Secrets of the Harts

1 Jan 2015
“So...can I have this dance?”

I smiled at the green-eyed gentleman in front of me, so different from the idiot he’d been a few years ago. “Sure.”

He flashed me a quick smile and took my hand, leading me to the dance floor. He slipped the thumb drive I’d passed to him into his blazer’s pocket and pulled me close. I knew the steps to this dance well and let him take the lead, laying my head on his chest.

We were attending Mayor Rothschild’s New Year Party. He was Mayor to New York, well known for the extravagant parties that he threw. His New Year Parties were particularly famous. He was also extremely picky as to who he wanted to invite. The only reason we were here was because we were pretending to be our good friends Mr. Luke Ouverson and Miss Tia Macpherson. Luke had became a literary sensation, despite only being 22 years old and Tia was his plus one, well on her way to a doctor’s degree. Mayor Rothschild liked to make friends in high places.

Obviously, we weren’t only here to enjoy the celebrations (no matter what Dylan said), we were also here to do our jobs.

My skills were still very much in demand, only that I didn’t work as an Agent anymore. Instead, I owed my own private investigations company. The money was okay but the jobs were mostly boring, because my clients largely comprised of housewives worried about unfaithful husbands. But I could without excitement for a while, I had enough of it to last me for the next couple of years.

That wasn’t to say that I didn’t have any significant jobs to carry out. My most interesting jobs, the ones that made my heart pump faster, came from Dylan.

Dylan worked for the New York Times. He’d always had the knack of asking the right questions, the sort that got under people’s skin and unnerved them—allowing them to answer more honestly than they would have in the first place. Dylan specialised in politics, which wasn’t surprisingly considering all the plotting he’d been surrounded with and he’d always needed my help getting information.

Not everything I did was legal but most of the time the politicians were too busy battling public outrage for their expensive ways and their misuse of the public office that they didn’t bother with me. Besides, if they wanted to sue me, they’d had to get through my lawyer, Alessandra Zeta first.

She was a very good lawyer, having been practising since 2013. Incidentally, she was also my mother. When I had found her, she had been studying in secret, working hard in night classes to become an attorney. Now that she was a lawyer, Uncle Dante and Uncle Adriano couldn’t breathe a word to her about joining their family business.

The last I heard, my maternal grandparents were still trying to decide if they should be proud of their daughter, a rising star in America’s legal system, or be furious with her for going behind their backs. But we’d survived a crazy Thanksgiving with them last year, so I supposed they would come around soon.

Anyway, the thumb drive that I just handed to Dylan? It contained the information we had came for. While Dylan had distracted Mayor Rothschild with conversation, I had slipped away and peeled off the voluminous black dress I’d worn. The Mayor had made a joke about how it looked like I was pregnant and then gazed pointedly at Dylan. Dylan had turned slightly pale at this point. I only laughed lightly. Actually, the dress had been so roomy so that I could hide my other suit and gadgets inside, so that I could break into Rothschild’s other rooms from the roof.

“Hey, can I have your attention please?” Dylan sounded mildly annoyed that I hadn’t been listening to whatever he was saying.

I nodded, biting back a smile. He sounded so much like a petulant kid.

“I was saying, what should we get for Luke and Tia’s engagement present.”

It was going to be a real engagement, one held because they wanted to be together and not one to please someone else. I thought about it for a second and then said jokingly, “The 55th Anniversary Edition of To Kill A Mockingbird.”

“Seriously, what is with your obsession with that book?” I could feel Dylan smiling, shaking his head good-naturedly. He spun me away from him before pulling me close again.

Luke was right in the end. I hadn’t understood the book as fully as I wanted to; the book did discuss the greyer nature of humans. In reality, there was no such thing as black and white, no wholly good or entirely bad people. There were just people, complicated to understand and full of secrets.

My story started with my family’s secrets, the secrets of the Harts. Maybe there would be more skeletons and secrets that’ll slip out from the closet but I knew I could handle it, especially because I didn’t have to do it alone.

I glanced at my ring finger, the way I did sometimes to reassure myself that I hadn’t misplaced my wedding ring. Lo Vi Amo Sempre. My Italian had improved over the years, enough for me to understand when Dylan wanted this to be engraved on the inside of our rings.

I love you always.