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Matteo, being who he is, hasn't said anything yet but every time we pass the place he turns an unhealthy shade of red. He’s internalizing his seething for now. The king of bottling up his emotions has finally found something that even makes him expressive. His normal vacant, emotionless state is long gone when our girl is involved.
Noah on the other hand, is wreaking havoc on the backseat of the SUV. Stomping and punching and cursing loudly. He’s the most expressive of us all but this whole situation is clearly destroying him. He’s not handling things very well and I’m preparing myself for the outcome where his chaos and mayhem run rampant. If he unleashes his madness, I’m not sure we’ll be able to stop him until he’s burned the world to the ground. Every time it seems as though he’s managed to control his anger, Q does something to set him off again and this place has him furious.
These guys are my family and while I’m just as worried about Q as they are, I’m also worried for them. If this is killing them as much as it is me, then something bad is likely to happen sooner rather than later. I’m doing my best to keep an open mind and trust my love, knowing she’s doing whatever she thinks is best in this unknown situation. Nothing bothers me more than not understanding a situation and having at least two projected outcomes on how to settle the matter. It’s what makes us work.
We all have our own strengths and mine is my brain and intuition. Noah is our resident Jekyll and Hyde, charming as can be with an underlying layer of crazy. ‘Teo is our leader in a sense, our decision maker, if you will. When Alessandra came barreling into our world, she was like a dark angel sent to fight all of our demons away. She pulled us from the hidden depths of depravity we were living in and made us better. She gave us purpose. She’s grown our very own dreams into reality and breathed life into us.
We weren’t living. We were existing. We were surviving as children raised to be men in a gruesome, fucked up world. We were understanding of our roles. Bred, born and groomed for a life in the mob. To lead and defend territories, to ride the line of successful businessmen and criminals. Now it all has meaning. If you had asked me a year ago if I believed in love, I’d have laughed it off and told you love was weakness. Now I understand that it doesn’t make you vulnerable, it makes you powerful beyond your wildest imagination and that’s all thanks to her.
Deciding to move away from our vehicle, I want to go survey things up close.
“I’m gonna jump out and check out the building on foot. I’ll be back soon. If you can, keep driving around and watch out for anyone suspicious.” I let the guys know my plan and then bail quickly, needing to check in on my love as soon as possible. Instinctively look down and rub my watch. Needing to feel her close.
I come up to round a corner about a block from the roach motel and almost run into someone. I need to get my head out of the clouds and be more vigilant.
“I’m so sor-” I hold my hands up in a placating gesture.
“Don’tchu even worry ‘bout it suga. Say, you wanna make it upta me down here at this local moh-tel? I’ll take real good care’a yous. Mhmm, a fine thing like you can prolly afford a sweet lil’ thang like me, huh?” A loud brash twang from the prostitute I almost crashed into, as she speaks. I was too stuck in my own thoughts to take notice of her before I smacked into her very large person.
This can’t be real. The icing on the cake to this shit hole is the cross dressing prostitute that hangs out on the street corner, eyes glazed over on lord knows what. He, err, she has on a neon blue wig and is wearing the largest hoop earrings I’ve ever seen. They hang down to the prostitute’s extremely wide set shoulders and are a matching gold to the strapless, skintight dress being worn. She doesn’t need the extra height but that doesn’t stop the too tall disco ball heels from being worn. The whole getup is, as Q would put it, extra as fuck. I wish she were here with me to witness everything that’s happening. I can’t wait to tell her all about it.
“Oh, um, no thank you. Sorry to have almost run into you. I’ll pay more attention to where I’m walking next time. Have a nice day.” I say with a tight smile. I lift my hand in a goodbye and start to walk off.
“Ya sure? I’ll offa half’a my services off for ya. A real looker, you’s is.” The prostitute yells down the road, only adding to my discomfort.
“Nope! I’m good.” I yell back, moving a lot faster than before.
I’ll admit, it takes a lot to fuck with me. I honestly didn’t think there was much that could get under my skin, so for this admittedly fucked up scenario, to have gotten to me, tells me that I really need to focus on the task at hand. I can’t get distracted now. Alessandra has to get out of here.
I can only assume, since we are in Illinois, that we are heading back to her old house. Although, I can’t figure out what she’d need to go back for. As soon as she told me that she called her childhood home the Jason Shack, I knew her life had been a bad one. This place may just give it a run for its money though based off of the brief experience I’ve had here.
Finally making my way to the motel in question, I start casing the whole place. It’s pretty late, or early depending on your definition of time, I guess, so I’m able to look around without drawing any suspicion to myself. It doesn’t take long for me to find which room is hers seeing as every other room is vacant. They don’t even bother locking most of the rooms that are empty. All the locks are real key locks so picking it isn’t hard. I open up the door to her room silently and notice her small frame laying on top of a blanket and pillow placed on top of the motel bedding, they are things she must have brought with her. The room she rented is just that, one room with an attached bathroom. I stalk silently through the room to double check the bathroom before doubling back and moving to our girl. Even in sleep, she looks exhausted. She even looks a bit thinner in the face, darker skin feathers out under her swollen, puffy eyes, a telling sign that she’s not taking care of herself. Tear tracks streak down her beautiful face tells me she fell asleep crying. Stress is laying heavily on her, if her taught shoulders are anything to go by. She’s grabbing a hold of her heart necklace, telling me she misses us as much as we miss her.
This is bad. Something truly bad had to have happened for her to be running scared like this. Tapping her passcode into her phone, I go into her app store and set up a hidden app to allow me access to her phone at all times. I’ll be able to monitor things better this way.
Hopefully, we can get some more information from her phone. I’ll also be able to hack her phone calls if need be. I’d be curious to know how much Alessandro knows about what’s going on. Reaching down to brush the hair out of her face, I kiss her gently, barely touching my lips to hers but so desperately needing to feel her against me in some way, shape or form.
“I love you Alessandra. I’ll be here to help when you’re ready. Just remember that I love you, always.” I breathe my words into her silky hair, taking in her magnolia scent that I adore so much. Taking one last glance along her body, I almost don’t let myself walk out the door but I know she needs to do whatever this is, for her. Just like I told her, I’ll be here when she’s ready. We all will. Locking the door behind me, I make my way back towards the car. Going out of my way to avoid the hooker.
* * *
“It’slike every step we take further gets worse!” Noah curses this whole trip as he gets an up close look at the love of our life’s childhood home.
Calling it a home is definitely a stretch. It’s more appropriate to call it a shack or hovel. To call this place unpleasant would be putting it nicely. There’s no way this could even be misconstrued as a safe place for a child to live, or even an adult for that matter. How did this go on for so long? None of that makes sense. Especially factoring in the drug addled excuse of a mother that was constantly picked up by the police. They didn’t even think one time to take a look at her home life with a daughter registered as her dependent through the state?
No, this reeks of underground involvement. We don’t have exclusive ties to the mafia families here on the East coast but I know when something has been tampered with by the mob. It’s my job to know these things. It’s how we keep everything clean and tidy when it comes to our own less than legal shit. I need to look into what we’ve found on her phone but for now I’ll settle for waiting until we get back to the hotel.
Thank goodness for small favors. Q finally picked a decent place to stay. She’s a bit of a drive out from her old residence but it’s less than an hour so it looks like she’s willing to take advantage of the clean sheets over the extra drive time now that we’re where she wants to be. At least for now.
I left Matteo to set up the surveillance on her room. Fully trusting his hacking capabilities to get into her room and place bugs everywhere. I also gave him the codes to hack her phone. He’s looking into it now and will let us know if there’s anything worth a damn on there.
Noah and I came over here to scope things out before she makes her way back here, that is, if she comes back. She only stopped for a short while before but when she left, she had this look on her face that will torture me until my last breath. It was a look of pure devastation and pain; it was a look that screamed resignation. Like she knows what’s to come next and it won’t be good. It was weird for her. She’s not scared of much so there had to be something hidden in the darkness that even she couldn’t bear to deal with yet. I’m going to find out what that something is.
“Hey man, you gonna be ok? This is probably going to get much worse before it gets better and I know you’re barely holding onto the beast inside but I really need you right now brother. I need to figure out a plan to get her back and then ‘Teo and I will let you create utter chaos. Can you do that?” I look at him, fully knowing how mentally strong he is to hold back when his every instinct is to let go and protect our girl.
“Yeah bro, I’m good. I just want to figure out who put that horrifying look on Alessandra’s face so that I can murder them in cold blood.” The smile accompanying his statement is one that even the most depraved murderer might shy away from. He’s close to the point of pure psychosis.
“The sooner you do your job, the sooner I get to do mine.” He winks at me, his eyes clearing back to normal, letting me know he’s actually good to go in with me.
