Page 6 of The Rescuer

This kid is breaking my heart, Brian thought, then answered the teenager’s question. “Well, The Base helps kids who have been in bad situations. It's an amazing place.” His voice was enthusiastic like every time he spoke about the sanctuary. The man cleared his throat, moving from behind the counter. “I'll go get your books and there's food there if you’re hungry.”

“No.” Raven energetically shook his head again in a gesture that reminded the librarian of Martino. “I'll find a place to sleep. I don't like people, and I don't like cages. Just want to read and work. Honest work, but I want to keep the money.” He stopped talking for a bit, then continued in a bitter voice. “Back home, they took all my money and beat and starved me.”

“I think you'll like this book.” Brian gave the kid a few books and a couple of dictionaries. “If you need anything, you can find me here, and if I'm not here, my colleague knows how to get a hold of me.”

Lips moving, head lowered, hair falling in long, raven-black strands, Raven was focused on the book he was reading, totally absorbed in it. From time to time, he frowned, looked into one of the dictionaries scattered on the desk, then made notes in clumsy writing in one of the notebooks the librarian had given him, and he’d paid for.

From his place at the counter, Brian examined Raven. There was something in the way the boy talked and gestured that reminded him of Luca when the two of them first met. Same inflexibility, iron will, fierce determination, and sternness. Although Raven’s vocabulary was much reduced compared to Luca’s, the two of them sometimes had the same style of talking, blunt and choppy like they were throwing stones.

Brian’s thoughts took a turn to his Sicilian friend, who wasn’t his usual self. On the one hand, the man became quieter, while on the other, he spent a lot more time on his phone messaging people and waiting for their answers, impatient and agitated. Luca’s change of attitude worried the librarian, and he asked the mafioso what was wrong. Averting his gaze, the man answered in a hesitant voice that he was fine, then changed the subject.

If Brian had learned something about Luca, it was that he wouldn’t get anything from him if he pushed him to talk. He decided to give his friend time and space, hoping that the Sicilian would come to him by himself, but that didn’t happen. When Gabriele told him Martino was worried about Luca losing sleep and not eating enough, the librarian decided to intervene.

Brian was determined to talk to his friend that very day, right after his shift at the library was over. Lost in his thoughts as he was, the librarian didn’t hear the door or see the man walking inside and coming near the counter. The sound of a discreet cough made him flinch and raise his head, and it was only then that he noticed his Sicilian friend standing in front of him.

“Hey, librarian, who are you daydreaming about?” Luca flashed a cute grin. “I hope, for your sake, that it’s Bart, that sexy husband of yours…”

“Hello to you, too.” Brian returned the grin. “You guessed correctly, I was thinking about a man, but it wasn’t my hottie of a husband. It was you.”

“The dumbass in front of you is here to do what he should have done more than a week ago.” Luca let out a long, heavy sigh. “Your brother-in-law, Julien. I need his help to locate a person, but I don’t have much information about that person.”

“You don’t know T-Ball.” Brian’s voice was filled with a mix of affection and admiration. “He located Eddie five years after he’d been kidnapped without a recent photo or other clue about him other than his name.”

“Well, from what I know, the boy I’m searching for looks almost like me. I mean, like the seventeen-year-old me, and I don’t have any pictures from back then to show you.” Luca inhaled sharply. “Don Ruggero behaved less than honorable with a rich farmer’s daughter, but the family was proud he chose one of them as his mistress. When the girl got pregnant, however, he had no use for her and sent back to her parents in shame.”

“Another bastard son. Poor child.” Brian let out a heavy sigh and gave the Sicilian a compassionate look. “I imagine he had it rough, just like you.”

“I was lucky, my mother loved me, but that unfortunate girl died in childbirth.” Luca briefly stopped, then continued in a linear voice. “Don Ruggero gave the family some hush money, but I don’t think it was enough to cover all the expenses with the boy’s education, clothing, and food for such a long time. I found the family, but I couldn’t see my brother; he was at school, they said, so I gave them the money for a plane ticket and told them to call me when he gets on the plane.”

“When was that?” Brian frowned, the little cogs inside his brain starting to spin a thousand miles a second. “There’s a reason why I’m asking you that.”

“I don’t know exactly, but less than two weeks ago.” Luca thought for a few seconds, then slapped his forehead. “Ten days ago, that’s when I was on that business trip to Sicily.”

“About a week ago, this boy showed up in the library and asked for a book to read, any book.” Brian took a sharp inhale, then continued the story. “He said his name was Raven and looked a lot like you. I think I just found your brother.” The man pointed to the teenager’s reading spot and gasped loudly.

“What is it, librarian? Did you see a ghost?” Luca tried a joke, but the expression on his friend’s face was of shock and disbelief. “Now you are scaring me.”

“The kid I told you about was there five minutes ago, and I can’t figure out when, but especially where did he go.” Brian looked around the library, but Raven was nowhere in sight.

“Maybe he took advantage that you were absorbed in our conversation, didn’t pay attention to him, and he used the back entrance?” Luca hesitantly suggested. “It’s what I would have done,” he added.

Brian nodded, went to the back door, opened it, and looked up and down the street, but there was no trace of the boy; it seemed he’d vanished into thin air. At the main door, Luca did the same thing, and he even asked a group of middle school students who came to return some books if they saw Raven, but the answer was negative.

Half an hour later, tired, defeated, and a bit discouraged, the two men put an end to their search, but they were determined to reprise it the next day. Besides, Brian was counting on Raven’s great thirst for knowledge and desire to learn to have him come back the next day. If that happened, Luca suggested the librarian coax the teenager into sleeping on the cots, asking for a symbolic payment for the lodging.

It’s something so simple and easy to do,Brian said to himself;how didn’t I think about it from the start instead of letting him go and sleep who knows where?He thanked Luca for the idea, and the Sicilian replied by expressing his intention to give Raven what was rightfully his from the Rinaldi estate.

But the boy didn’t come back the next day or the following. Brian asked Saint, one of Ardan’s rescue crew’s key members, who, for a few months, worked as sketch artist for the FBI, to draw a portrait of Raven. He printed flyers with the drawing and posted them all around the sanctuary and into the town, but no one came with information on the kid. With every day that passed, hope got scarcer until only a sliver was left.

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Raven trudged to the makeshift bed in the corner of the warehouse where he found an exhausting, twelve-hour, underpaid job, and plopped down on it, face buried in his hands. The work no one wanted was a gold mine for him because it came with free lodging, and that helped him save big time.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that, Raven said to himself;the librarian wasn’t supposed to be nice and talk to me that way, treat me like someone who matters, a person, not a horse or an ox. The one who paid him to do what he promised to do told him the librarian was cold, cruel, manipulative, and didn’t care about anyone except himself and those he could use.

Raven was paid a hundred thousand dollars to tarnish the reputation of a man who he’d never seen and who never harmed him, physically and mentally. He had to bring that man to the point where he couldn’t control his temper anymore and would hit him. In the States, if someone put an underage kid’s life in danger in any way, they would throw that person behind bars for a very long time, the one who paid him had said.

He wasn’t thinking clearly when he took the thirty thousand dollars the man gave him as upfront payment to slander his adversary’s good name. All he wanted was to stop being the target of his uncle’s and cousins’ anger and insults. Raven was tired of being overpowered, hit with the belt, and used as a punching bag by those of the same blood but who hated him like he was their mortal enemy.

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