This is a continuing adaptation of Judith McNaught's novel, Perfect.

Trust Me

Chapter 2

“I think a toast is order, don’t you?” Ned called out over the din of the cocktail party in the restaurant.  Conversation slowly stopped as the attention of the group of people focused on Ned.  “To my wife, Lois, and her partner, Brenda,” he said.  “For taking their dreams and making them a reality!”

As the crowd echoed his toast, Ned clinked his champagne glass against Lois’s and then against Brenda’s.  Beaming, Brenda tapped her glass against Lois’s and took a small sip.

Lois, who was now Lois Cerullo-Ashton having been married to Ned for seven months now, turned her blue eyes on her best friend and business partner.  The conversations in the room returned to their loud din after the well-wishes.  “Can you believe it, Bren?”

Brenda shook her head, grinning.  “Not really.  I mean, who would have guessed two years ago that we would be signing Miguel Morres to our label?  It’s not too bad for two small-town girls, huh?”

Ned laughed, wrapping an arm around Lois.  “I don’t think too many people are calling you two ‘small-town girls’ any more!”

Their conversation was interrupted as Lois spotted someone on the other side of the room motioning to her and she excused herself.  Brenda remained where she was, silently watching the party.  She reflected on what had gotten them to this point.

The past two years had been a constant stream of trials and errors where their record label, L&B Records, was concerned.  They’d had several small bands sign on in the beginning.  Most of them were just starting out and Lois used her contacts from her previous experiences to get them nightclub gigs.  A few of the bands hadn’t panned out and they quickly dropped out of sight.  The first year was very rough for Brenda and Lois.  They’d even considered giving it up at one point.

But just over a year ago, Lois had been at a local restaurant listening to a sort of open-mic night when she heard Miguel sing.  Before his first song was over, she had called Brenda to come down and join her so she could hear him for herself.  Brenda got there in time to hear Miguel’s second set and she immediately agreed with Lois.  They’d approached him afterwards and, after a lot of talking, had convinced him to let them cut a record for him.

The rest was pretty much a whirlwind of a fantasy life.  Radio and television stations had taken to Miguel’s music very quickly.  His first CD was a back-door seller as his fame began to grow.  With his fame, Lois and Brenda’s label became very well known in the music business.  And four months earlier, they had launched Miguel’s first national tour.  The final concert was the reason for the party they were hosting.  Miguel’s tour had been a near sell-out at every venue across the states.  L&B had made it to the big time with him.

Brenda shook her head with one last thought.  Lois had certainly been right to have as much faith as she had had in them.  Hearing her name over the music, she saw Lois motioning her over to join her for pictures with Miguel.  They had nowhere to go from here but up.

“Jax, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Jax slowly turned his head to stare intently at his cell mate.  “DiLucca, how many times are you going to ask me that?”

Roy DiLucca had been Jax’s cell mate from the first day.  Over the past two years, they had formed a kind of friendship that could only come from their circumstances.  Jax, intent on remaining in his state of denial, had spent his first several months barely speaking to anyone.  Roy could have cared less what Jax chose to do.  He’d already been in Pentonville for three years by the time Jax showed up.  The fact that Jax had been convicted of murder meant nothing to him.  The fact that Jax maintained his innocence meant less.

Roy had been convicted of attempted murder in the form of a planned assassination of a statesman three years before.  It was something he had been hired and paid to do and when it went wrong, he’d taken the fall for it.  His sentence came to ten years with parole possible after five.  His parole hearing was set up for a little over six months from now.  He had a hardened exterior that came from having spent three years in the prison before Jax came in.  A man had to become that cold in order to survive his sentence.

Six months after Jax became his cell mate, they were out in the courtyard on a sunny afternoon.  Jax was sitting on a picnic table, keeping to himself, while Roy talked to another prisoner a few feet away.  One of the men sauntered over to the table and started a conversation with Jax.

“So, did you do it, Candy Boy?” he asked.

Jax raised his eyes from a spot on the ground he’d been studying.  The man in front of him was named Michael ‘Sonny’ Corinthos, convicted of racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder, and a whole slew of other crimes.  He had already been in for six years and was staying for another fourteen before he had any chance of parole.  Word was that Sonny had been a major mob boss when he was convicted and that he had several connections already in Pentonville when he arrived.  That was painfully obvious in the number of lackeys that followed him around from day to day.

“Did I do what?” Jax asked cautiously.

“Murder your wife?  I mean, word is that’s what you’re in for.  Premeditated murder one, right?”

Jax studied him before answering him.  Sonny was about five inches shorter than him when Jax was standing up.  He had greasy, slicked back black hair and dark brown, almost black, eyes to match.  His demeanor was always relaxed, as if he owned the place and had complete run of it, which he did.  He knew Sonny was goading him from the tone of voice.  “She was my ex-wife,” he finally replied.  He returned his gaze to the rocks on the ground, trying to signify the conversation’s end, but it didn't work.

“Did that make it okay?” Sonny persisted.  “She was your ex-wife, so it was okay to kill her?”

Jax didn’t answer him, choosing to remain seated and staring at the ground.

“I mean, I can understand it,” he said.  “After all, she cheated on you how many times?  She made you look like a complete fool, right?  A man does have to protect his reputation.  And I do have to respect that in a person.”

“Don’t,” Jax said quietly.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t respect me,” he expanded.  Finally, he raised his gaze again as he stood up.  Standing above the shorter man, he glared back down at him.  “I don’t need, nor do I want, your kind of respect.”

The two of them had begun to draw the attention of other guys in the courtyard, including Roy.  A few of them were closing in, watching as they stared each other down.

“Oh, come on, Candy Boy,” Sonny said.  “My respect can get you places in here.  I can do a lot for you.”  He grinned, a sickeningly slick smile.  “Of course, nothing comes without payment.”

“Forget it, Corinthos,” Jax said firmly.  He started to walk away to another side of the courtyard, only to be stopped by two of Sonny’s guys.  They stood in front of him, physically preventing him from going anywhere.  “Call off your boys,” he asked calmly.

Roy inched closer to Jax’s side, knowing exactly where this was all headed.  He also knew the guards were going to continue to look the other way.  They were all on Sonny’s outside payroll.  Sonny could literally get away with murder within these walls.  And he had.

“Jax, Jax, Jax,” Sonny said, shaking his head in disappointment.  “You misunderstand.  I’m not really asking you.”

Jax turned his head to look back in time to see Sonny raise his eyes and nod at one of the men in front of him.  He turned back around just in time to take a right handed punch to his jaw.  After that, it was pretty much a free-for-all, but it became pretty clear that Jax could hold his own.  With Roy’s help, three of Sonny’s men ended up in the infirmary for the next two weeks.  Jax was able to walk away with not much more than a bruised jaw, three broken ribs, and a hell of a lot more respect than he’d had in the first place.

In their cell afterwards, as Jax lay on the lower bunk struggling to breathe through the pain his ribs, he thanked Roy for his help.  Roy had literally walked away without a scratch, even though Jax knew his cell mate had done more damage than he had.  They’d formed a bond over the situation, a combination of gratitude and debt, that quickly became another, simpler form of friendship.  Roy was the only person Jax admitted to himself that he could lean on to help him.

In the past year and a half now, Sonny hadn’t had any more contact with Jax or Roy, preferring instead to harass the newer, more naïve crowd that came in every week.  Because Sonny kept his attention off of them, so did much of the rest of the staff in the prison.  That was what Jax was counting on in order for his plan to go correctly.

“I’m just making sure you’re ready, that’s all,” Roy said, holding his hands up in defense.  “You don’t have to bite my head off.”

Jax sighed.  “I know, I know.  And yes, I’m more than ready to do this.  Are you sure your friend is going to come through?”

“How many times are you going to ask me that?” Roy countered, smiling.  “I’ve told you a hundred times.  Luke is the one person in this world that I have always counted on to come through for me.  He was more than willing to help you because I asked him to.”

He nodded, knowing Roy had made numerous sacrifices for him and his plan.  In the two years he had been locked in this place, Jax had had no one but Roy to turn to.  After fighting that fact for the first several months, the day he went to bat for him had made him realize that. 

He’d had friends before, but they were all business acquaintances, no one he could really count on to help him out.  There was one, of course, but there was no way he was going to risk Thomas’s reputation and family all in an effort to help him out of a dangerous situation.  No one had visited him in the prison for the last two years.  He’d never expected anyone to, though.  Thomas had his own life.  He always had.  They lived a world apart from each other and even in their best of times had only seen each other once or twice in a year.  There was no one else Jax could have asked for help.  And Roy had been very willing to give it.

It was as if Roy sensed that Jax was truly innocent of the crime he had been convicted of.  As a result, the last year of planning had finally come to a head.  Roy had asked his friend, Luke, to help them and Luke had apparently come through.  All they had to do now was wait two more days.

“You know, I hear it’s supposed to snow on Thursday.  They’re talking like it’s the first blizzard of the year,” Roy interrupted his reverie.

“I don’t care.  We’re going through with it.”

“Oh, I know that.  I just thought you’d want to know.”  Silence fell for a few seconds.  “You don’t think it’s going to complicate things a little bit?”

“DiLucca!” Jax burst out.  “Are you trying to make me have doubts?” he asked a bit quieter so they didn’t draw attention to their conversation.  He’d seen a few of the inmates look towards their cell from the other side of the block when he’d started.

Roy smiled.  “No, no.  I’m just making you aware.  That’s all.”

He relaxed.  “Well, I appreciate that, but we’re going through with it,” he reiterated.

“All right,” Roy conceded.  The lights flickered off, signaling the end of all conversation. 

Jax climbed up onto his bunk in the darkness.  As he closed his eyes, waiting for the elusive sleep that rarely came, he reassured himself with one thought.  Two more days.  Two more days and he was out of here.  He would die before he came back.

“You’ve got your book, right?” Lois asked Brenda one more time.

Brenda held up her appointment book in the middle of her search for her keys.  “Yes, Mom,” she said sarcastically.

“I’m just making sure, Bren.  The directions are in there and I don’t want you getting lost.”

Brenda had an appointment to meet a venue owner in a city three hours away from Port Charles.  “I’m not concerned about getting lost, Lois, but if I don’t find my keys, I’ll never go!”  She dug even deeper into her shoulder bag.

“You mean these?” Ned’s voice came from the doorway.  He slipped a set of keys out of the lock and held them up.  The initials BVB flashed from the silver keychain.

She let out an audible gasp.  “Yes!  I thought I had quit doing that months ago!”

“Apparently not,” Ned laughed.

Brenda laughed along with him.  Knowing she was already running late, she gathered her bag and briefcase, gave Lois a quick hug, and kissed Ned’s cheek as she grabbed the keys dangling from his finger.  “Bye, guys!  See you later tonight!”

As she started her burgundy Jeep Cherokee, she heard Lois’s voice call her name.  She put down her window to hear her.  “Be careful, Bren.  It’s supposed to snow later today!”

“I know, I know!  I will!” she called back and rolled her window back up.  Seconds later, she was backing out of the driveway and headed for the interstate.  She had some time to make up and now she was in a hurry.

A half hour later, Brenda was back on track and had relaxed considerably.  She had turned her CD player up to a decibel well above a normal person’s tolerance.  Singing loudly, she drove north, enjoying the wintry scenery passing by.

Her appointment was supposed to take an hour, she knew.  She was scouting the place for a future booking for one of their bands.  If she liked it, then she just had to line up a date and a time.  She’d be headed home by three o’clock, if it all went accordingly.

“Jacks, DiLucca, gets your butts moving!”  The warden’s shout echoed through the halls as they approached his office.  They quickened their steps and knocked loudly on the door.  “Enter!” the command came gruffly.

Raymond Belford was the Pentonville Prison warden.  He had been for the last ten years.  Known for his intolerance of the inmates, many a man had been taken into his office only to come out headed for the infirmary.  Undoubtedly, Belford, like all the guards, was on Corinthos’s payroll.  As far as Jax knew, Sonny and his men were some of the few who had never had to visit the warden’s office for his particular kind of punishment.  For his own part, Jax had barely sidestepped it himself once or twice.

It was the warden’s decision who got to be his inmate lackeys and for the last few months, he had chosen Jax and Roy quite frequently.  His distaste for the two men was very apparent every time they had to be near him.  It had quickly become clear that the only reason they had been chosen was because they had never had to visit him privately.  Instead, now they were subjected to obeying his every command two days out of the week.

On this particular day, Belford had a meeting in a nearby town.  He expected to be chauffeured there by Jax and have his errands run by Roy.  Three days prior, they’d been forced to sit in the conference room adjacent to the warden’s office and listen as they were told exactly what was expected of them.  No contact with anyone, no conversation with anyone, don’t even look at anyone else, and so on.

Jax had tuned him out for the duration of the two hour lecture, knowing this was the day he had been waiting for.  All of his year-long plans had been pinned on a day such as this.  Of course, it had been quite the coincidence when the warden had chosen them for this job, but Jax saw it as a prayer being answered.  He was probably the only inmate to ever see these tasks as an answer to a prayer.

“What the hell took you so long?” Belford demanded as soon as they walked in the office.  He never waited for an answer as he grabbed his coat and headed back towards the door.

Jax and Roy turned and followed without saying a word, knowing no explanation was wanted.  The warden was walking briskly through the halls and they followed at a slightly slower pace behind him.  Two guards were behind them making sure they got where the warden was going.

“Hurry it up!” the command came back without a glance backwards.

Jax felt a hard shove in his back from the guard on the left.  He stumbled so he didn’t fall altogether.  He had to refrain from turning and decking the guy.  He glanced sideways at Roy, portraying his thoughts in his look.  Roy grinned back.  Jax shoved his hands in his prison-issue jacket as they exited into the biting winter air.  The jacket was much too lightweight to be considered appropriate, but he didn’t care and neither did the warden.

Belford was standing by the back door of his black sedan waiting for one of the men to open the door for him.  He refused to get in by himself.  Jax gritted his teeth and opened the door.  He comically gestured for the man to get in, meeting Roy’s eyes.  Roy grinned again and Jax felt a bone-jarring slap from one of the guards as he rounded the car to get into the driver’s seat.  Defiantly meeting the guard’s eyes, Jax merely rubbed his cheek and opened the car door.  He could feel the heat exploding from his skin and had to stop himself from wincing.

The drive was quiet.  No one spoke a word as they wound their way off the prison property and towards the small town they were headed for.  Jax had to stop himself from driving too fast in his anxiousness for his plan to be set in motion.  He would have a small window of time and everything had to go perfectly in order for it to all work.

Twenty minutes later, Jax braked the car gently to a stop in front of the town hall.  “This meeting will last two hours.  I want this car waiting here and ready to go when I come out of this building.  You know what you’re supposed to do.  And I don’t have to tell you what will happen if you don’t do exactly as expected.”  Belford grabbed the door handle, wrenched it open, and exited the car in a fit of anger that was so typical of his demeanor.

Roy watched as Belford disappeared into the building.  “He’s gone,” he breathed when he couldn’t see him any longer.  He rubbed his hands together in nervousness.  “Jax, can we go over this one more time?  Please?”

Jax shut off the car and took the keys from the ignition.  He was surprised when his hands weren’t shaking.  Yet.  “Look, Roy, you have nothing to worry about.  You’re still going to make your parole in six months, I promise.”

“If it all goes according to plan.”

“Well, yeah,” Jax smiled slightly.  “Okay, we’ll go through it one last time.  You know what you’re supposed to do.  Go down the street to the drug store.  Get the items Belford wants.  You need to take at least forty-five minutes before you get to the counter to pay.  Then, you pretend you accidentally left your money in the car.  Tell the clerk you’ll be right back.  When you get back here, you’ll find the car locked, with the keys in the ignition.  Of course, I won’t be around, so you’ll have to go get Belford.  Take your time, don’t make it look like you know I’m gone.  Just pretend I accidentally locked the keys in the car as I went to the grocery store for him.  By the time you find Belford, I’ll be gone.”  He tried to make it sound like it was a simple, fool proof plan.  He knew there were a lot of things that could go wrong.  He was trying not to think about that right now.  “Got it?” he asked one more time.

Roy nodded anxiously.  “Got it.”

They got out of the car.  Roy carefully placed the money he’d been given back on to the front seat, tucked as if it had fallen out of his pocket.  Jax leaned back in and put the keys in the ignition.  He hit the door-lock button and closed the door.  Step One.

Walking around the back of the car, he grabbed Roy’s wrist with one last instruction.  “Remember, Belford can’t come looking for me for at least an hour and try to make it longer.”

“I know, Jax,” Roy assured him.  He held his hand out and Jax clasped it.  “Good luck.”  They shook hands and took one last look at each other. 

Jax nodded his silent thanks and grinned, the first real smile he felt in the last two years.  “See you around,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” Roy whispered as he watched his cell mate and friend walk away.

Jax ducked into the grocery store across the street.  He knew the prison clothes he was wearing were bringing attention to him, but that would all change in a matter of time.  Spending some time in the produce aisles, he pretended to pick out oranges and put them in a bag.  He carried them towards the back of the store, looking for the back exit he had been told was there.  There, down a long hallway, the red Exit sign blazed.  He went into the bathroom, removed his jacket and turned it inside out, knowing it would look odd, but not as odd as the word Pentonville stamped in white across the back.  He left the oranges on the sink and went back into the hallway.  No one was around to watch him go out the back door.

The alley was a bit dirty and grungy, but Jax didn’t care as he began his search for the dark green dumpster.  Spotting the only one on the other side and hidden towards a corner, he jumped in quickly.  Luke had been kind to him when he picked the dumpster, Jax thought.  It was for cardboard waste and therefore, had very little trash in it.  A few frantic moments later, Jax stood up and cursed loudly.  It wasn’t there.  He swore more furiously in his head.  He raised his eyes, said a small prayer, and looked one more time.  Then, in the very back corner, hidden under an overturned box, he found it.

The large black duffle bag was heavy when he lifted it.  Under the cover of the dumpster, he checked the contents.  A pair of blue jeans, a gray sweater, boots, socks, a black baseball cap, a watch, a manila envelope with a set of keys inside along with cash, a coat, and finally, on the bottom, a gun.  He recoiled a bit at the sight of the gun.  He’d never owned or carried a gun in his life.  Now, it was going to be a necessity. 

Quickly, still standing on the cardboard, he began to unbutton his prison uniform.  The winter weather bit into his bare skin briefly as he changed his shirt and again when he pulled on the new jeans.  The jeans hung low on his hips, obviously a bit too big.  He’d apparently lost a bit of weight in prison, since he’d given Roy his last known size.  He pulled on the socks and boots and shoved his uniform back into the spot where he found the bag.  The baseball cap hid his blond hair, dulled after two years of only two hours a day in the daylight.  He tried to tuck the gun into the waistband of his jeans, but they were too loose.  He had to put it, instead, in the pocket of his coat.

The coat was a great luxury from Luke.  It was a heavy, black leather jacket.  It fit like it had been made for him.  The soft, supple leather bent with him.  Stopping himself from reveling in the feelings too long, he tossed the duffle bag back onto the alley street.  He put his hands up on the edge of the dumpster to jump back down.

As he hoisted himself up and swung his legs over, a voice stopped him cold.  “Hey!  What are you doing there?”

Jax froze, the blood draining from his face.  He actually saw tiny lights dancing in front of his eyes as he knew for sure that he’d been caught.

 

Chapter 3