Vendetta (23 page)

    
So, instead, Julie sat in her chair and gazed out the window, watching the cars pull in and out from the main street. “Nice blinker buddy,” she commented.

    
“Yep, the person behind you is psychic; they knew exactly what you were going do,” Julie criticized out loud.

    
“And to think that all this time, we‘ve had it all wrong…” she thought. “Dogs hate stupid drivers and can’t communicate their disdain, so they chase and bark at them instead. Hmm,” she said sarcastically.

    
Julie spotted a familiar looking black, S.U.V. pulling into the parking lot. Then she saw that her car was following right behind it.

    
“No way, it’s Mark and Detective Williams!” Julie exclaimed. She jumped up and ran to her stuff on the bed. Shoving her sneakers quickly on to her feet, she went back to the window, looking down and around. She couldn’t see where they had gone.

    
“I thought for sure that was Detective Williams and Mark coming to get me,” She thought. Julie wasn’t exactly looking forward to going back to her house, but this did mean that she could start to move on with her life.

    
She was anxious to find out what had gone on. Most of all, she was grateful that Mark was okay and about to walk through that door. One last glance in the bathroom and she was reassured that she had everything ready to go. Maybe one more check under the bed. You never know.

    
“What’s taking so long? They must be checking out or something,” she thought. She stood in the center of the room, near the foot of the bed and excitedly awaited her company. There was a rapid little knock at the door.

    
Julie pushed the thick metal lever down and pulled the door open.

    
A look of disbelief and shock swept over her smiling face, as she realized who was staring back at her. Mark stepped in and quickly grabbed Julie as she began to stumble backwards.

     
Julie shook her head as if to say, “No”.

    
“Jules, it’s ok. Yes, it’s Allie…. She’s alive and well,” Mark sat her on the bed and held her, whispering in her ear. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

    
“I told you this was a ridiculous idea!” Allie said, concerned for Julie. “What if she has heart failure or a seizure or something?”

    
Allie knelt down in front of Julie and touched her leg. “Hi, Julie, It’s me. I have a lot of explaining to do, I know,” Allie stated.

    
Williams came into the room, and shut the door behind him. He smiled at Julie, as she looked up at him blankly.

    
“I don’t understand what’s going on right now,” Julie looked at Allie, but didn’t know if it was really her that was looking back. Was this a figment of her imagination?

    
“You see her and hear her too, right?” Julie looked from Mark to Detective Williams.

    
Smiling, Williams nodded his head, reassuring her that it was indeed true.

   
Mark laughed, “Yes. We see her and hear her as well. Allie isn’t dead Jule’s. I know it’s a shock, imagine my surprise! I thought I had lost my mind for good,” Mark said truthfully.

    
Julie cautiously reached out and touched Allies hand. It was warm. Nothing like when she had seen her in the hospital. She suddenly wrapped her arms around Allies neck and shoulders, squeezing her.

    
“It’s you!” Julie cried. “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe you’re alive! You are, you‘re really here and you’re really breathing,” Julie was slowly convinced.

    
“Yeah, I am!” Allie laughed. “Now that you know that I’m not a member of the undead zombie world, I should explain, or try to at least,” Allie said sounding muffled.

    
Julie continued to hold on to her tight, running her hand down the back of Allies head and feeling her hair. “Oh, you silly girl, you scared me senseless,” Julie wept.

    
Allie tried to sit next to her on the bed, as she awkwardly knelt in front of Julie. Mark slid off the bed and helped Allie get seated, considering Julie wasn’t letting go anytime soon.

    
“It’s okay, Julie, I’ll tell you everything that happened,” Allie couldn’t help but cry. She was so moved by the emotion that poured out of Julie. Julie loved her so much, that was very apparent. But what was more obvious, was how much pain she knew she had caused her… all of them, really. The gravity of her fake death had much more emphasis than she could have ever imagined. She knew that now. Julie had also grieved very hard, and hurt so deeply over losing her. Just like her Dad.

    
“I’m so sorry, Julie. I never meant to hurt anyone. You were supposed to have found out sooner … not that that really matters now,” replied Allie.

    
“What do you mean?” Julie sat back, letting go of Allie. Julie wiped her face on her sleeve. “I saw you Allie, you weren’t breathing. I couldn‘t believe it, you looked like you were sleeping…. But-”

    
Allie nodded her head as Julie made the realization. “I was,” Allie answered.

    
Mark got up and grabbed a tissue box from the night table and after handing one to Allie and Julie first, he placed it between them on the bed.

    
“Well, the cake poisoning never happened. It was staged to throw off Lucy and Nick. It was to make Lucy think she succeeded in killing me. Dom put a sleeping pill in the wine I drank. It kept me out for quite a while and kept my breathing really shallow. There were real doctors around me, monitoring me. I was safe the whole time,” Allie explained.

    
“Dom, he was behind this, for sure?” Julie looked really confused now.

    
“Yeah, he’s an F.B.I. Informant. He was the one working with Leo Vanzetti to bust Lucy,” Allie said, knowingly.

    
“What?” Julie looked at Mark.

    
“Okay, let’s let Williams explain all that. Alright honey?” Mark said patting Allie’s shoulder.

    
“Oh, right,” Allie nodded.

    
Julie looked at Williams and raised her eyebrows, waiting to be filled in.

    
Silent until now, Williams tried to explain the situation more clearly.

    
“Uh, well. That’s about right, actually,” he loudly cleared his throat.

    
“It basically stems back to an ongoing investigation by the F.B.I. It was about bringing down a group of police officers who profited off of selling contact information of protected witnesses, like Mark and Allie. They’re just a couple of cops, out of at least a hundred nationwide.

    
Lucy, A.K.A. Christina L. Mazzo, was able to get the “new” names, addresses and phone numbers of Mark and Allie, from a cop she was married to at the time, who was only one of a handful of bad cops in his precinct. They would sell private, classified information to the highest bidder.

    
Once Lucy got what she wanted, she left him one day, out of the blue, completely disappearing. She moved here under an alias, and spent many years carrying out this revenge plot against Mark and used Dom to get into their lives. Nick was also a pawn, if you will. She made him think he was killing Mark, instead. As you know, the rest of their relationship besides there intimacy, involved drugs and murder for hire. But when Lucy told her brother, Leo, what she was planning on doing for him, he contacted Dom and told him everything. As it turns out, Leo’s led a legitimately reformed life behind bars and recognized his sister’s mental instability. She had hoped this insane murder plot would make him happy and proud of her in the least. Allie’s death was supposed to be a gift of sorts to him,” Williams stated.

    
“That’s sick,” Julie said, disgusted.

    
“Dom, we now know, is in fact, an F.B.I. informant. He then took this information from Leo, and went to his superiors and it was then that they connected the dots. Allie cooperated with the F.B.I and they decided to let Lucy think she had done all of this, so that when confronted by Leo and Dom, they could get a full confession about everything, but that’s not exactly how it ended up going down,” Williams sighed.

    
Julie was fuming mad. She sat listening to this explanation, and was still disgusted. She bent her legs and her knees began to bounce.

    
“So the Fed’s and Dom, get to decide to drug a young girl and let her father think she’s dead for two days?” Julie sat up straighter on the edge of the bed. “All of this, in the name of justice? Lucy‘s not the only one playing head games, huh?” Julie added.

    
Mark looked at Julie, somewhat surprised by her reaction, but totally agreeing with her thought process. “God love you, woman,” Mark said as he kissed her head.

    
“It was my decision, Jules. It was my idea, actually,” Allie explained.

    
Allie looked directly at her father now. “An F.B.I agent named Mr. Slatter confronted me a day after my actual eighteenth birthday, and he told me I needed to go in and talk to him. He asked me questions about Lucy and Nick and told me what Leo did to Aunt Alice and her boyfriend. I didn’t have anything different to tell them, but I offered to help any way I could. He was unsure of the investigations approach at the time and said that the both of us would be contacted,” Allie continued.

    
“A week before the party, Dom asked if I would stop by the restaurant on my way home from school. So Jen took me and waited outside. He told me to stay away from Nick and Lucy as much as possible. I played dumb and asked him why, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

    
Allie swallowed hard, trying to vanquish the lump that was forming in her throat. She hated keeping these secrets from her father. It was time to let it out.

    
Mark stood still listening carefully. Just hearing that Agent Slatter talked to her behind his back, upset him. He nodded at Allie to continue. He wanted to hear this.

    
“I told Dom to tell me the truth. I said I was eighteen and that he should treat me like an adult. He said “NO,” that he didn’t want me involved in any of this, but I kept insisting that if he knew something about MY life, that I was more entitled to know about it… much more than he was,” Allie sounded very convincing.

    
“So, I told him that I knew about the guy that killed Aunt Alice and her boyfriend. That’s why we moved, I already knew that, but then he told me that he didn’t know about any of that. But he was lying, I knew he was. Dom said that he was trying to protect us and the least we knew, the better off we would be. I told him he wasn’t fooling me and he better tell me what the connection is, because I knew there was one. He just said, “The F.B.I is investigating and they would take care of everything. They would talk to all of us soon,” Allie took a deep breath.

    
“Dom said he shouldn’t have said anything to me and that it was a big mistake and he had already told me too much. But, I got persuasive. I’m not proud of this, but I told him that if he didn’t tell me everything, that I would blow their entire investigation wide open. So, I told him that he better tell me, or I was going to tell my father and anybody else that would listen, including Lucy, that there was an F.B.I investigation. That’s when I told him that I already had talked to Agent Slatter,” Allie grimaced as she remembered how persistent she had been with Dom.

    
“He was pretty shocked to hear of this. I could tell he was upset, but not at me. He was upset that I had been approached by someone in the bureau.”

    
Looking at Marks face, full of chagrin, he didn’t like it either.

    
“That’s when Dom told me he was an F.B.I informant and he could help protect us. He didn’t know they had contacted me, until I told him. He knew things about the investigation that Slatter didn’t mention and he told me about them. Like Lucy being Leo Vanzetti’s sister. Nick was going to poison Dad’s piece of cake on the night of the party and Lucy had ordered him to do it. This was her way of getting back at you for testifying against Leo, whom she thought was totally innocent. She told her brother about her plan and he decided to report it, by calling Dom,” Allie looked down at the ground.

    
She knew that this was hard for her dad to hear her side of things. Well, it was hard on all of them for that matter. She just didn’t want to disappoint her dad, but she knew she needed to be honest. He could handle it, if it was the truth. Allie hoped that he would understand why she did what she did next.

    
Julie put her arm around Allies shoulder to encourage her to keep going. She knew this wasn’t easy for her to reiterate. She had been through a lot too.

    
Allie closed her eyes and remembered the conversation.

    
“I then asked him, ‘If fewer people, the better, know about this, the better off the investigation will be, right?’”

    
Dom said, “Yes.”