Page 21 of Warped

Chapter Eleven

V

The two men sat with me while I forced a hotdog down my throat. The smell and taste was overpowering, strong and tangy, in a way I’d never noticed before. I hoped I hadn’t been given one past its sell-by-date. I’d had enough of throwing up for one day.

But even as I struggled my way through my meal, my head was filled with thoughts of X. I couldn’t believe he was still alive; my heart swelled with hope for him. I’d truly thought I would never get to see him again, and seeing him there had been like someone had struck me in the chest. Like a person whose heart had stopped, only to have it jolted back to life with a defibrillator.

He was alive. He was walking the streets in the same city I was in. I would be able to speak to him again, to touch his hair and press my face against his chest. I missed having him to talk to and give advice more than anything, even more than the physical stuff, though that had been great, too.

The business card the other man had given me felt like a massive wedge in the side of my bra. I was terrified they’d notice it and I’d lose my only way of contacting X again. I didn’t know how I’d manage to get to a phone without Tony or one of his gang noticing, but it was now the main focus in my day. Yes, I should have been preoccupied by thoughts of facing my father in court, now the date was imminent, but all I cared about was seeing X.

Paulie and Warren drove me back to Tony’s place. The gangster was waiting for me when we arrived, and fresh guilt swamped over me. I shouldn’t have felt guilty, but I did. Tony had kept his side of the bargain. He had kept both me and my sister safe when my father could easily have sent someone else to kill me, so removing me as a threat to testify against him. Tony had shot X, something I hated him for, but he’d done so with good reason. X had killed four of his men. X had also been sent to kill me. In Tony’s eyes, X was the enemy, and I guessed a part of me understood where he was coming from.

Problem was, he was anything but an enemy in my eyes.

And I wanted him back.

Tony locked me into his gaze. “So, how did it go?”

I refused to be intimidated and so stood straighter, lifting my chin. “It went fine. Everything is going ahead as scheduled.”

I wondered if Paulie or Warren would mention my vomiting incident, or the fact I’d run out on them while at the hotdog place. I didn’t think they’d talk about the running part—after all, they were as worried about getting into trouble with Tony as I was—but I thought they might mention me being sick. Then I realized they hadn’t been in the room when I’d so unceremoniously lost the contents of my stomach into a trashcan. They might have guessed when they’d seen the state of me, but they didn’t know for sure.

“Do you have a court appearance date yet?”

I shook my head. “No, but I’ll find out in the next day or two. It won’t be long now.”

“Good.”

What would happen to me after my father had gone down for life? Tony would no longer have any reason to offer me protection. In fact, he might even kill me himself. That he was continuing with Nicole’s education made me think he had longer term plans for her. I wanted to know exactly what they were, but I was frightened I wouldn’t like the answer.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m kinda beat. I might go and take a nap, if that’s okay with you.”

He gave a shrug, as though what I did was none of his business, though we both knew that wasn’t true.

I was glad to escape. The business card burned against my skin, and I wanted to take it out and study it, try to figure out where X might be, and put a plan into place. I wasn’t afraid of taking chances, but I was so close to my end goal of seeing my father behind bars for the rest of his life that I didn’t want to mess things up now. However, I discovered as I slipped past Tony and headed up to my bedroom, I was exhausted. It was far too early to go to bed, but that was the only place I wanted to be. The tiredness had taken hold of me, making me want to sleep like nothing else. I must have picked up a virus or something.

I couldn’t allow myself to fall to sleep. First I needed to check out the card the man had given me and see if I could work out any clues about where X might be. I didn’t want to hide it in the bedroom somewhere. Keeping it on me was probably the safest thing to do. It was uncomfortable, having the card sticking into the side of my skin, making my breast sore and swollen, but other than shoving it down the front of my panties, I didn’t have many other options of places to hide it.

My sister must have still been in her lessons, or else was doing something different, but she wasn’t in the bedroom. I was pleased to have the privacy. What would she say if she knew I’d seen X again? She wouldn’t be happy about it. She’d chosen to have Tony come and get us, and she knew X had been sent by our father. She didn’t care X had ended up helping me rather than killing me. In her mind, he’d killed the two men Tony had sent to save us, and then killed two more. It didn’t matter to her that we’d believed she’d been in terrible danger. As a typical teen, she only cared about what she wanted, and that was to get back to New York and see our father sent down.

I threw myself down on my back on my bed and reached inside my bra for the business card. I read the name, Harvey Baglione. Did I know it? The surname certainly seemed familiar. My father knew a lot of the old families in New York, and I’d grown up being bounced on the knee of several of the older members.

Baglione.

I ran the name over in my head and then read the card again. I was certain I knew it, though I assumed it was the man’s father I would have been acquainted with at some point. The man who’d handed me the card—Harvey—was too young to have had anything to do with my father. There was nothing to give me an idea of an address, but there was an email address and two phone numbers. If only I had access to a phone or a computer, and I’d be able to look him up. Problem solved.

I knew one person who did get regular access to a computer, and that was Nicole. Was there any way I’d be able to persuade her to Google Harvey Baglione for me? See if she could come up with an address. I’d have to make up something, though I wasn’t sure what. She’d never look for me if she thought it had something to do with X. But then why would she ever think that? As far as she knew, he was dead, just like I had believed up until a few hours ago.

I pushed the business card back inside my bra and rolled over onto my side, my hands up under my head. It occurred to me that nowhere on the card did it say exactly what kind of business Mr. Baglione was in. I had a feeling I could make a good guess.

I thought I’d have lain awake with worries of the court case running through my head, but instead I slipped into sleep with X’s face on my mind.

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