Page 18 of Forbidden Surrogate

Who the hell are these people?

Trust and believe, I experienced enough already to be some mixture of vigilant and horrified, but the fake IDs don't make it better.

I shove my hands into the next drawer of clothing in the dresser, expecting to have worn out interesting discoveries whenmy fingers brush against something metal. My stomach sinks. I know what it is before fumbling around more, but I have to pry the drawer open to get it out.

A pistol.

Just holding a gun causes me to break out in a sweat. I'm not a gun owner and while I know crazy upstate New York men are just as nutty about their guns as country boys from Alabama, I don't like being around firearms. They're dangerous weapons, not toys for white men to assert their masculinity at random.

I'm careful holding it but also scared to drop it and accidentally fire it. Is there a bullet in there? My heart races as my hands get sweatier. If there's a bullet in there, I'll have to change my stance on guns until I get away from Luigi. I don't have to kill him when I shoot him, I just have to injure him. I run my fingers along the sides and explore the outside of the gun until I find the button that releases the magazine.

No bullets. Okay. That won't work, even if I'm somewhat reassured by the weapon's impotence. I set it back in the drawer, motivated to continue my search. The bedside tables yield nothing interesting except a fancy looking black watch and a copy of a small black book with random Italian names written inside.

The closets just have clothes in them and an empty black backpack.

A strange, dark urge compels me to check under the bed when I run out of places to search. I crouch down and hit the fucking jackpot. A slim black storage container made out of heavy duty plastic slides out easily and behind it, I find another larger gun strapped to the bottom of the bed.

Even without bullets, hitting someone in the head with THIS could cause some serious damage. I shove the storage container to the side, unstrapping the gun before placing it on the bed, and continue my investigation.

I don't know how much more I really need to see. I have some ideas about who this man might be and none of them seem good. He's not a cop, he's not in the FBI, so he must be a criminal. An Italian criminal in Buffalo, New York with multiple IDs and properties doesn't leave many options for Luigi's identity.

He has to be a mobster. A real, modern, Italian mobster.

I'm fucked.

I don't know the difference between a rifle and a shotgun, but I'm guessing this gun is one of those. It's a big one, that's as much as I can figure out. I follow the pattern of the first weapon I found, finding analogs of the original structure to identify the trigger and the chamber. From what I can tell, this gun isn't loaded either.

I see white men love being responsible gun owners all of a sudden at the least convenient times. Whatever. Maybe I can hit him over the head with the base of this thing and knock him out. Once I set the gun aside, I sit cross-legged in front of the black plastic storage container, wondering if maybe he didn't prepare for me at all since there isn't a lock on any of this stuff.

It's dangerous to get too calm and slow, so I get the top off and quickly scan the contents. Maybe he didn't lock this one because there's nothing in here worth stealing. I pick up what looks like an old navy-blue photo album, straight out of those nostalgic 90s memories, and open it up expecting to find the whole mob family history.

The first page I flip to contains an erratically clipped newspaper article from 2009 with a headline "44th STREET FIRE DECLARED ARSON, NO SUSPECTS". On its own, nothing suspicious there. The rest of the articles pasted into the album suggest a different story. They're all about unsolvedarsons in various phases of investigation across Western New York and then three fires in Pittsburgh at the end, with all the Pittsburgh fires dated around 2017.

I can't think of a good reason why anyone would have this except if they were a part of the mafia. And maybe if they set the fires. Fuck. Two of the other albums in the box are empty. I find a journal written in a language I don't understand. I try sounding it out and decide it sounds Italian, but I don't really know.

The last item in the box doesn't seem interesting at all, but I open it up just in case. Sure enough, the small black book holds little appeal compared to the rifle. It's just a list of former and current Buffalo Bills players with random statistics jotted down. Every few pages or so, there are lines and dollar amounts that look like ledgers.

It's a very old book and some of the players written down retired in the early 00s, so it might be an old-fashioned bookkeeping system.

I spread everything out on the floor and since it's been a while, I decide to indulge in a quick shower before I go back to minding Luigi's business. If he didn't want me to mind his business, he should have invested in a combination lock.

After borrowing some of his clothing from the dresser, I throw my braids up out of the way and get underneath Luigi's fancy lake house shower. The water pressure is elite. I hate to appreciate anything about this man, but this house is comfortable as hell for a prison. I almost lose track of time in the shower, especially when the Trader Joe's shower gel smells like eucalyptus. My spa day can't last forever and after I run out of things to do in the shower, my anxiety about Luigi's pending return gets too high for me to just stand there.

I turn the water off, towel dry and slip into Luigi's underwear, which my ass instantly swallows up. Ew. I don'twant this man's underwear between my ass cheeks, but I'm not comfortable going commando in this house.

Not after what happened this morning. With fresh clothes, I have a renewed interest in my search through Luigi's things, although searching has very little chance of changing my mind about my discoveries. If he's not a mobster, what is he? I open up a manila folder from the storage container and find more documents in Italian. Hm…

A door slams in the lake house and I snap out of my efforts to understand Italian, freezing in place to listen better. Footsteps. Fuck. With seconds to act, I shove everything back into the plastic box and kick that shit under the bed with a quickness.

Lord, let's hope this man grabbed some take-out food before showing up here. With the storage container stowed, I hold the gun's muzzle so I can use it like a baseball bat to hit him on the head with the heavy part once he opens the door. I stand by the best spot in front of the door and wait for those footsteps to get closer.

Just hearing Luigi's footsteps terrifies the crap out of me, but this crazy plan to escape that I didn't have much time to think through makes it much worse. Instead of sniffing his eucalyptus body wash, I should have been coming up with a diabolical plan. But who among us can think straight before a good shower?

Luigi's footsteps draw closer to the bedroom door and I can practically feel his hand touching the handle on the other side before he opens it.

Here goes nothing.

Chapter Eleven

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