“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Not today but I’ll get her on a plane soon,” I said.
“How soon?”
“We are not dropping things and running back there. You’ll see us in a couple weeks.”
“Three days. And I get twice daily phone calls from Tia until then so I know she’s okay and you haven’t done something to her. Morning and night.”
I gritted my teeth, “Fine. I’m sending someone to meet with you today to find out everything you know and where you got the info. You need to share this so that we can determine whether or not you’ve put us in danger. Got it? He’ll meet you at your place in two hours.”
“Who are you sending? One of your wiseguy thugs? Sending someone to rough me up?”
“No. Zack Jacobs. Look him up. He’s a PI. You’ll need to meet with him today so he can do damage control.”
“Fine but in public. Give him this number and I’ll meet him in public and I won’t be alone. Tia calls me tonight before midnight my time and then tomorrow by this time or I’m on a plane, Mr. Caruso.”
Yep, she proved she knows exactly where we are.
I got off the phone and glared at my wife. Then I got on the phone and sent Zack over there.
Dare
Lisa walked into my office looking as put together as she always did but this time her face was solemn.
I invited her to sit on the sofa with me.
“What’s wrong, Leese? You got morning sickness?” I gave her shoulder a squeeze.
She shook her head, “No. I’ve just…” she swallowed hard, “Since finding out you know … and finding out about Felicia … I’ve just been thinking a lot. It brought stuff back to the surface for me. I guess I’ve buried a lot and now um…” She paused.
“You’re facing it?” I tried to help her along.
She shrugged, “I’m thinking about therapy maybe. I feel stressed, panicky all the time, I’m not sleeping. I don’t think it’s good for the baby.”
“Let me arrange the counseling. Due to the sensitivity of the issue it has to be someone we trust.”
She nodded, “I’ve been thinking about Tess and Luc and what they’d think if they knew…”
“Hang tight, please. Tommy and I need to talk about how to play this.”
She nodded, “Why did you wanna see me?”
“Angel and I, she’s decided it’s Angel, as you know, we’re giving things a go together and…she’s not handling things so well. I wanna help her. I was gonna ask you to talk to her. And I was gonna ask you some questions that might help me know how to be with her. Did you have trouble adjusting when you got here? Did you have panic attacks or anything like that?”
She snickered, “I’m having more trouble adjusting now, now that I’ve been thinking about it. They program you, Dare, they do it in a way where you just go on about your day, do what you’re supposed to do. If she’s showing you she’s broken it’s because the truth broke her. The truth being that she’s not a Kruna slave any longer. It’s almost easier to function on autopilot, I’m starting to figure out. You’ve gotta imagine how she feels. She probably feels like a fish out of water, not sure how to act.”
I nodded, “I figured that. If I’d been what she thought she was getting she’d have functioned as well as you did?”
Lisa nodded, “When I got here I just did what I was told. And I was so grateful for being here, so grateful at how kind your father was to me. I felt like I was so lucky.” She shrugged, “Dare, if she’s having trouble she needs you to be decisive and guide her. Wean her into making her own decisions slowly.”
“That makes sense.”
“That’s how it sort of worked with us. As time went by your father gave me more and more freedom. Not because he seemed to be hanging onto control with me, more like he was helping me adjust slowly. They had me in a training program to transition me from slave to wife and that helped. It was a lot being in public after all that time at Kruna. When I first got here I spent over a month in a hotel suite just seeing him when he had time. Then he started to take me out in public slowly, then he put me in culinary school, and you know the rest.”
I nodded, “I just took her right out of there. They wanted her in a wife training program but I said No. Said I’d train her. So maybe this has been too hard on her. Too much too soon. Can you see her tomorrow? Come by the condo?”