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“Yes.”
“Right,” he says. “We’ll leave that at that. But you need to know, the two deaths are definitely linked. Your husband was working on the same ring. It was just budding at the time, and we tried to put a stop to it. Your husband was a casualty of that attempt. We realized at the time we weren’t strong enough, that we weren’t ready to tackle such a thing. We didn’t want to lose another brother.”
My husband was the first one to try to attempt this feat? I had no idea. “I thought he was in finances for the family?”
“He started there. Then, it was a great cover as we branched out to try this. I’m really sorry we lost him, Charlie.”
How do I say I’m over him? Such a brave man? He deserved more admiration than I gave him. I don’t know what to say. I just wait for Rockland to speak again.
“You doing okay, Charlie?”
“Yes, sir. I’m fine.”
“And Shannon? You girls are taking good care of her?”
“Yes, sir. We are.”
“Charlie,” Rockland says. “I want to say I’m sorry. I know this is hard.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
We say our goodbyes.
My husband died. Now, Mark has died. Nikolaos could die too. The stakes are high enough with his job. His operation is dangerous enough without me plaguing him with the Charlie curse.
Okay…logically,intellectually, I realize there's no curse. But emotionally, given all I’ve experienced in my life, I can't shake the thought. I’m still convinced it's there, because regardless of the cause, stuff keeps happening to me.
My spiral of thinking leads me to one, sad conclusion: I can’t be with him.
It wouldn’t be fair to him.
I don’t want to put him at risk.
And the full truth? The real reason, the one that keeps me up at night…
After all the heartache in my life…
If I lost him…
I don’t think I could survive the pain.
20
Beast
Shannon had beeneager to jet out of the Village the day of their wedding. Mark told his wife he wanted a few weeks to hang out at the townhouse, settle into married life, but really he wanted to help run the last shipment of girls. He took care of the city end of things, getting the girls from their hovel onto the boat.
I make it a habit not to drink hard liquor. Enough foolish men who couldn’t control themselves, even before they were inebriated, flowed through my mother’s life that I stayed away from the stuff.
Tonight, I pour myself a whiskey, neat.
Mark was my partner in the destruction of crime. Well, this particular crime, this human trafficking ring. We both broke enough laws to serve more than a few life sentences. That’s just the way it is when you’re a Bachman. Some rules are meant to be broken.
Mark’s death confirms what we were starting to suspect. The leader of the ring is onto us. He knows exactly who’s causing him to bleed girls, and he knew Mark was the one getting them out. Let’s just hope he doesn’t know where they were going. We’ve had to put a pause on taking any more shipments to the island right now. It’s just too dangerous for them.
God damn, I’m going to miss Mark.
I sip my whiskey, thinking of his good sense of humor that even got a laugh out of me from time to time. Shannon is devastated. I’m glad Charlie has gone to be by her side but having her out from under my wing of protection has my gut wrenching.
