Page 39 of Dangerous Vengeance

I never say anything either. I sit here and stare, thinking about Matty. By now he’s either dead or healing well. I’m convinced, however, that if he were dead, they’d have taken me into that garden and ended me by now. Which is why I still have hope that I’ll see him again, hear his voice. So, I don’t even turn to see who it is. It’s nearing lunch; it’s probably Nanette bringing a tray of food I will refuse anyway. I haven’t eaten much either, barely drank the water they’ve provided. I’m too depressed. I haven’t even bothered to take my burner phone out of my pocket. It’s dead by now anyway. The only thing I want is Matty.

“Natalie,” a gruff male voice says, and I turn to see Matty’s oldest sibling, Dominic, standing at the foot of the bed. He is dressed casually for a change, white polo and dark navy jeans. His hair is loose, falling in his eyes, his feet shod in sneakers. It’s a good look for him, though I doubt he regularly indulges.

I turn back to the window and stare. There is a cardinal in the bird feeder, pecking away at the seed. Its mate is somewhere close. They mate for life and rarely separate. Even when they migrate, cardinals are sworn to the one they mate with. You’ll rarely see them apart for very long. Even nature has a way of showing us how it’s supposed to be.

“I’ve come to talk with you.”

I hear movement. I assume he is sitting down or something. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter if I ask about Matty or not, they give me no information. In fact, nothing matters anymore without him. I am numb, a hollow shell of the woman I’m supposed to be. I feel nothing but emptiness and sadness. I’m tired. I wish I could drown my sorrows in that sweet Scotch Matty made me drink that night.

“We got into your laptop, Natalie. I know the things you have stored on there. I know you know everything.” He’s calm. Why is he so calm? Why isn’t he hitting me or slitting my throat or something?

“So?” I continue watching out the window despite my curiosity as to why he’s here. If he knows what I know, he has enough information to kill me and never look back.

“So, I want to hear it from your own mouth. Tell me everything.”

I look at him. He’s seated calmly on the foot of the bed with hands folded in his lap. His rugged charm won’t make me swoon. My heart is spoken for. But I can see the family resemblance and it makes me ache for Matty to be in my arms, for me to be draped over his chest in a post-sex high that melds us together forever.

“What?” I turn my body, placing my feet on the ground. He’s serious?

“I want you to tell me everything you know and leave nothing out. Start at the beginning.” He purses his lips and tilts his head. He is serious.

I don’t even know where to begin. My story begins as a kid from a big family who felt neglected. My uncle took me in as his own when he moved in with us. My parents were there, sure, but they had too much on their hands, which is why they welcomed Hal’s help. He loved us like his own.

“Well, I grew up in the city surrounded by crime and danger. My parents and uncle did their best to shelter and protect us. But with crime dramas on TV and smutty romance novels I read later in high school and into college, I became fascinated with the world of organized crime.” I turn again, staring out the window as I speak. “I went to college for journalism, but the real reason I started investigating your family and the others in this city was because I was curious, drawn to it. Like I was made for it but wasn’t’ born to it.

“It aroused me, excited me too. I was taken by stories of passion and romance, villains and heroes, and I found it somehow strangely satisfying to learn real details about things. I kept a few files as you can see on the laptop.” I gesture but I don’t know what I’m gesturing at. I don’t even know if he’s looking at me. I’m staring at a finch in the tree just outside the window. “Those were just for me to enjoy—until I got a job at the Tribune and a coworker saw my file. She said I had something there and that I should pursue a story. So, I did, but when I asked the boss about it, he said I was nosy, not investigative. He thought my work was childish.”

“Because you were interested personally but never dug deep into the gritty stuff?” Dominic asks and I look at him. If he’s trying to psychoanalyze me, it won’t do any good. Even the best shrinks my parents could afford couldn’t do that when I spiraled.

“Because I had no proof, just notes.”

“So, you got proof?” he asks and tips his chin up.

“So, I dug deeper, exposing things from every family…. Until Hal was shot.” My shoulders tense and I tear my eyes off of him, afraid that if I keep looking at his face I’ll cry. “Hal was like a father to me. My digging turned over a rock, out from which a cockroach crawled and killed him.” I have no doubt in my mind that the investigation I did triggered that shooting. I just don’t know who did it.

“And after that?”

I pause my story for a few long minutes. After that I imploded. I was institutionalized for a while and spent hours every week in therapy. I dug and researched and dug some more. I scavenged evidence and information, fighting tooth and nail to swim upstream in a corrupt system that continuously pushed me down. Cops are dirty, men are dirty, I am dirty. And I was on the brink of discovery when I was nabbed off the street. How do I say that? How do I tell him the truth?

“After that,” I say after at least ten minutes of silence, “my focus was singular. Catch Hal’s murderer. I followed the evidence that your dirty cops buried. I traced it back to the shooting and who was there.” I turn to glare at him. “I seek revenge for my uncle’s murder, nothing more. I could never hurt Matty. That’s why I brought him here. It’s why I saved his life instead of letting him bleed out on the street. I love him.”

Dominic stares at me with a placid expression. There is no hatred there, no guile. He has no emotion toward me whatsoever, or perhaps he just has a really good poker face. Either way, I don’t want to look at him anymore. I peer out across the sweeping hillside garden in search of the cardinals who were keeping me company. They are gone, replaced with an eerie emptiness, as if Dominic’s presence in this room commands them to take flight, so that I can pay attention to him.

“And what do you know about the docks?” His voice is tinged with anger now. This is where rubber meets the road, where I prove myself to him.

“Sergeant Monroe of the first precinct covered it up. You had a problem with a man named Nick, who, having been a loyal member of your family for years, decided with the help of the Italians to turn on you and form anarchy.” I rise, taking to my feet to pace. If he’s going to kill me, he’s going to have a fight on his hands. “He was right under your nose, and you couldn’t see him. You hired James Slater, known hitman, to sniff him out. Jimmy gave you the intel you needed, and you brought Nick to justice the way your family handles things. There was a massive shootout between the loyal members of your family and the ones Nick turned.”

I cross my arms over my chest and stare at him. He remains seated, calmly watching me. His expression hasn’t changed a bit. “And the evidence?” He tips his chin up again and I continue pacing.

“Copied on hard drives all over this city just waiting for my word to be released to the press. If I don’t check in by the first of November, they go live.” I am seriously bluffing here, and I don’t care. If it gives me ten seconds longer to live, I’ll do it. Maybe that’s ten seconds longer Matty has to wake up and come get me.

“I don’t believe you for a second, but you do seem to know more than we’d like.” Dominic stands and hooks his thumbs in his pockets as he does. “We will kill you, you know that? No one knows this much about our family and lives to talk about it. And it’s all throughout your laptop.”

I shrug nonchalantly. I’m shaking internally but I won’t give him the satisfaction. “Kill me then. I did the right thing by saving his life because I love him. If that’s not worth anything to you, then I want nothing to do with this family.”

“You’re only alive because he asked us not to touch you.”

I turn my back on him, mostly so that the tears forming in my eyes—tears of terror—don’t slip out and give away my true feelings. I hear the door click shut and I let out the emotion. I breathe and the tears come streaming down my cheeks. If Matty requested that on his deathbed, and he really meant it, then he must have truly meant it. He must truly care for me.

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