The Body #2: Lucio and Janie

Chapter 31 (Janie): You're Unexpected

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

Cosi and I took a two-week, circuitous road trip to get to the generic two-bedroom house in some generic suburb near some generic city in some generic state that was our first stay. We'd be here for about a month before moving on. It was Cosi's turn to drive and I was staring out the window.

I had a completely new phone registered to some fake name so I wasn't sure why I expected Lucio to have texted me. But I kept checking for a text from him.

"You know, I'll be fine on my own," Cosi said to me. "If you need to get back or anything."

I really didn't. We'd wiped out the mistresses and had a great start on the supply chain and the purchasers. Lucio was more than capable of dismantling the rest of the pieces of that enormous puzzle. Lucio had multiple hackers looking for the victims to see if they could be recovered and they had told us in their most recent status report that they were getting close.

All very positive and hopeful.

So why did I feel so sad and let down? 

And the answer was Lucio. 

My feelings for Lucio had clarified in my mind when I'd gone into his room. He was Body through and through, and yet he'd proven he could be more. For me. He wasn't the type of man to bring me flowers -- I tried picturing Lucio walking in with a bouquet of blood-red roses and offering them to me, and the thought made me smile. My husband would more likely walk in and offer me a new gun.

"Earth to Janie," Cosi sang out sweetly.

"I'm not leaving you Cosi." We had this argument at least once a day, and I was glad for it because if Cosi was arguing, she was feeling better.

"Look, as much as I love you for being willing to run with me, I don't need you," she insisted. "I'm feeling much better, and even the morning sickness that lasts all freaking day is better. So you can go back to him."

"I'm not going back," I insisted just as firmly. I hadn't told anyone about what I felt for Lucio, hadn't told any of the girls about the night I'd gone into his room on the pretext of conquering my demons...but was really me saying goodbye. It was me allowing myself one moment of softness, one moment of weakness, one moment of comfort for the first time since Papa had basically told me enough crying about your Mamma. I'd wanted something just for myself and I'd given myself permission to be with Lucio. Just once. Just once before I left.

Cosi huffed impatiently at me as she changed lanes and passed the truck slowing down on the steep incline. That same truck would be thundering past us on the way down in just a minute.

"I'm not sure who you're trying to fool. Maybe yourself?" Cosi asked. "But the girls and I have had a front-row seat to this ever since you came back. We've been watching it happen in real-time, Janie, and it's been subtle, but it's been there for those of us who know you. You were so mad at him at first, then after a while you calmed down and were indifferent when you started working at the women's and children shelter and began doing some late-night rides. But then it started creeping in after he found you on the wrong end of a gun...Lucio did this, he said that, can you believe he tried this? Then it became even more obvious. Lucio thinks we should do this, Lucio had an idea, Lucio suggested...and then, it happened. We were talking, we thought, we realized. We, we, we, Janie. And not like the little piggy who cried that all the way home. You and Lucio slowly but surely became an entity. A unit. A we."

 I couldn't say anything to that because...she was right. For the first time in my life, I went from I to we with a man. I'd had a partner who had my back in every way he could show. And considering the man Lucio was, each act was a declaration to me.

Cosi continued. "And the day you sat in Lucio's rightful place at the head of the table in front of the Body Heads, that's when we knew how he felt about you. That was him bowing to his queen and giving notice to all the Heads that you had his respect, his complete trust and his approval. He might as well have climbed a mountain and shouted that he loved you from the top of it."

Let me love you, Janie.

"I'm staying with you, Cosi. None of what you said is going to make me leave you alone while you're pregnant. It's not happening."

"Fine," she conceded. "Just know you can go at any time."

An hour later, we were pulling into the driveway of the rental home, glad that after seven thousand miles in fourteen days, we'd be staying put for a month. We both decided the luggage could wait, and we walked to the front door. I opened the lock box with the key inside and let us in.

Cosi and I both had our guns in our hands in seconds when we saw a man standing on the other side of the living room, and it took another second to register that it was Lucio.

"You're safe. Your husband doesn't know where you are or where I am," he assured Cosi while never taking his eyes off me. "And I won't be telling him, even though he's been a fucking asshole the last two weeks and is about to lose his shit in a serious way. I left Santo with instructions to contain him after his last explosion."

"He...exploded?" Cosi asked. "Nico?"

At that, Lucio looked over at her. "You ever hear someone threaten to tear a person's arm off and beat them to death with it? Nico actually did that two days ago."

We both blinked at that information for a minute, trying to both picture it and not picture it all at the same time. Cosi finally gave me a look.

"I'm going to go lie down for a bit."

Nodding, understanding that nothing was wrong with her and she was giving me time alone with Lucio, I watched her go. When I heard her bedroom door shut, I focused on Lucio.

"How'd you find us?"

"I figured you'd be executing Papa's rule number three soon, so I was watching for it, knowing that rule number six would be coming in to play," he said to me calmly, as if he wasn't an earthquake shaking the ground beneath my feet.

"How do you know Papa's rules?"

"Because, until you, they were passed down from father to son, generation after generation. It's an important Body tradition for a father to give his son the rules on the son's sixteenth birthday. It's considered a rite of passage."

"Fifteen," I said, remembering the special dinner at my favorite restaurant Papa had taken me to. "I was fifteen when I got the rules from Papa."

"You're the only girl to ever receive those rules, Janie. The fact that your father passed them down to you tells me he knew just how unique you are. Special."

Papa had made such a big deal out of those rules that I'd always remembered that night. He'd never told me I was the first girl to receive them, but maybe I could have figured it out if I'd thought about. He'd just told me to never mention them to any other Body man or boy. So I'd felt safe enough telling the girls the rules.

"It took me longer than it should have to put it all together. You walked out of our house and off the property, sight unseen, on our wedding night. Our marriage license disappeared. After Tanya disappeared, I got a note saying I'll take care of Tanya for you. It was signed a friend, just like rule four states. So that made me realize it was from someone who knew the rules and someone who considered me an enemy. Then when I came to bring you back, I could tell you had skills, so things began adding up."

"People didn't expect me," I told him.

"No," he agreed. "You're unexpected in the very best way."

"Why are you here, Lucio?" I was worried he was going to try to talk us into going back with him.

"Because I didn't want you to leave me, either," he said, moving right into my personal bubble.

He'd heard that. I'd been so certain he was asleep.

"And because I've come to offer you a choice, little ghost."

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA