by Mia Ford
“No, Katrina, you can’t fight these people and you can’t call the cops,” he said. He coughed and put the towel over his lips. It came down covered in bright red blood. “You have to leave, Katrina. You have to get out of town.”
“Daddy, goddammit, tell me the name of the man who did this to you!”
When my father said the name of the man who had threatened our lives, I had to fight back my tears. I knew my change in fortune was too good to be true and too good to last.
People like me aren’t meant to be happy.
I’d had one glorious weekend and was rich for a short time.
Now, it was all going away.
* * *
I helped my father to bed, then cleaned his wounds as best I could. It looked worse than it was, but it was bad enough. Ice packs would take the swelling down around his bruised eyes and split lips, but his nose was broken and needed to be set, and his right cheekbone stuck out more than it should. He promised to let me take him to the hospital the next day and I reluctantly agreed.
I gave him a couple of extra-strength Tylenol and sat next to him until he fell asleep. Then I went down to the bar, pulled the ice-cold briefcase from the beer cooler, and went to face the man who had done this to my father, and to me.
Katrina
I had never been inside Gino’s Gentlemen’s Club; or any strip joint for that matter. I knew nothing about the place other than what Bethany had told me. She had worked there a few months and was fucking the son of the owner, a guy named Tony. She had never told me his last name and I had never been interested enough to ask.
I took a cab to Gino’s and walked through the front door holding the briefcase tightly in my right hand. Bethany was working the floor, serving drinks to tables filled with rowdy men. When she looked up and saw me standing near the entrance, she did a double-take, as if she thought that her imagination was playing tricks on her.
She came to me with her bare tits bouncing on her chest and a round drink tray between her hands. She was wearing a sheer thong and high heels, and nothing else. I glanced at her when she waved, but then let my eyes continue around the room searching for the man I had come to meet. The place was dark, but not so dark that I couldn’t see who was there.
“Jesus, Kat, what are you doing here?” Bethany asked, clutching the tray to her breasts as if she were trying to hide them from me. “Is something wrong? Did something happen?”
“Your friend Tony,” I said calmly, still scanning the room. “What is his last name?”
She frowned and blinked at me. “D’Angelo,” she said warily. “Why?”
“Is he here?”
“Yeah, he’s in the VIP area like always.” She stepped in front of me, forcing me to look into her eyes. “Kat, what the fuck is going on?”
“Take me to him,” I said. “I have something for him.”
“Kat, seriously, what the hell…”
“Take me to him now, Bethany,” I said forcefully enough to make her blink. She stared at me for a moment with a confused look on her face, then turned and started making her way through the club with me following close behind.
I had never met Tony D’Angelo before. I wasn’t aware that I had ever even seen him. But when I saw him sitting in the booth with his arms around the shoulders of two naked dancers, his hands squeezing their tits as he nuzzled his nose into their necks, I recognized him immediately from the auction. He was the man who was standing next to Nicky, the guy who looked like a character from The Sopranos. He was the cousin Nicky mentioned. And the man who had beaten my father senseless and threatened our lives.
There was another man sitting at the table. The muscle head I’d seen him with at the auction. He was sitting at the end of the booth with his elbows on his knees, nonchalantly picking at the scrapes across his knuckles, the result of hitting my father over and over in the face with his fists.
“Uh, Tony, this is my friend, Katrina,” Bethany said, stepping aside when we reached the table. Poor Bethany had no idea what was happening, but there was no time to explain. The muscle head took one look at me and got to his feet as if he thought he had to put himself between me and his boss. Tony D’Angelo grinned at me for a moment, then pulled his arms away from the girls.
“Ladies, take a hike,” he said, pushing them out of the booth. He stared at me while he spoke. “Bethany, another round for the table. And bring your friend, Kat, something. She looks like she could use a drink.”
“You want something?” Bethany asked quietly. She turned her back to the table and lowered her voice. “I don’t know what’s going on, but be careful. You do not want to mess with him.”
“I will,” I said. “And no, I don’t want a drink.”
“What are you doing here?” My heart sank when I heard Nicky’s voice coming from behind me. I turned to find him standing less than a foot away with a confused smile on his face. He held out his arms, but I didn’t move. I realized I had the briefcase clutched protectively to my chest.
“I’m here to give your cousin this money so he won’t kill me and my father,” I said, forcing the tears back from my eyes. Nicky frowned as he looked at me, then glanced at Tony. He came to stand next to me and put his hand on my arm. I jerked my arm away.
“Don’t touch me,” I said.
Nicky held up his hands and turned to Tony. He had a wary smile on his face, like someone who had missed the punchline of a joke. He said, “I’m a little confused. What exactly is going on here?”
Tony sighed like he was bored with the entire scene. He waved a hand at me and rolled his eyes. “Sweet cheek’s dad owes me money for a gambling debt. I guess she’s here to pay it off.”
Nicky turned to me. “Is that right, Katrina? Does your dad owe Tony money?”
I didn’t look at Nicky because I thought I might cry. Instead, I stared into Tony’s eyes and spoke through gritted teeth.
“My father owed him seventy-five thousand dollars,” I said. “I gave my father the money to settle the debt, but now he wants it all. He said that if I don’t give him the entire two-hundred-thousand dollars he will kill my father and kill me.”
Tony rolled his eyes. His bodyguard moved to stand behind me. Tony nodded at the briefcase and said, “So, is that my money?”
“Hold on a second,” Nicky said, holding out a hand. “That’s not your money. It’s hers. It’s her cut of the auction.”
“Actually, cuz, it’s mine,” Tony said. He folded his arms over his chest and glared at me. I could feel the hot breath of his bodyguard on my neck. I glanced out of the corner of my eye to see if Nicky was going to step in. He was still standing a few feet from me, not moving as if his feet were cemented to the ground.
Tony shook a finger at me and said, “Your old man obviously forgot that there was interest on the balance. The original amount was seventy-five-grand, but that was two months ago. Now, it’s two-hundred. Next week it’ll be two-fifty. Now, you can give me the money or I can have Jimmy pound it out of your old man. Or, you can work off his debt dancing here. You gotta nice ass and a good rack. And Nicky tells me you fuck like a machine, so you’ll probably work it off in no time.”
“Did you say that?” I asked, gazing into Nicky’s eyes, no longer able to hold back the tears.
“Of course he did,” Tony said with a laugh. “He said for a virgin you were one hell of a piece of ass and you sucked a cock like a pro. In fact, he said you were right up there in his top one hundred best fucks ever.”
“Shut up, Tony,” Nicky snapped. He looked at me with guilty eyes. “Katrina, I didn’t mean that. It was just talk, like locker room bullshit. You know how I feel about you.”
“Do I?” I asked, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Oh my god, you were just using me. You’re in on this, aren’t you?”
“What? No, that’s insane.”
“God, I was such a fool.” I stared into Nicky’s eyes and suddenly realized that the connection I thought we had was nothing more than a silly, vulner
able girl falling for the first white knight that rode past her door. Only this white knight had a black heart. God, what a fool I had been. A blanket of shame fell over me. It was all I could do not to drop to my knees and wail.
“That money does not belong to you,” Nicky said, facing Tony with his hands on his hips. I took it to mean that he thought the money rightfully belonged to him.
“You paid for her cherry, cuz, and got more than what you bargained for,” Tony said, wagging a finger at Nicky. He directed the finger toward me. “Her old man owes me money and she wants to cover his debt, so that’s my money. End of discussion.”
“That’s not your money,” Nicky said again, taking a step toward me and reaching for the case.
Tony snapped his fingers. “Jimmy. Get the goddamn briefcase.”
I suddenly found myself being torn between Nicky and the guy called Jimmy. I did my best to hold onto the briefcase long enough to open the latches, then shook it in the air. Twenty dollar bills went everywhere and all hell broke loose. Tony was scrambling to gather up the money. I fell backward just as Nicky and the muscle head went at it with fists flying and bottles breaking.
I stumbled back away from the table. Nicky and Jimmy were locked together like two awkward dancers. They fell sideways onto the table and Tony screamed bloody murder. The air was filled with twenty-dollar bills, over six thousand of them. In a screaming mass, everyone who was nearby lunged for the table, grasping for handfuls of cash.
“What the fuck, Kat?”
I turned to Bethany, who was standing beside me with her tits hidden behind the tray and a dumbfounded look on her face.
“Ten thousand of that belongs to you,” I said, tossing the empty briefcase to the floor. “Your commission for referring me to The Virgin Auction. You’d better get in there before it’s gone.”
I walked away without another word.
I hoped I’d seen the last of anyone with the last name D’Angelo.
Katrina
“It’s a good crowd for a Saturday,” my dad said as he set four glasses of draft beer on the bar and wiped his hands on the bar rag he kept tucked in his back pocket. “This keeps up, we might be able to afford meatloaf twice a week.”
I rolled my eyes at him as I loaded the beers onto a serving tray. “Will we ever be able to afford anything better than meatloaf?” I asked playfully.
He grinned at me. “Will you ever learn to cook anything other than meatloaf?”
“Probably not,” I said, hefting the tray onto my shoulder and balancing it with one hand. “I need four tequila shots and four Rolling Rocks for table three.”
“Hey, think positive,” he said, tapping the tip of thumb to the side of his head. “One day we will have steak.”
“Yeah, yeah, if you say so.”
I delivered the four drafts and returned to the end of the bar to wait for him to bring the next order. I set my elbows on the bar and rested my chin on a fist to watch him work. It was amazing the difference in him since his close call with Tony D’Angelo’s gorilla. It took a couple of weeks for his bruises, cracked cheekbone, and broken nose to heal, but once he was back on his feet it was as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He hadn’t had a drop to drink and had not gambled once that I knew of. His step was spryer. He smiled and laughed more. He looked and acted happier than I’d seen in a long time, since before mom died. It was a hefty price we both paid, but worth every cent and every ounce of blood.
The weeks had passed more slowly for me. I tried to forget my weekend with Nicky D’Angelo and all the pleasure and pain it had brought. I reconciled myself to the fact that I was not destined to go to MIT or to become a cancer researcher. My life would be spent behind the bar, just like my old man and his old man before him. There were worse ways to make a living, I supposed. And big dreams weren’t meant for people like me. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I should have known better than to expect anything more than what life had given me.
“After you deliver these, take a break,” dad said, loading the drinks onto the tray. “You’ve been going hard for hours. I can handle things for a bit.”
“You sure?”
“I was schlepping drinks before you were born,” he said. “Go on, take a break.”
He gave me a wink, then went back to pouring drinks and laughing with the customers lined up at the bar. I delivered the shots and beers, then poured myself a Coke and carried it into the kitchen. Dad was right: my feet and back were killing me. I sat down at the little table we kept in the kitchen and kicked off my shoes and took a long drink.
There was a stack of mail that had collected over the past few days on the table. I picked it up and flipped through the envelopes, finding the usual bills and junk. Then an expensive looking envelope caught my eye. It was addressed to Miss Katrina Donovan. The return address was for a company in Manhattan called Phoenix Capitol.
I picked up a butter knife that was on the table and slid it under the flap to open the envelope. Inside was a monthly statement for an account in my name. The balance in the account was one-hundred-twenty-five-thousand dollars.
“What the hell?” I checked the envelope, but the statement was the only thing inside. I read over it again. Account holder Katrina Donovan… my address … account balance $125,000… account open date… I did the math in my head. The account was opened a week after The Virgin Auction. The day after I gave the money to Tony D’Angelo.
I folded the statement and was about to stick it back into the envelope when I noticed something odd. Under the flap, written in red ink, were the words, “I miss you. Nicky.”
Katrina
The woman at the front desk gave me a warm smile as I came through the heavy glass doors and approached. I tried to smile back, but it came out as a nervous twitch.
“Hi, I’d like to see Mr. D’Angelo,” I said.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“Can I have your name?”
“Katrina Donovan.”
“One moment.” She picked up the phone and pressed a button. I heard her say my name. She turned back with the smile still plastered on her face and pointed toward the hallway to her right. “You can go right in. His office is at the end of the hall.”
“Thank you.” I tried to slow my breathing as I walked down the hallway toward Nicky’s office. My hands were shaking and my palms were sweaty. Sweat is not sexy.
As I approached, the door opened and Nicky appeared, looking perfect in a dark blue suit and a starched white shirt open at the collar. He smiled when he saw me, but made no attempt to touch me. Rather than hold out his arms for a hug, he stepped aside and held out one hand to usher me in.
“It’s nice to see you,” he said formally, directing me to sit in a red leather chair in front of his huge smoked glass desk. He sat behind the desk and folded his hands together. “How have you been?”
“Fine,” I said, forcing myself to look him in the eye. “You?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes, it is.” He stared into my eyes for a moment, then let his eyes go soft and offered a smile. “It’s good to see you, Katrina.”
“Is it?”
“It is.” He tapped his fingers together and pushed his eyebrows up. “This is where you say it’s good to see you, too, Nicky.”
I reached into my purse without responding to his playful words. I took out the envelope containing the account statement and slid it across the desk. He opened the envelope and took out the statement, then quickly glanced over it.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What is that?”
He held up the paper and frowned at it. “It’s your account statement.”
“I don’t have an account here,” I said.
“You must,” he said, tucking the statement back into the envelope and sliding it back across the desk to me. “You wouldn’t have a statement if you
didn’t have an account.”
“Are you trying to be funny?” I asked, perturbed. I grabbed the envelope from the desk and stuck it back into my purse.
“I’m not trying to be funny,” he said with a shrug. “It just comes naturally.”
I had to keep myself from smiling. Dammit, just being in the room with him was like being drunk. The world around me blurred as my vision tunneled into him. My head felt lighter, my feet barely touched the ground. But no, dammit, he was not who I thought he was. He wanted something, obviously, but I’d be damned if I was going to give it to him.
“I’m going to ask again,” I said calmly. “What is this all about?”
“That’s your money,” he said, leaning back and spreading out his hands. “Tony got seventy-five thousand to settle your father’s debt and the rest was yours. I told you that I would figure out a way to invest it for you and that’s what I’ve done. I will need your signature on some forms, but that’s just a technicality. The account is yours, as is the money. I can issue checks and a debit card for you to draw out whatever you need whenever you need it.”
“That’s my money,” I said, still not fully convinced. “But I thought you and Tony were fighting over the money when I left.”
“That was never the case,” he said. “I was fighting for you, for your money. I never intended to take the money back. There was no grand scheme to buy your virginity and then steal the money back from you.”
“There wasn’t?”
“No, of course not,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Look, my cousin, Tony, is a world-class prick who plays every angle that puts money in his pocket. When your father showed up with seventy-five-thousand dollars to cover his debt, Tony asked where he got the money. Your father refused to say, so Tony had Jimmy work him over a bit because he figured something was up. Your father finally said his daughter won it in Atlantic City. He didn’t mention you by name, but Tony remembered your last name from the auction brochure and connected the dots. He realized that you were Tommy Donovan’s daughter and the payoff was coming out of your share of the auction. Tony knew how much you were paid, so he decided to get it all.”