Page 61 of Amadeo
“Hell, I don’t know what happened right this minute,” Amadeo quipped.
Tito chuckled. “Always with the humor.”
Max agreed, “The times I had to hold my laughter in after listening to him.” He now openly laughed. “Especially when he is fussing about his father’s attitude. I admit it almost broke me the day he told Stephano to shake it loose. I admit I had no idea what that meant until Deo cleared it up for me. He said his father was so stiff that there had to be a stick up his…” Max seemed to realize what he was describing as he halted. “However, I finally understood the concept. And I must say that your father was not amused.” He then proceeded to laugh loudly.
I chuckled at the story, because knowing the main characters in it, made it hilarious.
Amadeo and Tito didn’t join in as one would think. No, they kept staring at him like he had two heads.
“Please Max, stop doing that, will ya?” Amadeo admonished. “With the laughing and all that smiling. I just can’t, man. It’s…” He shook his head.
“Surreal?” Tito suggested. “Uncanny? Spooky as all hell?”
Amadeo just kept nodding his head in total agreement with his cousin’s description. “Like Dr. Who meets Quantum Leap and they had a baby named Max.” He shook himself and waved his hand as if he could just make it all go away. “Never mind. I refuse to go there.” Finally, he looked over at me. “You’re his doctor, Gia. You told me that you would make sure no one hurt him. And this seems to take care of his safety. Even though he won’t exist here anymore.” He again halted and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. Then he seemed to again get his composure as he dropped his hand to his side. “But I also made a vow to not allow you to be hurt. So, what should they do? Is he well enough to travel…” His voice faded to nothing. “Man, I just have to think of it differently than traveling…” He stopped talking altogether.
I slowly shook my head. “I have no idea how to reply.” I scoffed at the totally outrageous concept too. “Do I want to remember that your butler is really a time traveler or whatever he is and he solved this horrible family dilemma by taking my patient somewhere in time, so he would be safe from death?”
Amadeo nodded. “That makes more sense than you’d expect, Gia. If we forget this, then we will never know what happened to him and Nurse Jocelyn. That would bother us maybe? But if we did know, would it bother us more…I mean to know?” He laughed. “And if we remember we may just be happy that this will all be in the past.” He paused and stared at Max. “Or will it be in the future? No, wait! A different dimension?”
Tito raised his hand up at Amadeo. “Ok, cugino. I think you are gonna hurt yourself if you don’t quit.”
We all laughed.
Looking over at Deacon and Nurse Jocelyn, I nodded. “I think Max came up with the only plan we can all live with.”
“So we all agree?” Valencia asked.
I nodded at her. “You are his family, Valen. So who are we to disagree with this?”
Amadeo also nodded.
“I can see that he doesn’t remember,” Tito said. “And he seems to be a different person from the one Rocky and I guarded when Uncle Stephano had him in the cells. That man was scary in his own right. He never looked afraid like many would while handcuffed and in a cell owned by… well the mafia. He acted unafraid. He never tried to talk his way out of it or deny any of it. He actually didn’t seem to care at all. Now, I see a different person. One who is concerned and he has asked many questions. So, he is now…a new man? I guess. One with no memory of the crimes he committed.”
Valencia agreed, “He doesn’t remember me or his mother. And that doesn’t hurt my feelings either. In fact, I’m grateful for it. You all don't realize what our mother did to his mind. I never knew what he must have gone through. I do know that he has kindness in him. I happen to know because he helped to raise me. So when everyone kept telling me how sinister he was or how evil he could be, deep down I refused to believe it. And what’s odd is I never saw the evil in our mother. I’ve had a lot of time recently to recollect growing up and I now see that he protected me from seeing her in her true form. He would spirit me off somewhere fun suddenly. He did that a lot. Trips to amusement parks, museums, zoos. He moved me away from her worst tirades. He was the one that sent me to college too. I think that was also to get me away from her. That’s why I never knew all the horrible things she was doing. So, he did love and care for me as his little sister. Now, I can return the favor.” She looked over at us. “I can protect him from the horror of her and his deeds.”
Tito took her hand and gave her a gentle smile.
Her love for her brother and her desperation to avoid the tragedy of splitting a family apart was deeply moving for me. I swiped a tear from my cheek. I could understand it. I really could. What was it I’d told Amadeo before this? People would make a deal with the devil to protect a sibling, to protect family. While Max wasn’t the devil, this still might be considered to be a wild deal not aligned with reality. If I could protect my father and my mother from the horror and misery they suffered. Yes, I would do the same in a heartbeat.
Epilogue
Amadeo
Two weeks later…
My father hadn’t given up the search entirely as he kept bulletins up throughout the criminal world, bail bondsmen, private detectives and anyone else who looked for missing people. He also finally called Jared Walker and told him what had happened. He did inform him that a neurologist had confirmed that Deacon had total memory loss from a severe head injury and posed no threat as far as he knew. He told Jared about offering a two-hundred thousand dollar reward for anyone that could lead them to Deacon Walker. They were family now since Glory was about to marry Giovanno, so he would keep in touch as well as meet him at the wedding.
I happened to know my father hadn’t given up at all. It wasn’t in him. Not a part of his makeup. He even had a motto that hung on his study wall behind his antique Italian desk that read:Never say die, unless it is a promise to your enemy.So any kind of defeat had always been something he could never accept. His life had been dedicated to being on top. To being powerful and in control. He had Deacon Walker in his clutches, ready to snuff him out for all his sins toward the Walkers and the Descalias, but finding Deacon seemed highly unlikely at this point.
He told Luca that the video of the escape had been corrupted the same day as it occurred. So they never got the chance to study the moving images of the tall male that had scooped Deacon from his bed that day. This had really upset him as it pointed to an inside job. Hell, they escaped from theinsideof our house. He first had that carpet company checked over as they had been here the day of the escape. Scared the two men to death almost, when he called them to the house to see what they knew. Which was absolutely nothing. I believed them too when he’d had Rocky question them with threats and promises of pain.
My father even had all our staff re-vetted just to be sure. Searched their histories deeper, checked their bank accounts and any recent movements they had made since Deacon’s plane crashed. All to no avail. No one appeared to have any guilt.
It sounds cheesy but it really did seem like she and Deacon had disappeared without a trace. That they had just slipped off the edge of the earth. And from the inside of the estate, no less. This implausible fact worried Rocky to no end. How did someone sneak out like they had to have done? While Tito took over the regular security detail, Rocky searched high and low all over the property with men who were expert trackers. Even hired a specialty firm that used dogs to sniff out a trail that never came to fruition. No scent left behind, no tracks or signs of anyone running away.
Luca reasoned that Nurse Jocelyn had definitely assisted in the getaway. However, he couldn’t find any connection between her and Deacon Walker. No proof that they ever knew each other before he became a patient at the hospital. She in fact had a spotless background and with being a nurse for the Famiglia hospital, this came as no surprise. Nor did Luca find any damning activity in her bank account. Either in receiving a large payment, as in a bribe for helping or a trail of her spending anything by using her card the last couple of weeks. His men made a visit to her apartment on day two of Deacon’s absence to find that nothing had been taken from there. As in clothing or anything else. The security feed on and in her apartmentbuilding did not show any signs of her being present recently either.
So both Rocky and Luca had a rough couple of weeks, before my father finally ordered them to stand down.
