Tess's Tale (The Chanel Series Book 3) (15 page)

‘Where should I take you?’ Her fists clenching the steering wheel were white. All-in-all this was turning out to be a pretty shitty night for her.

‘The club.’ I hadn’t seen Liss’s car as we drove up the street. She must have headed back to the club when the cops showed up. ‘Take me round the back.’ The last thing I needed was for club patrons to see me like this.

I was right about Liss. She opened the door before I could knock and hustled me inside. ‘Quick, up the stairs. Thor’s making sure the coast is clear.’

I ran up the stairs after her, trying not to dirty the carpet too much. Even then I’m sure I left a trail of dirt. Noise coming from one of the rooms indicated that one of the girls had a client. It sounded like Brittney. Of all of them, she faked the best orgasm.

Liss didn’t stop till we were safely inside the apartment. ‘Good grief. You look like
you
were the one buried.’

‘The house burnt down.’

She nodded. ‘I thought it best to hide the evidence.’

‘
You
did it?’ I don’t know why I was surprised at anything any more.

She nodded. ‘I didn’t feel like going to jail for doing such a good deed.’

My smile cracked the mud around the edges of my mouth. Some of it flaked off onto the floor.

‘Into the shower with you.’ She opened the door to the bathroom for me.

It took a long time to get all the mud off. Even then I found some in one of my ears while I was drying myself.

She was waiting for me in my old bedroom. A set of clothes was ready on the bed and the rest of my stuff had been packed up ready to go. Harry’s and my bags sat by the door. ‘We need to get you to the airport.’

‘Now?’

‘Tess this is crazy. Do you have a death wish?’

I paused in the process of buttoning up my blouse.

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘Harry.’

‘We’ll pick him up on the way.’ She nodded at his bag.

Doubt circled in my head. Would he come? Would his unborn child and I have more of a hold than his sick father?

Once I would have said, ‘Yes.’ There wouldn’t have been a single doubt in my head. But now? Now I wasn’t so sure. Not since he had lied to me about the meeting. Not since he had become Big H.

‘Come on.’ Liss was more impatient to be off than me. Anybody would have thought it was her the Corleonesi were after.

Five minutes later we were parked out the front of the Pink Flamingo. ‘Come with me?’ I was going to need her support if Harry decided he wasn’t coming.

‘Sure.’ Her smile was reassuring as she squeezed my hand.

We crossed to the front of the hotel and entered the foyer. A man sitting on one of the lounges glanced up from his book. His eyes flitted over us before returning to the page. I managed to keep my legs moving but changed direction, heading for the ladies’ bathroom instead.

I recognised him. One of the men from the van.

As we walked past the bar I glanced inside. Sure enough, the other two goons were there as well. Another couple of men with dark hair and olive skin sat at a low table. They stood out like dogs’ balls from the rest of the bar patrons. They all nursed glasses but none of them seemed to be drinking.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

I could feel my heart staccato beating.

I pushed open the ladies’ bathroom and Liss followed me in.

‘You couldn’t wait till you got upstairs?’ Liss asked.

‘They’re here.’

Confusion flitted over her face, but she was no dummy. ‘The Sicilians?’

I nodded, my mouth so dry I was finding it hard to speak. ‘What should we do?’ I croaked.

‘That man reading the book on the lounge?’

‘I saw him outside our house the other day.’

‘We won’t make it to the elevator without him seeing, but he won’t know what flight we’re going to.’

‘You need a swipe card to access the penthouse floor. It’s the only floor you need it.’ The swipe was on the outside of the elevator.

‘Is there a back way up?’

‘If you feel like climbing thirty flights of stairs.’

She looked down at her heels. ‘There’s no way Harry can come down with them there.’

Crap. She was right. I’d only been thinking about getting up to Harry. Once we did that, we were trapped.

‘I’ll get Bob to ring him.’

‘Bob?’

‘The concierge.’

‘You’re going to tell him over the phone? In front of the concierge?’

‘If I have to.’ I wasn’t going without giving him a good reason to come with me.

I pushed the bathroom door back open and headed for the concierge’s station. He was a little too close to the man reading in the lounge for my liking but I was out of options.

‘Why are you walking like that?’ Liss whispered.

‘I’m trying to be inconspicuous.’

‘You look like there’s something wrong with your hips. Walk normally.’

I felt like I was glowing like a beacon. How could they not notice me? But I adjusted my walking style back to normal.

The concierge station was empty.

‘Bloody typical,’ I muttered. Normally the big man with his booming voice was in my face as soon as I walked in the door. Now, when I actually needed him, he was nowhere to be seen.

‘Maybe we should go back to the club and ring him.’

I thought about it. We were sitting ducks hanging around down here.

‘Okay.’ We turned toward the doors just as Bob came back in.

‘Mrs Milano.’ His voice echoed around the foyer.

I winced and looked around. The man had forgotten about his book and was staring at Liss and me.

‘Mr Milano junior is upstairs with Mr Milano senior.’ Bob beamed at us as if he had just done me the biggest favour in the world.

I mean honestly, as if I didn’t know where they were. Jim was still bed-ridden.

A couple of the men appeared in the doorway to the bar. The man with the book stood, one hand in his jacket pocket.

‘Run,’ I yelled at Liss, taking off towards the front door.

I was guessing the men gave chase because Bob yelled, Stop. That’s Mrs Milano. You leave her alone.’

We cleared the doors and raced across the carpark. A quick glance over my shoulder showed five men fanning out behind.

Liss had her car keys in her hand by the time we got to her car. She opened her door and threw herself in, leaning over to open my side before jamming the key in the ignition.

The first of them reached us as she stuck the car in reverse and hit the accelerator pedal.

‘Put your pedal to the metal,’ she said as the car backed straight into the book reader. We crashed into his thighs and he flew backwards, smacking into another parked car.

The next man to reach our car jumped in front of it. He held his arms out wide and yelled, ‘We just want to talk,’ in a thick Italian accent.

‘They never learn,’ Liss said as she changed into drive and floored it.

He dived out of the way of our speeding car and we roared past him, taking the exit corner so fast that we fishtailed out onto the main road.

I stared out the back as we drove off but couldn’t see any sign of pursuit. The main prize was still at the hotel and they weren’t leaving till they had it.

‘I’m taking you to the airport.’

‘But, Harry.’

‘You can ring him from there.’

‘We could still go to the club.’ Going to the airport without him seemed wrong. Like, if I did it, I would never see him again.

‘Too risky. They’re staking out your house and here. They may already know where you work.’

Damn it, I hated when cold, hard logic got in the way of my heart.

The closer to the airport we got the bigger the hole in my chest became. I ached for Harry. Wanted him there with me, on board with the plan. The fact that it was my own fault that he wasn’t, didn’t help.

If I could go back in time I would have told him the minute I found out. It had seemed so important to make the announcement at the perfect time. But life had decreed that there was no perfect time, and I had let it bully me into submission. I should have fought harder.

Tears escaped my eyelids and trailed down my cheeks.

Harry.

Liss glanced sideways at me and then reached across and took my hand. ‘Don’t cry baby. It’ll all work out.’

I wanted to believe her but a certainty had set up home in my head. I was going alone to Australia. Harry wouldn’t be coming.

We found a phone booth in the airport terminal and I dialled the penthouse number. It rang and rang until it finally rang out. I tried it again and again while Liss sorted out my ticket.

‘He’s not there.’ Anguish threatened to overwhelm me. I collapsed onto a seat and put my head on my knees. What was I doing? Why was I going? Nothing seemed worth this pain.

And then I remembered my baby. If I even survived the Corleonesi, did I really want to bring a child into this life?

‘I’ll tell him,’ Liss said.

‘I feel like I’m betraying him.’

‘He’ll understand. Here.’ She handed me my plane ticket and a brochure. She held another copy of the brochure. Sydney Backpacker’s Hostel. ‘You should be able to afford to stay here for a while. I’ll let him know where you’ll be.’

Backpacker’s Hostel. I had withdrawn all my money, converted it to Australian dollars, and hidden it in an envelope at the bottom of my bag. It was hopefully enough to cover a backpacker’s for a little while. ‘I can always get a job singing.’

‘No singing. Remember?’

I stared at her. She had said it before but I hadn’t really thought she was serious.

‘I don’t think you realise how amazing your voice is.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve been a teeny bit selfish hogging you at the club. But I always knew it was only a matter of time before a talent scout found you.’

‘I loved singing at the club.’

‘You would have loved Broadway musicals more. If you sing, they will find you.’

I shuddered. ‘Okay.’ It hurt almost as much as leaving Harry behind. Almost.

‘Stay there for a month. If he hasn’t contacted you by then, he’s not coming.’

He would come, he
would
. I didn’t know if I had the strength to get on that plane if I didn’t believe that.

‘Now you have to go through Customs.’

‘Liss.’ The thought of saying goodbye to her was suddenly too much.

We stared into each other’s eyes and then suddenly we were both crying and hugging.

‘I love you like a daughter,’ she said, kissing me on the cheek.

‘I wish you had been my Mom.’ I felt guilty saying the words, but they were true. Liss had been more of a mother to me over the last year and a half than Mom had ever been.

‘Go,’ she said, pushing me towards the customs doorway. ‘Go now before I think of a reason not to let you go.’

I pulled a tissue from my bag and wiped my nose. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Customs.’

‘One foot in front of the other Tess and you’ll get there every time.’

I nodded and took my first step away from her. My first step toward a new life. Even through my grief I could feel excitement hum inside me.

I was going to Australia. I was going to have a baby. And Harry would join us soon.

In retrospect, I guess two out of three ain’t bad.

I slept most of the way to Hawaii, my body exhausted from my pregnancy and the uncertainty I had been living under.

A four-hour layover in Hawaii and then I was boarded on my flight to Sydney. Any excitement disappeared during that flight, overtaken instead, by a desire to lie down flat. I wanted to sleep in a bed instead of propped up with a frozen neck.

I caught a cab to the Sydney Backpacker’s, a not-so-classy establishment in King’s Cross, and got myself a room.

The woman behind the counter was nice but uninterested in me, for which I was grateful. ‘My husband will be joining me,’ I told her, praying it was true.

The room was small but clean and I sat my bag on one side of the bed and lay down on the other. When I woke it was dark.

Resembling a drunk person, I staggered to the wall with my arms outstretched, feeling along until I found the switch next to the door.

A sudden wave of homesickness swept over me, a ball of pain clenching around my heart.

Harry would know I was gone by now. Did he think I had betrayed him? Was he coming? The uncertainty was worse than the knowing. If I had known for sure he wasn’t, I could at least start grieving.

The best thing to do was unpack my things and plan for the morrow.

I opened the little wooden drawers and started transferring my clothes in. I pulled the clothing out and then turned back to my bag. A layer of manila envelopes sat at the very bottom of my bag.

What had Liss put in there?

One of them had my name written on it. I opened that one first. It was stuffed full of one hundred dollar bills and had a folded piece of paper sitting on the top.

I opened it and Liss’s bold handwriting stared back at me.

I hope you don’t mind but I kept half.

I opened the rest of the envelopes. Except for the note they were identical. One hundred dollar bills neatly stacked and wedged into the envelopes.

Half? Half of two million dollars. There was one million dollars sitting in the bottom of my bag.

Just to be sure, I took it all out and counted it. Ten envelopes each with one thousand notes in it. Yep – one million dollars.

What was I going to do with that much money? Spend it? Save it? Invest it? I would have to think carefully before I progressed. I was sure a young girl walking into a bank with one million dollars would raise eyebrows.

Once I had given her some of my Australian money, the lady at the hostel check-in was happy to let me ring Las Vegas. I rang home first – no answer. Next I rang Jim’s number. Also no answer.

Pictures of Harry lying dead in our home flashed through my head, quickly followed by ones of him being tortured or lying in a hospital bed with tubes hanging out of his body.

I never should have left. Not without talking to him. Not without telling him.

I calmed myself with the knowledge that Liss would have spoken to him. It was possible that he was already on a plane to meet me. He could be here by this time tomorrow.

He wasn’t. Nor were either of the phones being answered. To make matters worse, Liss and Thor weren’t answering
their
phone either.

What had happened? Maybe a storm had knocked out the phone lines to our area. Maybe the Corleonesi had caught Liss while talking to Harry? Maybe they were all dead.

The uncertainty ate away at me. I scoured every newspaper I could find, looking for a hint of what was going on. But Las Vegas didn’t even rate a mention.

One week passed with my being no closer to finding Harry.

I ached for him. I yearned for him.

At the start of the second week I woke determined to fly back home. I clambered out of bed and dragged on my clothes, leaving the top button of my pants undone. They had become uncomfortably tight around my growing belly.

I put my bag on my bed and started to pack it. While I was staring at the envelopes of cash wondering what to do with them, I felt a little flutter in my stomach. A few seconds later it happened again.

I stared down at my bulge, placing my hands directly onto my bare skin. This time I felt it under my fingers. Realisation of what I was feeling shot through me.

Up to this point I had known from an analytical point of view that I was pregnant. Now I knew it on a cognitive level. My baby was kicking me, telling me I was being an idiot. And she was right.

I was safe here. Heart broken, but safe. And she needed me to be safe.

‘Oh Harry,’ I sobbed, sitting back down on the bed. ‘Where are you?’

He should have been with me the first time our child kicked. He should be there for her birth, her first step, first day at school, first boyfriend. He should be there for
all
of the firsts. But it seemed the only thing he was going to be there for was her conception.

I put my bag back into the little cupboard and went downstairs to ring him again.

The phone at the house rang out again, but this time, when I rang Jim’s penthouse Rosella picked up.

‘Rosella,’ I said. ‘It’s me Tess.’

She said something in Italian and put the receiver down. For one awful moment I thought she had hung up on me and the flaring hope in my chest started to die. I was so close to him, so close.

A few seconds later the receiver was picked up again.

‘Harry,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’

I heard my sister’s voice, so like my own, on the other end of the line. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘Harry’s not home at the moment. Where are you?’

‘Sydney.’ The word came out of my mouth before I realised it. She was the last person I wanted to know where I was. ‘When will he be home?’

‘For you?’ Smug satisfaction oozed through her voice. ‘Never.’

‘What… what do you mean?’

‘Let’s just say he’s realised I’m a better fit for his life than you. He’s traded up. I’m his woman now.’ And then she laughed and hung up the phone.

Almost blinded by the tears swimming in my eyes I stumbled back to my room. I closed and locked the door, collapsing onto the bed as great hulking sobs, ripped me apart. I wanted to tear out her heart and claw out her eyes. I wanted to fight for him but I couldn’t. The worse part about the whole thing was that I knew she was right. She was a better fit for his life now. For the life he had chosen over me.

I cried till I had no more tears left to shed, and then I lay on the bed feeling miserable. There was a hole where my heart had been.

I’m not sure how long I lay there, staring at the ceiling as day turned into night. I didn’t know if I could live with this pain. Didn’t want to live at all.

It was the little flutter that got me moving, reminding me I was not the only one in my life any more. It was time to put away my own feelings and start thinking about the future. It was time to work out what to do.

It was time to disappear.

That night I made my way out onto the streets of Kings Cross. I felt right at home amongst the prostitutes, which was a good thing, because I figured they might know who to go to, to organise an I.D.. I was right.

Mandy sent me up the street to talk to Anna, who sent me over a couple of streets to Bambi who had a brother who could help me. Bambi’s brother, Adam, worked in a tattoo parlour. He was a wall of inked muscle and before I’d had my run in with the Mafiosi, would have scared the shit out of me. Now he was mildly threatening.

That changed once I showed him some money.

‘That’ll do for the driver’s licence,’ he said, nodding at my wad of cash, ‘but if you want a passport good enough to clear Customs, you’ll need to triple it.’

‘I’ll give you this now,’ I handed him the money, ‘and the rest when I see the documents. Oh and bring your own passport. I’d like to compare them.’ I had no idea what an Australian passport looked like.

He stuffed the cash into the top drawer of his tattooing cart and said, ‘You going to leave your hair that colour?’

I touched my bob. I loved my red hair. ‘Why?’

‘You’re kind of memorable. I get the feeling you’d prefer not to be.’

He had a point. ‘I could go brown.’

‘Do it, then get your passport photos taken. The twenty-four hour chemist down the road can take them.’

There was a hairdresser two shops down from the tattoo parlour that was still open. It only took an hour for the apprentice to turn my glistening red hair to a boring brown. She pretended not to notice the tears on my cheek as she blow dried my hair. I was thankful for that.

From there I went to the chemist, had the passport photos taken, and then took them straight back to Adam.

‘It’ll take a week,’ he said when I handed him the photos.

‘I’ll quadruple it if you can do it in two days.’

‘Lady even if you gave me ten times as much, I couldn’t have them in two days. Best I can do is four.’

‘I’ll be back in four days.’

Out of energy, I dragged myself back to the hostel. I went to bed, wrapping my arms around myself to try and hold in the pain.

A knock on my door woke me the next morning.

Harry.

I leapt from the bed and threw open the door, prepared to leap into his arms. It wasn’t Harry.

A tall, dark-haired man in a blue uniform stood on the other side of the door. ‘Tess Milano?’ He glanced down and I blushed. There was no way I would have opened the door in my lace nightie if I had known it wasn’t Harry.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Constable Trent Bailey of the New South Wales Police Force.’

I was suddenly very glad I had hidden those envelopes under the mattress.

‘Constable,’ I said. ‘I had the television on pretty loud last night. Was there a noise complaint?’

He laughed. ‘In King’s Cross? The only noise complaints we get called to are those that involve gun shots and screaming. And then not even all of those.’

My face felt weird and I realised I was smiling. It was the first time that had happened since I’d arrived in Sydney.

‘Well then,’ I said, ‘why are you here?’

‘Gotta ask you some questions. Want to do it here or down at the police station?’

‘I have a choice?’ I was doing a pretty good job of appearing to remain calm, but in reality my mind was flitting around my skull like a frightened rabbit. What was this about?

‘You’re not under arrest,’ he said. ‘Just following up on an anonymous phone call.’ He pulled a face. ‘Probably shouldn’t have told you that part.’

Now it was my turn to laugh. ‘Tell you what. How about you let me get changed,’ I gestured at my nightie, ‘and I’ll shout you breakfast.’

‘That would be a nice change. Normally I just get shouted
at
,’ he said.

I smiled and shut the door, swinging around to look at my room from how he would have seen it. There was nothing there that would have aroused his suspicions about anything. I pulled on a loose dress, slipped on my sandals and dragged a brush through my hair.

He was still waiting on the other side of the door when I re-appeared.

‘Where’s good?’ I asked.

‘’Smoky Bacon’ does a pretty mean fry up,’ he said, leading me down the stairs.

‘Sounds good.’

‘How did you find me?’ I asked as we walked up the street.

‘Customs form.’ He stopped and pushed open the door of a small, homely café with American-style diner booths. I felt right at home.

We both ordered bacon and eggs, and coffee, waiting till the waitress had disappeared before beginning our conversation.

‘Anonymous phone call?’ I prompted.

‘I knew you’d latch onto the one bit of information I shouldn’t have given you.’ He twirled the salt shaker between his fingers.

My smile came more easily. ‘You can always count on a woman to do that.’

‘I wish I had known that before I met my ex-girlfriend.’

‘Ex?’

‘I suggested she get a job in the Force as a lie detector.’

‘How did that go down?

‘That’s why she’s my ex.’

I moved back to let the waitress deposit our coffee in front of us. Trent ripped the top off a couple of packets of sugar and dumped them in his coffee. He was all long, lean muscle, and even though he seemed relaxed as he stirred his coffee I was betting he went from zero to a hundred in under six seconds.

‘So tell me about Leo the Brain.’ The bastard waited until I had a mouthful of coffee before he said it.

My eyes must have been bulging with my effort not to snort it all over him.
They’d found the body?
When I had finally swallowed, I wiped my nose on a serviette and said, ‘It’s Lou. Lou the Brain. And what do you want to know?’

‘So you’re not going to deny knowing him?’

‘He was my mother’s boyfriend.’

‘Your step-father?’

‘Call him that again and I
will
be shouting at you.’ I arched an eyebrow at him and took another sip of my coffee.
How much did he know?

‘So I’m guessing you weren’t that fond of him.’

‘I’m pretty sure he beat my mother to death, so no, I’m not that fond of him.’ I saw straight through his attempt to trick me into using past tense on Lou.

‘So you won’t be sad to hear that he’s dead?’

I paused for what I thought would be the appropriate amount of time to digest that information. ‘He’s dead?’

‘The Las Vegas police got a tip off but they haven’t recovered a body.’ So somebody had told them Lou was dead and had pointed them in my direction. There were only two people who knew he was dead
and
where I was, and I was pretty sure Liss hadn’t set this up.

He sat back in his seat and stared at me, his intelligence suddenly dominating his face.

What a bitch. I couldn’t believe Hillary had done this. So it wasn’t enough that she had stolen my husband, now she wanted to see me behind bars for something she had done.

Okay, so
I
knew she hadn’t really killed Lou, but
she
didn’t.

‘Killed your mother?’

‘Lou came around to my house the day Mom was killed. He was drunk and he attacked me. I managed to fight him off.’ I noticed Trent’s eyebrows ride up his face as I said that. ‘Later that night my sister,’ I bit into that word, ‘found our mother dead. Her head had been crushed. We haven’t seen Lou since.’

‘He was prone to violent attacks?’