Page 65 of In My Blood
“Do you mind me calling you Dio, or is it silly?” I asked him.
“Silly? What? Of course I don’t mind. That’s what you’ve always called me. I like that you still use that name. What made you ask that?”
“Gia said I shouldn’t call you that. She said you wouldn’t like it anymore. I just wanted to check. I don’t want to annoy you.”
“Cara, you could never annoy me, and certainly not by calling me Dio. That’s my name as far as you and I are concerned, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed with relief. I knew it wasn’t a big thing to call him Dario instead, but calling him Dio was something that felt familiar to me, from my life before. I needed those things if I was ever going to settle there.
“Are you hungry? You missed dinner?”
“I was coming to find something to eat, but I wanted to find you to give this to you first,” I explained as I pulled the drawing from the pocket of my robe and handed it to him. “It’s not exactly a work of art, and I don’t remember all of the letters, but I think the ones I drew were there.”
Dario opened the folded sheet and studied the image. I worried it was too bad for him to even make head nor tail of when he just stared hard at it, but then he looked up at me and nodded.
“Thank you, Carr. This helps,” he told me.
“Do you know what it means?” I pushed.
“No, but I think I know the language those letters are from, which gives me a huge clue about who might be trying to get their hands on you.”
“Who?”
“I can’t be sure, and it doesn’t make any sense, since we have no dealings with them, but those characters you drew are from the Armenian alphabet, I think. I’ll need to check it out to be sure,” he explained.
“Armenian? And this family has no dealings with them?”
“Nope Never had anything to do with them. They don’t run from our ports. They have their own routes.”
“Then why would they come after me?”
“No idea. You can’t think of anything? Did your Mum have any dealings with any criminals, or get into debt with bad people? Anything like that?”
“No,” I shook my head. “I mean yeah, she definitely dated criminals, but none that screamed anything more than low level dealer, or something equivalent. And as for debt, I’ve bought her drugs for the last couple of years, and I know the dealer. He’s a nobody.”
“I’d still like you to give me any names you can remember, so I can look into them. There’s a chance this guy was working for the Russians, but it seems unlikely. If the Armenians are coming for you, we need to work out why.”
“I get it. I’m eager to know what the hell’s going on too. If you hand me your phone on the notes page I can type in the names I remember,” I offered. Dio picked up his cell and pressed a few buttons, then handed it over to me.
“Write down anything you can remember. Names, places, dates, anything that could help. I’ll make you something to eat while you do that. What takes your fancy?” he asked as he stood and rounded the counter.
“Anything. I’m not fussy,” I shrugged.
“There was leftover alfredo from dinner. Does that sound good?” I looked up to him with a huge smile and an eager nod. It was one of my favourites.
Then I looked down to the phone again, set on the blank notes screen, the little curser blinking at me. I decided to work in date order as much as I could, so I wrote the year we disappeared – 2013, then under it I wrote the places we passed through. If Iremembered a boyfriend in one of those places I put his name beside it and as much info as I could remember about them. In the earlier days I didn’t remember many surnames, but I knew where they had worked, and even some of the street addresses, since I had spent a lot of my time outside the house, at my Mum’s command, just wandering around.
The note got longer and longer as I listed the years and the hellholes we stayed in, along with so many men my Mum used for money, drugs, or both, never caring what kind of men they were, or what they did to me when she was too high or frunk to care.
Finally, I wrote our final address - the apartment that I had paid for us to live in, and there were no more men’s names then, except Justin – the drug dealer who I allowed to take pieces of me in my despair and desperation.
“Cara?” I almost jumped out of my skin at the sound of Dio’s voice, lifting my head with alarm as I jolted violently. “You’re okay. It’s just me,” he said as he held his hands out before him. He was standing across the counter from me, a steaming plate of food set on the counter between us.
“Shit!” I gasped. “Sorry.” It wasn’t until I tried to say more that I realised I was breathing too fast, my hand that held Dio’s cell trembling so hard it had drawn his attention.
“That’s enough now. I’ll work with what I have here,” he told me as he leaned over and took the phone from me, instead placing his hand over mine. “Breathe for me now. Steady breaths,” he told me calmly.
“Sorry. I…I’m alright,” I tried to reassure him, but he just shook his head.
