He bowed his head for a few seconds then lifted it back up, his bright blue eyes meeting mine. “I do… I do, because I trust you. I trust you, Jia, with everything I have in me. I don’t find it easy to trust people. You have proven to be the most trustworthy person I’ve ever met in my life.”
He was talking about this morning.
“It’s okay. I told you I wouldn’t say anything,” I reminded him.
“You could have though, I’m not sure that if the tables were turned that I could have done what you did. I’ve never been placed in such a situation and it was unfair that you were. I slipped up baby and I got caught.” His hand dropped like a leaded weight to his side.
“Can you talk to me a little more about what’s going on? The blueprints I mean, and what happened when Pa caught you. Do you feel strong enough to talk?” It was my eagerness to help taking over. Seeing him so helpless made me want to help even more and do what I could, whatever that may be. It was like I’d found strength from somewhere despite the weakness that had taken me earlier while I was with Armand.
“Yes… The blueprints are for a nuke… and your father was keeping them in a place where he didn’t share with his knights.” He seemed a little more stronger as he spoke, although he took a few breaks to catch his breath. He swallowed hard then continued. “The area was all secret. No surveillance, not even on the plans for the building. My friend, his name is Wes, he always had my back. I thought it would be safer for me alone to go for the prints when some Ra guys jumped us at our base. So I went alone, blind and your father caught me. You know the rest of the story.”
“God, Xander. I’m so sorry. I knew it was supposed to be goodbye and all I could do was imagine what you must have been doing. Xander, my father still has the prints. What do we do about that?”
He pressed his lips together and stared at me.
“Nothing. There’s nothing I can do. Jia he wouldn’t be foolish enough to put the prints back in the same place, it’s a given. Do you remember at the poker game that night? You asked me about a man that was there?”
“Yeah, Russian looking guy.”
“He’s a black market trader. We also call him The Chameleon because of how he vanishes in plain sight. My advantage that night was that he’d never seen me before. He however caught me along with your father and it was always the worry in my team that if he got the prints then that would be it. We wouldn’t know what happened to them. I’m guessing he has them now.”
Great…
“So, there’s nothing we can do?”
“There’s only one thing I’m going to do and that’s take care of you.” He looked at me with firm determination.
I would have loved to feel happy about the declaration but fear got the better of me.
It really did.
It also switched my focus from the prints to the more pressing problem, my father.
He always said I was the most important thing to him. I believed him.
I believed him and I expected the whole Marchesi clan to be after us by morning.
