Beautifully Flawed

" 'El crándo'...."

No.

There's no way.

"Oh my God! This is all my fault....they took my little sister. Chloe! They took my mom. They didn't know! I never fucking told them!"

Jake still kneeling a few feet away from my front door, continues to rant frantically.

And i can't make sense of any of it.

They didn't know?

He didn't tell them?

Tell them what? That he's involved with the mafia?

"Jake Jake Jake......look at me okay, look at me. I promise i'll help you, but you need to focus okay? Just take a deep breath. You have to be as calm as possible" i say, still kneeling in front of him.

"I can't be calm Rhea! Those bastards have my sister!! My little Chloe....oh God! I fucked up, i fucked up bad" he says, literally crying his heart out.

" look....we need to work things out so we can find out where they are, and the only way we can do that is if you're able to speak clearly."

He nods his head slightly as the tears continue to flow down his face.

"Deep breath in, deep breath out...." we do this for almost five minutes before he stops shaking.

"Now.....think Jake, everything you say at this point is a hundred percent important. I'm going to give you a minute to gather your thoughts, but after that you have to tell me- tell us what happened okay?"

"O-okay...." he stutters in response.

"In the mean time, Shawn get your laptop . We need to go over everything we found yesterday. Mira please get me my phone from the living room. Dray get ready to call Drenad and that other informant" i say quickly as i walk into the kitchen to grab Jake a cup of water.

"Here take this.." i say, as i hand him the glass of water.

He gulps it down in mere seconds.

Once we are all settled in the living room, he starts talking.

"You all know about my Father. Rhea, you  know what he was like y-you witnessed it first hand. He always had a drinking problem, but after Chloe was born it just got worse. He'd show up drunk and hit my mom and I.......i never really knew what happened to him, he just lost control. My mom worked as a waitress, she barely made enough but with what my dad was making....we were surviving. And then he got fired, for violence and misconduct. It all started to go down hill from there....."

Tired, weak......absolutely exhausted, hurt, guilty. That's all i can see as i look at him.

"With him out of work......the bills were coming and there was no money. I got a job. But then he'd just come back and take all the money. We tried everything, hiding it -whatever we could......he'd threaten us and then walk away with all our hard earned money. I was barely able to balance work, school and taking care of Chloe....it was all just getting too much. One day i got home from work and he was right there......Chloe was crying and my mom was bruised from head to toe. Once again he wouldn't leave if i didn't give him money, i wanted them to just get divorced and to never have to see each other ever again but he wouldn't do it! He'd leave but come back every damned week......he wanted alcohol, drugs, anything to get fixed. I was frustrated....done. i didn't want to have to deal with all that, so i gave it to him. I told him to leave and never come back and i gave him everything. That night......after my mom and Chloe were asleep, i left the house. I didn't take anything with me, i just walked off. I was sick and tired of putting up the facade that i was happy, content, the party animal, player , bad boy. At that point i wanted to embrace my problems and get lost......i wanted to be quiet, calm....i wanted to be real. So i walked towards the old abandoned playground. I don't know why, but at the last minute i took the wrong turn. I literally went left instead of right. Moments later, i found myself on a dirt path, alone in the dark....heading for the woods."