PoweR

Chapter 3: Rule #3: Silence is Power.

Beauregard.

I was resentful of life while sitting in front of my computer in the hotel room I had been living in for the last two months, staring at the same tabs of research opened in front of me. I found myself right back here immediately after I concluded my lunch with Abigale.

I had started mentally resorting to categorizing her as Abigale when she was with me, and Abby when she was with Beatrice, she were clearly two different people, and I couldn't help but annotate the differences of when her friend was present and when her friend was absent.

Abigale was quieter, she was practically human, she listened, and asked questions, but when she was in front of Beatrice, she was insecure, in search of approval. But Beatrice wasn't who she wanted the approval from. Beatrice was unassuming and not at all who I anticipated meeting.

Which raged a war inside my soul. On one side of the coin I wanted to continue to tear her apart, I wanted to forge forward, like a wrecking ball to this spoiled princess's world, plague her, until she was nothing but a sick, scared, and worthless human so that she would have to empathize with me and how it felt to be taken and forgotten.

But in the midst of seeing her, hearing her, and learning two key things that I had never heard about her, things I couldn't help but feel were held back from me on purpose. I needed to find out if she was lying to me, or if she truly was innocent, sick, and walking into something that she had no say in.

I had seen that look before on the faces of many women in our world. Girls bartered into arranged marriages, who had never had a chance at exploring romance or a love for themselves. Girls whose fates had been sealed before womanhood even found them. This familiar look of dreaded acceptance, and like each one before, her lie would of course be that she chose this path on her own.

This fate would be better than losing their family, their freedom, and in some cases their lives. Children born to men of the underbelly were just pawns to be moved around the board at the father's convenience, love wasn't ever something provided. I suppose I had been lying to myself thinking she had ever grown up in a loving household.

Still pounding away at the computer keyboard in my hotel room, hatred for myself quickly replaced the hatred I had aimed toward Beatrice. The more I researched HCM, the more questions arose about our past. She said she had been diagnosed as a child, but every single thing I read said that it was extremely rare in the pediatric population. I couldn't help the growing nagging suspicion that my mission of wrecking Beatrice Halifax's life wasn't going to be the clean and easy plot I had anticipated.

No, this is going to have to be a campaign to deconstruct her life, to show her the life she lived was a lie, and the first thing I needed to do was prove to her that this medical issue she had was the first lie.

I knew if I brought in one of Carlos's birth sons that the water would only become muddier, but Javier was not only the Heir to the Domenico family name, he was also brilliant when it came to finding out information, loyal to a fault, and righteous like no other man I had known. It was a risk I was willing to take.

"Domenico." Javier's voice answered my call.

"Javie, it's Beau."

"Pequeño mocoso, how are things in the south?"

Javier and I had always had a closer relationship, compared to Carlos' other sons. We had walked through the briars as kids and as teens I watched Javier get beaten down until he was built back, all in the name of "training" in order to take on the mantle of the family name.

Carlos was notorious for being meticulous with his sons. They had to perform to the grandest expectations, always held to the highest Domenico standard. Javier learned the hard way to meet his father's ever-changing expectations, and when I was younger, I didn't see him deflecting his dad's attention away from me or the other boys. Be it Stockholm or appreciation, I started to appreciate the family I was in, and slowly they started to accept me

"Different than I anticipated." I sighed into the phone, closing my eyes against the confession, knowing the onslaught of questions I was about to receive.

"Your melliza, is she the b***h we thought she'd be?" Javier's dark tone rang in my ear, my body bristled against him insulting her.

"Careful Javie." My tone issued a warning, off-putting the both of us.

"Oh.. that is different." Javier's voice slowed down, the chair he was sitting in squeaked under his shifting weight. I could hear the voices in the background clear out as I imagine him waving them away passively with his hand. Javier had a way of demanding attention with a carefree air.

"Tell me Galán what's going on."

"I met her today, as planned. My contact Abby... Abigale Danvers... Arranged a lunch date" I knew he would be researching everything I'd be telling him, so I tried to remember to be as detailed as possible. "She easily slipped into the plan of introducing me to her friend Bea. She wasn't at all the woman Carlos... she isn't the woman we thought her to be."

"Deconstruct it Galán." Javier said.

It was a theory that had been beaten into us as children to look at situations. If we could see everything from every angle then we couldn't be surprised or caught off guard. We would catch the problem. Finding the solution before the problem killed us.

"She's shy, withdrawn, and nervous around people," I explained to Javier.

"Men? Or just people?" Javier dug deeper.

"People. Her skin literally crawled at the idea of being out in the open." I shared my observation and the more I replayed my encounter with Beatrice, the more off-putting it was.

"Threat? Danger? Did you see anyone around that was following her? Security detail, watchful eyes?"

"No, I arrived thirty minutes before, and even followed her out when she abruptly left, there was no one there that shouldn't have been there." I was sure, confident, I was good at what I did and what I did was follow people. I would have known if someone was keeping track of her.

"Go on." Javier clipped.

"Her friend Abigale is as suspicious as they come, she exposed details of Beatrice's weakness to me twice."

"Details."

"The first was the revelation that Beatrice had been sick since an infant, resulting in her brother's death, and her hospitalization, she had been diagnosed with something called 'hypertrophic cardiomyopathy' she said the current symptoms she has are swelling, shortness of breath, faintness, and fatigue."

"You suspect foul play?"

"I suspect it's not what she thinks it is."

I know because I pulled her medical records, and there was nothing there. There was no sign of illness in Beatrice's life. She claimed she spent time in a hospital when in fact she wasn't a patient at any hospital, there was no record of her anywhere.

"Why's that?" Javier interrupted my thoughts.

For now, I was only choosing to tell him the small details, simple facts, keeping certain things I learned about her to myself. I trusted Javier to an extent. But to what extent I trusted him with her. I was still unsure.

"It's extremely rare in pediatric patients." I vaguely explained.

"Rare doesn't mean impossible." Javier challenged.

"But there's something off about it, she's almost guilty for being sick, Javie."

"You think she thinks she's responsible for your death?" Javier questioned me.

"I think you need to dig deeper Gálan, I'll call our family physician, have him dig into her medical records, the illegal way, and see what he can find. But I don't sense that is the only reason you're calling me, because you could have easily called the physician. What was the other thing the friend revealed?". s**t, I couldn't afford for him to do that, I needed to keep those medical documents private.

"No, that's okay Javier, you have enough on your plate. I'll do it. The other thing I wanted to talk to you about was that in the span of five minutes Abby also revealed that Beatrice is stressed because she's planning a wedding."

"We have nowhere on our intel that Beatrice is engaged." Javier's tone shifted again.

"Exactly." My distraction worked.

I forced the smile out of my voice. Just like that, I dangled a carrot large enough in front of his face and Javier took it and followed with a long string of colorful Spanish curse words. This news had him.

"When I followed her out to the street, I asked her if she was forced into this marriage."

"Beauregard," Javier growled out my name at the position I had put myself in, potentially causing her to suspect me in any way could blow my cover.

"It was a risky way of asking and yes it was an impulse. She said she agreed to it. That it was her idea..."

"...I'll get Herman on it, see what he can find out, maybe it's quiet, maybe she's doing it behind Ken Halifax's back." Javier interrupted me.

"Maybe, but it didn't feel like that. Not with the look in her eyes."

"Seeing her changed things for you, didn't it?" Javier asked me.

We all knew the possibility of my assignment coming here. We knew that there might be a chance that I couldn't go through with what I was ordered to do, but if we had been lied to, if there was something nefarious going on and my sister wasn't a willing participant, then it was a large enough loophole that I could slip out of her life with no damage to her and her none the wiser.

"She wasn't what I had expected. I had imagined a woman different from the women I saw. The photos Carlos had of her were posed, staged photos, I saw the best sides of her, the best parts of her. But t if she's not a part of this whole thing Javier..."

"...But she might be Gálan." Javier butt in.

"Yeah... It'll be easier to hate her, easier to do what needs to be done if she's just as much at fault as Ken is."

"But you don't, do you. You don't hate her." He answered for me, which made admitting it so much easier.

"No."

"Then that complicates things."

"I know what needs to be done, Javier"

"Of course you do Gálan" Javier darkly responded.

"Let me know what you find out about the engagement."

I was feeling emotions that I wasn't ready to pull apart and figure out what they meant. I came to this godforsaken town with one task to do, and in the course of a day it became complicated.

"Of course." Javier's tone was methodical, he like myself was just going through the motions of what you do when you're on a mission for one of New York's top crime bosses. He was overseeing that I was getting in, getting out, and getting the job done.

"Javier..." I stopped him before he hung up.

"Yeah?"

"Don't tell the others. Not until we know everything."

"On my blood hermanito."

Javier hung up, I stared at the computer. Javier said to refocus my purpose, readjust my target. If I wasn't here to destroy Beatrice Halifax, then I was here to protect her. The skill was to do it without her knowing. Without revealing to her who I was, and without Javier finding out.