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“I tell you the time to act is now.”
“It isn’t the timing I question, Georgiana,” Wells replied calmly. “It is the proposed action that I find questionable. It has only been a few years since the setback we suffered on Arthur’s first Inauguration Day. We are still recovering much of what was lost financially, not to mention how much of our network was compromised in the aftermath of that failure.”
“I understand that, Charles,” Soors snapped haughtily. “And you are certainly to be commended for salvaging as much of our enterprise as you did back then. But the fact remains, we have more than enough resources financially and in manpower to proceed.”
“With you as the candidate this time?” Wells sneered at her. “Do you really think the voters will vote for anyone over Arthur or the person he tabs as his successor? The man’s approval numbers soared in the months after he was sworn in, and the news broke about what we attempted. We are just lucky they thought they’d gotten the leadership when Cavanaugh and Collins were killed by Del Rio. And, they never became aware of our existence.”
Georgina must have had something impressive on Liposey, Wells mused, to buy the woman’s silence despite the pressure of a full federal investigation that she’d been under.
Liposey had exposed just enough to save her own skin while keeping both Soors’ and Wells’ names out of it. Although her cooperation, as it turned out, had only bought her another year of life. She’d succumbed to a heart attack in her prison cell, although rumors quickly spread that her heart had been assisted in failing through outside means. But given how many deaths that had been laid at her feet, no one really investigated those claims overmuch.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least, Wells allowed, to discover that Georgina had arranged for the woman’s demise.
“That damned Del Rio family,” Soors hissed. “I knew we should have killed that entire family off years ago instead of just the parents. Those brothers were even more of a threat than we thought possible.”
“Indeed. They did a very good job of ruining your plans.”
“Our plans, Charles,” Soors corrected. “Don’t ever forget that you were a part of those plans.”
“I have always supported the ‘original’ plan, Georgina. It was only yours and Bradley’s insistence on bastardizing the original goal that lead to our near demise. I urged you both back then, and I do so again today, to abandon this hopeless attempt to turn back the clock and proceed with Karpov’s original intent.”
“Rejected,” Soors dismissed, having not heard a word of Wells’ pleas, “as is any further objection. We are in position to make a second attempt, one that I guarantee will succeed, and this time we are going to make sure any obstacle in our path is removed before we even get started.
“Beginning with Jack Del Rio. We always knew that cover story of him having died was phony. We just didn’t know where he’d disappeared to afterwards. Now we do.”
“True. But do you really think we are going to be able to stroll up to him unmolested? Whether you want to credit them or not, he has some serious protection surrounding him where he is. And even should you get through to him, do you think he is just going to lay down and die like a good little boy? He’s proven to be a very hard man for us to kill in the past.”
“Fortunately for us we won’t have to,” Soors replied with a little too much glee to suit Wells. “Because we have others who will happily do it for us, once we tell them where to go first of course.”
“And who might this be?”
“Some old friends from Del Rio’s past that owe him dearly.” The evilness of her smile sent a chill over Wells’ body. “Then the last remaining members of that cursed family will be dead and we will fulfill our destiny.”
“I was under the impression that Jack Del Rio was the last remaining member of his family still alive,” Wells commented, puzzled by Soors’ use of the plural.
“Oh no,” Soors answered with a smile that turned Wells’ blood cold. “There’s another Del Rio on this Earth, one Del Rio himself is unaware exists. But when he finds out he will come out from hiding just long enough to get them both killed.”
Soors slipped a photograph from a folder and handed it to Wells. The picture was of a woman about Del Rio’s age and a young girl of perhaps six.
“The child is Del Rio’s,” Soors said when Wells looked up in confusion. “We managed to get a DNA sample to confirm it. Not only is he unaware she exists but, even better, both the child’s mother and the child are in jeopardy. Once we arrange to make Del Rio aware she exists, and they are in danger, we can draw him out and make killing him much easier to accomplish. We will do whatever it takes to see to it that the last two Del Rio’s time on this Earth comes to an end and sooner rather than later. If I have learned anything it is not to leave any member of that family alive to get in our way.”
Wells looked back down at the child in the photograph. He had known that innocents would be impacted by what they were planning from the very beginning years ago. But what troubled him was that Soors sounded like she very much wanted to be in on the kill and would not pause for even a second before slaying a six-year-old girl who’d done nothing wrong but having had the wrong parentage.
What troubled him most was that he was going to go along with it with little more protest than he had all of the other failed plots.
“It’s delicious irony isn’t it?” Soors crooned when Wells looked back up. “The shades of Jack Del Rio’s own past are going to come back to haunt him right to his own grave.”
THANK YOU FOR READING BETRAYALS.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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A NATIVE OF TURLOCK, California, Richard Paolinelli began his writing career as a freelance writer in 1984 and gained his first fiction credit serving as the lead writer for the first two issues of the Elite Comics sci-fi/fantasy series, Seadragon. His sports writing career spans stops at the Gallup Independent, Modesto Bee, Turlock Journal, Merced Sun-Star, Tracy Press, San Mateo County Times and the San Francisco Examiner. He won the 2001 California Newspaper Publishers Association award for Best Sports Story while at the Turlock Journal.
In 2013, Richard retired as a sportswriter and decided to return to his fiction writing roots. He released two short stories - The Invited and Legacy of Death - as well as a full-length sci-fi novel, Maelstrom. In 2015, Richard completed nearly two years of research and interviews and published, From The Fields: A History of Prep Football in Turlock, California. One month later, the first book of the Jack Del Rio series, Reservations, was published by Oak Tree Press. In 2016, Richard was one of a dozen authors selected to participate in, Beyond Watson, an anthology of original Sherlock Holmes stories and was one of 20 writers involved in a second Holmes Anthology, Holmes Away From Home, released in December. Perfection's Arbiter, a biography of National League Umpire, Babe Pinelli, was released on October 8th. W & B Books acquired the Jack Del Rio series and released the second book, Betrayals, in November. In January of 2017, Richard returned to his science fiction roots with the release of the award-winning novel, Escaping Infinity, for which he has been named as a finalist for Best Sci-Fi Novel for the 2017 Dragon Awards.
His short story, The Misplaced Mystery Writer, will appear in the upcoming Sherlock Holmes in the Realm of H.G. Wells anthology by Belanger Books and his short story, Spinster’s Manor, will appear in the My Peculiar Family 2 anthology in late 2017.
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