Chapter 32
32
BENNETT
I look at the computer screen in front of me and I grind my teeth for what feels like the hundredth time tonight.
Staring back at me, clear as day is Marisela Serrano.
If I had put money on a possible dead person popping out of nowhere, my money would be on anyone else but her. My brother, sure, but his wife was never even a fucking thought. I should be more shocked that she is currently on my screen, but I’m not.
There is a reason she decided to make an appearance after all these years, and it wasn’t to drop off my brother’s watch because she found it somewhere. She’s here to for something. I know she is. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have spent time playing games and would have contacted her children. Contacted me directly. Not just show up at the office one random weekday.
You would think that your children you haven’t seen in years would be your damn first priority, but for someone like Marisela playing mind tricks is at the top of the list.
“You staring at the computer screen for hours on end isn’t going to give you the answers that you are looking for.” Dante voice from where he sits across from me.
We are currently sitting in the study at the penthouse, have been for about three hours now, looking over the security footage from earlier today that has my sister-in-law front and center.
It’s been six hours since Ella told me about Marisela being in my office and five since the Lane security team was able to get me every single tape that I requested and talked to the security guard that escorted Marisela out. As soon as the tapes were in my possession and I got more details as to what happened, I made some calls and Ella and I made our way to the penthouse.
When Dante arrived a few hours ago, we started to go through everything. Every piece of camera footage, every single angle. Everything that showed Marisela, we have over analyzed. And nothing has given me the answers that I want.
Why is she here? Out of all the times, she could have shown up, why the fuck do it now?
But the question that keeps plaguing my mind, is what does my brother’s watch have to do with any of this? Is she trying to send a message?
I have a feeling that this one of her many mind tricks, that the watch is just to get my attention. But why?
“I need to figure out why the fuck she is here.” I voice, moving my eyes away from the screen and meeting the stares of the mafia boss sitting in front of me.
“And you will, but concentrating on how she got into the building without security noticing her isn’t going to help with that.”
I won’t tell him as much, but he’s right. I can’t keep obsessing over how she got it. If anything I should concentrate on what she did while she was in my building.
From what the footage is telling me, Marisela was inside for a total of twenty-five minutes. From what Ella says, she was in my office for five at the most, so what did she do during the rest of her time? The possibilities are endless.
As I think about it, something comes to mind and I can’t help but to mentally kick myself in the ass.
I’m looking at the wrong footage. If her coming and going isn’t going to give me any answers, looking for her as she moves through the building probably would.
Not wanting to stew in anger, I quickly pull up the footage from the elevator cameras and the ones in front of my office and notice something.
“There’s no footage of her in an elevator going up. Only coming down with the security guard.”
“How is that possible?”
I’m asking myself the same question. Our security is top of the line, we don’t have errors like this.
“Looks like she chose the one elevator that didn’t have functioning security cameras all day.” Even as I say the words, I don’t believe them. Someone messed with the cameras before she arrived, I fucking know it.
Not wanting to stew too much on who might have messed with my security system, I move on to the footage of my office. The cameras don’t have a direct line into my office, but there is a direct line to Ella’s desk.
I replay the footage from when Gerald and I leave the office to when security escorts Marisela out. Nothing catches my eye until I zoom into the frame.
The second I do, my teeth start to grind again.
As the security guards walks out of my office with Marisela’s arms in his hand, the woman stretches over as they pass Ella’s desk and swipes something from the desk.
My jaw feels like it’s going to break with how tight I’m holding it shut when I hit replay and slow down the footage. Sure enough, she swipes something from the desk. All I can tell is that it looks like a piece of paper but I can’t get a clear enough picture to see what type of paper it was.
“She took a piece of paper from Ella’s desk,” I state, feeling fucking irritated that the more that comes from all of this, the more questions I have. And I’m not anywhere near getting answers.
“It could be nothing.” Dante tries to reason but the second I throw him a glare he backtracks. “Okay, the best case scenario, it’s just a random piece of paper with no information. What about worst case?”
I see red just thinking about it.
“It has a signature.” I grumble, feeling like I’m seconds away from pulling out my own hair.
Dante sits back in his chair and thinks. His eyes dark as mine feel. “Okay. Let’s say it does have a signature. What can she do with it?”
If it were my signature, she could do a lot. Forge contracts, take money out of my bank accounts. Anything that could come to mind to a person like her.
But if she has Ella’s signature, she can’t do much with it. Even though Ella is my wife and holds my last name, her signature doesn’t hold as much power as mine, because that’s how I set things up when this whole arrangement started. Marisela could still do things with it. Mostly anything attached to the back accounts that Ella has access to, but that’s it. If this was happening a month from now though, everything would be in jeopardy. I guess luck wasn’t fully on Marisela’s side.
“Write herself a check and drain a few bank accounts.”
“If she does that, how much money are we talking about?”
“Anywhere between five to ten million dollars.”
Dante lets out an exasperated sigh. “Damn. You really went all in on this marriage didn’t you?”
Of course I fucking did, and I have no fucking regrets about it. Giving Ella access to those accounts was never something I gave a second thought to. Even though I had my doubts about her in the beginning, a part of me knew the I was going to be able to trust her. Which is why I was getting everything ready to give Ella access to everything I own and do. Now thanks to Marisela, that has to go on pause.
“What I gave my wife access to doesn’t matter. What matters is what the fuck are we going to do about Marisela. She’s here for a reason. You don’t come out of hiding just because. Something has to trigger it.”
Dante nods and looks like he is contemplating something.
“Have you talked to the kids? Have they heard from her?”
I fucking hope not.
“The only one that I have talked to is Elliot and even then, I didn’t mention anything about their mother and he didn’t sound like he knew anything. I just told him that I was sending a plane to bring him to Chicago and he better be on it.”
He asked me a million times why, but something like his mother popping up after years of us thinking she was dead is not something you mention over the phone.
They need to know though and as soon asI get more information, I will tell them.
The door to the study opens, and Ella pops in her head. She had excused herself about an hour ago to eat dinner and to check in with Henry and let him know what was going on. If Marisela even attempts to go to the house tonight, Henry will be on high alert.
“Sorry,” she says, throwing a small smile in my direction. “I just spoke to Henry and he said the Elliot is on his way. He should be at the airport about an hour.”
I give her a nod. “Thank you.”
Ella stays by the door way, looking nervous. I watch her as she opens that beautiful mouth of hers to speak a few times but nothing comes out. After about a minute, she finds her voice.
“Can I ask a question?” The question leaves her as she comes deeper into the room.
Both Dante and I give her a nod as she sits in the chair next to Dante.
“Is this woman,” she stops, as if she wants rephrase what she’s about to say, “is Marisela a bad person? You two have been in this room for hours trying to figure out her next move and I guess I’m just confused as to why. Why is her being here such a big deal? Apart from you thinking she was possibly dead.”
It’s times like these that I remember that Ella still doesn’t know all of the Lane family history. That she is still very much new to all of this and doesn’t know all the details.
Part of me knew the day she found everything out was going to come, but I wanted to be believe that I could keep all the dirty secrets away from her. That my past would be just that, the past, but of course nothing ever stays there.
Letting out a sigh, I tell her everything that I know.
“When the kids first came to live with me, he said that something was going on back where they lived in Mexico. His father-in-law was stepping further into the political game and because of some of his policies, his family became a target of threats. The day that he flew into Chicago, Marisela ended up going missing. From what I know, he flew back to go find her and to make sure that her father and the rest of her family were safe.”
I still remember seeing the fear in Robert’s face that day. It was bone chilling. I begged him not to go. To stay here where he was safe. To stay here with his kids. To stay here for me, but there things were important.
Now that I’m married, I understand him leaving. If it were Ella, I would do the same, but that doesn’t stop me from getting angry every time I think go it. My brother abandoned me twice in my life and both times he promised to come back and neither time has that promise been held.
“How was he going to find her or protect her family?” Ella asks, taking me out of the depressive state my mind was heading in.
“My brother enlisted in the military when he was eighteen, from what his records tell me. And when he was discharged, he moved to Mexico with Marisela and worked with the armed forces there to an extent.”
Ella nods as she is trying to take in all the information. “I’m guessing since Marisela is here now, he found her?”
If only it were that fucking easy.
“As far as I know, he never found her. If he is still out there, there’s a chance he doesn’t even know that she is alive.”
“Is this the first time she had popped up?” She ask, her eyes bouncing between me and Dante.
I shake my head. “No, we found out that she was alive about six years ago before she went under again.”
“How did you find out?”
Her question is simple but the answer not so much. Because it touches things that I’m sure Ella never thought she would ever have a direct line to.
Dante looks over at me as if to silently ask just how much are we going to tell her. With a simple nod, I answer him.
We’re going to tell him everything.
“Have you heard of the Muertos Cartel?” Dante asks once he sees that it’s taking me a bit to form a response.
Ella looks over at with wide eyes. “Yeah, but I don’t know much about them.”
Dante gives her a nod of understanding. “Six years ago, there was this big news story circulating about how the wife of the head of the cartel was killed.”
A small chunk of realization hits Ella. “I think I remember that. She was shot coming out of a store or something, right?”
My friend gives her a tight smile for getting it correct. “That’s right. For years there have been a few rumors flying around as to why she was killed, but as of today, nothing has been confirmed. Some say that it was a rival cartel that fired the shot, to send a message. Others say that Ronaldo, the cartel head, had a mistress and promised said mistress everything. That he would leave his wife for her, but that when she saw that he wasn’t holding up the promise, she took matters into her own hands. Rumors say that either the mistress fired the shot, or someone close to her did.”
I watch Ella as she takes in everything that Dante is saying, but I could see questions moving around in her eyes.
“And who do people say the mistress was?”
Dante looks over at me to answer.
“Marisela.”
When I first heard the rumors, I didn’t want to believe them. I didn’t want to believe that my brother’s wife would fake her own deathly to pop up as the mistress to a cartel head while her husband looked for her and I took care of her kids but the more I learned about her, the more my perspective shifted.
“And you believe it?”
I give my wife a nod. “I do. Marisela had to be in something dark if nobody had heard or seen her for four years. And her being intertwined with the cartel makes sense.”
When I hear that Marisela popped up the first time, it came with a lot of questions. The main on being, where the hell was Robert?
I know for a fact that my brother went back to the home that he and his wife built. What I don’t know is what happened when he got there. There is something deep in me that tells me that I already know what happened. He got caught in the middle of a cross fire while looking for Marisela and he is buried deep in the ground and that’s why I haven’t been able to find him.
But I’m not going to accept that until I get confirmation. Hard, solid conformation that I see with my own fucking eyes. Marisela is alive, so can he.
“What happen to Marisela after the shooting?”
“She disappeared again. Her and her family all basically fell off the face of the earth for about two years.”
Ella’s eyebrows bunch up in confusion. “Two years? You mean they showed up again after two years? Did Robert find her? Did they come back for the kids?”
A bit of anger rolls through me as I remember all the details of how I became the kids legal guardian.
My jaw ticks as I speak. “Only she came back. According to her, she hadn’t seen or heard from my brother in years and had no idea where he was, which I called bullshit.”
She knows. I know she fucking knows and if I ever get in the same room with her again, I will torture her until I find out.
“What happened when she showed up?”
I let out a sigh and relieve a memory that I tried so hard to bury.
“She went to the manor and I took pity on her. I knew what it was like to not have my mother around, and I didn’t want the kids to go through that any longer, so I let her in their lives. Which was one the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made.”
I see the question in Ella’s eyes before she speaks it.“Why?”
“Because she didn’t want anything to do with the kids. I don’t know how much my brother told her about our family, but she knew we had money. So she came here, pretended to miss her children and want to give them a better life, but in reality, she was just here trying to figure out how to get her hands on the Lane family fortune. In a period of two weeks, she stole anything she could get her hands on. Turns out my brother’s wife is a greedy bitch that is only after two things. Money and power. After I realized what she was doing, that she wasn’t telling me the truth about Robert, I threatened her, and she signed over her parental rights.”
I can still see the anger on Elliot’s face when his mother told him that I was forcing her to leave. I was twenty five and I was looking out for my family. He hated me for it, and to this day still holds some resentment towards me because of it.
He’s realizing why I did it, though. Its taken a few years, but he’s seeing that when it comes to him and his siblings I would do anything to protect them. Including keeping them away from their mother.
She is as toxic as they come and they don’t need to be exposed to that.
“Why did you think she was dead?”
“Because much like my brother, she fell of the face of the earth when I made her leave. I had no confirmation that said otherwise.”
“Why do you think she decided to pop up now, after all these years?” She asks, her eyes bouncing from me and Dante once more.
“That’s the fucking question of the night.” Dante mutters out.
“I don’t know why she’s here, or why now, but she’s here for a reason and I will find out what it is.” I don’t give a shit if I have to be in the same room as her, I will find out why she is here.
Ella gives me a a nod, like she is silently telling me that she’s with me on this.
I wonder if she would still be with me if I tell her that if it gets to it, I won’t stop until Marisela is in the ground.
A phone rings somewhere in the penthouse, and Ella quickly goes to go answer it, leaving Dante and me in the same place as before, with more questions than answers.
“What do you want to do? Be on the lookout and hope she pops up somewhere else?” Dante throws the suggestion out and as much as I want to tell him that we aren’t going to be doing that, I can’t.
We have no information to go off on. All we know is that Marisela is somewhere in the city. We don’t know where she is going to go next, if she is working with someone, or if she will make another appearance anytime soon.
“That’s the only thing we can do.” I can’t believe that I’m just going to leave shit up to chance, but what more can I do? “I’ll increase security. Here, the manor, the office. Hell, even at the kids’ schools. She’s going to pop out again, if she wants something so desperately, and when she does, she’s not going to have any place to run.”
Dante nods in agreement. “I’ll have men ready for whenever you need them.”
“Thank you.”
With that, I close all the security footage from today. I’m going to be obsessing over it for days to come, I know that for sure, but right now, I’m not going to be getting any information. I need to come back with a clear head.
As I walk Dante out of the study, I try to get everything that has happened today out of my head, even for a few hours, so I’m preoccupied and miss the fact that Dante stops in his tracks until I run into him.
“Did Ella go somewhere?”
It takes me second to register Dante’s question and as soon as I do, I go on high alert.
My eyes scan the area and right away I notice that the door that separates the foyer and the elevator to the garage is wide open.
Lately, Ella has gotten into the habit of telling me she is going to do something. If she was stepping away from her desk, grabbing something from the car, she has been telling me. So for her to leave the apartment without letting me know, is raising questions when it shouldn’t.
“Ella!” I call out and wait for a response, but nothing comes.
I don’t have to call out again to know that she isn’t here.
“You don’t think…?” Dante starts, leaving his question up in the air.
My finger nails dig into my palms, drawing blood. “I don’t have to think. I fucking know.”
Marisela was fucking here. I fucking know it.
How the fuck she got through my security team, is beyond me, but she did and possibly has Ella. If she lays a fucking hand on her, I won’t hesitate. Marisela will end up in the ground.
I don’t give a shit if she’s my brother’s wife or the mother of his children.
She will fucking pay for her actions.