26
Charlie disappears for seven days. Seven whole fucking days, and I go mad with depression and suppositions.
One minute I think he’s left for good—and after the way he shouted at me to get the fuck out of his office, how could I not? But then he texts to ask if I’m all right, and I’m left wondering in his gray abyss of the unknown. I reply desperate to speak with him, to apologize for whatever, begging for him to come back, but he doesn’t respond.
He never responds.
I receive flowers and chocolates like this shit will actually soothe my anxiety rather than fuel it, but that’s the extent of our communication.
I start to wonder if all men do this to soften the blow of separation. I start to wonder if the breakup process is always so drawn out and heartbreaking like this. And it really is heartbreaking, more than I could have ever anticipated.
I cry for no reason. I puke every day because I’m wound so tight with nerves. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I don’t even know what’s happening with my brother. Is Charlie still chasing leads? Has he given up now that he’s given up on me?
I don’t know. But I need to find out, somehow.
With a plan in mind, I make a daily effort to venture downstairs for breakfast and dinner with the Decenas, minus one, knowing they will be loitering in Charlie’s shadow. I don’t know what I’m expecting from them, but repetitive tête-à-tête on sports isn’t it. I want to steer the topic in my favor, but I don’t really know how. Maksim never trained me to be a conversationalist. The only person I’ve ever freely spoken to outside of my clan unit is Charlie, though he always took the lead.
I frown at Luna’s green vest, at the plunging v-neck boasting a curvaceous cleavage. Women like compliments. They get all mushy and blushy—I’ve seen it—but does that mean they fall in line spilling with secrets? Platitudes can’t have that much power, surely?
Here goes nothing...
My lips part to speak, but Luna cuts in.
“Want some?” She lifts a steaming bowl to offer up a second serving of food, and I know my time to try and probe her has passed. I accept the food, and she turns her attention to indulge her husband in talk of their children. Nic maintains his silence, blitzing messages on his mobile, or he’ll take sly calls he leaves the room for. The housekeeper mutters about clearing up the kitchen without ever noticing I’m here.
I’m so miserable I could cry right here in front of them all. I feel isolated, and it heightens the fact that Charlie really is gone. He’s probably moved on by now with a real beautiful woman who’s bowing to his every need. I’ll bet she’s easy to read, easy to love, and easy to be with. Unlike me, a chasm of darkness.
No wonder he left. I agree with my deeper-self. I’m damaged goods, and men like Charlie do not want damaged goods.
Hot tears come to the surface of my eyes, soaking my lashes, and a huge, painful lump forms in my throat. I gulp down a mouthful of food, forcing it past the swell of my throat, but I can’t seem to stow the need to weep in pity for myself.
“Hey, are you okay, cariño?” Luna says softly, reaching across the table to touch my hand.
I don’t flinch away. I let her touch me, soaking up her warmth, surprised by how much I miss human contact.
“Cariño?” she whispers, urging me to speak. “What is it?”
Eyes full of need, I want to tell her that I’m not okay, that my world is falling apart and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. But I can’t. So, I just cry in to my closed mouth, tears falling from my eyes. No one says a thing. Luna draws away from me at her husband’s beckoning, and I’m right back to being alone again.
The next day isn’t any better. I’ve cried all night. My eyes are red-raw, and the aching hole in my chest feels like it’s getting bigger, expanding beyond size.
Over breakfast, lacking in any form of self-respect, I ask Luna if she’s heard from Charlie. Waiting for her response is gut-wrenching. I fiddle to cover my mouth with the collar of my sweater, sure she’s going to ignore me. But then her deep, brown eyes flash to mine, and I sense she wants to ease my obvious misery. I smile to wheedle her on. I perk up in my chair, gazing, pleading...but Andres lifts a single finger, silencing his wife.
“Eat your food, Blaire,” Nic butts in, informing me that Charlie will come back when he’s ready. He apparently has another sim card, and I’m welcome to try and call. Same number.
I’m aware he’s got another sim card—he’s been texting me every fucking day. But I’m too nervous to call. He told me to go away.
“Don’t worry, cariño.” Luna beams with compassion from across the table, digging into her food. “I’m certain Señor Charlie misses you. And he will be okay.”
Be okay? From what?
Her subconscious nuance bugs me, and I can’t concentrate on our meal. I’m right back to thinking Charlie hasn’t left me at all. He’s just in a dark frame of mind and taking some timeout to battle his demons, like he told me he does.
But, he yelled at me. He practically told me to fuck off.
I glance at Nic with despair boiling in my eyes, hoping he’ll elaborate on Luna’s statement. He looks over at Andres, sighing on a shrug. “What harm is it going to do by telling her where he is, huh? Look at her, hermano...look how sad she is.”
My heart jumps. I glance through all three of them in a panic, expectant.
“Charlie is in France,” Andres confesses, shocking the hell out of me. “I’m sure you know why.”
James. He must still be chasing clues on James.
“Time’s getting on now,” he adds, speaking around a fork full of food, “so it won’t be long before he returns, I’m sure.”
“He’s coming home?” I gasp on every word, blinking a million times to process. For the first time in days, I feel alive.
“Of course he’s coming home.” The youngest Decena’s face screws with bafflement. “He misses you like crazy. I spoke to him yesterday. He told me himself.”
“Oh, for sure,” Luna croons in melody with her husband. “Charlie will be missing you, cariño. How could he not?”
My mood lifts sky high. I leave the table in haste, accidently flinging my fork across the kitchen in the process. I dive to pick it up, but Nic tells me between chuckling, “Just leave it, Señorita. Go, do what you were planning on doing.”
With a genuine smile, I leave the kitchen and rush up to Charlie’s bedroom. I muster up the guts to call his mobile, to tell him that I miss him and that I want him to come home now. I don’t like this anymore. He’ll take pity on me. He’ll walk through that door within hours, sling his arms around me, and kiss me deeply, passionately. I just know it.
My mood drops beyond a gulf when I dial his number as it isn’t a foreign ringtone that sets in. He’s still in England.
Hanging up the phone, I lower onto the edge of the bed on the verge of more tears, worried Andres doesn’t seem to know Charlie is still in the country. Or maybe he does know. Maybe he knows exactly where Charlie is but he’s hiding it from me.
Maybe because he’s with another woman.
The thought makes me puke.
By sunset, I come to the conclusion that I should probably leave before Charlie revokes my residence, but the mere idea of being without him petrifies me. Maksim is dead. James is God knows where, suffering God knows what, with God knows who. If I leave, I’ll be completely and utterly alone. And I’ve never really been alone before.
As a last resort, I try to communicate with some old acquaintances to see if they know where Charlie is. At least if I can find him, I can confront him, and then if we really are over, I’ll go. I’ll find a way to piece my life back together. I’m certain I’m not the only woman in the world whose life has dissolved at the power of a man.
Locking myself in Charlie’s bedroom, I let my mission consume me. First off, I hack the mobile he gave me, but it takes forever. The software currently imbedded is genius, layer after layer of codes and more codes tracking where I am and what I’m doing. When I manage to disable the features, the camera light beams red as if recording. I stick a lick of paper over it and carry on in my endeavor, connecting to an illegal Wi-Fi system so I can bypass the iTunes plugin feature. This allows me to jailbreak the device and implement a twenty-character password. Then I download my Dark Web applications and the application to my profile. I log in with anticipation, ignoring Tatiana’s string of capital-letter-subject-headed messages, and all the other messages offering jobs now that I’m free from Maksim’s hold, including Kratos—a squad of assassins led by Demetrius. I contact the most estranged people, being careful with how I ask if they’ve seen or heard from Charlie, Robert, or even James. I don’t want to make any of them easy targets.
Over the course of the evening, I get the same generic responses: Robert is missing. James has been AWOL for months now. Charlie Decena is never on the radar. There is a rumor the Los Zetas are wiping out Albanians nested in France, though I don’t know how true it is, and it doesn’t help my plight either way.
It’s gutting to know my last-ditch effort is an epic fail. At this point, I’m certain I should just leave of my own free will, but I can’t. I don’t want to go.
Another message comes through from Oliver, the guy who held a security post with James for Maksim. He insists I need to find James before it’s too late, that he’ll help me if I need him, and my stress levels amplify. He says seeking out Robert—not Charlie—should be my priority. I either need to find and kill the Albanian, or secure insurance and trade for my brother.
I knew this already, but what can I do without intelligence, allies, and funds to track him myself? Charlie made Tatiana take back all my cash.
I could go back to London and ransack Maksim’s place in Dartford for funds, but that means leaving, and I really, really don’t want to leave without seeing Charlie one last time.
Someone knocks on the bedroom door, and I dart out of bed to answer, subconsciously thinking it’s him.
It’s not.
It’s Luna, demanding I come down for dinner. “You’ve been locked away for days now, cariño. It isn’t healthy to be alone for such long periods of time.” She waves out in a manner of no-nonsense, holding my gaze the entire time. “Please, Blaire, or I’ll go fetch our plates and come eat with you.”
This confuses me most, why Charlie’s family linger around me. Surely, if he wants me gone, they would too? I can’t imagine Nic or Andres enjoy babysitting me.
I do as Luna asks before she invades my personal space. I grab my phone from the bed and follow her downstairs, though I immediately wish I hadn’t. Forty-eight hours of no sleep hits me hard, and I’m all twitchy and exhausted at the table. I nearly doze off in my starter salad, but my head whips up at the cackling sound of Luna laughing at her husband.
Kneading my temples, I try to level my mind. It’s hard though. I’m suddenly so tired, and my head is all over the place.
At some point, Eliza takes my untouched salad and serves my main course. I pick at the chicken but barely taste a lick of meat. I glance over my shoulder at the coffee machine thinking I should make one, but the housekeeper is there now.
Nic gently nudges my arm to see how I’m feeling, and I register he’s sitting next to me, spritzed in spicy cologne.
I don’t answer him. I let the evening wear thin, but my thoughts take a turn for the worst. By the time Eliza serves desert, I’m meditating on the memory of the heroin: the empty, floaty feeling of reverie and the sensation of the floor hugging me with its magic.
Nothing hurt when I was high. There was no painful rejection or depression of hope. There was only the moment. I miss it, and the more I think about it, the more my craving turns into a full-on blaze of starvation, just like before.
Heroin. Heroin, heroin, heroin.
Sitting forward in my chair, I cup my face in front of my audience, taking deep, calming breaths. I know where I could score some. Maksim used to buy drugs from the Yardy men in London, not a ten-minute walk from my old apartment. If I can just get out of this house, I’ll be on my merry way to reverie. I’ll be so numb that even James won’t matter anymore, and by the time I learn he’s dead...well, I’ll likely be dead, too.
We might as well both die. What else is there?
“Blaire?” Luna’s husky voice comes out sharp with apprehension. “Blaire, are you okay? Have a sip of water, cariño. Nic, get her some water.”
He tries to pass me a glass. I shift away shrinking into myself, telling him to leave me alone. But he won’t. While Andres gets up to make a call, Nic and Luna fuss over me thinking I feel sick. I don’t feel sick. I feel blank for a second. My head is totally empty. And then I recollect where my mind went.
Heroin.
I wonder what I would do if a syringe loaded with heroin was right there on the table. Would I take a hit? Wouldn’t I?
I think I would, and if I’m being honest with myself, I hate that I would. I hate what my mind has turned to. I hate what Charlie has done to me.
I think I’m disgusting.
“Iisus Khristos,” I say, rubbing my eyes.
I can’t do this anymore. My brother is in trouble, and I’m hankering for drugs while waiting for Charlie to come home—when it’s quite clear that he isn’t going to come home.
In a moment of clarity, before I lose myself a little more, I get up and storm out of the kitchen. Luna jumps to her feet, knocking her chair back so quick it slams on the floor, and yells at Andres to do something. It amazes me that it took seven days and total ruin for anyone to notice my state of hell.
Ignoring the Los Zetas on guard, I grab a set of keys from the cupboard near the front door, preparing to go find my brother. At least if my mind is on him, it’s not on Charlie, and it’s not on drugs. Oliver was right: James should be my focus.
“Hey, what are you doing, Señorita?” Nic jogs up after me, but I don’t pay him any attention. I’m typing Charlie’s number in to my mobile tracking system, so I can disconnect him from his Los Zetas tracking system and attach his number to mine. I’ll be able to find him then, and ask for all and any intelligence he has on James. I could have done this at the beginning of the week, but it’s risky. If Charlie were to go missing, the Los Zetas won’t be able to find him. Only I’ll have information on his location.
It’s not easy to disable his tracker, given someone—on his behalf—has implemented advanced software to his number that scrambles his location signal and blocks outside access. I go about trying to embed my codes in theirs, which will create a new gateway that I can link to my software.
A hand touches my shoulder, but I whack it away and shove Nic up against the wall.
“Whoa, lo siento!” I’m sorry. He lifts defensive, tattooed hands, promising not to touch me again. The Los Zetas guards spread out around me, but Nic orders them to leave the house right now, and they do. “Blaire, tell me what you’re doing,” he says.
I wrench my arm off his chest and return to my phone, thumbs whizzing all over the glass screen. “I’m going to find Charlie.”
A wave of panic jolts through Nic’s powerful body, and he reaches into his joggers back pocket, I presume for his mobile.
“Call him,” I say with a miserable shrug, jealous Charlie might actually answer his brother’s call. “He’ll speak to you, won’t he?”
“Ohhh, Blaire”—the way Nic says my name...it makes my heart ache more than ever before—“he’s not intentionally ignoring you, chica. Charlie is just...” His voice disappears on a note. I lift my eyes to his and gaze for ages, pleading him to just tell me the truth. But as per usual, I get nothing. His shapely lips don’t move an inch.
“I’m leaving,” I say in his silence. “I need to go find my brother. You can try to stop me, but I must warn that it won’t end well for you.”
“I can’t just let you leave.” He sidesteps me, the paleness in his eyes flashing between mine. “Please, Blaire, I know you’re anxious—I know you’re worried about James and Charlie—but you shouldn’t be. Charlie is handling everything.”
“And how do you know that?” I ask with sarcasm.
He opens to speak, tumbling over his own words. I try to duck past him again, but he blurts out, “Before Charlie left, he asked me personally to keep you here and make sure you’re okay!”
“Well, I’m not okay!” I scream at the top of my lungs, losing my minuscule shred of cool. “I want to know where Charlie is!” I jab a finger in Nic’s face. “I want to know where the fuck my brother is!”
He mirrors my steps all over the place, begging me to stop. “Chica, please, will you just calm down.”
“Don’t you chica me!” My anger hits a peak, and I kick out at a sideboard, sending it skidding back a few feet. When Nic doesn’t move from his position, standing there like a wall of muscle blocking my exit to the front doors, I go crazy. I yank the key cupboard off the wall and toss it across the entrance hall at him. I tear at the side tables, whacking and punching, chipping skin off my knuckles. “I want to know where Charlie is!” I spin around to screech in Nic’s face, sure I’m crimson with madness. I’m shaking with adrenaline, too, pulse reaching an all-time high. “I want to know where James is!”
“You need to calm down.” Nic’s hands hover about me in a battle to compose my rage. “I promise, James is okay, and Charlie is okay, too. He isn’t far away.”
Isn’t far away? My hackles spark, steam blowing out of my ears.
“You either tell me his location, Nic,” I say his name for the first time ever, speaking through clenched teeth, “and save me the trouble of disabling your tracker blocker, or get out of my way.”
“You can’t do that.” Andres appears, dominating the kitchen doorway.
“Why, are you going to stop me, huh?” I challenge, and Nic steps in my line of vision, blocking Andres from sight.
“That’s not what he meant,” Nic says, head snapping back and forth between his brother and me. “If you disable the scrambler or the blocker connected to our numbers, we’re fair game to anyone who’s able to track.”
“I will attach his number to my server and re-block outside access,” I say, hating myself the second I do. I don’t have to explain myself. They don’t give a fuck about me, so why should I give a fuck about them?
“What if something happens to him, Blaire, and our men can’t track his location?”
This was my initial concern—why I didn’t do it in the first place—but I’m running out of time to find James, so I have no other choice. Once I find Charlie, I’ll re-connect his server to the Los Zetas tracking system, putting things back as they were.
Nic grabs the front door as I yank it open. “Blaire, stop. You’re acting reckless, and you’re putting Charlie in danger.”
I shove him up against the wall again, gaining height on my tippy toes to grab his thick, tattooed throat with my nails. “I want to know where he is!” I scream in his chest, quaking from the frustration. “It’s been seven days! I want to know where he is! I want to know where my brother is! If he were Charlie or Andres, would you just leave him?”
“Blaire”—Nic grunts as I shove him harder, pinning him to the wall—“I shouldn’t even be telling you this, goddammit!”
“Tell me what?”
“Charlie’s all fucked up!” he yells, the sound ricocheting around the house, and a wave of dread comes over me. “When he butchers people, it screws with his mindset, and he doesn’t want to be around you! He fucking left for space, which he won’t have if you go after him!”
“You’re lying,” I say, unsure of myself. “He-he left because of me. I know he did. I’m not stupid. He told me to—”
“¿Estás loco?” Nic scoffs, shaking his head in disbelief. “You really are insane... My brother loves every inch of you—he’ll marry you, you silly girl! He would never leave you indefinitely!”
Marry me. Charlie mentioned marrying me when we were in Dover. He said he might marry me when we get to Mexico. The memory hurts, cutting through my soul like razors. I wanted that so fucking badly I’d have murdered for it.
I don’t want to believe Nic. I can’t stomach the pain. I look away from him, then back at him, away and back at him. He’s still shaking his head, holding my scrutinizing stare, and a sense of cold fear goes through me. I realize he could be telling the truth. Charlie might’ve been in hell for the past seven days and I haven’t been there to help him.
“Where is he?” I demand to know, stepping up to Nic for a fight. “You have three seconds to tell me before I—”
“Nic,” Andres murmurs from the kitchen doorway, edging toward us, “you can’t let her go on her own.”
“Don’t you think I fucking know that?” Nic shoots a glare at Andres, then swipes the keys from my hand. “Charlie won’t be fucking happy about this.”
I shove past him for the front doors, tossing over my shoulder, “I won’t be happy until I see him.”