Page 16 of The Secrets We Share

“Hey, Mom. You going to let me in, or?” I let the question hang between us before she pulls the door open the rest of the way to usher me in.

The moment the door latches shut, she whirls me around and her delicate frame wraps around me. “Oh, my sweet boy, where have you been? The mess your father’s made.” Her sobs are quiet, but the evidence of her distress is in the trail of tears streaming down her face.

I’ve never seen her like this, other than the other day over video chat. It’s just as off-putting in person as it was over a screen, if not more. Her strength dwindles, and I all but carry her into the sitting room.

“Can I get you something?”

I don’t know what she thinks she can do for me when she can barely sit up on her own. Her body’s slumped to the side, eyes half-mast and red. I’m hoping it’s from lack of sleep or crying, but from the stench wafting off her, that’s only making it worse.

“We need to talk. What the hell is going on? Where’s Dad?”

She flinches at my tone, but I’m too irritated to draw it in. I didn’t want to take this trip. I’m pissed there’s yet another piece of this damn puzzle I have to figure out. It’d be great if there was no relation between our stack of problems with Domenico and my dad’s disappearance, but the possibility is miniscule.

“I don’t know where your father is.” She sniffles and wipes at her eyes. “He’s gone, Harkin.”

“Gone, gone? Or missing? I need to know what I’m dealing with here.”

She ignores my question completely, getting up haphazardly from the place I dropped her on the couch before stumbling out of the room. I should probably go after her, make sure she didn’t run off to hide from me. I’ll give her a couple minutes before this becomes an unwarranted game of hide and seek.

When she returns, a small parcel is clutched between her shaking hands. I leave my phone forgotten on the arm of the couch and reach for it. The thin cardboard is cold to the touch. The box looks like something I’d get takeout in back in New York. Dread settles in my stomach when I notice the faded stain along the bottom.

“Where did this come from?” I ask, peeling the folding top back to reveal the contents. “Jesus fuck, Mom. You could have given me a little warning.” My shock radiates through the room, but it doesn’t faze her in the least.

“Mom. I need you to snap out of whatever the fuck little bullshit trance you’ve got going on and answer my fucking questions so I can figure this shit out. Where did this come from and when?”

“It was left at the front gate a couple of weeks ago. The gardener brought it up to the house.”

“And you’ve what? Just been keeping some fingers on ice in the freezer? Why didn’t you call me?”

“I did,” she shouts, jumping to her feet a little too quickly, since she sways to the left and almost takes another tumble to the floor. She has the sense to sit back down before continuing. “I did call. Your phone was shut off. So, I called James, and he said he’d get in touch with you. How was I supposed to know you wouldn’t get my message?”

“I’m assuming since they’re still here, you didn’t involve the police.”

“No! No, police, Harkin. They’ll kill him.”

“If he’s not already dead,” I whisper under my breath. “Has anyone called, emailed, shit sent a fucking carrier with a note? There’s got to be more than a box of fingers we can work with here.”

“In your father’s office, on his computer, there’s a message for you.”

I nod and leave her half zoned out in the sitting room. I’ll need to get James to send over someone he trusts before I leave. It’s not safe for her on her own. She’s as much of a threat to herself as Domenico could be. Maybe she’d be better off in rehab until he returns. If he returns.

His office is closed up and dark. I’m shocked it’s unlocked since he never left it that way when I was living here. Maybe she knows more about my father’s dealings than she let on. Or maybe I was the only one he was worried about stumbling in here and digging through his shady shit.

For someone who locked his room up tight, his computer is a different story. His password doesn’t even require my computer skills to break. I’m shocked to see the man who’s never shown me a modicum of emotional connection, chose my birthdate to keep people out. Then again, maybe that’s exactly why he chose it.

“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”

Mom must have been searching for something when the email came in, because the moment I click on the browser, the email is still up. The video is paused only seconds in. It doesn’t matter; I can tell from the freeze frame what to expect. I click back to the beginning and press play.

The video is pixelated, to the point I wonder if it was shot on an old flip phone. When the view changes, everything clears, and I sit forward to take it in. A man sits slumped in a metal chair that looks bolted to the cement floor. His feet are zip tied aroundthe front legs and his hands are tied at the wrist, pulled above him and attached to a meat hook. The burlap sack over his head doesn’t conceal his identity. It’s pretty damn obvious the man being held and tortured is my father.

Another man rounds the camera and walks toward him, before ripping off the hood. Blood coats a third of his face, running from cuts and broken body parts. The swell of his eyes has them closed to a point, I’m not sure if he can even see. His complexion is no longer tan from the California sun, but black and blue from the deep bruising. Yet, with all that he’s suffered through, he’s still conscious, groaning and mumbling something unintelligible.

“Well, would you look at that! He’s finally awake,” someone says somewhere beyond the camera’s reach, as the man now standing behind my father chuckles.

I push the volume as loud as it’ll go. Once I get the file onto my computer, I can dissect every inch for clues and see if their microphone picked up more than they bargained for.

The problem with their setup, the man on camera isn’t hiding his identity. That means one of two things. My father’s dead or will be soon, or Domenico’s grasping at straws, looking for a pressure point to draw us out hiding. His biggest mistake is thinking my father offers adequate leverage for me to put Keira back into his orbit. That shit won’t happen until we can pinpoint what his plan is for her.

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