Page 46 of Assistant to the Assassin

Her pink lips part. “That’s why you sought me out.”

“Yes. The data you had been collecting told me that my mother had likely been taken by the Santoros family. The hotel we had stayed at was in their territory, and they used the coast to export people to different parts of Europe, particularly in the Netherlands. Anthony Santoros, one of the members, owned property in the Red Light district in Amsterdam.”

“But other organized crime groups deal in the trafficking of humans. How did you know it was Santoros, besides the location of the hotel?” she thinks aloud.

“I didn’t, but I had to start somewhere. Anthony Santoros owned three brothels there, and I searched the most popular of the three first, Elysium. I slipped in amongst the midnight crowd of customers, bartenders, and workers. I let one of the women lead me upstairs, but when we were behind closed doors, I asked her if she was being trafficked, and she broke down in tears. I managed to get out of her that all of the prostitutes and bartenders were there against their will, and their job depended on their age. You became a bartender if you were above sixty-five or a prostitute if you were above sixteen. I asked her if she had ever seen a Chinese-American woman in her fifties named Audrey, and her eyes grew cloudy with tears. She said Audrey was in room seventeen.”

My hand shakes in Beth’s grip, and I begin feeling the signs that I’m about to have a panic attack, but I don’t let these feelings overtake me. I need to get this out. If I break down now, I’ll never get through this, and I owe it to myself and to Beth to uncover this festering wound.

“I went into seventeen, and there she was. Mama. Naked. Tied up. Her body limp and frail, her hair streaked with grey, her skin sickly. A syringe needle was sticking into her neck, and a man had his finger on the plunger. He only injected half the dosage before realizing I was there, and when he turned towards me, I looked into the eyes of Anthony Boreanaz for the first time in over twenty years.”

“Oh my God.” Beth clasps a hand over her mouth, shaking her head.

I give a single nod, feeling my chest clench painfully, growing tight like a stretched band, as if my heart were trying to rip apart my body from within.

“No,” I whispered, my hand shaking as I pointed my gun at my dad’s best friend, the man I had known my whole life…the only father I had ever known.

Uncle Tony let go of the syringe, leaving it sticking out of Mama’s neck. He tilted his head to the side, his eyes wide and horror-stricken, like he’d seen a ghost. Ironic since he’d been the one presumed dead for the last two decades.

“Henry? My you’ve grown. You look just like your mother.” He said it so casually, like I didn’t just catch him drugging my mother.

“Why?” I begged, my throat growing hoarse. “My dad trusted you, my mom trusted you. We loved you like family. We—and then you promised to save her. I thought you were dead.”

“The man you knew is dead,” he said. “My parents abandoned their duty to our family when they left Italy, and my grandparents reminded me of the fidelity we have to blood. I reclaimed my true surname, my status, my wealth as the family’s heir. I may have loved you, but you’re not blood.”

“You were the one that took her.” My teeth gritted together, and I spit the words out at him. “You promised me you would bring her back to me! You promised me!”

He shrugged. “We all must make the most of the shitty hand we’re dealt. It wasn’t personal.”

“I shot him right between the eyes,” I tell her. “He was dead before he hit the ground.”

“Good fucking riddance,” Beth whispers, her voice thick with emotion.

“I ran to my mother’s bedside and took that needle out of her neck, but the amount of heroin Anthony had injected her with was enough to make her OD, and even though I didn’t know it in that moment, my instincts told me my mother wasn’t going to live. I knew I only had minutes with her before I would lose her again.”

Tears streak down my cheeks, and I can hardly register Beth hugging on to my side, placing kisses on my shoulder and neck. All I can feel is the weight of my mother in my arms, of her blood soaking my skin from the beatings she received. All I can see is her cloudy gaze focusing on me, and her smile wipes away whatever pain she might have been feeling.

“Henry? My Henry?” she had whispered, reaching up to cup my cheek, and even that small movement exhausted her.

I nodded, holding her hand up to my cheek, placing a kiss on her palm. “I’m right here, Mama. I’m right here. You’re safe. I found you.”

She gave a weak laugh, and tears filled her weary eyes. “Look how you’ve grown. You look so much like your father.”

By this point I was crying alongside her, but that last comment sent me over the edge, and for the first time since I was twelve, I sobbed in my mother’s arms. Despite the fact she was dying, she used what energy she had left to comfort me, to assure me that all would be well, even though we both knew it wouldn’t be.

“Please don’t leave me, Mama,” I begged. To her, to God, to the world. I begged for my mother to survive. I had just gotten her back. I already knew what it felt like to live without her, and I didn’t want to do so ever again.

“I never left you, Xingan. I never will,” she assured me, her expression contorting in pain. I looked around the hotel room for anything to help her, anything to make her pain lessen, but the only things here were sex-stained sheets, the dead body of the only father I ever knew, and a mostly empty heroine vial.

“I love you, Mama. I love you,” I sobbed, my tears splattering onto her pale, sickly skin. I leaned my forehead against hers, clutching her tightly to my body, as if I could transfer some of my strength to her.

“I-I love you,” she panted, her eyes becoming glassy. “I’m scared.”

“Everything is alright; Nishì anquán. Nishì anquán,” I whispered, placing a kiss on both her cheeks brushing her hair from her face.

I didn’t know how to put someone dying at ease; I still don’t. But I did the only thing I could think of, the thing my mother did for me whenever I was scared. So, in a soft, low tone, I began to sing, slowly rocking her body back and forth like one would do for a restless infant.

“Moon river, wider than a mile

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