“No!” I snapped. “This can’t be right.” I checked the dates of the calls again, and then again. “This is just weeks before Mum was killed. She was barely lucid, Rafe! Anything that came from her mouth barely made sense! How could she have called anyone? I don’t even know where her phone was! I hadn’t even bothered to charge the thing for months. She would have needed to add minutes to it, which she couldn’t have done. She couldn’t even dress herself most days!” I was getting worked up, ranting at Rafe because it made no sense to me! How could my Mum, who I had done literally everything for in the last year or so of her life, have been calling Gia?
“Just take a breath. Is there any chance Mum could have been acting worse than she was? Making it look like she was reliant on you, so you’d provide everything she needed?”
“No! She wouldn’t…” Even I couldn’t finish that sentence as I thought of all of the hellish things my Mum had put me through, or turned a blind eye to, just to benefit herself. “She couldn’t have. She was out of her mind. She boarded up the windows in the house. Her rants about people watching us, and coming for us…she’d get so worked up. I don’t think she could have faked that, could she?” I looked up to him, feeling so confused and angry at just the thought.
“Did she ever do things or say things that didn’t mesh with the rest of her behaviour? If it were all an act, I doubt she would have been able to keep it up without the odd slip here and there.”
I thought back to more recent times with my mother. The day I returned from the factory to find she had covered the windows with anything she could find. She’d pried floorboards up to cover parts. The rest was covered with sheets, towels, even a cabinet door she had managed to rip off of the single hinge it had been hanging by since we moved in. When I had tried to remove the coverings, she had screamed about us being watched. Told me that they would find us if they could see in. She’d been manic and when I’d tried to calm her down, I’d gotten a split lip for my trouble. In the end I’d left the windows covered, and left my mother ranting erratically as I locked myself in my room.
I thought of all of the days I had helped her in and out of the shower, forced her to change her clothes and brushed her hair just so it wouldn’t become a wild nest atop her head. I thought of the times I’d come home and found her sat in her own piss because she was so out of it she hadn’t even realised she needed the bathroom. Could she have been out of it because she was on something? Because she’d been out and bought drugs, then taken the lot at once? I never even thought of such a possibility back then, but now? Yes, that was possible.
Her anger too. Those were the times I saw the version of my Mum that I recognised most. She always seemed more with it when she was lashing out at me. She’d swear at me, telling me how useless and worthless I was. She always remembered my name then, or Rafe’s, or Marcello’s. She’d fully remember Rafe putting me on that plane and tell me how little he cared for me – how he’d kill me if he ever laid eyes on me again. Her confusionwould disappear then and hatred and bitterness would pour through. Maybe that was the slips Rafe spoke of.
“Maybe. I didn’t see it, because I just thought…I assumed she was crazy, you know?” I glanced up to Rafe feeling embarrassed. Had our mother been playing me the whole time? How could I never realise? “If she was acting, then she was good, but there were times, when she’d really lose her temper…she was clearer then. Maybe that was a clue that she wasn’t as far gone as I believed.”
“It’s not your fault, Cara. You did the best you could, and our mother was a very talented actress when she wanted to be,” Rafe told me.
“Why would she track down Gia though? Or did Gia track her down?” I asked.
“Mum reached out to Gia.” Rafe handed another printed page over, and I read through what looked like a brief conversation on social media.
I read through the messages several times and knew they were written by my Mother. The wording, and the pleading tone. I knew them well. I also knew why she had reached out to Gia.
“This is her,” I said shakily. Adrenaline was coursing through my body as if I were in danger, but there was no threat, just betrayal and confusion, making me feel more idiotic than I ever had in my life. “The way it’s worded. This is our Mum, and I know why she was seeking Gia out. She wanted money.”
“Money?”
“For drugs. That’s what this was all about. She played me. She pretended to be out of her mind, and I fell for it. I plyed her with alcohol and drugs. She didn’t have to work or lift a finger. Just throw the odd crazy fit as I came through the door now and then. But the drugs I was getting mustn’t have been enough. She was looking for money for more,” I explained. “Did Gia send her any?”
“Yes. Dante found a money transfer app on Gia’s computer. She sent several thousand pounds via the app just days before we reconnected,” Rafe confirmed.
“Fuck! Christ knows what vitriol Mum filled Gia’s head with to win her over for that much cash. That’s why Gia hates me. It has to be. Mum poisoned her against me. Maybe you too, judging by these messages,” I growled angrily.
“Is it possible Mum was up to something more before she tried her luck with Gia? We were looking for a reason for the Armenians coming after you. This could be it. If Mum owed them money…”
“She probably sold me to them!” I bit. “And yes, Rafe. Anything is possible with that woman. If she was willing to take things this far, just to ensure she got what she wanted, who knows what else she did? I can tell you one thing, she definitely had a dealer. Mum always had a dealer.”
“We need to find them and get any information we can. I need to get to the bottom of the threat against you. Do you have any idea of a dealer Mum would use?”
“No. Not really. There were probably several living in that apartment building with us,” I shrugged. “I need to go back to Chicago,” I added as the thought struck me.
“What? No! No way, Cara. You’re not going back there.”
“I know people there. I can get information on what Mum was up to. Like you just said, we need to get to the bottom of what the fuck Mum left me mixed up in. I’m best placed to do that. I know people on the wrong side of the tracks around there.”
“Absolutely not! I am never putting you in that kind of danger, ever again. I hate that you were ever there at all.”
“No offense, Rafe, but I was safer there than I have been since I came home with you,” I pointed out. “And as I’ve told you before, you can’t keep me out of danger. Being a De Santis puts a target on my back, no matter what. At least if I can put this threat to bed, I can have a chance of finding some peace here. Right now I’m just waiting for the next attack, and I can’t live that way. I need this all to end,” I told him bluntly.
“Dante can go. You give him all the details of everyone you know and he’ll get whatever information there is,” Rafe countered.
“No one will talk to Dante, not unless he scares them into talking, and some of these people are friends of mine. I don’t want Dante charging in and scaring them. He can come with me. I’ll take as many men as you want, but I have to go, Rafe. I need to know what Mum was up to. I need to know because I worked myself into the ground earning enough to get her the drugs and booze I thought she needed, and all the time she was just making a fool of me!” I gasped. “I worked every hour I could, barely ate, hardly slept. I dealt with a drug dealer, Rafe! The things….oh God! The things I did to get her those pills, all because I thought she needed them, because I thought it was the only thing that would calm her enough from burning our home down, or killing herself!” I cried desperately. I had allowed Justin to use mybody for those pils! I had given those last vestiges of myself, just because I was that desperate, and it had all been for nothing!
“I’m so sorry,Gioia. Sorrier than I can ever say. I failed you. If I had kept my promise, you never would have been forced to endure any of that.” Rafe stood from his chair again and rounded his desk, dropping to his haunches at my side and taking my hands in his again. “That’s why I need to keep you safe now. I can’t fail you again.”
“You didn’t fail me. Mum did this, to both of us, not just me. She took me from you, and now she might have taken Gia from both of us too. I have to try and fix it. Please try to understand that. You said I was strong, so let me be, please. Let me at least find out what our mother was up to. Maybe if I do that, I won’t spend the rest of my life feeling like a complete idiot for being taken in by her bullshit.”
“Don’t do that to yourself. She was every bit the monster my father was. She was just better at hiding it. I learned a long time ago to let any bullshit that came from that monster go. Now you have to do the same with our mother. If you don’t, if you give them any space in your mind, they will poison it and everything else in there.”
