Page 125 of Thin Lives

Calisto was less worried about the men—he could handle them and their bullshit at another time. His main concern, and his only focus, was on Cross.

He needs to eat every three or four hours.

He needs to be changed and bathed every night.

What if his teeth are giving him a fever again?

Sometimes he cries a lot at night, and Affonso didn’t like that.

What if he gets angry with him?

He’s just a baby, but Affonso doesn’t understand.

Calisto could still hear Emma’s frantic questions driving into his thoughts through the bouts of planning and wondering. It was almost worse than having her cry over the phone as he tried to placate her, because like this, it was just her voice inside his head, and no matter what he told himself, there was no placating anything.

Scrubbing a hand down his face, Calisto leaned back in the driver’s seat and peered through the windshield into the darkness of the street ahead. Two days, and he had fuck all for answers.

Nada.

Wait, he’d been told.

Give us time, they said.

We’ve done this once before, he was assured.

Calisto didn’t have much of a choice but to trust the Marcellos and give them all the faith he could muster up in order to bring his son home. Well, not all the Marcellos, just the one.

Giovanni.

His old friend asked for the truth about the situation, and feeling like there were no other options, Calisto told Giovanni what there was to tell. He offered little details about how Cross had come about, and the relationship Calisto shared with Emma, but he explained the most important details.

Like the fact Cross was his son, not Affonso’s.

Giovanni took that information in stride, and then asked for a bit of time to get what information he could gathered up.

Calisto knew a few things for sure.

Affonso hadn’t left the city on a plane, bus, or any other means of transportation that didn’t include walking on his own two feet. Between the contacts the Marcellos had throughout the city, and the ones Calisto had, there had been no reports of Affonso being seen or using one of his many alias.

He’s waiting, Calisto thought. Waiting for when your guard is down.

Affonso was sneaky like that, Calisto knew it. The man had already proven he could hide within the limits of the city without being obvious.

Calisto wasn’t sure if that made it worse or not, but he was going to go with the latter. It was a small thread of hope to hold onto, as far as that went, but he didn’t have many other options to look at. At least if Affonso was still in the city somewhere, he wasn’t out of Calisto’s reach just yet. He wasn’t in some country with a new name, and access to enough offshore money to keep him well hidden.

That would be the smart thing to do, of course, and he suspected that was exactly what Affonso would do.

But first, the man needed to get there.

The bigger question was where would the man hide out until he could make his way there?

That was what Calisto needed to answer first.

And when he did … when he had that answer, Affonso was going to wish that his death would be as easy and quick as God would provide to him for his years of lies and betrayals.

But Calisto wasn’t God—certainly not Affonso’s.

There was no mercy here.