I wish I could sink freely into that belief, but there’s still a paranoid part of me that’s waiting for the hammer to fall, for the punchline that will bring this all crashing down.
Jackal lets out a soft rumbling noise.
It’s not that he’s hungry. I found the second kitchen after getting lost twice and ending up back where I started, but eventually, I found my way there, found his dog bowl and a giant bag of food that was difficult to lift. Somebody had written his serving portions on a piece of paper next to the food, so it was easy enough.
Maybe the noise is because he senses the uncertainty boiling through me.
The uncertainty makes no sense.
I should want to call my parents.
And yet anxiety twists in my gut when I think about how Arturo and Dad could possibly know each other. If I’m starting to develop completely unrealistic and unhinged feelings for Arturo – and let’s face it, I am – then what the heck am I supposed to do if I discover that Arturo is evil, somehow?
What if Dad tells me he’s a monster?
I sit on the bed with a sigh.
Jackal leaps up easily, causing the mattress to judder under his impressive weight. The dog whines softly and lays his head in my lap, looking up at me with his dark eyes, eyes that remind me of the near black of Arturo’s.
I stroke my hand over his head, tickling him behind the ears.
“I have to call them, don’t I?” I murmur. “They need to know that I’m safe.”
As I pick up the phone, I’m stunned that no part of me wants to call 911, which would be the logical, normal response. It’s the first thing I should want to do, call the police and tell them I’m being held captive against my will, but even thinking about that sends harsh firm feelings of rejection surging through me.
It’s like that place deep inside of me, my center, my womb, whatever the heck it is, it’s screaming at me that I can never leave this man.
I’m destined to be with him.
I’m destined to have his babies.
We’re destined to be a family.
It doesn’t matter that if I told Arturo these crazy thoughts, he’d laugh at me in that growling way he has, turning from Nice Arturo to the snarling beast who threatened to take me from behind on the balcony.
I grit my teeth at the thought, my sex giving a shiver.
He knew about my secret sexual fantasies.
I’ve never had an object for these fantasies before, just a vague general sense that one day I wanted to unleash all these inner desires, that one day I didn’t want to be the shy girl anymore.
But now it’s Arturo, only him, and an endless repeating cycle in my mind.
I push all of that aside and call my parents’ landline, the only one I know by heart.
It answers on the second ring.
Snaps’ voice is taut, as though he’s been awaiting this call.
“Yes?”
“Snaps, it’s me,” I tell him.
He sighs. “Thank God. Do I have time to get your father?”
He speaks as though I’m being held at gunpoint somewhere, as though somebody has been torturing me for the past twenty-four hours. I almost laugh when I imagine sending him a photograph of my bedroom and the lovable pooch with his head resting on my lap.
“Yes, you have time,” I say.
I drum my fingers against my legs, thinking about Arturo and the man named Elmo who escaped, whoever he is.
A prisoner, a man Arturo’s been torturing for information, a drug dealer?
I want to believe that Arturo is a good man deep down, but good men don’t order people kidnapped and held prisoner, even if this is the best prison in the world, even if – crazily – this place feels more like home than my own house has for years.
“Aida?” Mom says, relief flooding her voice.
“I’m okay, Mom,” I tell her. “I’m not hurt. Nobody’s touched me. I’ve been fed and I’ve been allowed to wash and … I really am okay.”
“Oh, thank God,” she gushes. “I’ve been so worried. I …”
She breaks off into choking sobs, struggling to talk past her emotions.
“I love you,” she says finally.
“I love you, too,” I tell her. “I’m sorry I’ve made you so worried.”
“Sorry?” she gasps. “Don’t be foolish. Where are you? Who has you?”
In the background, Dad grumbles, “Give it here, Lyndsey.”
“Franco, she’s alive,” Mom cries. “She’s safe.”
Mom passes over the phone and then Dad’s gruff voice fills my ear.
“Aida, where are you?” he says quickly. “The men who took you, are they Russian? Are they Eastern European? Irish? Mexican? Aida?”
His barrage of questions leaves me with my mouth hanging open, as the realization dawns that Dad has so many potential kidnappers to choose from.
“Exactly how many enemies have you made, Dad?” I snap, rage swimming in my voice.
“This isn’t the time for—”
“Actually,” I interrupt, “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
“You’re being held prisoner somewhere, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then how the fuck do you have all the time in the world?”
“Don’t swear, Franco,” Mom snaps in the background.
“Sorry, dear,” Dad sighs. “Aida, I don’t understand.”
“I understand,” I say, voice trembling. I think I’ve been holding this in for a long time. “You’ve been lying to me my entire life. You’re not in real estate. You’re a criminal, plain and simple, and you’ve always tried to keep me in the dark. Heck, maybe I purposefully ignored reality. Maybe I was too willing to lose myself in books and singing and … But you’ve lied to me, Dad, haven’t you? Otherwise, why would he take me?”
“It’s complicated, Aida,” Dad sighs. “Life isn’t always that simple. Tell me who has you.”
“Arturo Amato,” I snap.
“You’re at his estate?”
“I don’t know. I think so. Who is he to you? He said you knew each other.”
“I don’t think we need to—”
“Dad,” I hiss, the anger making my voice taut, Jackal flinching and looking up at me. “You can’t keep lying to me.”
There’s a long pause, and then Dad finally says, “We were friends when we were children. But things changed. We grew apart. Now he—Jesus, Aida, you don’t need to know all of this. I’ve kept you safe for a reason.”
“You’ve lied to me for a reason, you mean. And it hardly worked, did it? Here I am. Now he what? Now he what, Dad?”
“Now he runs one of the biggest crime families in America,” Dad says.
“And you run one too,” I finish for him because on some level I’ve always known this.
It just took a kidnapping to make me look at it.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “Believe it or not, Aida, I really did have your best interests at heart.”
“Franco, who is it?” Mom says, her voice quiet in the background of the call.
“Arturo,” Dad says.
“Oh, thank God,” Mom cries.