“Turn onto the highway,” I direct Wes, leaning forward in the passenger seat of his car.

“The next exit coming up on the right?” he clarifies.

“Yes. Right there,” I answer. I sit back as he makes the turn. I realize my body is totally tensed up, my jaw tight and aching. With a deep breath, I make a concentrated effort to calm down and relax my body, if not my racing mind.

“Now what?”

“Just drive for awhile. It’s a long way down this highway,” I tell him.

“Are you okay?” Wes asks quietly.

I can feel the undercurrent of what he’s not saying. All the things he hasn’t brought up. Those questions burning, crackling in the small space between us.

“I don’t know,” I reply, shaking my head. “No. I’m not, actually.”

“You know the way, right? For sure?” he asks, looking over at me.

I give him a slow nod. “Yeah. I know it by heart. We used to go there all the time when I was a kid. Eddie’s lakehouse. We spent summers laying out on the lawn, hiking in the hills, fishing off the dock. He had this little red rowboat. My sister and I used to take it out and paddle way out onto the lake, play card games on the open water, just drifting. Getting crazy-awful sunburns and then paddling home, exhausted, to eat hamburgers and hot dogs my dad and Eddie grilled on the back deck. Those are some of my happiest memories, Wes.”

I look over at him, now not even trying to stop the tears prickling in my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. “How did this happen, huh? How did it come to this? How did the man I trusted, even maybe loved, as a kid… end up being such a fucking evil creep? It makes me question all those good memories I made back then. The whole time he was pretending to be my parents’ best friend, my goofy uncle-- was he just planting the seeds for what he had planned later on? Was this his goal all along? To make me trust him so that I would make an easy target as an adult?”

Wes shakes his head. “I don’t know, Molly. I’m so sorry.”

“How dare he do this to me? To Andie? God, to my parents! We all trusted him. We all fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. He seemed so genuine, that lying bastard. Tell me, how the hell am I supposed to trust anyone now? Ever?” I cry, running my fingers back through my hair in frustration. Wes is conspicuously silent.

Which only reminds me of something Eddie said during the fight at the docks.

“Especially with you associating with that mafioso.”

My stomach flip-flops. If I don’t say something now, I’ll regret it. I can’t let this-- whatever this is-- go any further without getting some answers first.

“Go ahead,” Wes says suddenly, his voice gruff. “Ask.”

“How did Eddie recognize you?” I murmur, almost afraid to look at him.

There’s another long, painful silence. He’s mulling it over, choosing his words.

“Are you sure you want to know?” he asks. For some reason, this just pisses me off.

I round on him with a glare, my cheeks burning hot. “I asked, didn’t I? Come on, Wes. It’s not like I haven’t had suspicions. The way you fight. The shady skills you have. The stack of burner phones. The fact that you won’t tell me a damn thing about yourself and your past even though I’ve spilled my fucking guts to you. Who are you? What are you?”

Wes closes his mouth, a steely expression on his face. He’s clamming up on me.

“You told me to ask, and I asked. Now you have to tell me,” I demand.

“I take it back. We’re not talking about that shit,” he says, a warning note in his voice. But I don’t care. I’m not just going to drop it. Not now.

“No. You don’t get to go back on your word,” I tell him, shaking my finger at him angrily. He glances over at me with those beautiful blue eyes flashing, but I won’t back down.

“Now is not the time, Molly,” he says.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Everything is falling apart around me. Everyone is lying to me, sneaking around, doing shit behind my back. I’m relying on you, Wes. Right now, you are all I have. Can I trust you or not? I’m so fucking tired of being lied to. Give me the truth now or stop the car and let me walk the rest of the way!” I shout, my voice cracking as tears pulse down my cheeks. Wes heaves a sigh, shaking his head. I can tell I’ve struck a nerve. Good.

I put my hand on the door handle, a warning sign to him that I mean it.

He clicks the door lock.

“You want the truth?” he asks in a low, dark voice.

“Yes! That’s what I want, Wes. I want you to tell me who the hell you are.”

“Fine. You really want to know? Okay! I’m Wes Jameson, former mafia grunt worker. I’m from Las Vegas, Nevada and I’ve been running away from that place for years, afraid to look back and see it following me. When I was a kid, I lived with my mom. She was a single mom, working her damn ass off to make ends meet. Vegas isn’t cheap. She was a blackjack dealer at a casino, working all hours of the night to put food on the table and clothes on my back. She’s a fucking superhero to work as hard as she did. She was exhausted all the time. Never took a sick day or a vacation. When I got a little older, I got so tired of watching my mom run herself ragged. I worked odd jobs, trying to help out after school and on weekends, but it never made much of a difference. We were dirt-poor, living on the outskirts of town, surrounded by all those neon lights and the glamor and money of Vegas life without being able to even touch it ourselves. So, yeah. The mafia recruited me. Offered me a life I’d only dreamed of. Money, notoriety, women, fast cars-- the world I’d stood on the outside of for my whole life. And you know, Molly? For years, it was fucking awesome. They gave me easy jobs. Drive this car. Stand guard at that door. Follow that mark. Until that wasn’t enough for them.

“That’s how they get you. Hook you in with promises of easy, fast money, and then they escalate it. Give you harder work. Dark work. Things nobody should be doing, especially a dumbass kid like I was. They made rob stores, stalk people. Send threats. Did I want to do any of that? No, of course I fucking didn’t. But I had no choice. It’s not like a regular job. You can’t just put in your two weeks’ notice and leave with a letter of recommendation. If they say jump, you say how high. And then they bumped it up too far. They ordered me to kill this guy, this poor alcoholic gambler who was a regular at my mom’s casino. He owed the mafia big money, and they found out he was planning to skip town. So they demanded that I lure the guy out to the desert and kill him.”

“Jesus,” I swear. “What did you do, Wes?”

“I got out. They were threatening to kill my mother, Molly. The most important person in my whole world. The reason I got involved with the mafia in the first place. So, I ran. I ran away to Los Angeles and started over, doing the only barely-marketable skill I learned with the mafia: using my physical strength to protect some people and threaten others. I’ve tried to bury where I came from, who I used to be. But that’s how I know who Eddie is, and that’s why he knows me. We come from the same dark place. His real name is Eduardo Abruzzi, and he’s been in the area for a long time. He was sent here as an emissary to recruit and stake a claim for this one-deadly crime family from New York,” he says.

“Once-deadly?” I ask.

“Yes. The organization has more or less collapsed by now, but Eddie is resourceful. Versatile. The family didn’t know what they had in him. Underestimated his ability to blend in and make do with the cards he’s been dealt. He made a new life for himself out here,” he says, “and I guess he got lucky. Fell in with the right people. Smooth-talked his way to the top. Met people like your parents, and gained their trust.”

My mind is racing. It seems so fucking crazy. Eddie… a secret mafioso?

But then, certain memories come floating back to me. Times when he would disappear for weeks at a time on some mysterious business trip, always returning with lots of cash to spend. Conversations he would sneak out to his car to have. Hush-hush discussions with sketchy-looking guys who would come to the lakehouse out of nowhere.

It was there in front of me all along. Eddie Arnold… actually Eduardo Abruzzi.

“He was lying to us all along,” I mumble. Then, an even more horrible thought occurs to me. “Or maybe he wasn’t. What if-- what if my parents knew?”

Wes shakes his head. “No, Molly. I’m sure they had no idea. Guys like Eddie survive by keeping that shit under wraps. He wouldn’t have ever shown that side of him to people like your parents. He needed them to believe he was squeaky-clean. It helps his image to have folks like that on his side. Potential alibis. Character witnesses. No, he was living a double life, like so many of them do.”

“And what about you, Wes?” I ask, my voice trembling.

“Where do I turn?” he asks, ignoring my question.

I glance out the window, wracking my brain for the right instructions. I recognize a field from my childhood. We’re getting close. “Turn up at that next street. To the right. It’s in the woods, further in.”

Wes is quiet as we turn down the little country road, the rarely-maintained road rough and uneasy. The car shakes and grumbles over the gravel. I’m still staring at the side of Wes’s face, waiting for him to answer me. I’m not going to just let this go. I need to know the truth.

“Wes,” I say, prompting him.

He ignores me, staring straight ahead. My heart sinks.

“Wes!” I cry out. “Answer me. Please!”

“What? What do you want to know, Molly? I’ve already told you everything. What else is there? You got my pathetic, tragic life story. What more could you possibly want? I don’t tell anyone this shit, you know? Nobody knows who I am. Where I come from,” he shoots back, those eyes blazing with a fiery rage. And something else. Sadness, maybe. Regret.

“I want to know if you’re still in that life,” I ask, enunciating every word. “I want to know if the guy I’ve been hiding out with, the man I’ve been fucking, is someone I should be afraid of. I want to know if I’ve been sleeping with the enemy.”

“I’m a bodyguard, Molly. That’s why I’m here right now.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“My friend Cody got me started. Hooked me up with the protection agency your stuffy-ass lawyer hired me from. I’m doing my job,” he says firmly.

“This? This is just your job? You said it yourself, this is more than that,” I say.

“Fine. You want me to spill that part of my soul, too? I feel-- something for you, Molly. I don’t know why I can’t just treat you like any other client. I don’t know why I’m going out on a limb for you and your family. I don’t have the answer. I’ve worked with beautiful women before. I’ve had assignments that felt too personal. But nothing like this. Nobody like you,” Wes fires back at me, gritting his teeth.

“Then tell me the truth,” I plead. “If you feel something for me the way I feel something for you, then be honest. Give me the ending of that story, Wes. That man the mafia made you lure out to the desert. Did you kill him? Did you kill that guy, Wes?”

The car rolls to a stop. Wes, still silent, points straight ahead. I tear my eyes away from him and look out in front of us. The lakehouse sits in the near distance, shielded partially by beautiful, slightly overgrown flowering hedges.

“We’re here,” Wes says.