I Went to Italy and All I Got Was this Shocking Secret

The sticky July heat plasters my hair to the nape of my neck as we sprint through Vatican City. Angry outbursts follow us as shocked tourists jump out of our path to avoid being barreled over. St. Peter’s Square is inundated with people, making it difficult to move. I risk a quick glance behind me and see a black-clad figure push their way through a tour group, determined in their pursuit of my brother Simeon and me. Shit, shit, shit, I think to myself.

               “Go left!” Simeon yells, making a sharp turn around the columns flanking the Square. We weave around families with screaming children and couples walking hand-in-hand, the shade a welcome respite from the hot sun beating down on us. I did not wear the right shoes for this. If I had known we’d be running from muscular cronies, I’d have opted for something with a stronger sole. If the strap of my sandals snapped and I stumbled, the men chasing us would catch me. If they caught me…I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I knew it would be very, very bad. Especially since they looked they came straight out of a Bond movie, short-cropped hair and bulging biceps with permanent sneers slashed across their faces.

               Simeon and I round the corner of the columns and reenter the sweltering heat of the open air. The kerfuffle behind us tells me that our pursuers aren’t far behind. We look around wildly, searching for a way out, but it’s too crowded to get to the street. I spot the line to enter the Basilica and grab Simeon’s arm, dragging him with me. The line is condensed enough that we may be able to hide in plain sight. We thrust ourselves into the fray, keeping our heads down and our backs to the Square as the line slowly shuffles along. I’ve been looking forward to seeing St. Peter’s Basilica since my family arrived in Rome three days ago, but this isn’t exactly how I pictured my tour going. How did we get to this point? Things were fine, normal, until my parents left for a private dinner last night and didn’t come back. All Simeon and I got was a blood-spattered note: We’re being followed. Meet us in Vatican City tomorrow at noon. Be careful, be quick. This vacation was turning out to be unlike any other.

               We’ve had a lot of unique vacations over the years. Ever since I was a child, my parents have insisted that we be exposed to as much culture as possible. I’d been to ten countries by the time I was three, and now, at 19, I’ve been to every continent and to multiple countries therein. My friends envy my lifestyle, but I don’t know anything different. We’re wealthy enough to afford our frequent travels, but I’m not exactly a trust fund baby.

               “The real riches lie in what we can learn in every new place we visit,” my mother would say. It’s the kind of thing that you roll your eyes at when you’re young, thinking your parents are being naïve and optimistic. She hasn’t been wrong, though. I’ve seen Paris from atop the Eiffel Tower. I’ve walked along the Great Wall of China. I’ve stood in the shadow of the Pyramids of Giza. There was a time when I wished we could have a typical family vacation, fighting with each other and trudging along at some theme park designed to drain you dry before you leave. The older I’ve gotten, though, the more I’ve come to appreciate the emphasis my parents have put on travel. I’m becoming self-aware, finding an identity in the social structure of my coastal hometown, and I’m finding that there’s a stark difference between Those who have Left and Those who have Not. When you’re from a small town, you think the world is as big as Main Street and Friday night football games. Well, I’ve seen a lot of the world, and Main Street and touchdowns can’t even compare.

               Every third night, my parents take some time for themselves to be alone. They go to dinner, they go for a twilit stroll, they do whatever it is parents do when they manage to get a second away from their children. When Simeon and I were young enough to need supervision, we’d bring our au pair, and she’d be stuck watching after us while Mom and Dad got a kid-free night. By the time we woke up in the morning, our parents would be back, snoozing away in bed as if they’d been up for all hours of the night.

               “Why do you go out every third night of our vacations?” I asked Mom once. “Why not the first night? Or the second? Or not at all?”

               She smiled at me benignly, like I was being precocious.

               “The first night is for all of us. The second night is for you and your brother. The third night is for me and dad,” she answered.

               “What about the fourth night?”

               “That’s when we all come back together again, before we go home.”

               I remember feeling jealous that our parents would want time away for themselves. Wasn’t this supposed to be a family vacation? But, like clockwork, they’d be ready to go out on the third night, dressed to the nines.

               “You guys look like Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” Simeon joked once. Our parents gave him a strange look, like he’d said something surprising, but then the look was gone and they laughed about it a second later.

               “So full of imagination, you kids are,” Dad said.

               Last night, before we’d found ourselves running for our lives, Simeon and I sat at the dining table in our hotel suite. We didn’t need a babysitter anymore, so we’d be on our own until our parents got back in the morning. Once they were ready to go, they hugged us goodbye.

               “Remember the rules,” said Mom. “No booze, not too much TV, and, most importantly, under no circumstances should you leave this hotel and wander around the city.”  

               I rolled my eyes at her warning. They never let us go out on our own, even though we’d traveled half the world and were old enough to make adult decisions.

               “Nellie?” Mom said, waiting for my confirmation that I would follow her rules and stay put.

               “Yes, Mom, I know,” I huffed.

               She studied me for a moment, an emotion I couldn’t place passing over her eyes, and then she kissed my forehead and walked out with Dad. Simeon and I ordered twice as much room service as we could eat, just to spite them, and fought over what to watch before landing on Spy Kids, a nostalgic film for us. We speculated as to what our parents were getting up to.

               “I bet they save all the cool exclusive tours for themselves,” Simeon said.

               “I bet they eat the most expensive food at the most prestigious restaurant,” I guessed.

               We played this game for a while, until the film ended and we’d eaten our weight in pasta. We ambled to bed, and I wondered what exciting thing my parents were genuinely doing. When we woke in the morning, our parents weren’t in their bed. We ate some breakfast at the hotel restaurant, figuring they’d be back by the time we finished, but when we got back upstairs, they were still missing, and a note with stains that looked suspiciously like blood had been slipped under the door.

               Now, we stand waiting in line, hoping to slip into the Basilica unnoticed. I glance around surreptitiously and see the black-clothed men looking around intently. I quickly avert my gaze and nudge Simeon, trying to get him to look like a normal tourist rather than a confused teenager running for his life.

               “Smile,” I say, talking as if I’m relaying a funny anecdote. He grins awkwardly. “Less Joker, more Disney,” I tell him. He moves his mouth into a more genuine smile. “That’s better. Now laugh like I’ve told you a joke.” He laughs loudly, too loudly, and in my peripheral I see the men looking towards us. He turns his laugh into a cough. “Very smooth, Simeon.”

               “Well I’m sorry, but I don’t know how the proper protocol on how to act after your parents disappear and leave a cryptic note to meet them in Vatican City. I feel like we’re in a Dan Brown novel.”

               “Ah yes, the age-old question: What Would Tom Hanks Do?”

               He pinches me. “Ow,” I say, still smiling. The group in front of us looks back with furrowed brows, noticing something is off about us. “Alright, when we get into the Basilica, let’s do a quick look around for Mom and Dad and if we don’t see them, we leave and go back to the hotel until we hear something else. We can’t keep running all day.”

               “But they told us to come here.”

               “We don’t even know if the note came from them. Clearly someone was waiting for us.”

               “How do you figure?” he asks me.

               “These guys found us almost as soon as we got into the City. Maybe whoever they work for left the note.”

               “It was Mom’s handwriting.”

               “Forgery isn’t that hard, Simeon. We faked Mom’s handwriting to get out of P.E. for years.”

               He looks around worriedly, and soon we’re at the front of the line to get into the Basilica.

               “Tickets, please,” an attendant says to us.

               “Oh. Uh, we don’t have tickets,” I say to them. Their eyes glaze over, as if they’re desensitized to ignorant visitors.

               “No tickets, no entry,” they say, looking behind us to the next group. We hesitate to move, looking back to see where the men looking for us are. I see them walking up the line, checking every face for ours.

               “Listen,” I say to the attendant desperately, “we’re in a bit of a predicament and we need to get out of the Square.”

               “No tickets, no entry,” they repeat in a bored voice. I look behind us again and, to my horror, I see the eyes of one of the men locked onto mine. He points and I see him mouth “there” to his companion before they start pushing their way towards us.

               “RUN,” I yell to Simeon, and we push past the attendant.

               “Hey, you kids, get back here!” they yell after us, but we’re already inside the Basilica. Excellent, I think to myself, now we have deranged men and security on our tails.

               “Do you see Mom and Dad?” Simeon says. I look around, but I don’t recognize anyone.

               “Not yet,” I respond, trying to keep calm. We try to walk calmly around the Basilica, hoping to blend in, and I can see the men wading through the crowd and looking around for us.

               “Okay, we have to go,” I say to Simeon. “Mom and Dad are probably fine, and we should go back to the room to wait for them.”

               “But –“ he starts, when we hear a security guard shout “there they are.” The guards make their way towards us, which draws the attention of the cronies.

               “Shit,” I say. “Let’s go.” I pull Simeon’s arm and we run to the exit, dodging people who look between us and the guards and the cronies in bewilderment. We push our way forward, slipping more than once on the waxed floors. I don’t even have a moment to appreciate the beauty of the Basilica before I’m back outside and running for the stairs that will take us back down to the Square. If we can just make it out of Vatican City, we can get a cab back to the hotel and we can –

               “Well, well, well,” says a voice I don’t recognize. I skid to a stop and look up at the person who is suddenly blocking my path. I see a man dressed in a smart suit with a matching trilby, a thick mustache on his tanned face. He’s average looking, but he has a presence that makes me freeze. He smiles at us, and behind us I hear the guards and the cronies come to a stop. “Your parents will be most excited to see you,” he says. He jerks his head to his henchmen, who come and grip our arms as the mysterious man has a whispered conversation with the guards. I see him slip some money into their hands, and my stomach sinks as they walk away. He turns back to us. “Let’s go,” he smiles. They lead us to a sleek black car waiting at the front of the Square, putting us inside the backseat. The windows are tinted, so I can’t see where we’re going.

               “Where are our parents?” I ask the mustached man.

               “You’ll see them soon,” he says.”

               No one speaks again for the remainder of the trip. Soon, we pull to a stop. When the door opens, a nondescript building is in front of us. There are no other cars around, no other people. This isn’t good. The mystery man walks ahead of us as his henchmen walk behind us. Another crony opens the metal door to the building, darkness behind it. I stop.

               “I’m not going in there until you tell me where my parents are,” I demand. He turns around, tilting his head at me with a small smile on his face.

               “They’re inside, waiting for you.”             

              I look at Simeon, who looks back at me with some fear and trepidation, but he nods his head once and takes my hand. We follow the man inside and the dark hall in front of us lights up as we’re led to a large, circular room. In the middle are two chairs, and on each chair are our parents, still dressed in their regalia but looking worse for the wear. I see spots of blood and some bruising on their faces as my heart squeezes in my chest.

               “Mom! Dad!” yells Simeon, going to run towards them when the henchmen grab his shoulders to keep him back. “Let me go,” he demands.

               “No can do, kiddo,” says the mustached man. “You see, your parents tried to kill my cousin. Obviously, they were unsuccessful, but we needed some…collateral…to make them talk. Them: killers. You: collateral.”

               We stare at him, dumbfounded. “Why would they try to kill your cousin?” I ask incredulously.

               He raises his eyebrows at us, looking from our parents back to me. “You don’t know?”

               I just stare at him.

               “Your parents are assassins.”

               For a moment I just start at him. Then, I guffaw at the absurdity of his statement. “Assassins? Get real.”

               “Haven’t you wondered at the many exotic vacation you’ve taken? Why go to Prague when Disney World is closer?”

               “To expose us to new cultures.”

               “Or because they had contracts in those cities.”

               I look at him like he’s lost his mind. I’m suddenly struck by a line from Spy Kids – my parents can’t be assassins, they’re not cool enough!

               “Mom? Dad?” Simeon says quietly. They look up at us, their lips split and eyes swollen.

               “Sorry you had to find out this way,” Dad says, his voice cracking. I’m stunned into silence.

               “What a lovely reunion this has been,” says the man, “but let’s go on with this. I have dinner reservations. Tell us who sent you,” he says to my parents.

               They don’t answer, so the man grabs Simeon and yanks his arm behind his back, making Simeon cry out in pain. My Mom looks like they’ve physically struck her at his yell.

               “Don’t hurt them,” she cries. “I’ll tell you everything.”

               “Finally, some cooperation,” the man says, approaching her. It’s a split second, but I swear I see her pass something to my dad that flashes in the dim light.

               “The person who sent us,” she says slowly, drawing out every word, “had a message for you.”

               “Which was?” he says impatiently.

               She’s quiet for a moment, looking at the ground. “Speak!” the man shouts. She slowly raises her eyes to look at him.

               “That you’re dumber than you look,” she says, and before the man can react, she thrusts herself to her feet as my dad brings his hands forward and slices the rope binding her wrists with the knife she must have slipped to him earlier. Everything seems to happen in slow motion as she karate chops the mysterious man in the throat, his cronies rushing forward to defend him. Mom sweeps her leg under one of their legs, knocking them to the ground with a “hi-yah!” Dad punches the mustached man in the stomach, who doubles over as Mom hits the second crony with a series of punches that leave me dizzy trying to follow her hands. Dad grabs the man in the trilby as mom picks up their discarded ropes. They push him to a chair and tie the rope around him, bounding him to the seat. When they’re done, they stand up straight and face Simeon and me. Our jaws are on the floor. Who are these people?

               “Hi kids, how was your night?” Mom says nonchalantly.

               “Uh…better than yours I guess. What is going on? Who are these people? Why did you try and kill someone? Are you really assassins?”

               Our parents look at each other, a silent conversation passing between them.

               “Why don’t we go back to the hotel and get cleaned up. After that, we’ll tell you everything.”

               We just nod dumbly. They limp towards the exit and we follow after them, still in a state of shock. The man in the seat groans faintly as we walk away.

               “By the by, how do you kids feel about going to Amsterdam in the fall?” Mom asks. “There’s someone we want to pay a visit.”

               I think I can confidently say that this has been the wildest family vacation yet.