The two of them got along like a house on fire. I felt my muscles, which had cramped up one by one on the drive over here, slowly unwinding while I listened to them banter as if they were best friends from school. I hadn’t felt this relaxed on a visit to see her since the day she told me she had cancer.
As much as I loved my mom, I could usually only last so long before the cramps worked their way up my neck and I ended up with a headache. Fighting the defeated resignation on her face, and the staff going through the motions of a hopeless cause, was more than I could take.
It was little wonder that I fed off the power that creating F had given me. It was because this, in here, was what powerlessness felt like, and it was horrific. To be so helpless in the face of this… monster attacking my mother was beyond my ability to really cope with it.
Having Sarina here was even better than I thought. I’d hoped it would feel safe like having two legs to stand on instead of one, but it was more like having two legs and a big fucking gun.
Wrapped up in a blanket of hope that my mom could see the same special things in Sarina that I did, I wasn’t even aware that my head rolled back and I fell asleep at some point. I had no idea how long their hushed voices washed over me, before I recovered from my power nap and sat there with my eyes closed for a few more minutes.
“No, I swear it, never,” said my mom, “but I saw a few. No offense intended to them, but… they looked like, well, skanks.”
Sarina laughed quietly.
“But you’re really…” my mom searched for the words for a moment. “Nice. That sounds like a weak word to describe it, I know, but… um… it’s not supposed to be. I mean, you seem like you really care for him. That’s all a mother really wants for her son. Somebody out there who thinks about him as much as I do before I kick the bucket. You’ve got to be good to him, Sarina, he’s been through a lot with all this. That’s all I want you to promise me.”
“I can’t promise that… unless you make me a promise too,” said Sarina.
“What’s that?”
“I need you to promise to stick around for a while to make sure I keep my promise. You need to fight for every day. No more of this “we’ll see” and “bucket-kicking” bullshit.”
“Well… I can’t say I approve of the language. I hope that doesn’t rub off on my Ryan, but… OK. I’ll promise to fight. That’s the best I can do.”
“Good enough for me, Ms. Crewe,” said Sarina.
“Oh, you. Call me Diana. Hey, do you like baking? I was just reading a brownie recipe in this magazine I bet you could fatten Ryan up with.”
Ryan
I craned my neck up at the Acardi building, wondering if Alberico was up there right now. If I hadn’t had that meeting with him right at the start of my arrangement with the Acardis, I might have wondered if he was a work of fiction, because I hadn’t seen him since.
Just inside the main entrance, a few men wearing “W. Darrin & Co Construction” high visibility vests came and went amongst the more professionally dressed members of the Acardi Crime Family, and the people who worked in the various businesses housed in Trafford Tower who had no idea who they really worked for.
They thought they were travel agents, accountants or personal assistants, many of whom had been pretty pissed at being temporarily relocated as the construction workers made their way through the building, checking for damage and making repairs as necessary since the earthquake. In reality, they were cogs in several interconnected money laundering machines, but at least their inconvenience was coming to an end, as the work was almost complete.
I sighed. I had big plans for this building. Plans that would entail a shitload more inconvenience for everybody, to put it mildly. Especially the Acardis.
Lately, though, all that had seemed to fade into the background in terms of importance. Ever since the night of the Halloween party, Sarina had decided that we’d moved slow enough for her liking and we’d been fucking like bunnies.
All I could think about was shaking Sarina’s body again and again, tasting her, and hearing her scream my name, when she was capable for forming words at all. Then, when we weren’t fucking, she was the sweetest, toughest, most supportive person I’d ever met.
My mom hadn’t looked this healthy in over a year. She glowed when she saw Sarina and I walk through her door, and even in that stark hospital setting, I felt complete. Maybe it would be easier and ultimately more satisfying to just disappear with as much of the Acardi’s money as I could, rather than take their place in a bloody coup.