With Good Behavior (24 page)

Just as Carlo made it to the base of the stairs, he froze. His uncle was descending, coming straight for him. Enzo inhaled sharply when he caught sight of the boy. He surreptitiously pocketed his gun. Swiftly making his way down the last few steps, Enzo seized Carlo by the scruff of the neck and growled in a seething whisper, “What the hell are you doing here?”

Wincing and squirming in his uncle’s painful hold, Carlo whispered, “I was following you! T-t-t-to see why you had a gun.”

“Jesus.” Enzo narrowed his eyes. “I was looking for somebody, but he wasn’t where I thought he’d be. Let’s get out of here.”

There was a noise to their left, and Enzo clutched his nephew’s neck even tighter. He held his index finger to his mouth to signal Carlo to be silent. Carlo whimpered in pain—his uncle was really hurting him now.

“Shut up!” Enzo hissed, and suddenly a shot blasted through the darkness, causing Carlo to slump into his uncle’s arms. His arm was on fire.

“Shit!” Enzo yelled, dragging Carlo to the floor of the hallway. Carlo felt his uncle claw at his pajama shirt, seeming desperate to find the source of the blood.

From the darkness came a small voice. “Dad?”

In his haze, Carlo tried to make sense of what was happening. There was another kid there?

Then a gruff adult voice admonished, “Get down, Tony!”

“Richie Fanocelli,” Enzo angrily whispered, halting his search. “He fucking shot my nephew?”

Carlo moaned, which refocused his uncle’s attention, and rough hands frisked his body. When his uncle’s hands grazed the bullet wound on his right arm, Carlo gasped. Enzo’s eyes lit up with fury.

Shaking with rage, Enzo whipped out his weapon and fired into the darkness. He gave a satisfied grin when he heard the other man holler, “Nooo!” But Carlo watched Enzo’s grin vanish when the man started wailing. “Tony, nooo! My Tony. You’re only seven—oh, God!”

Carlo sat up a little, panting with fear in his uncle’s arms. Enzo frantically looked back and forth from his injured nephew to the place in the darkness where a grown man was whimpering. Carlo felt drawn to the darkness, wondering what had happened.

Enzo rose and attempted to pull Carlo to a standing position. Carlo cried out in pain, and Enzo flinched and backed away. In that moment, Carlo rushed forward into the room. “Carlo!” his uncle shouted after him.

Gingerly holding his right elbow, Carlo stopped short. There, lying on the floor next to a discarded handgun, was a young boy. Carlo felt his uncle come up behind him, but he couldn’t look away.

A sticky, dark-red substance poured from a hole in the boy’s throat as he clutched at his neck, wheezing and gasping for air. A heavyset gray-haired man crouched over him, cradling his small head in his hands and sobbing. Both man and boy wore pajamas.

The man turned his weeping eyes to Carlo and his uncle, standing in the dim light.

Carlo felt frozen, entranced by the blood oozing from the boy’s throat. He heard himself say, “It’s like Buckingham Fountain.”

Enzo turned to him. “What?”

Feeling the wet stain on the sleeve of his pajamas growing by the second, Carlo nodded toward the other boy’s throat with a zombie-like stare. “Blood. Gushing like that fountain in Grant Park.”

Suddenly Enzo yanked Carlo into his arms, despite his cries of pain. Carlo looked up to see his uncle take one last look at Fanocelli and the stray gun on the floor before running out of the house, jostling Carlo’s wound with every step.

Enzo huffed from the effort of carrying him across the lawn, but they finally reached the car.

“Stay with me, Carlo,” he ordered.

Carlo felt his eyelids droop, and he moaned as Enzo buckled him into the front seat.

Enzo floored the accelerator, headed to an unknown destination.

Despite his wooziness, Carlo was thrilled to be in the car, speeding down the deserted road—on an adventure with his uncle. “Uncle Enzo, tell Lo about this, ‘kay? Tell him I helped you and Dad.” Carlo’s voice faded, but he added, “He’ll be so jealous.”

“Stay with me!” Enzo shouted. Carlo felt his uncle’s hand trying to prop him up in the seat, but all he wanted to do was sleep.

The tires screeched to a halt and Carlo squinted at the bright lights. Abruptly he found himself cradled in the arms of his uncle, who was sprinting toward some sliding glass doors.

“Help us!” Enzo shouted, bursting through the entrance.

A startled nurse instructed, “In here!” and guided them into a curtained room where Enzo laid Carlo on a gurney. “What happened?” she demanded.

“He’s been shot.”

The nurse began cutting off Carlo’s pajama top, now sopping wet with blood. “How old is he?”

Enzo’s voice sounded weird, sort of strangled. “Ten.”

Two doctors bustled into the room and went to work.

Amidst the chaos of people darting around his bed, barking orders at each other, Carlo’s head lolled to the side. The last thing he noticed before he lost consciousness was his uncle ducking behind the curtain and stealing away. Uncle Enzo had left him.

Weeks later, when Carlo asked where Uncle Enzo had gone, his father filled in the rest of the story:

Once out of the building, Enzo had broken into a run. He was almost to his car when a commanding voice ordered, “Freeze!” Enzo looked to find a uniformed police officer aiming his weapon straight at him. The officer’s partner jogged up to join him, and Enzo had no choice but to halt, glaring at the two cops.

“Vicenzo Barberi, hands up!” the first officer shouted. The Mafia don did as he was told, noticing the gun weighing down one of his jacket pockets. The murder weapon. He was screwed.

The officers were on him in a second, forcing him to the ground, finding the weapon, and roughly cuffing his hands behind his back. One officer radioed headquarters, informing them of the arrest. They’d suspected Enzo might hit the hospital after a 911 call.

Fanocelli had called the police. The informant had fulfilled his duty.

“What’s wrong with you, man?” Logan’s deep voice broke through the memories.

“What?”

Logan squinted at his cousin, whose black eyes were even wilder than usual. Carefully he took a subtle step back.

A car engine rumbled in the distance, and Carlo demanded, “Stop looking at me like that!”

The noise increased, and Logan caught a glimpse of a car approaching. He inhaled sharply. Was that a cop? Quickly he jogged back toward his car.

“Ah, life on the lam for a wanted man.” Carlo delighted in Logan’s fear of capture.

As Logan hustled, Carlo called after him, “Don’t be a stranger, 
cugino
!”

As he started the car, Logan exhaled slowly, grateful for an excuse to get the hell away from his cousin. Carlo was bad news. He had to keep Grant away from him. He had to find Grant.

Y
ou got a new clownfish,” Sophie observed.

“Yes, I did.” Hunter smiled as they began their fourth therapy session.

“Nemo Junior?” she suggested.

“More like Nema, I think. She’s a female, thank goodness, just like the shop promised. They warned me that if I got two males in there they might behave aggressively, trying to establish a hierarchy.”

Sophie nodded. Percula clownfish didn’t sound all that different from humans. “Their markings are so vivid, so vibrant,” she said. “You’d think their predators would find them too easily.”

“Ah, but clownfish know how to hide in an anemone,” Hunter said. “Though no one has figured out how they avoid getting stung.”

The two clownfish swam closely together, darting in and out of the plants in the aquarium. Although they’d met only recently, Nemo and Nema seemed quite happy together.

Hunter studied his client before clearing his throat. “Speaking of hiding out, managing to avoid getting stung—have you contacted your father yet?”

Her gaze left the serene water and lowered to the floor. “No.”

“Is he even aware that you’re out of prison?”

“I don’t know.”

After a moment she asked, “Why do you think I should call my father?”

“I’m not sure you should,” he responded, surprising her. “That’s a decision for you to make, and only you understand the consequences of doing so. I don’t really know your father or the intricacies of your relationship with him—you haven’t told me much. But I can imagine how lonely it would feel to be on your own with no family support after all you’ve been through—after going to prison and losing your mother.”

Sophie sighed, not wanting to acknowledge her loneliness. “But I have Grant and Kirsten.”

“I know they’re important to you. I also know our parents have quite a hold over us, whether we want them to or not. And I don’t think you can avoid your father forever.”

“It’s not like he’s reaching out to 
me
,” she said bitterly.

“But he has no way of contacting you.”

“He should have thought of that when he decided not to visit me 
once
 in prison.” She felt a deep hurt pressing down on her chest. She gave him a hard stare. “Do you get along with your parents?”

“Now I do,” Hunter said. “But there was a time when my dad didn’t talk to me for almost a year.” He leveled his gaze. “After I came out.”

Sophie winced. “I’m sorry. Here I am whining about my father when people around me are dealing with 
real
 problems, like homophobia or child abuse.”

“Child abuse?”

The image of Grant lying on his stomach, his arms tucked under his chest and tears tumbling from his tightly shut eyelids, filled her mind. The angry scar. She shuddered.

“Grant,” she managed to get out, her throat tight with imminent tears. “I’m pretty sure his father physically abused him.”

Hunter nodded, feeling a twinge in his heart as he watched her eyes pool with tears. She clearly cared deeply for Grant, and he tried to push aside his concerns about her rapidly developing intimacy with another convict.

“Has Grant ever been physically abusive to you?” he asked.

Sophie drew in a shocked breath. “No! He would 
never
 hurt me.”

“Okay, okay,” Hunter backtracked. “You and I both know sometimes the abused becomes the abuser. I was just making sure.”

Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that Hunter was only doing his job. He didn’t know Grant. He didn’t know that Grant seemed sad and wounded from the abuse, not outraged and vengeful like some abuse survivors. Like Logan Barberi.

“Every family is different, Sophie. We each have our own albatross to bear. You weren’t ‘whining’ about your problems, and they’re not insignificant. You have every right to feel hurt, angry, and abandoned by your father. It sounds like you and he both have made some mistakes.” He looked at her kindly. “Would you like to talk about it?”

She twisted her hands in her lap. “I just wanted my dad to …” She glanced at the aquarium. “To be proud of me. I know he was disappointed he didn’t have a son. All the miscarriages really took it out of my parents, I guess.”

“How many times did your mother miscarry?”

“Four.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, I was her fifth pregnancy. The doctors told her it was her last.”

“They must have been thrilled when you were born. How do you think those miscarriages affected their parenting?”

“I think it made my mom super overprotective. She was always scared something bad might happen to me. And when it did …” Sophie trailed off, remembering her mother’s devastation at her sentencing hearing. “I suppose it was too much for her.”

Instead of chastising her once again for blaming herself for her mother’s death, Hunter asked, “And your father? How did the miscarriages affect him?”

“He seemed happy that he finally had a kid, though I wasn’t the boy he always wanted. I tried to play with the construction toys he bought me, I tried to learn all the White Sox players’ names when he took me to games, but it never seemed like enough. He’s just kind of a cold man.”

“He disapproved of you?”

Sophie nodded.

“Did you argue a lot?”

“Not really—I was a good kid. Well, until my senior year of high school, that is. I started dating one of Dad’s employees, Derek Bowden.”

Hunter noticed her smirk.

“I met him when I visited my dad’s office one afternoon. My dad had suspended Derek from the job site, forcing him to work at a desk after he’d shown up drunk one day. My dad was stuck on a phone call, so I struck up a conversation with Derek, and I was shocked by his honesty—he told me outright that he hated my dad. I remember saying, ‘You do know I’m his daughter, right?’ and he replied, ‘Of course, beautiful, but you seem way too nice to rat me out.’ I liked him immediately.”

“You sure found a way to stick it to your dad, huh?”

She gave him an impish grin.

“How old was Derek?”

“Twenty-five.” Hunter’s eyebrows shot up, and Sophie continued, “Dad went ballistic.”

“I bet. You were only eighteen.”

“He ordered me not to talk to Derek, but I thought I was in love.” She rolled her eyes. “My mom and dad yelled at me nonstop about it.”

Hunter tilted his head to the side. “That must have been a nice diversion from yelling at each other.”

Sophie looked puzzled. “Huh?”

“You said your parents fought constantly, and that your mom would complain to you about your dad all the time. So for them to yell at you instead—well, maybe that’s what you secretly wanted.”

She sat perfectly still on the sofa, absorbing his insight.

“What ended up happening between you and Derek?” Hunter asked.

“After he got fired for failing a drug test, things kind of faded between us. I realized he was a loser. Then I went off to college.”

“So,” Hunter ventured tentatively. “Have you dated other older men?”

She glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’?”

Frowning, Sophie realized she could not get much past this shrink. “I had a huge crush on my professor in grad school,” she admitted. Her blush deepened when she divulged, “He was married.”

“Did anything happen between you two?”

“Of course not. And that was the only older man I’ve been attracted to besides Derek, so whatever case you’re trying to make for me seeking a father-figure boyfriend, you can flush down the toilet. The whole I-never-got-my-father’s-approval-so-I’m-searching-for-a-daddy-husband thing just doesn’t apply to me.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. “Wasn’t Logan Barberi older than you?”

“Well, yeah. He was about six years older than me, but it’s not really that unusual for a twenty-eight-year-old woman to be involved with a thirty-four-year-old man.”

“Logan was a bad boy, though, wasn’t he?” Hunter pressed. “Just like Derek. And it was quite illicit for you to have sex with him since he was your psychotherapy client.”

“What’s your point?” she challenged.

“Why don’t you tell me?” he challenged back.

“Arghhh! You’re infuriating! You’re making me do all the work! I should tell Jerry to have the DOC withhold your payment for this session.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it? Your cruel psychologist is making you think for yourself so the insights will have more meaning. What a jerk.”

Her temper tantrum subsiding, Sophie flashed him a beguiling smile. She was imminently likable, even when she was frustrated as hell.

With a loud sigh, she plowed ahead. “Your point is that it was not surprising how I fell for Logan. When I couldn’t get approval from my dad, no matter how hard I tried, I decided negative attention from him was better than no attention. So, I rebelled and chose male partners to intentionally piss him off: older men, bad boys.”

She felt close to tears as she continued. “I was trying to show my dad that he didn’t have any control over me, that his approval didn’t matter to me.”

Hunter was impressed. He couldn’t have said it better himself. “Well done. I retract my earlier snarky comment that perhaps it was a good thing you lost your license. I think you would have made an excellent psychologist.”

His compliment caused her emotions to erupt, and tears began sliding down her face.

“I guess your father’s approval 
does
 matter to you,” said Hunter. “As much as you don’t want to care.”

She nodded, sniffing and plucking a few tissues from the box on the coffee table.

“I guess we also know why you haven’t called your father, then?” he added. “You’re afraid he’ll reject you again?”

She gave her answer by crying harder. Hunter let her sob for a while, her tears indicating they had arrived at the heart of the matter.

Softly he told her, “I have one more thing to add to your brilliant insights about what led to your mistake with Logan. It seems like trying to piss your dad off wasn’t the only reason you fell for Derek and Logan. They both sound like very troubled men—both struggling with addictions of some sort. You said Logan was abused, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Derek was too. But instead of their troubles repelling you, they actually attracted you. You wanted to help them.”

“It’s true.” She nodded. “I was trying to help Derek to stop drinking.”

“What the hell did an eighteen year old know about substance-abuse treatment?” he asked.

She smiled sheepishly. “Not a whole lot, as evidenced by his subsequent positive drug test.”

“My sense is that your caring nature is drawn to wounded people. You attempt to help them just like you tried to help your mother and father with their unhappy marriage. You really sacrificed yourself for your family—attaching yourself to loser men to deflect the attention from your parents’ conflicted relationship. But Sophie, you deserve a man who is healthy and strong, not damaged and dysfunctional. You don’t have to settle for a Mafia criminal who uses you to get what he wants. You deserve a man who can care for himself, and for you, in a loving, honest way.”

Sophie returned Hunter’s gaze, blinking several times while taking in his words. All she could think about was Grant. He seemed caring and loving and healthy on the surface, but there was still so much she didn’t know about him, beginning with his disturbing nightmares and apparent family history of abuse.

Hunter’s words of encouragement circled in an endless loop in her mind. She deserved a good man. Was Grant that good man?

* * *

Grant removed the headset and placed it carefully in the drawer while Roger powered down the ship engines.

“Madsen, you got yourself a phone yet?”

“They just turned it on this morning,” he replied.

“Good. Joe called last night to check up on you, and I didn’t have a number to give him.”

“Joe called last night?” Grant was pleased.

“Yeah, the fucker’s back stateside for a few weeks, and he was wondering how you were doing.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him you were shacking up with another parolee—”

Grant’s mouth dropped open in protest. “Sophie is living with Kirsten, not me!”

“I also told Joe you have a drinking problem.”

Grant’s eyes widened with shock, making Roger feel guilty for goading him.

“Jesus, Madsen, can’t you take a fucking joke? You are wound so tight, man. Of course I told Joe you’re doing just fine. If I 
had
 said those things, you know he would’ve taken the first plane to Chicago and would be here this instant, trying to set your ass straight.”

“Yeah, Joe would have gotten on my case, that’s for sure.”

Roger disdainfully eyed the bag of celery sticks on the counter of the bridge, then grabbed one. “Was the XO tough on you as a kid?”

“Yeah, tough but fair. You could say I did my share of military pushups as a teenager.”