2 comments/ 17107 views/ 3 favorites 4. My Father's Son Ch. 04-06 By: inspirixis1 CHAPTER FOUR Grace didn't think it was possible to feel more miserable than she did, but Zach looked like he was running a close second. His face sagged and he had bags under his eyes. He chewed and swallowed his breakfast wearily. He looked defeated. He looked how Grace felt. "Should we just get a room here?" She asked. They had gone to the hotel that Adrian had recommended for breakfast. Zach shrugged his shoulders. "Sure, why not." She went back to picking at her food in silence. Even though she hadn't eaten properly in days she wasn't hungry. She had no appetite, just an awful twisting ball of nerves in her stomach that made it impossible to relax. "Grace I'm so sorry." She looked up. It was Adrian. "I didn't realize that he was going to be that bad. I'm sorry you had to hear that." She sat there dumbfounded, blinking at him. What was Adrian doing here? She thought he had agreed to stay away from her. Adrian squeezed into the booth beside her, nudging her over so that her plate was in front of him. He took her fork from her and started eating her breakfast. "You guys aren't going to believe what the cops wanted with my dad," he said through a mouthful of eggs. Grace and Zach couldn't keep up with Adrian, they sat there looking at him dumbly. "It turns out the Chicago Police Department have a mystery on their hands, one of the big organized crime bosses showed up dead in his penthouse apartment on Wednesday night, blunt force trauma injury to the head." He paused while he shoveled more food into his mouth. "When they fingerprinted the bathroom they found something unusual. My dad's name was written on the mirror in the bathroom. They couldn't lift a print from it so they don't have any leads on who this mysterious killer might be. They figured that it was a warning, they think that my dad is next on the hit list." "Nicholas," she whispered. Adrian smiled at her. "Pack your bags Gracie, we're going to Chi-town." "We're going? But you told your dad..." "Yeah, I feel kind of shitty about that, but this is making up for it for now." He leaned down and patted the bag at his feet. "What's in there?" Zach asked. Adrian smiled. "Chandrasekhar's file. Everything my dad knows about him is in this bag. Needless to say there is no reason for me to go home." "You stole it?" She asked. "That's not the only thing I stole." He had a boyish grin plastered on his face as he jangled a set of keys. "How do you fancy trading that Corolla for something a little more stylish?" Adrian's mom's Porche was so much fun. It was so comfortable and sleek and fast and it handled like a dream. Adrian let Grace drive and she discovered that she loved fast cars. She would never have guessed that she could be so taken by a machine, it's funny the things you learn about yourself by accident. She guessed that she got it from Robert, her biological father. Robert was a mechanic who worked solely on European luxury vehicles and himself drove a super-charged Alfa Romeo. She would have to ask him if she could take it for a spin the next time she saw him. At the rate Grace was driving they would have been in Chicago by the end of the day, except that Adrian insisted on a detour. They were not far West of Boston when he directed her into the rolling green hills of the Massachusetts countryside and to an enormous estate that had similar huge wrought iron gates to his parents' house in Boston. "Is this your house too?" Zach asked on their way up the long drive to a huge house. "This is my parents' 'country home.'" He used his fingers as quotation marks around the words. "I never realized you had all of this Adrian," Grace said. "Does it make a difference?" He asked. "Would it have changed anything?" It was the first time Adrian had ever referred to the fact that they used to date. She glanced at him as she drove, he didn't look upset or angry. "No. I just never knew. You don't act rich." He shrugged his shoulders. "What's rich?" It was more of a comment than a question. They followed Adrian as he unlocked the front door and led them through the cavernous foyer, up a set of stairs and to a room that looked like a library but only had bookshelves on one wall, on the opposite wall were locked glass cases full of guns. Adrian went to the bookshelves and pulled out a large leather-bound book and opened it on the waist-high table in the middle of the room. He went to the index and then flipped through the pages and started reading from the near the middle of the book. Zach and Grace busied themselves looking at the guns, they were mostly big long ones but there were some pistols too. Grace had never seen a gun in real life before and these ones looked sleek and beautiful and refined. It was strange to think something so beautiful was so deadly, kind of like Nicholas. "Fuck," she heard from behind her. "What?" She asked as she turned to look at Adrian. He looked disappointed. "None of these are going to be legal in Illinois. There isn't a state preemption law that trumps local municipalities so there are no reciprocity laws with Massachusetts." "I thought it was our inalienable right to arm ourselves? I thought it was in the constitution?" Grace was surprised, she had always assumed she could have a gun if she wanted one. "Well yeah, but you still need the right permits, otherwise you're breaking the law. This isn't the movies, you can get in a lot of shit for carrying a firearm without the proper permits." "You were going to take a gun with us?" Adrian rolled his eyes. "Grace, Nicholas would kill me himself if he found out that I hadn't done everything I could to protect you." Although the comment had been made casually it still jarred her. "You don't really believe that do you? You don't really think that he would kill you?" Adrian's face softened. "No Gracie," he said gently. "Nicholas wouldn't kill. My dad doesn't know what he's talking about, he just acts as if he does." She nodded. God she hoped that was true. "Hey," Adrian continued. "Maybe you see Nicholas differently because you are in love with him but I'm pretty sure I'm not. There is nothing wrong with my judgment and I don't think he's been tricking us, I think he's been abducted." Zach smiled and then he started laughing. It seemed inappropriate. "What's so funny?" She asked. "Can you imagine Nicholas trying to trick someone into believing something about him that's not true?" She had to admit it was kind of funny. Adrian started laughing too. "The guy is practically socially retarded." That comment sent Zach into a fit of hysterics. "Hey, he is not retarded," she said defensively. "He's just..." If she were a bigger person she may have admitted that socially retarded was only a little bit too harsh of a way to describe Nicholas. "...shy." Zach and Adrian were still laughing uncontrollably. "When they were little Grace and Nicholas used to take ballet lessons together," Zach started to tell a story. "They were like six or seven or something and they had this Christmas recital and everyone went to watch, all of the grandparents and kids... everyone. "Nicholas was the star. He was absolutely brilliant. Even back then he could do all of those insane jumps and tricks and turns and all of that shit, and in perfect time with the music. It was impossible to tear your eyes away from him when he was on the stage. "So anyway, the recital finishes and everyone goes back to Grace's parents' place for the rest of the afternoon. It wasn't until we all sat down for dinner that his mom goes, 'Where's Nicholas?' He was nowhere to be found. Nobody had seen him all afternoon. The fucking star of the show and nobody had noticed that he was missing for hours." Zach started laughing again. "His dad was flipping out, he wanted to call the cops, he thought..." He was laughing so hard that he couldn't complete the sentence. "...He thought he'd been kidnapped and sold to..." More laughter. "...To the circus!" Adrian burst out laughing and Grace couldn't help but join in. She could totally picture Tyler saying something like that and being dead serious about it too. "Maya, his mom, called the recital hall and asked them if Nicholas was there and they said no, and I still remember this... she goes, 'Can you check the bathrooms?'" Now Grace had forgotten being offended or standing up for Nicholas' honor, she was laughing just as hard as Zach and Adrian. "But he wasn't there right? So Tyler decides that his little border collie mutt is all of a sudden a bloodhound sniffer dog and is waving Nicholas' hat in front of her nose and saying 'Cassie, find Nicholas, find Nicholas,' and the poor dog has no idea what is going on. Maya is on the couch crying, convinced that her son has been sold to the circus and Grace's mom is trying to console her. All of the little kids are crying. The grandparents are all out to trolling the streets for him and Grace's dad, who is totally unaffected by the whole scene says to me, 'Why don't we go and check the recital hall just to be sure?' "So we go back out to the recital hall and it's actually a community center right? There are lights on and some function going on inside and outside sitting on the curb, shivering from the cold, is Nicholas. "He sees Sam's car and he gets up with his gym bag and climbs in and goes 'Hi,' as if it is the most normal thing in the world for a seven year old to be left sitting on the curb in the middle of winter for several hours. He's shivering uncontrollably and his teeth are chattering and Sam asks him why he didn't go back inside the hall and he says, 'Well I didn't want to miss you when you came to get me.'" There was a pause while everyone laughed. "Ah Nicholas. He was such a funny kid," Zach said as he wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. Adrian was shaking his head and smiling. "Yeah... Let's go get him." When they got to the Chicago Police Department late that night he told Grace and Zach to let him do the talking. Adrian had assumed an air of responsibility over the day, a kind of authority that she was happy to obey and follow. The deputy superintendent was visibly annoyed when he finally showed up. He had been called in late on a Saturday night because Adrian had managed to convince an officer that they had information that couldn't wait. "Okay, let me hear it," he bristled. He was in his late fifties or early sixties with a thick moustache, graying hair and a straight up and down, almost militaristic demeanor. "I am Adrian Wheeler, my father is Charles Wheeler, the one whose name was written on the glass in Lombard's bathroom." "Okay, and..." "And we think we know who is responsible for it." Adrian slid a photograph of Hamid from his dad's file across the table to the deputy. "Who is this?" "Hamid Chandrasekhar, he was a big player in New York back in the eighties." "Never seen him before. Why do you think he's involved?" Adrian explained their story and the deputy superintendent nodded and asked questions but he never volunteered any information. He was stone cold. Not an ounce of emotion in him. "So you want to give me your father's file on this Chandrasekhar guy?" He asked when Adrian came to the end of the story. "Kind of. As you can imagine we are very concerned about Nicholas, we want to find him and, if he is mixed up in some sort of organized crime circle, extract him. We want to know everything about the Lombard case. We want to know about the organized crime cartels in the area." The deputy superintendent looked from Adrian to Zach to her and back to Adrian. "You can talk to Guiterrez, the chief of our Organized Crime Division, but I can't guarantee anything." They met with Guiterrez the next morning and were given a lesson on the mob. It was surreal. Grace thought that organized crime was something that was exaggerated to make action movies, she hadn't realized that it was alive and well. It was an intricate web of dirty people, dirty money and dirty deeds. Guiterrez was warm and friendly despite the early start on a Sunday morning. She obviously loved her job. "Your Fiancé, Nicholas, do you have a photo of him?" Grace got out Nicholas' passport and handed it to her. "Amir?" "That's his middle name." Guiterrez picked up the phone and pressed a few buttons. "I need Ben to come in..." She said. "... as soon as he can. Now if possible." She turned back to Grace. "Tell me about him." "What do you want to know?" "Everything." Half an hour later Grace was still answering questions about Nicholas when there was a knock on the door and a stocky guy wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt walked in. "This had better be good Susan," he said. "This is Officer Benson, he's an undercover agent in the Torini house," she introduced him. "Yeah, an undercover agent who is not impressed by being dragged out of bed on a Sunday morning." "Tell me about Amir," Guiterrez requested. He shrugged his shoulders and collapsed into a chair. "Early twenties. Looks like an Indian, talks like an American. He showed up on Monday or Tuesday. He's a specialist, although I'm not sure what he does, he didn't bring a weapon with him." Grace's heart jumped. That sounded like Nicholas. "Is he there willingly?" He leaned over her desk and picked up her coffee mug. "I assume so." Guiterrez slid Nicholas' passport across the desk and Benson picked it up. "Yeah, that's him. Shit, he's got a lot of names huh?" "Mm..." She slid the photo of Hamid across the desk. "Is this... Waziri?" He picked up the photo and examined it carefully. "Yes. I think so. He looks young here though." "Ben, Amir is Waziri's son." A smile crept across his face. "No shit? I thought so but I didn't want to ask incase I offended him." "Yeah, well get this, Amir was kidnapped. This is his fiancée Grace and his friends Adrian and Zach." Benson shook his head. "Not possible. His fiancée's name was Maria. She's dead, she was killed accidentally on Wednesday." What? Is that what Nicholas thought? "My first name is Maria. I'm not dead. I'm here. I'm looking for him." "You're Maria?" "Yes. I was being followed but I got away on Wednesday, I tricked the guy who was following me in the airport." He looked at Guiterrez. "I don't get it, why would Torini lie?" Guiterrez turned her palms to the ceiling. "He's fucking with his head," Adrian said. Everyone turned to look at him. "Chandrasekhar, or Waziri or whatever you want to call him, is a master of deception. He's manipulating Nicholas to get whatever it is that he wants from him." Benson shook his head. "Waziri is a serf, he doesn't tell anyone what to do." "No way," Adrian insisted. "Waziri is running the show. Read the file, he's a genius." Benson raised his eyebrows. "Waziri?" He seemed skeptical. "Is that possible?" Guiterrez asked. He shrugged his shoulders. "I guess it's not impossible. I would never have guessed it though, he's so... personable." "What does he do?" Adrian asked. "Okay, there are three types in the Torini house." He lounged back in his chair and crossed his legs so his ankle was resting casually on his knee. "The specialists, they're the ones who actually do the hits and cover the deals, they live in the house and have their every whim accommodated. The contractors, like me, we're the ones who do reconnaissance, set up the hits and deals, follow people of interest, all of that sort of stuff. Then there are the staff, who just do what they're told. Torini and his right-hand man Cosgrove run the whole operation. "Your friend Amir is a specialist. He lives in a nice room, with a..." He stole a glance at Grace. "Well, he's comfortable, let's put it that way. Waziri is head of staff, he sees to the specialists personally." "How many other specialists are there?" Adrian asked. "Two." "What are they like?" "Cold. Distant. They're both marksmen. A sniper and a target shooter." "Is it possible that they're there against their will?" "Ah... I don't think so. I don't see how they could be kept there against their will, I mean they're highly skilled and there is no security detail on them. It would be easy for them to escape." "Physically maybe, but what about mentally? I think your specialists are prisoners." Benson leaned forward towards Adrian. "Explain." "Somebody has a skill you want to use, they're a sharpshooter or a ninja or whatever but they're not dirty, they couldn't be bought, so how do you get them to do what you want? You send out some contractors to stalk their family members and tell your specialist that he has to do what you say or else his mother or brother or sister or whoever will be shot." "Okay, but why kill his fiancée? Wouldn't keeping her alive be his greatest motivation?" Adrian nodded. "Maybe in the short-term, but think long-term, you want to get your specialist to the point where he's given up on his old life, to turn him. In order to do that you need to break his ties, you need to take away his reason for living the life he was living and nurture the evil in him." "Hey." Grace thought that was taking it too far. "Nicholas is not evil." "Grace, everyone has a little evil in them, it's human nature. Waziri just gives that evil a chance to flourish." Grace thought back to the photos of the man in the stairwell. She hadn't realized that Nicholas was capable of that, of course he was physically capable but emotionally she would never have guessed that he could beat someone to death like that. He'd never expressed any remorse for killing those men. Not once had he mentioned any feelings of regret. He'd gone on training and going to school and working as if it had never happened. Maybe Adrian was right. "Besides," Adrian continued, "the Lombard hit was on Wednesday night, what better way to get an essentially good person to commit a heinous crime than throwing them off balance by telling them that the love of their life is dead? "And throughout all of the trauma Waziri is there to personally comfort and bond with the specialist. As far as they know he is just the head of staff, he doesn't have any control over the guns pointed at their loved ones. They grow to trust him and rely on him, in the end they would do anything for him." Benson was nodding his head thoughtfully. "It's not a bad theory. Sometimes when I'm sent out to follow someone it feels wrong. Sometimes they're just normal people going about normal lives." "You said Nicholas was 'comfortable,' what does that mean?" Grace asked. "Specialists get anything they want... drugs, alcohol, women... anything." She gasped. "Nicholas has a woman?" Benson cringed. "There is a woman who stays in his room. Jaidee, she's a little Thai girl." Grace felt her heart breaking. Another woman slept in Nicholas' room. Did she sleep in his arms? Was he having sex with her? "He thinks you're dead," Benson said apologetically. "Do the other specialists have women who stay with them?" Adrian asked. "Yeah, Ralph, the sniper, has a kid with his woman." "That must be part of the process. Give them a new life, something to keep them anchored." "We have to get him out." Grace was becoming panicked. She didn't want Nicholas to become anchored in a new life with a new woman. "Where is he? Where is this house?" Benson and Guiterrez looked at her sadly. "Grace it's not that easy. What about Maya and Luka? If Nicholas tries to leave they might kill them," Zach said. She felt desperate, like she could feel Nicholas slipping away from her. She turned to Benson. "You have to tell him that I'm still alive." 4. My Father's Son Ch. 04-06 He ran his hand through his thick black hair. "And blow my cover? I don't think so. He could repeat anything I say to Waziri." "Please, I'm begging you." She felt tears prickle her eyes. "Just plant the idea that I'm alive in his head." He shook his head. "No. It's too dangerous. As far as I'm concerned this kid is an unknown quantity." "So go talk to him," Guiterrez said. "See if you can get him to open up. Read this and then talk to Waziri too, maybe he'll slip." She pushed Hamid's file across the desk and Benson picked it up. "So what do we do now?" Grace asked. "Wait. You wait." Grace didn't want to wait. Waiting was driving her crazy. She called her parents and then Nicholas' parents from a public phone across town from where they were staying. She and Nicholas always called their parents on Sunday afternoon, it was part of their routine. Nobody was suspicious when she said that Nicholas couldn't talk because he was giving another Aikido seminar. On Monday she thought she was going to explode from the waiting. She and Adrian went for a jog to pass the time. They were running by the lake and the sun was warm and comfortable. "Gracie there's something I want to tell you," Adrian said. "Mm?" "You know when we used to date?" "Yeah?" "Well Nicholas used to give me hints on how to make you happy." "What?" Why would Nicholas help Adrian to be a good boyfriend? "Yeah, it took me the longest time to figure out. The first time was so weird. It was right before your birthday and he walked up to me in the gym and said 'Grace prefers dark chocolate over milk chocolate, roses make her sneeze and she loves getting pastries for dessert from that little Italian bakery in the North End.' "I was so confused. I thought he must have been fucking with me so of course I bought you milk chocolates and roses and you spent half of the night sneezing. Dinner was fine, but then I asked you if you wanted to go to that bakery for dessert and your eyes lit up like it was the best idea you had heard in your life." Adrian smiled and shook his head. "I didn't get it. I was sure that he was in love with you, the way he looked at you and took care of you made it hard to think otherwise, but he was always giving me these little hints. 'Grace could use some new mittens,' he told me one day. 'Her favorite color is light blue and she needs mittens, not gloves, her fingers get cold when she wears gloves.' "Finally one day I came out and asked him why he did it and he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'I just want her to be happy.'" Grace was crying, the tears streaked down her cheeks and her nose was all snotty. "Why are you telling me this?" She croaked. "I want you to know that he loved you. It wasn't acting or your imagination or anything else. It was love. I don't know what has happened to him over the past week, I don't know if he is going to be the same person when we get him out, but the Nicholas that I knew loved you in a way that was pure and unselfish." She nodded. She knew Nicholas had loved her, she just hoped that he still did. CHAPTER FIVE Nicholas was seriously considering suicide. Hamid had told him that if he killed himself his mom and Lucas would be killed but he wondered if that was an empty threat. "Why would they bother killing mom and Lucas if I was already dead?" He asked. "It would just be two more bodies to dispose of. Two more chances to get caught and be charged with murder." "Amir, no," Hamid pleaded. "They would make an example of you for the others to see. They wouldn't just kill Maya and your brother, they would kill everyone, everyone you love." "Like who? Who else is there?" He sighed. "Your step father and baby sister, Baaba and Daadii... me." "Why not Selena?" He tested. "She is like a second mother to me. She practically raised me while mom was at work." Nicholas watched him carefully for his reaction but there was no indication of surprise. "Yes," he said. "They would kill her too." There was no Selena. Hamid was lying. He was lying straight to his face. If he could be tricked into believing there was someone called Selena that meant they didn't know about Grace's family. That was something, a small comfort. But if Nicholas and his mom had been followed all of these years how could they not know about Grace's family? He had probably spent more time at Sam and Emma's house as a child than he had at his own parents' house. "My Maria, where is her body?" Nicholas asked. "I told you Amir, she has already been disposed of." "What about her jewelry? She had some jewelry that I want back... a ring." "It's gone. It was removed from her body and thrown away." "I want that ring. Get it back for me." Hamid sighed again. "It's not possible. Let it go my son." "I need that ring." "Why?" "I want to give it to Jaidee." A glint of satisfaction shone in his eyes and the corners of his mouth turned up into a smile. "You want to give Jaidee a ring?" "No, not any ring, that ring. It is very special." Hamid shook his head. "It is not possible Amir, but I will bring you catalogues, you can choose a different ring. Or if you want I can have a jeweler make you a replica, if you can remember what it looks like." Of course he remembered what it looked like. He remembered what it looked like on the finger of the most beautiful woman on the earth. "There is another thing... I want condoms." "Condoms? But I told you, Jaidee is clean, there is no need to worry." "I want condoms," he repeated. Hamid held his hands up in the air as if in surrender. "Fine, fine, I will get you condoms." Nicholas nodded. "I'm going to the gym." "Yes of course, good. Keep training Amir, it will make you stronger." Nicholas breathed deeply in order to calm his nerves as he walked to the gym. He had used every single trick his acting coach had taught him last summer and it had worked. He was now questioning everything about Hamid. Nicholas wasn't that great at reading people but he was good at logic. He was good at seeing patterns and recognizing inconsistencies and Hamid's story had a lot of inconsistencies. He claimed he was just like Nicholas, just someone who had been kidnapped and brought into this life of crime, but why had Adrian's dad acted so weird around Nicholas then? After the third time Adrian brought up Hamid in casual conversation Nicholas had googled Charles Wheeler and read his resume. He had been a district attorney in New York at the same time that Hamid was living there. The logical explanation was that Hamid was a criminal before he was brought to this house. He didn't know anything about Nicholas' life beyond what could be discovered by looking at documents. He always called Grace Maria and he didn't know about her family. It didn't add up. He concluded that nobody had been following him or his mom when he was a child. Hamid was a fraud. He was trying to trick him. He had ordered Jaidee to seduce him. Nicholas had hugged her when he was crying the other day and she had tried to take his clothes off and kiss him. When he pushed her away she started talking. "You sad," she said. "Yes," he replied. "I am sad." "I sad," she said. "Why?" "Waziri, he bad man. He put baby in Lawan. He say you put baby in me or else..." She made a chopping motion with her hand, slamming it down onto her palm. "Who is Lawan?" Jaidee's eyes softened. "Lawan mine sister," she said as she pressed her hands to her heart. The whole situation was so fucked up. Why did Hamid want him to impregnate Jaidee? Was it some part of a sick master plan he had mapped out? There was no way he was going to have sex with her. He didn't love her. It would be weird and wrong to have sex with someone you didn't love. But he also didn't want her to get in trouble. She was supposed to get pregnant, that was her job and if she failed to do it she might be punished. He had to make it look like the reason she wasn't getting pregnant was not due to her inability to seduce him. If Hamid thought they were having sex but using condoms it might keep her safe. His gi and belt were new and starchy and uncomfortable and the belt was ridiculously long. Whoever ordered it had obviously never practiced martial arts before. The gym wasn't really set up for martial arts, it was more of a standard weight lifting and cardio gym, there was barely enough room to stretch properly. He would have to practice outside. He was warming up on one of the treadmills when he heard someone enter the room. It was a short muscular guy with greasy black hair. He had seen him a couple of times but he didn't know who he was, he wasn't one of the ones who had come with him last Wednesday. "Can I get a spot?" He asked when Nicholas got off the treadmill. "Sure." He was bench-pressing an impressive amount. Nicholas stood behind the rack and spotted him. He blew out on each press, big veins in his neck bulging with the effort. "Thanks," he said when he was done with his set. "Yeah, no problem." Nicholas walked away. "Do you need me to spot you?" He asked. Nicholas hesitated. It would be kind of nice to have someone to hold some targets for him. "Do you mind going outside?" "Nah, it's nice out. Better enjoy it while we can. I'm Vince by the way." "Amir." Nicholas shook Vince's hand. He didn't want to call himself Nicholas anymore, he didn't want to sully that name. It was pleasant outside, the air was warm and there was a nice breeze. Nicholas had no idea where they were, although he had his suspicions that they were somewhere in the Midwest. The house that he was kept in was in the middle of a clearing that was surrounded by forest. There was an expansive lawn in the back and that's where Nicholas went to practice. He was allowed in the front gardens and on the back lawn so long as he was within view from the house. He showed Vince how to hold the targets and he practiced target kicks. It felt good to move. It seemed like he had been caged forever. "Where are you from?" Vince asked. "Denver." "Is that where you learned all of this karate stuff?" "Taekwondo. Yes." "Are you, um..." "Am I what?" "Are you Waziri's son?" Nicholas jumped high and spun, connecting his foot swiftly with the target Vince was holding. "In a biological sense I guess I am." "A biological sense? What other sense is there?" "I don't know. How about a genuine sense?" He smiled. Why was he smiling? "You have a genuine father too?" "Who is your father?" Nicholas asked. "What?" He asked, surprised. "Why don't you tell me who your father is so I can go and camp outside his house and blow his brains out if you don't do exactly what I say when I say it?" He plucked the targets off Vince's hands and walked back towards the house. He didn't feel like practicing anymore. He looked up at the house as he approached it to gauge its height. It was three stories tall. If he jumped from the roof he might be able to kill himself. It was risky though. If he was going to commit suicide he needed to make sure that he was thorough. If he lived he would be sure to be punished. He was thinking a hairdryer in the bathtub was probably his best bet. He had his own private bathroom that had a tub in it but he didn't have a hairdryer or other electrical device that would work. Jaidee probably did though, her hair was always perfectly smooth, she must use some sort of electrical hair device. He'd have to remove the GFI from the outlet but that wasn't a big deal, Sam had showed him how to install them when they had moved into the new apartment, it would be easy enough to take one out. He asked everyone he saw in the house where Jaidee was and finally located her room. There were three girls all living in the same tiny room on the ground floor. There was a heavily pregnant woman in one of the beds and Jaidee was sitting beside her, holding her hand. "Amir!" She smiled at him in surprise. "This Lawan." She turned to her sister and started talking to her in Thai. Lawan was beautiful. Even with a huge pregnant belly she was long and graceful and fluid in her movements. She smiled indulgently at Jaidee. She held her slender hand out to Nicholas and it was impossible not to go to her. She kissed the back of his hand and held it to her cheek. "Amir a good man," she said in a smooth velvety voice. Nicholas found himself momentarily transfixed by this gorgeous woman. It wasn't that she was pretty, by normal standards Jaidee was probably better looking than her, there was just something about her that was warm and comforting. She had an air of compassion about her. She couldn't have been any older than he was but she had a maternal softness, she reminded him of his mom. It took him a while to remember what he had come for. "Jaidee do you have a hairdryer?" She led him into a small bathroom that was cluttered with bottles of makeup and other beautifying products and pulled a hairdryer out of a set of plastic drawers. "What you need for?" She asked. Nicholas' hair was very short, he obviously didn't need it for drying it. He took it from her. "Thank you." He walked away from her. "Amir, what you need for?" She asked again when he was close to the door. She was right behind him and he turned and kissed her on the forehead. "Thank you." She looked shocked. He had never kissed her before. He went through the kitchen on his way to his room and searched the drawers for something that would work as a screwdriver. He settled on a butter knife and grabbed a pair of thick rubber washing-up gloves from under the sink. In his bathroom he put on the rubber gloves and carefully unscrewed the outlet cover plate. Usually you would turn the power off to do something like this but obviously that wasn't possible in his current circumstances. He held his breath when he unscrewed the wires from the outlet. He could smell the plastic handle of the knife heating up and starting to melt. He didn't want to get shocked. Getting shocked for a few microseconds probably wouldn't kill him, he needed sustained electricity to stop his heart for good. Once he had removed the outlet he was met with a problem. He didn't have an old fashioned ungrounded outlet to replace it with. How was he going to keep the electricity flowing through the hairdryer? He needed some tape to keep the wires attached. He went back out to the gym and pulled the first aid kit off the wall, there were some band aids in there, they would do. Back up in the bathroom he donned the washing up gloves for a second time and used the band aids to plaster the live wires onto the plugs of the hair dryer. Amazingly, it worked. He turned the hairdryer on and heard the familiar low hum. He laughed. Sam would be proud of him. He turned it off and started to fill the bathtub. He wondered if Sam would be proud of what he was about to do. Was suicide a selfish act? It was and it wasn't. He had no desire to live now that Grace was dead. It would be easier on him if he just died now, and he guessed that was selfish. His parents and the rest of their families would be distraught. His Baaba and Daadii would probably die on the spot from a broken heart. He didn't care if Hamid was a psychopath, Baaba and Daadii were good people, they loved him just the same as his mom's parents and Tyler's parents and Sam's parents did. He had been blessed with such an amazing family and he loved them so much, but that was precisely the problem. He loved them so much that if he didn't take himself out he knew he would kill innumerable times to protect them. He just didn't have it in him to let them kill Lucas. He had tried to do the honorable thing but he wasn't brave enough. The honorable thing would have been to refuse to kill the man in the penthouse, thereby sacrificing Lucas, but as soon as he saw the photo of Luka he knew he couldn't do it. He was brushing his teeth. The asshole who was stalking him must have been in the back yard and had taken the photo through the window. Lucas was standing in the bathroom brushing his teeth, his dark curly hair stupidly long, his grey-blue eyes watching himself in the mirror, completely unaware that he had a gun pointed at his head. They might kill his family if he committed suicide but that was a chance he would have to take. He only had four immediate family members that they were aware of. Four lives. He would take hundreds of lives to keep those four hearts beating. It wasn't a fair trade. No, he thought as he watched the water level rise in the bathtub. The only way to stop this was to take himself out of the equation. CHAPTER SIX This was getting to be ridiculous. Nicholas pulled the blanket over his head to block out the light coming from the bathroom. This was the third time Lawan had been up tonight. He heard Jaidee turn on the bed. He had been under constant surveillance from these two women ever since Jaidee had barged into his room, yanked the hairdryer out of the wall and thrown it out the window yesterday morning. Nicholas couldn't help but be amused by her, she was so dramatic, so different from anyone he'd ever known. Suicide at the house was pretty much out of the question now, but it was probably for the best. He decided it would be better for him to be taken out during a hit. If his death looked like an honest mistake on his part they would be less likely to take it out on his family. He heard the light switch in the bathroom and then Lawan settling back into the bed. He hoped that would be the last bathroom trip tonight. The floor wasn't that bad. It had taken a few nights to get used to it, but now it was actually pretty comfortable. It wasn't long before sleep overtook him. He dreamed of Grace. He always dreamed of Grace, but now it had been long enough that the knowledge of her death was starting to percolate his subconscious. The Grace of his dreams didn't know she was dead yet though. In this dream they were in his parents' back yard and he was trying to climb the big oak tree that she was perched in. "Are we in heaven?" He asked. "No Kolya," she replied in her soft melodic voice. "We are alive. We are both alive." He couldn't get up the tree, his feet kept on slipping and there was nowhere for him to hold on with his hands. "Help me Gracie," he reached his hand up towards her. She smiled down at him. "I am helping you baby." He opened his eyes, suddenly awake. God, how many times can one woman need to pee in one night? He wondered. But there was no movement. The light in the bathroom was off. He had woken up on his own. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep but he couldn't. He just kept on seeing Grace's face. Why couldn't the Grace in his dreams accept that she was dead? Every time he dreamed of her she insisted she was alive. Maybe... Did he have any evidence that she was dead? All he had was a lack of proof that she was alive. In the first two and a half days after he was abducted he had been shown photos of Grace non-stop, photos of her walking to rowing, in her boat, coming out of a classroom, walking at night with Robert from the dojo. On Wednesday he had gotten photos of her at rowing, one in the student union building, then one on a train, and that was the last he'd seen of her. He had been told that she had been killed by accident outside the airport. Apparently she approached the man following her and he panicked and killed her. He had accepted that she was dead because he assumed that it would be in his captors' best interest to keep her alive. Grace was his greatest motivation. If she were in their crosshairs there would be nothing he wouldn't do to keep her alive. 4. My Father's Son Ch. 04-06 But hadn't he proven that he would do anything for Lucas? Maybe they wanted him to think she was dead. Maybe eliminating Grace was convenient or even integral to their plan for him. It fit in with Hamid's enthusiasm for him to start sleeping with Jaidee. But if Grace's death was important to their plan why hadn't they provided him with proof of it? There were no cadaver photos and they didn't have her jewelry. Maybe she got away from them. If she got his note she would have known something was wrong. She was headed to the airport. Maybe she'd had a plan to get away. The airport would have been a good place to do it because her stalker wouldn't be able to carry a gun in there. She didn't go to Denver. If she had gone home it wouldn't have been long before the people following Lucas and his mom picked her up. Maybe she went to Grandma Judy and Granddad John's place. He felt comforted by the though of her safe at her grandparents' house. There was no way for him to know. There was nobody he could trust. Except maybe Jaidee and Lawan but they were just as much prisoners as he was. He couldn't figure out what to do. All day he wondered how he could figure out if Grace was alive. He had no contact with the outside world. His attempt to reach out to Adrian's dad had proved to be unfruitful. Maybe when he was sent out again he could plant a more detailed message. He was slightly annoyed when that idiot Vince came into the gym but he was too tired to be bothered with him. Nicholas had been working out really hard and getting very broken sleep. "Spot?" Vince asked him. "Sure." This time he was doing squats and he wasn't lifting that much, at least not compared to the amount he was bench pressing the other day. He was working out for show. Guys who didn't need to work out always over did it on the upper body and under did it on the lower body. After he was done with his set Vince went to the closet where Nicholas kept his taekwondo equipment and waved the hand targets at him. He didn't feel like hanging out with Vince but he hadn't done any target practice since the last time he had offered his help so he took him up on the offer. The sky was dark, low and ominous. He could almost smell the rain. Jaidee sat on one of the chairs under the back awning, hugging her knees to her chest, never letting him out of her sight. "Enjoying your time with your dad?" Vince asked pleasantly. Nicholas glared at him for long seconds. What was this guy's problem? Wasn't it obvious he didn't want to talk? "I haven't seen my father since the beginning of the summer." He started kicking without the targets to warm up. "Nicholas..." He froze. How did he know his name? Apart from Hamid everyone here thought his name was Amir. He turned slowly towards Vince. This could be a trap. It could easily be a trap, another mind game. "Are you here against your will?" It seemed like an honest question. Nicholas was confused. He had assumed that everyone knew, Hamid had told him that everybody was watching him to make sure he didn't put a foot wrong. "You... aren't you watching me to make sure I don't try to run?" Vince shook his head. "What do you do here then?" "Set up deals and every now and then do surveillance on who I'm told to." "Surveillance? What does that mean?" "Keep kicking." Nicholas did as he was told. "I follow the people I'm told to and take photos of them." "Do you point a gun at them?" "No." "Do you carry a weapon?" "Yes." "Would you shoot one of the people you were following if you were told to?" "Ah... No, I wouldn't personally, I'm not sure about the other contractors though." Nicholas tried to digest this new information and check it for authenticity. It could be a trick. "How do you know my name?" "Grace told me." Nicholas felt like he'd been punched in the gut. He hadn't heard that name in ten days. As far as he knew nobody here knew that name, not even Hamid. "When?" It came out as a whisper. "On Sunday." Sunday? That was three days ago. He tried to steady his heart, which was beating furiously. "You have Grace?" "She came to me. She wants me to get you out of here. She seems to think that you were kidnapped." He held the targets up. "Kick." Grace was alive. Nicholas tried to think through all of the possibilities of subterfuge as he attempted to make his feet connect with the targets. This guy could be working for Hamid. Even if Grace was alive, how did he know she wasn't a prisoner? He was doing a shitty job with the targets. "I need proof," he said. "I don't know if I should trust you." "Okay, what do you want?" Vince asked. He tried to think of something that only Grace would know that was appropriate for other people to hear. They had a lot of little secrets between them but most of them had to do with their sex life or were too personal to share with Vince. "Grace and I have a special place. It's where we kissed for the first time. Tell me where it is and I'll believe you." "Okay. We'll continue this conversation tomorrow." "Wait there's more, I want to know how she found you." "She came in with Adrian and Zach, they brought a file on Waziri, or Chandrasekhar I guess." Nicholas nodded. He couldn't believe this was happening. He really wanted to believe that Grace was with Adrian and Zach and that they were safe. "What's with her?" Vince asked, nodding his head towards where Jaidee was sitting. Lawan had come to assist her in her surveillance and they were glaring across the lawn at him. "Urgh. I did something inadvisable and now I have the Thai mafia on my back." Vince laughed and slapped him on the back. "You must be something between the sheets my man, the girls are lining up for you." "What? No, it's not that. I tried to kill myself and Jaidee stopped me. Now she wont leave me alone and she has her sister in on the act." His eyes bulged momentarily in surprise. "You tried to kill yourself?" Nicholas shrugged his shoulders. "It was a tactical move. I'm just trying to figure out how to make my family safe." "Well do me a favor and don't top yourself before I get a chance to talk to you again, alright?" "Alright." He hesitated. He really wanted to believe that this guy was for real and that he was going to talk to Grace tonight. "Can you give her a message from me?" "Okay." "Just tell her... tell her that I'm thinking about her at the very moment that you are giving her the message, and that it doesn't matter what time she gets the message because I am always thinking about her." Vince nodded and walked back into the house. Nicholas' head was spinning. Don't get too excited, he told himself, he might be a fraud too. But the idea that Grace was alive was too attractive to give up on. He felt... happy. It was strange to feel happy in such an awful place under such awful circumstances, but there it was, happiness. *** Grace cried when she heard Nicholas' voice for the first time. Benson had a digital recording device that he wore when he went to the house and he let her listen to a few snippets of the conversation he'd had with Nicholas. "The Boston Massacre Memorial," she said. "That is our special place." Adrian screwed up his face. "A massacre memorial? You guys are so weird." "Hey," she said defensively as she pushed him on the shoulder. "It was very romantic." Zach and Adrian looked at each other and started laughing. Those two really got along well, they were always laughing and usually at her. "Okay, settle down," Guiterrez said with an indulgent shake of her head. "What do you propose Ben? How do you want to handle this?" "Let me show you something else first." He opened a manila folder on the desk and pulled out a bunch of papers. "I had Richie do a standard check of criminal and financial records for Chandrasekhar. Of course the FBI lists him as a person of interest, but here's the interesting thing... at the time of his 'death' Chandrasekhar had an impressive estate. "He had a huge portfolio of shares that was liquidated the week before his death, but he also had several valuable properties; houses in Miami, Houston and Las Vegas, an apartment building in New York City, industrial land in the three largest ports in the country, the house here in Illinois and a few other small holdings. The properties went into stewardship under a company that specializes in that sort of stuff until his benefactor came of age. The benefactor is listed as 'Amir Chandrasekhar, unborn male child carried by Maya Chandrasekhar,' which has got to be Nicholas. Legally the estate became his on his twenty-first birthday." Grace was stunned. "He didn't know about it," she said. "He always talked to me about our finances and he never said anything about Hamid's estate." Benson nodded. "I don't doubt it. All of the properties are still under stewardship, Nicholas has to come forward himself to claim them." "So that's why he needs him," Adrian said. "He wants his property back." "Right, the estimated value of the estate is around twelve to fourteen million, so Chandrasekhar isn't going to give up on him lightly. I don't think extracting him before we have enough evidence to convict Chandrasekhar is a good idea, he's just going to keep coming for him again and again until he gets what he wants." "But this is his life that you're talking about, we can't just leave him in there." Grace was horrified. She had no idea how long it would take to collect evidence on Hamid, what else would Nicholas be forced to do in there? Guiterrez turned to her. "Here's the thing Grace, Nicholas killed someone. There were certainly extenuating circumstances, but he still killed someone. The D.A. is going to want justice. Even though Benson and I don't want to testify against him, we're public servants, if we're called to court we have to go and tell the truth. If we extract Nicholas without any evidence against Chandrasekhar he'll go down. We're talking about second degree murder, four to twenty years behind bars." Her heart sank. How had this happened? One minute everything was perfect and the next everything was so incredibly fucked up that their life was beyond recognition. She looked down at her hands. "It's not hopeless," Benson said. "Just the opposite, we have information Chandrasekhar doesn't know we have. If Nicholas agrees to help we can turn this thing on its head. We'll wire him and get him to talk to Chandrasekhar, see if he can get him to open up. Chandrasekhar must plan on letting him in on how things work eventually, Nicholas just needs to convince him that he's ready to know the family secrets now. Then we charge Chandrasehkar with the murder, not Nicholas." "Yes. Good work Ben," Guiterrez praised him. "I'll clear any tech you need." Benson nodded and got up from his chair. "I'd better get out of here." He paused before he left the room. "Is there anything you want me to tell him?" He asked Grace. "Um..." She thought quickly, she wanted to send a message but 'tell him I love him' was just so generic. She smiled. "Tell him I don't care what he thinks, I'm ordering all chocolate."