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“Didn’t Marco say something about it being injected?”
“Probably.” He nods, still looking worried. “Do you remember anything about yesterday?”
“Fuck how long have we been out and…” The memories come flooding back. “We were in the woods.” Glancing around, I can see we are no longer in the woods but the seedy motel we chose just outside of East Port, Maine. “Did you bring us back here?”
“Nope!” James shakes his head. “I woke up four hours ago in the bed across from yours.” He walks to the window and looks out. “Also, the SUV we rented is outside.”
“Konstantin’s men brought us here?”
“It seems that way,” James tells me.
“Which means the fucking bastard did know we were coming!”
“It seems so.” James turns and walks to the cabinet along the wall. “I got you a cheeseburger and some fries from the diner across the road, some orange juice, and some water.”
“Thanks.”
James brings it over to me.
“Drink the juice first,” he advises.
“Okay, James.” I down the orange juice. “I need you to come clean with me.”
“You want to know why I didn’t tell you about what I found out concerning my parents and Isabella’s mother’s death?” he guesses.
“Yes, that and…” The mention of Isabella’s name sparks another memory, and eyes widen. “Did I dream it, or is Isabella pregnant with my child?”
“Children, if I heard Isabella correctly, or she didn’t muddle up her Italian words. Which I doubt,” James tells me.
“What?” I stare at him dumbfounded.
“Isabella said to Konstantin in Italian, ‘They are family, and Andrey’s the father of my children,’” James repeats. “So either she’s planning on having more kids with you, or she made a mistake…”
“Or we’re having twins!” The shock hits me once again over the fact I’m going to be a father. But a father twice over in one go. I’m rendered speechless for a few seconds.
“It’s possible. Marco was a twin,” James comments. “My Uncle Matteo was thirty-five minutes older than Marco.”
“My mother told me that my father’s older brother, Girgory, was killed on the same day as Matteo,” I remember. “They were good friends like my father and Marco.”
“Do you remember how they were killed?” James looks at me questioningly.
“Yes.” I nod. “It was during that time when contraband crates were being shipped to prominent crime families, and as the contents of the crates were collected, the FBI showed up.”
“It got leaked that Matteo and Grigory were behind it.” James’s words echo eerily through the crappy motel room. “Rumor was they were trying to destabilize and weaken the competition to take over the families, their territory and operations.”
“And now it’s happening all over again,” I conclude. “But we’ve already realized that the painted lady containers are similar to what happened twenty-eight years ago.”
James sits on his bed and picks up a leather-bound journal from beside it. “Not only did the contraband containers from Matteo and Grigory’s day destabilize their competitors, it also caused unease amongst the Moretti Mafia and Belov Bratva.”
“Well, it would.” I shrug and take a bite of the burger, suddenly realizing how hungry I am.
“Matteo and Grigory deemed my grandfather, Fabio Moretti, and your grandfather, Gennady Belov, unfit to be the heads of the family and they were forced to step down,” James tells a tale that is starting to give me déjà vu as cold fingers started walking up my spine. “It’s like someone’s trying to get history to repeat itself.”
“A few weeks after Matteo and Grigory took over as the heads of their families, they were found guilty of being the ones who sent out the containers and were killed.”
“Correct.” James nods. “That was after the last container that had gotten Collin Cullen, the head of the Irish Mob, imprisoned.”
“My mom and dad were married about three months after Grigory was killed and on his twenty-first.” I remember my father telling me the story.
