Alessio
The plane engines die slowly and and I'm out of my seat in no time. The cold air of the New York airport hits me like a slap and my cheeks sting. I do not take any notice of the pain.
I have a coat on over my suit and it's enough for warmth on the short walk to the black town car.
I get in the backseat and the car starts to roll immeadiatly. The driver already knows where we are going, to the leader of the biggest gang in the US. I need someone with enough connections and spies in the FBI to get me the information I want on Ross. Dean tried to get the information for me but all he managed to get was that his full name wad Aaron Ross and that he had a dead daughter. That was all Dean managed to get because that was literally all the information the written part of the FBI had on him which meant that I need in person info.
The car pulls up to a modern building in the midst of New York city and I feel a weird sense of deja vu when I step out. It reminds me that it was not so long ago that I was here, with Naitee.
I straighten my suit arms and walk through the frosted glass doors into the office building of 'Clark Enterprises'. The smartly dressed woman at the desk points me in the direction of the elevator, after giving me a very suggesive look that is.
There is a few others in the elevator with me and we ride up in silence. None of the other people in the elevator stays with me to the highest floor and when I step out I am alone except for another secretary. She smiles at me and her teeth are scarily white.
"I am here for Mr. Clark?" I say and she nods curtly. "Take a seat and I will tell you when he will have you." She smiles again and I know what game he is playing. Making me wait to simply show that he can. I sit down in one of the couches and make myself comfortable. I will not be made a fool from a spoiled sociopath with a god complex. I come from a considerably more powerful family and this guy is simply trying to make me feel insecure because I need his help. What he does not realise is that for me there are a hundred more guys like him.
"Mr. Spaglia, Mr. Clark will have you know." The secretaires voice breaks through my thoughts and I stand up.
"Perfect." I walk over to the only only door on the entire floor and enter without knocking. Beside a ridicusly big glass desk sits the man I came all this way to speak to.
"Mr. Spaglia, it's a pleasure to finally meet you. Take a seat." I do so, reluctantly.
"You too Mr. Clark. I must say this office is..." Clark smiles and it is obvious that he is proud of it.
"Amazing? Yes well I always liked the NYC skyline." He gestures at the clear view of New York behind him and I let myself admire it for only a second.
"Yes very well but now I think it is time to discuss business. Do you have what I asked for?" Clarks face darkens for a second and his dirty blonde eyebrows furrrow. He's an objectivly handsome man but I have never swung that way.
"Yes I have." He says and picks up one of the files on his neatly organized desk.
"I did and it's going to cost you." He sounds just a little too smug. "I will make sure the tradings make it to Houston in time." Clark seems a little put down at my lack of emotions at the fact that he is wanting a ridicoulous amount of payment for this information. What the twenty three year old joke of a mob boss does not undestand is that the payment barely scratches the edge of my resources but I let myself look a little bitter so he will think that he won something.
"Great, here then. Feel free to ask any more questions if you want." He says but I simply grab the file and stand up quickly. I do not have time for niceities when I can find the murderer of my father.
"Thank you. Mr. Clark." I leave his office quickly and delve into the file as soon as the elevator doors close and start to bring me down from the 50th floor again. The first page is all standard stuff, 42 years of age, name, no family. That one suprised me. Grew up in New York, standard life in the FBI up until four years ago when he dissapeared for a month before coming back. After then all his psych evals have been different. Just a day before he dissapeared that month he had been personally investigating a double homicide case. The murders of Shaan and Maria Joshi. Why was Ross investigating the murder of Naitee's parents before they ever met?
The possibilities spin in my head. In the end there is only two I think are possible.
Either Ross and Naitee met at the investigation and Ross helped her or Ross has been involved in Naitee's life for a way longer time. I pick up my phone and dial one of the quick dials.
"Dean, I need you to look into a case for me. The murder of Shaan and Maria Joshi. Send it to me as fast as you can." I hang up as soon as Dean has given me a response. I walk out of the building, my head spinning with all the new information. I had atleast two more stops to make. The bank and a specific building down town. Hopefully he would have what I needed for my plan and hopefully the bank would not resist me and if they did. I would handle it.
Too much is at stake for a simple bank to stand in my way.
I flag down a taxi and get into the cigarette smelling backseat of the yellow taxi. I am one step closer to finding them but somehow I have an even worser feeling now with this new information. A sense of urgency has decended on me.
"Where to?"
Naitee
I wake to on a bed with a pounding in my head. Am I hungover again? I sit up slowly and there's a weight around my ankle. I look down at myself and around my ankle and surely there's a house arrest cuff there. My, now again, dark hair falls into my eyesight.
"What the hell?! Ross what the fuck are you doing?!" My angry scream causes no response and I get up out of the bed I was sleeping in. The room is a simple 9 by 9 feet wooden box containing only one bed and a dresser. I grab the door handle, ready to knock the door down if it's locked but it opens in no time and I step out into a unasuming hallway. The walls are painted a boring red with a few painting scattered on the walls.
I run down the shirt hallway and come out into a kitchen and a living room. On the couch sits the man I've been looking for.
"Either you have a really good explanation right now Ross or I'll kill you." Ross stands up slowly his eyes locked in on me.
"Sit down Naitee and I will explain everything." I start to shake my head and move toward the door but a slow buzzing and then a sting at my ankle makes me halt.
"What the--?!" The sting comes again and I groan.
"It's an incentive, sit Naitee." I debate trying to run but my gut tells me I won't get far. I sit down on the uncomfortable couch across from Ross and his now creepy eyes burr into me.
"Speak." I command and his eyes darken.
"As I guess you figured out we've known eachother since I helped you move into your dorm. You were wearing mom jeans and a blue sweater." Why does he remeber that? I nodd slowly still very careful to not do anything sudden.
"Well Hannah and you became friends and she kept me updated on you but it wasn't until she-- died that I became obsessed." The way he so clinically explains that he's obsessed. With me. Creeps me out to another level. "I know Naitee but I'm self aware enough to know that's what I am." Ross smiles and it's unsettling. If it's because it's just a little too much teeth or too little emotion in his eyes I don't know.
"Anyway I kept track of you during college and all that but then when you decided that you were going to med school in Switzerland because your parents wanted that I knew I had to step in." Slowly something begins to dawn on me with a sinking feeling in my gut.
"What did you do Ross?" My voice is eerily calm because I'm not sure I feel anything anymore.
"I killed them." His voice is emotionless in a way only psychopaths are and I feel ill. For just an instance the world is still and then I'm flying at him with everything I got.
"You bastard!" I slam my fist into his kidney and he groans.
"Calm do--" He can't finish the start of his sentence because I am slamming my other fist into his mouth.
"I will kill you!!" I try to slam my fist against his face again but suddenly electricity is dancing through my body and I stiffen with no option of movement.
I roll off Ross and down onto the floor with a thump. He looks down at me emotionlessly.
"I really hoped it wouldn't come to this Han--Naitee. But I will finish my story nonetheless. So I killed your parents and you succeeded my expectations. You applied for the academy and you excelled, just as I knew you would." I'm going to throw up. Learning that my entire time with Ross was just a devious plan of his made me sick to the bottom of my stomach.
"And then you had to go and get involved with the Mafia. I thought I lost you and it created this rage in me. But that's over now, because I killed him and his father for good use." For some reason the only part of my heart that was still whole breaks into a million pieces.
"W-w-what?" I manage to get out from between my clenched jaw and Ross smiles down at me in that same creepy way. His brows are furrowed in confusion.
"I killed them and now there'll be no one looking for you or keeping us apart. My sweet, sweet daughter." Bile rises in my throat and I close my eyes. Hoping all of this just has been a very, very bad dream. When I open my eyes he's still standing there looking like something straight out of the uncanny valley.
"What's wrong Naitee?" He asks and I can see his lip swelling up from my hits. He doesn't seem to understand that I now hate for what he's done. That I always would've hated him if I knew the truth. I grind my teeth together.
For the first time in the five years since my parents died I am once again truly alone. Not a single person could possibly care for me. My parents are dead, Alessio is dead and that means that everyone, including Aria probably hates me.
I close my eyes again and wish I never left. Anything is better than a deranged, psychopath that's been obsessed with me for years. Instead of lingering on that I force myself back to the classes I took at the academy. I took profiling my entire year and how to handle obsessed psychopaths was one of the first things we discussed. The moral of the story was that if you didn't have back up or any way to get out, the only way to get out was to play along. A part of me dies when I realize exactly what I'm going to have to do.
I'm going to have to play along. I gulp down a breath before opening my eyes and forcing my lips to move up in a smile.
"Nothing, I'm sorry I reacted like that. I just-- didn't really think." Ross nods solemnly and reaches out a hand to help me up and when I take it I feel the rest of my heart being ground into a dust and slipping away.