He agreed to the idea, which surprised me, actually. I thought I would have to fight him on it. And my brain was finallygetting a workout, so I was more than willing to fight. I knew the number for my team, they wrote it on every letter—“if you need help, call us”—and right now, I think I needed them.Weneeded the help, and they needed to spread the information.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked.
“I’m supposed to be asking you for reassurance,” I grumbled.
Payphones weren’t too hard to come by, most of them smelled of urine and cigarettes, and the ground was covered in squished cigarette butts and bottle caps. “I’m sure,” I said, staring at the phone. “I hope I don’t catch anything.”
“Let’s make it quick,” he said, taking my bag of croissants.
“Don’t eat them,” I said, watching as he smirked at me.
“I won’t.”
So I made the call. I knew it was going to alert people. I told them I had a plan, not what the plan was, but about how I was going to be coming out of hiding and I’d be ready to tell the world my truth—thetruth, which people would have to handle. Those people being Victor and Nexovex.
I knew the moment the words came out of my mouth that people, agencies, everyone was going to be mobilized.
***
Christmas trees were always so dull to look at when they were naked. Who’d decided to dress them up in the first place? And what were their intentions with it? Make it look all pretty—who were they doing that for? Jacques pulled me into a hug from behind as I whined about the tree, looking at the monstrosity taking up the entire corner of our ever-small underground lodgings.
“That tongue of your is becoming a little too sharp,” he said.
I felt it, every day spent here was like having my tongue ground against a whetstone. “Then let me put it to some use.”
He squeezed me like I was an orange and he was trying to get all the juices out of me. “Careful, kitten.” He kissed my neck.
Restlessness was my new normal. It had been days since I’d placed that call to my team. People were talking, people were closing in on the park. We were relatively safe here, all things considered. The Bianchi brothers were all a little fruity, and I say that with kindness because they were open about going on dates with twinks. Which made Jacques become Reaper in front of them, telling them to keep their eyes off me. It was that type of stuff that dulled my sharpness, that made me soft and submissive. Waiting for hell on earth, a.k.a. this hearing, was doing the opposite.
The tree remained naked by choice. I didn’t feel the Christmas spirit at all. And without all the lights and decoration, it kinda made me feel like I was out in the Sugar Bay woods again.
All we did was wait for ago. It felt like it was going to take forever.
The dummy was prepared. The red dye packs were strapped to it, and it was wearing a large puffy coat to hide the fact it was a dummy. If it hadn’t been ready, I might’ve actually tried to throw a punch at it—my first punch. But I didn’t. Instead, I pawed at Jacques’s chest and pouted.
19. JACQUES
It was chaos. The world stopped and throbbed like a slow-beating heart. On the bench in all the dressings of Ezra, the dummy sat, with sweatpants filled with bags of flour to keep an appearance of legs fixed to the spot. I reminded myself this wasn’t actually him, even if it was supposed to be. That slow throbbing gravitational pull came once more as I watched from the TV screen.
Rocco Bianchi, the middle brother who’d been adopted into the family—and a fair warning to Ezra never to mention that—had a body camera strapped to his chest, recording and transmitting the signal right back to us in the safehouse. We had a closed communication system like we were directing him.
“Do you think people are going to believe it?” Ezra asked.
“Move around the park,” I instructed Rocco. Occasionally, the flicker of a blade appeared across the camera, as he switched hands with it—he was the most bloodthirsty of the brothers it appeared. “Find a bench across from the dummy, and let’s—”
Bang. The dummy was shot, exploding on the spot. The red dye packs compounded with the flour, flying everywhere. Rocco’s camera went left to right, searching for the person. He found the man in the bushes and stuck a knife in him, seemingly right where it wasn’t going to kill him, but it would hurt.
Ezra hugged a cushion as he clung to my side. “Would that have happened to me?” His voice was soft, in shock from the explosion of the dummy. “I’ve never seen a gun do that.” Granted, he hadn’t seen many guns fired—I hoped.
“Large caliber, probably military grade,” I told him. “Probably a merc.” My eyes were fixed on the man Rocco had pinned to the ground. He stared right into the lens of the bodycamera and smiled while Rocco held the bloody knife to his throat. “Get a name,” I told him through the comms.
The man started to gargle and spit blood. I covered Ezra’s eyes—he didn’t need to see any of that. My sweet kitten couldn’t be exposed to more bullshit the world had to throw at us. I continued to watch, and there wasn’t anything Rocco could do, but he searched him and found a card with a number on it.
***
I tucked Ezra into bed with Mr. Thimble. The day hadn’t gone according to plan. We were supposed to have gotten answers, and at the very least, we were supposed to have had people believe that was Ezra. The whole ordeal left me with an empty pit feeling in my stomach.
The Bianchi brothers, all three of them were in the living room, sitting around the coffee table with a large bottle of scotch and four glasses.
