Rico

I’ve known for the past several hours that Jasmine’s father was murdered in front of her, but confronting her with that information wouldn’t have done anything besides push her further into that headspace she retreats to around me: the one where I’m the enemy and everything has to be hidden from me at all costs. I can’t imagine how twisted up her feelings must be. She has witnessed utter horror, but she is hiding it from me, almost as much as she is hiding it from herself.

Jasmine operates under a code of silence, so at a time when she should be coming to me for comfort, she says nothing and makes small talk to me about mobile games with irate birds instead.

I understand the thought process. Be born into the wrong family, or sometimes even the right one, and you’ll spend the first years of life learning what can and can’t be said outside the family unit. The worse the family, the greater the silence. With Jasmine, she’s basically gagged. Even when she wants to tell me, she can’t, so the confession she just made, telling me Leon shot her father, that was a big deal. Huge.

Sometimes I don’t know if I’ll ever truly have her trust. That’s going to take time to earn. I hope today went some way toward that. Her confession certainly took her a long way toward earning mine.

“You’re a good girl,” I praise her, holding her close. “You’re such a very, very good girl.”

“Why don’t I feel like one?” She sniffles the question against my chest.

“It’s going to take some time for you to start feeling better,” I warn her, rubbing her bottom. “And it’s not going to be easy. I’m sorry you lost your father.”

“I’m not,” she says, her voice cooling off, losing that sweet tone she only gets when she’s been very well spanked. “I wish Leon had done that years ago. I wish I had done that. I wish…” she takes a little half-breath and her voice cracks. “I hope he’s in hell. Does that make me bad? It makes me bad, doesn’t it?”

“It makes you hurt and human,” I reassure her, holding her close. As much as she must have hated Jaques, every little girl can’t help but love her father. It’s wired into the DNA. For a long time there has been so much love, so much hate, all balled up inside her with nowhere to go.

“I’m going to look after you,” I tell her. “I’m going to make this all better. You can trust me. All you have to do is tell the truth.”

I feel like her daddy. I don’t want to say the word, because I don’t want to evoke her complicated relationship with a father figure, but I am protective of her, and caring for her as any daddy should be. With me, she’s going to learn that she can get what she needs from a man, that’s she’s not just a tool to be used and the discarded, or beaten for being less than perfect. She’s going to learn that she’s brilliant and worth something just for being herself. But all of that is ahead of us. Right now, I just want her to know that she’s safe.

It seems to be working. She curls up in my lap, her cute reddened bottom resting in my palm.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her slim fingers playing nervously with my shirt. “I’ve been such a bad girl for you for so long.”

“You’ve been a brat, but you haven’t been a bad girl,” I reassure her. I can sense I will be doing almost as much of that as I will be spanking her.

I’m going to have to teach her to be my girl, retrain her, break her of all the sick little rules she learned which have made her miserable, vulnerable, and alone.

She looks up at me. I see concern. “What’s going to happen to Leon?”

“He’s going to prison, sweetheart.”

Her face falls. “He never had any chance. He had it even worse than me.”

“He hit you…”

“He got taught to hit me. He used to defend me. When we were small. And then my mother left and my dad beat him so bad…” she chews her lower lip and fire comes into her eyes. “That man deserves to burn… he made Leon hurt me. He made both of us his little monster puppets. But I’m going to get away with it, because I’m a girl, because I made an FBI agent like me. And Leon’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. Because he isn’t, and because he didn’t.”

“You’re not getting away with anything,” I tell her. “You didn’t kill a man.”

“No,” she says bitterly. “I let Leon do it. I guess… in the end… he still did protect me.”

I hold her close, and I think about what she’s saying. I didn’t have any inclination go to easy on Leon Francoise whatsoever. He hasn’t earned my mercy, or the mercy of the department for that matter. But there’s no doubt he’s every bit as wounded as Jasmine is.

That probably holds true for everyone in the justice system. Everyone behind bars has their story. In the end, it’s what you do that counts. Leon killed a man. Leon assaulted an FBI agent.

“Leon beat Sonya…”

“No he didn’t,” Jasmine says softly. “That was my father. Your friend beat Leon up for something he didn’t even do.”

She doesn’t say it angrily. She says it matter-of-factly.

I let out a soft sigh. Justice is being done, but this is a mess. Jasmine lost her mother a long time ago. Today she lost her father. Next, she’ll be losing her brother, and I’m not sure there’s anything I can do to stop that.

From what I know, Leon Francoise broke after ten hours of interrogation. The boys put some serious pressure on him. The kind that stays off the record and off the books. The kind we’d deny in a court of law and the kind he’ll never be able to prove. From what I hear, he was resistant and arrogant. He was Francoise through and through, but in the end, he broke down and told us everything.

“I will see what I can do for him.”

“You don’t owe him anything,” she says. “You should put him in prison. It’s what you do.”

I don’t like the turn this is taking. I don’t like the way her voice is changing. She doesn’t sound like my girl anymore. She sounds cool and disconnected and resigned.

I can’t have it both ways, I suppose. I can’t have her be my sweet, trusting, open girl and also have her be calm about what’s happening to her family.

“It’s okay to be upset, Jasmine. It’s even okay to hate me, if you need to.”

“Is it?” She looks up at me dubiously.

I gently take her chin between my thumb and forefinger. “I’m doing my job,” I tell her. “But that doesn’t mean you have to like it. You can be mad at this daddy.”

Her lower lip quivers. Her face crumples. She takes a deep breath and lets out a wail of pure pain. There it is. There it all is. I hold her close as she sobs against me, her hands clenched into fists against my chest.

“Please don’t put Leon in jail,” she begs. “Please, please, he might have saved me when he killed my father. Jaques wasn’t going to tolerate me for much longer. If you put Leon in jail, it will be like… like… like my father won. He broke us all.”

I hold her as she begs for an outcome that isn’t entirely in my control. Leon Francoise deserves to go to jail. An argument could be made that Jasmine does as well, but she’s been cooperating, and she has been so heavily victimized by her family that no jury is going to put her away even if charges were brought.

She cries herself out against my chest, and when she’s done, I take her and I put her to bed. She’s worn out from stress and utterly exhausted, so she doesn’t put up too much of a fight. She falls asleep, curling up in my arms, still whimpering for mercy she knows neither one of them deserve.

By the time Jasmine wakes up tender bottomed and with red-rimmed eyes, I’ve had some time to pull some strings. I can’t make everything right, but I can start to make it at least a bit more bearable for her.

I’m close by, in the next room when I hear her call out in sleepy tones. She sounds distressed at waking up alone.

“You weren’t supposed to leave me,” she says accusatorially.

“I didn’t leave, little girl. I was right here.”

“No, you were over there…” she pouts.

Down the track, I’ll be working on molding this behavior into something a little less demanding and rude, but right now, I like that she’s trusting me with these feelings. She needs me, and she’s letting me know.

“Well I’m sorry, princess,” I say, sitting on the bed and drawing her into my arms. “What did you need me for?”

“Nothing,” she says, curling up with me. “I mean, everything.”

I chuckle and hold her close. “When you’re ready, we should head out. I’ve been working on some things.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Just wait and see.”

She gives me a suspicious look, but she doesn’t whine.

When she’s had her fill of cuddles, she gets cleaned up and dressed and I take her into the city. She’s very quiet as we get closer to the building where I work. I reach over and pat her knee to comfort her, but she’s stiff.

“Okay so you changed your mind and you’re going to put me in jail after all, is that it?”

“That is not it,” I say, parking the car. “Come on.”

I hold her hand, sensing how uncomfortable places like this make her. Institutions of authority and Jasmine Francoise are not a great mix, but they’re going to have to be in the future because she’s my love, and this is my life.

There are a couple of guards outside the door of the room we’re going into. I nod to them, they nod to me and open the door. I draw Jasmine in behind me and hear her gasp.

“Leon!

Leon looks a much paler version of his usual cocky self. That’s because he’s sitting next to what might be the biggest agent we have - Eric Stone.

Eric used to be a Marine. He’s a no-nonsense sort of guy, and he has absolutely no time whatsoever for disrespectful bullshit. He jumped at the chance to handle Leon Francoise, saying something about liking them feisty. Leon can give Eric all the hell he wants - Eric will enjoy it, and give it back double.

Judging by their relative positions, I’d say they’d had a run in already. Leon looks cowed, to say the least. He’s not a small guy, but everyone is small compared to Eric.

“Hi Jasmine. Here to kick my ass too?” Leon says. He looks like he wants to get up, but he doesn’t dare. Eric is less than a step away and he shakes his head, indicating Leon needs to stay sitting in the chair.

“I should,” she says, giving him more sass than I expect. “You didn’t even notice the whole house was surrounded with feds.”

“Feds you bought to the door. Feds you probably sneaked in.”

“Yeah, well,” Jasmine shrugs. “I guess we’ve all got our faults. Some of us fuck law enforcement, others shoot our fathers in the goddamn face.”

“Best thing I ever did,” Leon snorts.

“Yeah,” Jasmine agrees.

This is the oddest sibling bickering I’ve ever borne witness to.

“This is the deal we’ve cut,” I explain to Jasmine. “Leon is going to be an asset. Eric is his handler.”

Jasmine’s eyes go wide. “Wow. You flipped.”

“Apparently it runs in the family,” Leon smirks.

Eric says nothing. Just stands there, very tall, very stoic, like a man made out of concrete and steel. I see Jasmine looking at him with curiosity, and maybe a little fear. Leon doesn’t respect anyone, but he seems to already be deferring to Eric. That’s because Eric will kick his ass if he puts a toe out of line, and Leon is smart enough to know when he’s beaten. His every move, word, and breath are going to be tracked from here on out.

“So you don’t lose your brother,” I say to Jasmine. “Good news, right?”

“Thank you, Rico,” she says, the relief evident in her voice.

“Yeah, thanks Rico,” Leon adds. He still sounds sarcastic, until Eric makes a gruff sound and raises a brow, at which point Leon’s tone changes considerably. “I mean, thank you,” he adds. “I know you could have just thrown me into prison and let my dad’s associates kill me. I’m lucky you didn’t.”

That speech sounds rehearsed, and I have a good idea who rehearsed it with him. This might actually work, if Eric has the time and interest to truly whip Leon into shape. Both of the Francoise kids have potential, but it’s going to take some work to get it out of them.

“It is a pity though,” Jasmine muses. “You look good in orange.”

Leon rolls his eyes. “Yeah well, you look good…” he glances over at Eric and whatever he was about to say dies on his tongue.

“There’s something else,” I say, interjecting before they can start squabbling and get one or both of themselves into trouble. “Your mother.”

“What about her?” Leon stiffens. Jasmine turns toward me, her arms folded over her chest. This is a sensitive subject for both of them.

“She has been in witness protection for the past decade. She’s been feeding us information on your father. She was our first in. Made is possible to start really gathering information on your family and your father.”

“Wow,” Jasmine breathes. “That would really piss him off if he wasn’t dead.”

“What a fucking…” Leon again aborts his commentary as Eric moves just a hair closer to him.

“It wasn’t safe for her to be in contact with you until this matter was resolved. It was too dangerous for her, and for you. But she’d like to see you both. Today.”

“I don’t want to.” It’s Leon who speaks first. His lips are thinned and pressed together, and I can see he’s fighting an outburst. I can only begin to imagine the mommy issues that boy has. I don’t blame him for not wanting to see her. She did leave them to their father’s mercy. She didn’t have a choice, but kids don’t understand that emotionally, and there’s some part of Leon that might not ever forgive her.

Eric reaches out and puts a hand on Leon’s shoulder. “You don’t have to see her,” he says, his voice deep and surprisingly sympathetic.

“Good, because I don’t want to.”

“You just shot our father in the face for hurting her…” Jasmine says wonderingly. “Why wouldn’t you want to see her?”

His lip curls in a sneer. “Because she was weak. Because she should have stayed. Because she should have taken us - or at least you. You would have been so much safer, Jazz. You would never have gotten beat up like you did - or the rest of it.”

There’s so much latent anger in the pair of them. Jasmine seems prepared to let it go, but Leon’s holding on tight.

“She left us,” he growls. “And I couldn’t save you. So I hurt you.”

“Leo…” Jasmine softens her voice and practically runs over to him, wrapping her arms around her brother’s neck. “We did what we had to survive. I forgive you.”

“You shouldn’t,” he says, hugging her one-armed. “You should shoot me the same way I shot that asshole we called a father. I was just as bad as he was.”

“Not just as bad,” she says. “You tried sometimes.”

“Wasn’t good enough though.”

“It’s over now. It’s going to be okay. Rico is going to make it better.”

“I hope he does make it better for you,” Leon says, glancing over at Eric. “I don’t think it’s going to get better for me for a while.”

“It will get better when you learn to behave yourself like a good boy.”

Eric’s second full sentence, delivered in gravelly tones, makes Leon damn near blush. Jasmine lets out a laugh.

“Oh my god, you’re in trouble,” she smirks, stepping away from Leon. “You have no idea how to be a good boy.”

“About the same idea as you have of being a good girl. Good luck with that, Rico.”

“Yeah, well, don’t worry about Rico. Worry about you,” Jasmine says.

It’s good advice.

“We need to get going, Jasmine. You can see Leon again another time. Eric and I can coordinate meetings.”

“My people will speak to your people,” Jasmine says, giving Leon another quick hug. She’s so damn forgiving. I’d understand it if she wanted her brother to rot in a cell, but that’s not her way of being. She just wants everything to be good - not that she’s ever had anything good. Until now. Now I’m going to make damn sure she has the life she deserves.

“Come on,” I say, extending my hand for her to take. “It’s time to meet your mother.”