Belonging (38 page)

“Don’t do this,
Alexzander.
Please
. Don’t go,” I begged.

“I have to, love. I’m so sorry. I know
this is hurting you, but you’ll eventually realize it was the right
thing to do. Please take care of yourself. I hope you have a truly
beautiful life, because that’s what you deserve.”

“No. Wait!” I exclaimed, jumping up.
He left the room quickly, and I tried to follow him. There were
dozens of people right outside the door, all of them talking
excitedly. I couldn’t run after him, not while holding a scared
little boy, so I took a step back into the office to escape the
chaos.

Mikey reached me a minute later and
gathered MJ carefully into his arms. “Is he okay?” he asked
me.

“He will be. He’s shaken up, and he’s
going to have a big bruise on his leg.”

“Are you okay?” my brother
asked.

“No,” I said as I left the office.
“Not even a little.”

I ran after Zan, dashing through the
hotel and out to the circular driveway in front of it. Immediately,
a dozen flashbulbs went off in my face. Nico caught me in his arms
and pulled me back inside the hotel. “Did you see Zan? Did he come
this way?” I asked him.

“Yeah. He got in a cab and drove away.
What’s going on, Gi? Where’s he going?”

“Away from me,” I muttered, holding on
to my cousin’s arm.

“What does that mean, away from
you?”

I looked at Nico and said, “Zan just
broke up with me.”

Chapter Twenty

Nico drove me to Nana’s house in my
car, and Yosh followed in his truck. I didn’t say anything on the
drive. Instead, I chewed on my lower lip and stared out the window,
my mind racing.

When we got there, we pulled right
into the garage, since there were a couple paparazzi camped out on
the curb. I noticed idly that the rainbow on the front of the house
sparkled in the light from a nearby streetlamp. Nana had gotten it
finished and had put her front yard back together over the past few
weeks, with the addition of a decorative as well as functional
wrought iron fence across the front of her property.

Once inside, I paced around the living
room with my phone in my hand, loosening my tie and unbuttoning my
shirt collar. “Do you want a drink?” Yosh asked. He and Nico were
perched on the edge of the couch, both looking like they might leap
up at any moment.

“No thanks. I need to stay sober,” I
murmured, continuing to pace.

Nana burst in a couple minutes later
with Jessie at her side. “Johnnie! You okay, sweetie? What’s going
on?” she asked.

“Zan broke up with him,” Nico
said.

“What? The man is totally in love with
you! What the hell is he thinking?” she wanted to know.

“He thinks he’s doing me a favor by
letting me go back to a normal life,” I muttered.

My phone chimed and I
looked at the text message from Shea and Christian. I’d found them
right after Zan took off and told them what happened, and they’d
driven to the house in Marin to see if he’d gone back there.
No sign of him,
the
message said,
but we’re going to hang out
here in case he shows up.

I dialed their number and Shea picked
up. “Hey. You’re on speaker,” he told me.

“You are, too. So, I thought it was a
long shot that he’d go back to his house, since he tried to give it
to me tonight. But where else would he possibly go? Does he have
any investment properties?”

“Not that I know of,” Christian
said.

“What about old friends, someone he
might reach out to?” I asked. “I don’t think he had any cash on
him, so it seems like he’d have to go to someone that’d pay the cab
driver for him.”

“As far as I know, he hasn’t kept in
touch with anyone aside from his lawyer, Chet Stanton. I already
tried Chet and got his voicemail, and asked him to call as soon as
he got my message,” Christian said.

“Alright. Well, keep in touch and I’ll
do the same,” I said.

“We’ll definitely call you if we hear
anything,” Shea promised.

After we disconnected, Nana said, “So,
Zan dumped you, but you’re looking for him? How come?”

“Because I love him, Nana, and I’m
worried about him,” I told her. “He was really rattled tonight. He
blamed himself for the paparazzi showing up and wrecking my party
and for people getting hurt.”

“Who got hurt?” she asked.

“Mikey Junior. One of those big
aluminum posts fell over and hit him. He’ll be okay, but the poor
kid was really upset. I’m not sure if anyone else got hurt in all
that chaos.”

“That’s not Zan’s fault,” Nana
exclaimed. “He didn’t ask for those parasites to show up and wreck
the place! It’s the fault of whoever the lowlife scumbag was that
decided to leak the party information to the paparazzi. If I ever
discover who did that, they’re gonna find out you don’t fuck with
the Dombrusos!”

“
It was probably just some
random hotel employee looking to make a few bucks,” I said, then
sighed and pushed my hair back from my face. “God, where would he
go? Where
could
he go? He’s one of the most recognizable people in the U.S.
right now.”

“Oh wow, that’s right,” Jessie said,
rushing from the room. He was back a minute later with a laptop,
and perched on the couch beside Yosh as he opened it up. “If anyone
spots him, there are going to be pictures all over the
internet.”

Jessie did a quick search and said,
“Well, so far there’s this.” I went around to the side of the couch
and looked over Jessie’s shoulder. The headline on a gossip blog
said ‘Lovers’ quarrel’ and showed side-by-side photos of Zan
getting in a cab and me in front of the hotel, looking
distraught.

“Awesome,” I muttered.

“We can keep monitoring the news and
we’ll see where he turns up. You know what else? On the cop shows,
they’re always figuring out where someone went by tracing the taxi.
This cab’s number is clear as day, right here on the door,” Jessie
said, pointing at the screen. “Do you think if we called the cab
company, they’d tell us where it dropped Zan off?”

“I really doubt they’d tell
just anyone,” I said, “but Christian’s fiancé is currently on a
leave of absence from the SFPD. His brother Finn works there, too.
Maybe Shea could call in a favor.” I shot him a quick text and
included the name of the cab company and the number from the door.
He wrote back,
I’ll see what I can
do.

“Okay, so, that’s something,” I said,
then went back to pacing.

“You’re gonna wear yourself out,
Johnnie,” Nana said. “You need to sit down and try to relax a bit.
Your honey’s gonna be fine.”

“We don’t know that,” I said. “He’s so
much more fragile than he lets on. He admitted tonight that he’d
only been pretending to be okay. And now he’s God knows where,
alone, with no money, nobody to turn to. He doesn’t even have a
phone, he can’t call anyone for help.” My voice broke and I ran my
hand over my forehead.

Yosh got up and pulled me into a hug,
and I held on to him as I took a few deep breaths and tried to keep
it together. After a minute he said quietly, “Are you sure Zan
wants to be found? I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m just saying. He
broke up with you and took off. Even if you find him, then what? It
seems like he’ll just push you away, and all of this will be for
nothing.”

“I need to find him so I can get him
to listen to me, Yoshi. He caught me off guard back at the hotel. I
was rattled and I was holding MJ, who was crying, and I couldn’t
think straight. Zan believes he’s doing me a favor and that this is
the best thing for me. But it’s not. I need to talk to him and I
need to make him understand.”

“Understand what?” Jessie asked as I
let go of Yosh and dropped onto the couch.

“That
he’s
the best thing for me,” I said.
“He made the decision to end it for my sake, but he never asked me
if that was what I needed or wanted. He never gave me a choice,
because if I’d been given one, I would have chosen Zan. I need to
tell him that, and he needs to listen.”

“Well, by God, then we’re gonna get
him to listen,” Nana said, “even if we have to kidnap him, tie him
to a chair and force him.” I had to grin a little. Our family might
have moved on from organized crime, but the old ways weren’t
entirely forgotten.

“
I don’t think it’ll come
to that, Nana,” I told her.

“Well, let’s just call that plan B
then,” she said. “You know, just in case doing it more polite-like
doesn’t work out.”

Shea called back about half an hour
later and said, “My brother talked to the cab company. They dropped
Zan off at Crissy Field.”

“Did they say how he paid the
fare?”

“With a hundred dollar
bill.”

“I didn’t know he had cash on him,” I
murmured. Then I asked, “Did Christian have any guesses why his dad
would want to go there?”

“No, none.”

“Does his lawyer live
nearby?”

“No, Stanton lives in Los Gatos,
outside Santa Cruz.”

I asked, “How’s Christian holding
up?”

“He’s really worried about Zan. We
both hope you can find him and talk to him. Whatever he’s going
through right now, he shouldn’t be dealing with it
alone.”

“You’re right.”

“We’re going to spend the night at the
house, just in case he decides to come back here after all. It
seems like he’d gravitate to someplace he feels
comfortable.”

“Good idea. Thank you so much for
everything, Shea.” After we disconnected I asked my companions,
“Why would someone get dropped off at Crissy Field in the middle of
the night? What’s around there?”

Jessie pulled the recreation area up
on Google maps and said, “Well, there’s a neighborhood within
walking distance, maybe he knows someone there.”

“Why not just get dropped off at their
house, though?” Jessie shrugged, and I said as I pushed to my feet,
“I’m going to take a drive over there.”

“He won’t be there,” Yosh said. “It’s
not like he’d just be standing around waiting for you to come
by.”

“I know, but still.”

Yosh got up too and said, “Alright.
I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t have to,” I told
him.

He shrugged and said, “I
know.”

“Can I come, too?” Jessie
asked.

“Sure, why not?”

“I’m gonna stay here and hold down the
fort,” Nana said.

We got to the front door, but stopped
in our tracks when we saw at least twenty paparazzi and reporters
out on the sidewalk. “Shit,” Jessie muttered. “What do we
do?”

“We deal with it,” I said. As soon as
I stepped outside, flashbulbs started going off and people started
shouting questions. Yosh’s truck was parked in the driveway, and my
friends piled in quickly.

A reporter yelled, “Gianni! Is it true
you and Zan Tillane broke up?”

I paused and turned toward the throng
as flashes went off in my face. “You know whose business that is?”
I said. “Mine and Zan’s. But if you want to print something, print
this. My family was harassed so severely tonight by the paparazzi
and by a so-called news station that a little kid got physically
injured. That shit shouldn’t have happened. What you’re doing here?
Hounding people for a shred of gossip? That’s not okay. Zan’s and
my personal business is none of yours. Get a fucking life and let
us live ours in peace.”

I got in the truck and slammed the
door, cutting off the chorus of yelled questions. Yosh threw the
truck in reverse, scattering the paparazzi, and said, “Good
speech.”

“It didn’t make the slightest bit of
difference.”

“I know. It was still a good speech,
though.”

Yosh drove us across town, and when we
reached Crissy Field, all three of us got out and stood on the
sidewalk. The large open space was dark and deserted this time of
night. The bay was directly ahead of us, the Golden Gate Bridge to
our left. There was a yacht club in the distance, closed this time
of night, beside a private, fenced-off marina. I turned to stare at
the neighborhood behind me, on the other side of the wide
thoroughfare.

Had Zan remained here? Was he in one
of those houses now with someone he knew, or had he just stopped
here briefly before moving on? That seemed really unlikely since
he’d cut most ties with his past, but I couldn’t think of any other
reason to come here. It made even less sense now that I saw it in
person.

I turned my back to the houses and
stood there for a long time, trying to figure things out. Yosh and
Jessie put their arms around me. “I need him,” I said softly as we
stood side by side, looking out at the bay. “Why didn’t he think of
that? He needs me, too. I know he does.” Yosh kissed my hair, and
then rested his head against mine. I whispered, “It hurts so much
that he left me behind, even though I know he honestly believed he
was doing the right thing for me.”