holes between their eyes in an east London dockyard two days later. Based on the lack of other injuries, investigators assumed David Park had ordered them killed himself, because if Marco had found them first, they would have been in far worse shape.

Did she really not know any of this? Didn’t she know the reason why her gift had been stolen from her? Before meeting her, I thought she must have, but the way she trembled as she told me the story and the flat way she said that it had all been an accident made me wonder if she knew less about her brother’s dealings than we had assumed. If he’d kept that from her, what else had he hidden?

Maybe her innocence was as sincere as it seemed.

I couldn’t say for certain, and I also had to acknowledge, as her body leaned against mine, that it might just be wishful thinking on my part. In the short amount of time we’d spent together, I found myself liking Cara more than I expected to. It would be nice to think she had no part in the family business, but it still seemed very unlikely. I had to remain objective and not let myself fall into the trap of finding the Russos sympathetic in any way. With Marco, I had less worry about that happening; Cara would be a little trickier, especially if she kept looking up at me with those big brown eyes, vulnerable and uncertain.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, clearing her throat as she pulled away from me. I let her go, my arm sliding off her shoulder almost reluctantly. “I didn’t mean to dump all that on you. I haven’t talked about it since it happened.”

“You aren’t seeing a therapist or anything? That kind of life-changing event can really throw you off course, and there’s nothing wrong with asking for some help.”

I asked the question partly because I wanted to know if anyone out there would have files we might be able to access, but also partly because I thought she really could use some help. All things considered, she seemed to be handling it pretty well, but it couldn’t be easy, and her reactions today suggested she had repressed quite a lot of it.

Cara shook her head sheepishly. “I mentioned that my brother is overprotective, right? He doesn’t want me telling any ‘secrets’ to anyone else. He says I can talk to him if I need to get anything off my chest, but he doesn’t really have any training in that kind of thing.”

I could hardly think of anyone less qualified to treat someone’s mental health than Marco Russo, but what she just said was interesting. If Marco was worried about her giving things away to a therapist, it must mean she knew things of value. That was a mark against her being innocent, and the pang of disappointment that accompanied that thought was stronger than it should have been.

“Well, if you ever change your mind, let me know and I could recommend someone. I’m afraid I don’t have any training either, so I won’t offer myself, but if you ever just want to vent, I’m good at listening.”

My phone buzzed with a text, letting me know our lunch had arrived. I hated to step away while we were having this moment of connection and I definitely didn’t want to return to the busy staff room.

“Do you mind waiting here? I’ll go grab the food and we can eat in here, if that’s okay with you?”

She nodded gratefully and I hurried out to the door to meet the delivery man. Over the guy’s shoulder, I could see one of Marco’s men, his eyes trained on the door, but I pretended not to notice as I took the bags of food and returned to Cara.

The mood lightened as I laid out all the food on the small desk in the office and explained everything to her. She was willing to try everything once, but she wasn’t shy about letting me know when she didn’t like something either. The California rolls were her favourite, followed by the salmon sashimi.

We talked about Beatrice some more and the charity, leaving our previous conversation in the past until Cara herself brought it up after insisting she couldn’t eat another bite.

“You asked me why that song you were playing the other day meant so much to me. That was the song I was supposed to play at the concert. It was the song I played at the rehearsal that day. The last song I ever played.”

I knew she had played the song in public before; I had chosen it for that reason, but I hadn’t realized it had quite that much significance for her. “I’m sorry if it brought up bad memories for you. That’s quite a coincidence.”

She quickly shook her head. “No, it’s not a bad thing. It took me back to what it felt like to get lost in that song. Music was always an escape for me, until it couldn’t be, and I’ve missed it. You gave it back to me, just for a second, and that’s why I stopped.”

Those brown eyes drew me in again, their look inviting and deceptively warm, and this time, I was the one who pulled back before I could do anything foolish like fall into them any deeper.

“Well, it’s not the Royal Albert Hall or anything, but I play some nights at my local pub. If you ever wanted to come and listen and forget…”

I let the sentence trail off, leaving the invitation open, but Cara winced. “Actually, that’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“You need to talk to me about coming to the pub?” I gave her a smile to confirm I was teasing, and she smiled back, tightly.

“Not that specifically, but about seeing you again in any capacity. I mean, assuming you wanted to see me again.”

“I just asked you to come see me play, Cara,” I reminded her. “I think that counts.”

“Right.” She shook her head at herself, her gaze down. “Well, the thing is, my brother, like I told you, he’s…”

“Overprotective.” She’d said it several times, and she seemed to respond well when I teased her, so I filled in the word for her, and sure enough, she both blushed and smiled.

“Right. And his security men told him about seeing you in the park the other day and, well, the thing is… um, he said that if you want to spend time with me, he wants to meet you first.”

She grimaced unhappily, clearly regretting having to say the words, while I did everything in my power to keep a neutral expression on my face. That couldn’t be more perfect. I thought it would take weeks or even months to get face-to-face with Marco, and now, I was being offered the opportunity on a silver platter. Thomas wasn’t going to believe this.

However, I had to play it cool. If I came across as too eager, that would look suspicious, and Cara’s behaviour showed me that she expected me to put up a fight about it.

I did my best to find a middle ground. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever had to go on an interview to be able to talk to a woman before.”

Cara winced again. “I know it’s ridiculous. I’ve tried to tell him that, but he’s… well, he’s hard to say no to.”

I’d heard that same sentiment before in very different circumstances.

“Our parents died when we were young,” Cara continued. “And Marco has been like a second father to me in some ways. He sees himself as my guardian, despite our ages. I know you don’t know me that well and it’s a lot to ask, but the thing is…”

She inhaled sharply before forcing the rest of the sentence out.

“I’d really like to see you again and this is the only way I can.”

I stayed silent for a moment to make her think it was actually a hard decision before I gave in. “Well, you’ve surprised me at just about every turn since we met, so what’s one more? If you really think it’s necessary, I can speak to your brother.”

Her face lit up with relief and a bit of disbelief. “Are you sure?”

“Don’t try to talk me out of it, Cara. I’m right on the edge here.”

She laughed, nervously and happily, and asked for my number. She added it to her phone and told me that her brother would probably get in touch with me directly.

“He can be a little intimidating, but I promise, underneath it all, he’s actually really nice.”

Keeping a straight face after that statement might have been the hardest thing I had to do yet. “I’ll try not to let you down. What’s his name, for when he calls?”

Of course I knew it already, but as far as she knew, I didn’t.

“Marco. Marco Russo.”