Page 7 of Stolen Kisses
Claudius was the boss, but when he came here like this he was just my friend. Gio took his helmet off too.
He was more of a brother than a friend to me. Most likely that was probably because our stories were the same. Someone killed his best friend and the killer was never found. No one knew who did it either. Same story as me.
We each bore a tattoo of a cross in memory of our fallen loved ones.
Claudius had his on his cheek, and like mine, both Gio and Alex bore theirs on their necks.
Death was what bonded us together. We’d been friends before, but death transformed us from the boys who’d loved motorcycles into men.
I watched the two approach and sit opposite me.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” I asked. Maybe it was a stupid question. With these guys I was like an open book and they knew me too well. Honestly sometimes they knew my mind even better than I did myself.
“That a question you actually want an answer for?” Claudius asked giving me a smirk and staring at me with his unusual colored eyes. One brown and the other blue.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“We didn’t think you’d want to be completely alone.” Gio offered and glanced over to Christina’s grave.
“I just wonder if the next ten years will be like this,” I said returning my gaze to the headstone. “Me sitting here feeling like a failure. Then it will be twenty years. I’m still looking for the mother fucker who killed her, but I … maybe I should just accept I’m not going to find him.”
“Don’t accept shit Dante. I’ll be the last person to ever tell you that.” Claudius stated.
I looked at him and took note of the seriousness in his expression. A little over a year ago he’d gotten vengeance on the man who’d murdered Marissa, his first wife. The killer was a man called Goliath. He was a black market trafficker who’d gotten involved in a deal to steal some nukes from Chicago.
The whole thing was potentially an example of things happening in the most unusual of ways. So, him telling me not to give up was because he knew what he was talking about.
“Me too,” Gio added. “I won’t tell you to give up, because I’m not giving up either. The similarities we share is that neither of us knows who took our people from us. We have no leads, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to find.”
“I won’t stop looking.” I said it more to Christina rather than them.
“And, we won’t stop helping you look either,” Claudius added. “We just need to find another avenue, which is what I did.”
I straightened. “What do you mean? What did you do?”
I was real interested to hear what he did that I hadn’t done yet.
“Last night I contacted a P.I., who deals with unsolved murders.” Claudius answered. “I know you’ve hired many people, but this guy is a disgraced ex-naval officer. Someone framed him awhile back for murdering his wife and he lost everything. He was exonerated, but never went back to the service. I figured he was worth a shot, because he owes no allegiance to anyone. A man like that will dig deep and won’t be afraid of what he finds. I think that’s what we need here.”
The thing I liked about Claudius was that he always spoke with wisdom and experience.
“Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you,” I replied.
“Don’t thank me yet. Let’s see what this guy is made of first. If we get results, then it’s a step in the right direction.”
I nodded and looked at them both. Something like hope sparked in me, waking up the fight in me to avenge Christina’s death.
I just needed a name.
Only a name and it would indeed be a step in the right direction.
Chapter 3
Maria
* * *
Atear ran down my cheek as I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
