by Stacia Stone
But I can feel the heat radiating off of him in waves. And I’m very aware of the fact that we’re alone in this car together.
“You worked for my grandfather?” I ask, hoping a benign question will break the sudden sexual tension.
His smirk makes it clear he’s aware I’m trying to find a safer subject. “Since I was practically a kid.”
“What do you do?”
I immediately regret the question. I’m too used to moving among the rarified circles at Cornell where asking “what do you do for a living?” is the safest thing you can ask someone.
Because the answer is never oh a little extortion, money laundering, and loan sharking on the weekends.
But Leo takes the loaded question in stride and shrugs. “A little bit of this and that.”
I recognize the convenience store on the corner as one I used to frequent as a kid. We’re back in my old neighborhood. “Where are we going?”
“Just driving.” He glances over at me. My legs are neatly folded and my hands rest calmly in my lap. “Though it doesn’t seem like you need it.”
“It’s nice of you to try to rescue me,” I say. “But, no. I didn’t really need it.”
“It’s all good. I’m no hero, anyway.”
I’m sure that truer words have never been spoken.
“Where’re you staying?” he asks.
“At my grandfather’s house, I guess. I just left Ithaca this morning so I didn’t set up a hotel or anything.” My phone vibrates in my hand and I glance down. My mother is calling me. I hit the button to send it to voicemail and stick the phone in my purse. I’m sure I’ll get my fill of dealing with her soon enough, no reason not to put it off for a little while. “Although, I guess it’s my house now.”
He glances at me. “You’re taking this remarkably well.”
“What else am I supposed to do? I could get all crazy and hysterical like my mother would do, and then what? I’ll still have to deal with all this shit when I finally pull myself together.”
“I agree with you. Most people wouldn’t look at all logical like that, especially a woman.”
“That’s incredibly sexist, you know.”
“Just the truth, sweetheart.”
The glance he shoots me fairly smolders and my stomach clenches in an involuntary reaction. The guys at Cornell don’t talk this way, they’re usually so polite that it borders on obsequious. Always asking if you’re okay and rushing to agree with everything you say. Leo seems more like the kind of a guy to bend over and take you how he likes it.
Really fucking hot, in other words. And exactly what a feminist like me isn’t supposed to want.
But then why am I sitting here with wet panties just at the thought of it?
“What’s your plan?” he asks, seeming completely unaware of my internal struggle.
I clear my throat, glad for the distraction. “My mother will probably challenge the will. I’ll have to stick around town until the probate hearing at least. In the meantime, I need to speak with the account manager at the bank about setting up an investment portfolio. I can probably invest most of the money and live off of the interest without digging into the capital at all. Save it until I need it for something.”
Leo raises his eyebrows, clearly impressed. “Very smart.”
The compliment means more than it should. I feel the creep of heat climb up my cheeks that means I’m blushing. “Thanks.”
The car slides smoothly through the gates in front of my grandfather’s house. They shouldn’t be open, but I assume there’s been a lot of people in and out of here in the last few days.
Leo pulls into the driveway and stops the car without turning off the engine. “Here we are.”
It’s a kind of a dumb thing to say. I wonder if he’s trying to stretch our little interaction out a little bit longer. Because let’s be honest, we’re probably never going to see each other again. He’s going to go back to breaking people’s legs, or whatever it is he did for my grandfather and I’m going back to school. With Papa dead, I have very little reason to ever come back here.
“Thank you,” I say sincerely. “I really appreciate you helping me out.”
He smiles in a way that’s more like a baring of teeth. “Maybe I just like the idea of you owing me one.”
“Well, I do,” I say, trying to laugh off what I’m pretty sure is a blatant come-on. “Anyway, see you around.”
“Wait a minute.” He reaches into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulls out a blank white business card with a number written on it in black. “Call me if anything else comes up.”
I catch the card between my fingers, the paper glossy and smooth against my skin.
“Why are you so eager to help me out?” I ask as I get out of the car.
He watches me for a minute through the open window and I don’t think he’s going to answer. But then he puts the car in gear and speaks just before peeling away.
“I have my reasons.”
The house is fucking trashed.
I step over a sleeping woman in a short skirt who’s sprawled across the entryway. Food containers, bits of clothing and other debris litter the floor and most of the surfaces in the foyer. In the living room, the painting that hangs over the mantle has a gigantic tear through it. A pile of syringes and empty baggies is spread over the coffee table.
My grandfather dies and my mother turns his home into a fucking flophouse.
If I wasn’t so angry, I’d almost be impressed by how quickly she made it happen.
Seeing red, I stomp over to the woman flopped on the floor and nudge her hard with my foot.
“Get up.”
She groans and rolls over, revealing a face streaked with lipstick and a tattoo across hear chest that reads Property of The Undertaker. Bloodshot eyes slowly crack open. “W...what?”
I grab her under the arms and heft her up. I mentally thank all the days I spent throwing around bags of flour at the soup kitchen. “Get up and get out.”
Luckily the woman is too blitzed out of her mind to put up much of a fight. She stumbles for the door. I get a completely unwanted view of her backside because her leather skirt is hiked up over thong underwear.
I walk quickly through the main floor of the house, surveying the rest of the damage. Luckily, the entryway and living room appear to be the worst of it. Though I’m going to have to strip every piece of linen off all the beds and then burn it.
A burly man is bent over with his head in the fridge when I walk into the kitchen. The leather vest he’s wearing has The Undertaker stitched across the back along with a bunch of MC patches.
My mom has always had a habit of making classy sorts of friends.
He looks up to see me standing in the doorway and a leering grin spreads across his face. “Well, well. Hey there, pretty thing.”
Oh hell no. “Get the fuck out.”
He stands to his full height, which is pretty damn tall, and glares at me. “Who the fuck do you think you are talking to me like that, bitch?”
“I’m the bitch who owns this house.” I hold up my phone to show him that 9 and 1 are already dialed. “And I’m gonna call the cops if you’re not out that door in the next five seconds.”
The glare on his face is enough to make my toes curl. I maybe should have called the police before confronting the large biker in my kitchen.
Papa is probably rolling in his grave at the idea of me calling the police to his house. How many times did he say it? I better never catch you talking to the goddamn cops!
The man brings a can of beer to his mouth and I notice how glazed-over his eyes look. Dude is high as balls. Which is either going to make him easier to take or make this a thousand times harder.
“Where’s Cece?” He burps the question.
He must mean my mother. What a stupid nickname. “She doesn’t live here anymore. You need to go.”
The Undertaker — or at least I assume that’s his name — lurches toward me. When I
take a quick step back, he hits the far wall and stands there for a moment, seeming dazed. He tries to grab for me again, but I skirt under his arm and back quickly toward the front door.
My phone is still in my hand and I strongly consider using it, before abandoning the idea. Inviting the police into my grandfather’s house is just asking for trouble. God only knows what they’d find. There’s definitely guns, cash or drugs hidden here, and probably all three.
I open the front door, hoping to find a way to get this idiot to stumble outside. The coked-out woman from before is huddled on the front porch, searching for something on her hands and knees.
“Hugo, where’s my purse? I need to fix.”
Hugo “The Undertaker” heads toward her like he’s heard a siren song. “You can’t find the fucking drugs?”
“Your purse is out on the grass,” I say. “I saw it when I came in.”
They both rush outside, intent on finding the money and drugs that are more important than common sense. As soon as Hugo crosses the threshold, I slam the front door shut and throw the deadbolt.
Dumb fucks.
Loud banging sounds on the door for a few minutes but eventually stops. Hopefully, they’ve realized that trying to get back in is pointless and have wandered off. I’m obviously not going to open the door and try to find out.
You’d think someone like Papa would have had one of those state-of-the-art security systems. Maybe some motion-sensors, perimeter cameras or a panic room. Except my grandfather never brought his work home. Home and family are off limits. It’s just one of those unspoken rules that everyone had agreed to live by. That’s always how it’s been.
Until now. Trust my mother to bring the worst that Newark has to offer right to the doorstep. And I actually considered letting her keep the house.
I’m trying hard to keep thoughts of what I’m going to say to her from my mind. But the reality of the situation is impossible to ignore. Papa isn’t even warm in his grave and she’s already trashed his house and gone on an epic bender.
He didn’t leave her money because he knew exactly what she would do with it.
I make a point of walking the entire first floor of the house to ensure that all the windows and doors are locked. And then I head upstairs to make certain that there aren’t any more unwanted house guests.
There’s an old pistol hidden in a planter on top of the stairs that I fish out. I check to make sure it’s loaded. Serial numbers are filed off and it’s definitely not registered. Just another reason why calling the police would lead to more problems than it solved.
Most of the upstairs seems to have been spared from the onslaught of crashers. I hide the gun under the bed of the room that I used to sleep in when I would stay here as a kid. The pink walls and lavender comforter are a throwback to the days when Papa was still hoping I’d grow up to be a pretty pretty princess. As opposed to the overly-analytical engineer with no social skills that I eventually became.
I can barely stand the thought of sleeping in this house all alone. His absence is like a gaping hole that sucks all the air out of any room that I’m in.
When I descend the stairs, the knob of the front door — the one that I made damn sure to lock — slowly moves as someone turns it from the other side.
I freeze on the landing, like some horror movie heroine who heads toward the scary noise when she should be running for her damn life. Like so many other parts of my life, I don’t know what to do. So I do nothing.
The door swings open and my mother stands in the threshold, looking crazier than I’ve ever seen her.
Which is really saying something.
“There you are, you little cunt.” She marches toward me and I see her husband, Mack, slip in behind her like the little rat that he is. “Where do you get off disappearing like that?”
“I didn’t think you’d care, one way or another. And I didn’t need to sit there and watch you throw shit around the church.”
Her eyes fill with tears. “Did you know he was gonna do it?”
“Of course not.” And just like always, I melt in the face of her emotional instability. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I wanted things to be.”
She rushes up the stairs and throws her arms around me, sobbing in harsh gasps.
I pat her awkwardly on the back.
“I can’t believe that my own father would do this to me.”
“Yeah. I know, Mom.”
“Fucking rehab? Where does he get off? Might as well spit in my face and call it an inheritance.”
I don’t know what to say to her, not that I ever have. Even as a kid, my mom treated me more like a doll she could drag behind her from place to place than like a real person with needs of my own.
“Maybe getting into treatment wouldn’t be the worse idea.”
She rears back, face pulled into an ugly sneer. Her mood turns on a dime, just like it always does. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Are you serious? There was some random woman asleep in the foyer when I walked in and used needles scattered all over the place. Some dude named The Undertaker literally tried to attack me when I told him to leave. That is a problem.”
“So, what? I can’t even have fun, anymore? Maybe I needed to take my mind off the fact that my father just died.”
I step back from her, just feeling tired. “Papa didn’t leave you the money because he knew what would happen. If you take the offer and go to rehab, maybe we can talk about a fair way to settle things when you come back.”
Her glare intensifies. “A few lines in a will and now you think you’re in charge, huh? You’re just like him — judging me. Like you’re all fancy and I’m just some piece of shit.”
“I’m not judging you.” I fight to keep my voice calm and even. I learned the hard way over the years that going toe-to-toe with my mother just makes everything harder. No matter how satisfying it might feel. “You have a problem. You’re sick. I just want you to get help.”
“Fuck you, Amaranth.”
I love you, too.
“Forget about her, baby.” Mack sidles up to my mom’s side. “She’s always been an ungrateful little brat. We’ll fix all this with the lawyers and shit, don’t you worry.”
“God forbid, you might have to get a new meal ticket.”
I regret the words as soon as they fly out of my mouth. The look that Mack turns on me makes my skin crawl. It’s equal parts lust and cunning. I remember that he’s always been the brains behind my mom’s shit-show.
He licks his lips and I nearly vomit.
“I always get what’s coming to me.”
“I’m going to bed,” I announce, desperate to get away from both of them. “Let’s just sleep on this and talk more in the morning.”
I flee up the stairs as quickly as I can without actually running. Mack’s gaze follows me to the door of my room. The weight of it feels like slime sliding down my back, making my skin crawl.
I shouldn’t underestimate him.
I wake up to rough and sweaty hands on my body. When I try to take a breath to scream, a foul-tasting hand is held over my mouth. It’s too dark to see anything, but I smell the acrid scent of cigarettes and unwashed skin.
I try to fight. One foot kicks out, connecting hard with something soft. I hear a grunt of pain and then I’m pulled bodily from the bed and slammed back down again. My head strikes hard enough against the headboard that I see stars.
“Don’t hurt her!”
My mother’s voice.
The light flicks on and I see Mack leaning over me. The manic look of some kind of stimulant blazes in his eyes. My mother is on the far side of the room by the door, her hand still on the light switch. She looks fidgety and scared. But she still just stands there while her husband wraps his hands around my throat.
“She’s gonna sign the fucking papers if she doesn’t want to get hurt.”
“What the f—” I manage to bite out before he slaps me full across the face, making my cheek
burn and my ears ring.
I hear my mother’s sharp gasp, but she doesn’t try to stop him.
Mack straddles my lower legs, pushing his full weight down so it’s impossible for me to get to loose. His hands have me by the wrists and press my arms into the mattress. I’m completely trapped.
“Bring the papers,” he snaps to my mother.
She hurries across the room with a sheaf of paper clutched in one hand. “Here.”
“You’re going to sign this,” he spits into my face, close enough that I can feel the rancid spray of drops against my skin. “It says that you’re giving all the money to your mother and me.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I ask, wanting to laugh at the absurdity of it all. I would if it wasn’t also so terrifying. “Contracts signed under duress won’t stand up in court. This is pointless.”
His grin is nasty. “But maybe you don’t ever show up in court.”
The blood freezes in my veins. “You would never get away with it.”
“When people ask, we just say that you went back to that fancy school of yours. And nobody ever hears from you again.”
My gaze turns to my mother, entreating. “Don’t let him do this.”
“Just sign the papers, baby.” Her eyes dart over my face, not making eye contact. It’s like she’s talking to the air directly over my head. “Everything will be fine if you just sign.”
I know that nothing they could have downloaded from the internet would be at all legally admissible. And the forced signature definitely won’t be. I’m not concerned about any of that. I am worried about the fact that my mother seems perfectly willing to let her husband kill me over Papa’s money.
Eventually, they’ll figure out this isn’t going to work and come up with something worse.
I have to get the hell out of here.
“I need my glasses,” I say, infusing my voice with as much resignation and defeat as I could muster. “I can’t sign something that I can’t read.”
“Just sign it, little bitch,” Mack growls.
“Let her have her glasses,” my mom says, wringing her hands. “She said she’d sign.”
“I think they fell off the edge of the bed, just let me grab them. Please.”