AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I will. But I want something in return. Five million dollars, to be exact. In unmarked bills, in a suitcase. Call me when you get hold of it—shouldn’t be hard for a rich guy like you, huh? Catch you later, ‘Lex.”
“You’re a monster,” I said.
“Oh,” said Luca, “one more thing. I do hope you don’t manage to alert the police to what’s going on. Otherwise little Macy….well,” he sneered. “Otherwise your baby girl might not make it to seven. And how would Mrs. Lowe feel about that, huh?”
He put the phone down, and I stood there, feeling my whole world as it fell apart.
***
I didn’t have time to get a driver and I wouldn’t have gotten one if I did. I sped into Queens through the rain, which was heavy now, verging on a thunderstorm. When I got to Lola’s apartment, I sat in the driver’s seat, shaking with rage and something else. So this was fear, true fear. The fear of losing the things in the world which matter most to you.
I slipped inside through the open door and bolted up the stairs. But when I got there, I could see the door to Lola’s friend’s apartment was open.
I went inside, and what I saw made me feel sick. The upturned table, the crayons on the floor. Little pictures of a happy sun smiling down on a house. A drawing of a lady with red hair that saidMommynext to it in childish, curly handwriting.
Lola and Sara were on the sofa, shaking. From the looks of it, they’d only just got back. Another man was standing by the entrance. When he saw me come in, he fumbled with the shotgun in his hands.
“NO!” I said, raising my hands. “No, no, no. I’m a friend. I’m a friend of hers,” I said, pointing at Lola.
She looked up at me. But there was nothing there I could do, nothing I could say which was going to calm her down. All I could see in Lola’s eyes was a dark look of disappointment.
“I’m going to help,” I said. “Luca’s just called me. We’re going to get her back.”
I thought Lola would scream. That she would shout and call me a bastard, that she would tell me I was nothing but a no-good scumbag who didn’t deserve her. And she would have been right about all those things. But instead, she frightened me with how calm she was. How evenly her voice chimed in the room, while her hands and her shoulders shook.
“You’re not going to do anything,” Lola said. I looked at her, shocked by the quietness with which she spoke.
“What do you mean?” I said. “We’ve got to pay it if we want to get her back.”
“This is your fault,” said Lola. “And I don’t want you to do anything.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “We can go to O’Rourke. We can tell him everything, he can stop all of this.”
“No, Alex,” said Lola, and I could see the dark circles under her eyes, from the sleepless night I’d just inflicted on her.
“He says if we go to the cops, he’ll…” said Sara, before her voice was choked by more sobs.
“Why are you doing this?” I said.
“You don’t trust me, right?” said Lola. “Never did. Well, here’s something I should have told you a long time ago, Alex. This is your fault.”
I felt like I’d been slapped.
“Lola,” I said, but I could hear myself tripping over my own words. “I know. I know Macy’s my…I mean, I know what happened.”
“If only it hadn’t happened,” she said.
“What?”
“I said,” said Lola, “if only it hadn’t happened. If only you hadn’t been the one I…then she’d be okay…” she trailed off into tears, and raised her hand to her mouth. The strongest woman I knew, and here she was, weakened at last by the loss of the person in the world who meant the most to her. Macy.
And who was I to stand here? In the room where Macy had been taken, and tell her she was wrong?
If I hadn’t left Lola last night, this wouldn’t have happened.
If I hadn’t taken her away from her daughter in the first place.
If I’d never met her at all. If I’d never wanted her. If I’d never put her in the position I had, where Luca blamed her and me for ruining him.
