Dead Flower

Chapter 39

“I have to say, you’re doing really great, Miss Sunshine and we’re very close to closing in on him. You’ve achieved in a week, what we have been trying to achieve for 15 years. We just need you to do one more thing before we are able to implicate him and his family.” Special Agent Finley informed me as we stood in the storage room with two other agents in the room with us. My heart was racing and at this point I couldn’t believe that I had actually achieved so much and we were so close to the finish line. 

I nodded my head, ready to do whatever it was, “of course. What do you need me to find out?” I asked him. 

“I need you to get him to take you to his shipping port, confess to you about his business while you’re wearing your earrings so that it will be on tape, and lastly show you his merchandise. Can you do that, Miss Sunshine?” 

I wasn’t too sure if I could do that but I was willing to try. My heart was banging against my chest as I nervously fiddled with the flower behind my hair as I looked out of the window. I was making my way back to Balerno, because the Botanical Garden that I frequented was out of the town. I wanted to pinch myself several times at the words ringing through my head that this was all that I had to do and as soon as I got him to admit it and show me whatever illegal weapons and drugs that he was trading, the CIA, FBI and whoever the hell I’m assuming to be on duty will swoop in and take Gregorio and his entire family. 

I didn’t want to wait too long and end up not going through with it. I was terrified of what the future held but I was so close to the finish line, I might as well take this final risk and call it a day. If I did it all today, in hours I could be back in Malibu, in my parents arms as I profess my love to them and tell them that they better keep me locked up in the house like they did because I don’t ever want what happened with Gregorio to happen again. 

I looked away from the window and at the guard who was sitting at the other end of the car. I was never alone in a car. Gregorio made sure that even though I had a chauffeur, I also had a bodyguard who sat in the back with me. “where is Gregorio right now?” I asked the guard, even though they don’t talk to me unless I ask a very important question and nothing like “how’s your day” because they just pretend like I’m background noise and I don’t exist, I was hoping that he would answer me now that I asked about Gregorio. 

“He is conducting important business.”

“So, he is at the port?” I asked him and he gave a curt nod. 

“Yes, la donna di Gregorio.”

I smiled at him, “good. Take me there. I want to see him.”

He didn’t argue and didn’t say anything in disagreement, he just looked to the chauffeur and narrated to him that we had to go to the port in Italian. I may be a bit rusty when it came to that language but I was learning a few words a day. 

I knew that Special Agent Finley was already listening in and my words would only set in motion their plan sooner than they expected. I wanted to get it over and done with, and I didn’t want to waste any time. I just needed to leave this place and get back into the safety of my parents clutches. I just needed to escape my impending doom of being a wife to a man, that even though I love and care about, I was afraid of. I just hoped that Gregorio wouldn’t see right through me because I might as well have “I’M A SPY” tattooed across my forehead when it came to him. But I do think that I have been doing an excellent job so far and he didn’t suspect anything more than me just being nosy. 

When we entered Balerno, we drove past all the streets before we headed into the far end of the town, an end so well concealed, I had no idea had existed. It seemed to be the middle of nowhere and it was so hidden, you had to have been here a million times to remember. When the car finally came to a stop I could barely calm myself down.