by Lily Knight
Surprisingly, she agreed and let me in.
She opened the door and I walked in, and whistled slowly through my teeth as I saw the extent of the damage. Now that I was closer to her, I could see that her eyes were reddened and that she was on the verge of tears, and that her throat was red too, almost as if someone had been choking her.
“What happened in here?” I asked. I wanted to see if she would willingly tell me, because it was pretty damn clear that someone had come in here and done this deliberately.
She looked away, and I could see that she didn't really want to talk. I was about to tell her that it was okay, that she didn't need to tell me, when she turned to me, tears now running down her cheeks.
“There was . . . there was an armed robbery here. The guys came in and pointed guns at me, and when I said I had nothing to give them – because I don't, I really don't – they got real angry and smashed the place up.”
“I see,” I replied, nodding as if I accepted this explanation, but I knew that it wasn't the whole truth. Now the pieces of the puzzle were coming together – this was why I had just seen Tyrese Wilson and his buddy getting into a car just up the street. They must have done this – and one of them must have laid his hands on her. That thought sent cold rage shooting through my veins; if one of them really had put their hands around her throat, I would take off the fingers of that hand one by one – by pulling them off with pliers.
“Are you alright?” I asked. “It must have been a terrifying experience.”
There was a reason I had come here today, and that wasn't to comfort her – but seeing her like this, in this state, softened my heart, and I almost didn't have the heart to bring up the matter I had come to discuss.
“I . . . I don't think I'm heart,” she said. “They hit me-”
“They hit you?! Where?!” I asked, my temper soaring with every passing second. I was getting more than a little mad at these guys. I was gonna cave Tyrese's skull in for this.
“Just in the stomach. It hurt a lot at the time, but it's just aching a little now.”
“Those lowlifes,” I muttered. “We'd better call the cops, tell them about this.”
“No, no, we don't need to do that,” she said hastily. “No cops.”
Now I knew for sure that this hadn't been a simple armed robbery. No. It looked very much like the CM guys were probably trying to squeeze her for protection money. I could easily stop them in their tracks, and send them running with their tails between their legs, all with a simple phone call to my boys, and I was almost inclined to do it right away, seeing the state she was in, but then, before I could act on this impulse, I thought long and hard on why I was here. I had come to tell her about the terms of the agreement I had made with her step-father, Sal. The agreement in which she was collateral against the debt Sal owed us – a debt he was no longer able to pay, not being of this world any more.
So right now, I couldn't get involved in her trouble with the CM gang. No – not until she had heard what I was going to say, and she agreed to it. Only once she had agreed would I help her out, and make the problem with the CM thugs a thing of the past, never to be repeated. Once she had agreed, in fact, I would provide her with anything she wanted, anything at all.
I decided to cut straight to the point – but only after I had helped her to clean up, which I had promised her to do. I helped her clean up the broken glass in silence, making an effort to cover the bulk of the job myself, to give her time to recover from the ordeal she had just been through. Once everything was all cleaned up, there were only two minutes left until opening time. It was now or never; I had to tell her everything about the deal Sal and I had cut.
“Thank you so much,” she said after I had cleaned up the last of the broken glass. “It's comforting to know that there are still good people in this world. I don't know how to repay you, I really don't. A cup of coffee doesn't seem like nearly enough, but I'll go make one up for you quick. And please, help yourself to a donut or two, it's the least I can do.”
“Hold on Bethany,” I said. “I'm not actually here for coffee.”
She looked up at me with those beautiful green eyes, an expression of confusion crossing her face.
“What? What do you mean?”
“You'd better sit down for this,” I said.
We walked over to a table and took a seat.
“I come here to you today as a representative of the Sciotti family,” I said solemnly, “and me, my family, we helped your step-father Sal out a lot.”
“But I've never heard that name before,” she said, sounding very confused. “What did you help him with?”
“Your step-father had some . . . activities in which he was really interested. And he needed cash to finance these activities. We, the Sciotti family, we provide . . . loans to people who, how should I put this, people who banks might not be too keen to lend money to.”
As I was saying this, I saw a look of realization spreading across her face, replacing the look of confusion. She now knew what I was talking about.
“He was gambling, wasn't he?” she asked softly.
“I believe that that may have been one of the things he did with the cash we loaned him, yeah.”
“And you're a mobster. You're no businessman . . . you're a gangster, aren't you?”
“If you want to call me that, then yeah, I guess I am.”
Now her expression was changing again – and anger was starting to crackle like the first sparks of a great forest fire in her eyes.
“And he owed you money, right? And now . . . now you're here to get that money, aren't you?”
I nodded.
“Well I'm sorry, but he didn't leave me any money. He was broke when he died, flat broke. All I have is this diner – that's it. And it's about to go under, unless I really work a miracle and make it profitable again in the next few months. And if it does go down, then I'll have nothing, nothing at all – and I'll be out on the streets, begging. Do you understand?! I have nothing to give you, nothing! I'm sorry that my step-father played you to get money for his gambling addiction, but there's nothing I can do about the money he owed you, nothing, because I don't have any! I have nothing, nada, you got it? Now please, just go. Please just leave me alone and get out. I've had one hell of a day, and we haven't even opened yet, and I sure as hell don't need you making it even worse. Now if you've got even one shred of decency and goodness in you, you'll leave now and never bother me again, alright?”
I was almost tempted to walk out and leave her alone – but I couldn't. I wouldn't. Instead, I simply took the envelope that contained the contract between Sal and my family out of my pocket, and pushed it across the table to her.
“What the hell is this?!” she demanded.
“Read it,” I replied calmly. “Read it very carefully.”
She opened the envelope and pulled out the contract, and as she read through it I could see her eyes widening with shock and her mouth hanging open wider and wider with disbelief.
“What the . . . what the hell?!”
“You can see Sal's signature, right there at the bottom, next to mine,” I said. “I'm sure you're familiar with your step-father's signature, aren't you?”
“You . . . you . . . he . . . I . . .” she stammered, seeming almost unable to comprehend the words on the paper in front of her.
“You understand what this contract says, don't you?” I asked.
“You're . . . you're insane, you're fucking insane!” she screamed. “I'm a human being, not a fucking car or a piece of property! This is the twenty-first century, not the seventeenth! This is . . . this is slavery you're trying to talk about here! You can't buy and trade me like some fucking thing! I'm a human being, a free person with rights! You're insane, you're crazy! You and that deadbeat step-father of mine! Get the hell out of here! Get out, right now, and don't ever, ever come back here!”
“The contract states quite clearly that you're mine now, Bethany,” I responded, my tone
calm and measured. “It's right there in front of you, in writing.”
“The contract?! The damn contract?! This is what I think of your stupid contract!”
She jumped up, grabbed the contract and ripped it in half, and then crumpled it into a ball and threw it as hard as she could at my face.
“That's what I think of this, this farce!” she spat. “Now get out, get the hell out of here and never come back!”
I stood up, remaining calm despite the rage she had flown into. I took a business card for my fitness center out of my pocket and slid it across the table toward her.
“I know it will take some time to accept this, but you'll simply have to accept it,” I said calmly. “And when you come to your senses, you can find me here, at my fitness center, and then we can talk in a more civilized manner about all of this. Oh, and I know that this wasn't no armed robbery, by the way. I know that the CM boys are after you. And if you want them off your back forever, I can make it happen. Come to my fitness center when you're ready and talk to me. We can make this whole thing work out quite nicely for both of us.”
“Get out!” she screamed, and she picked up my business card and ripped it up too. “Get the hell out, now!”
I nodded to her, remaining calm despite everything, and smiled.
“Farewell Bethany,” I said as I turned around and walked out. “I expect I'll be hearing from you soon. Very soon.”
“You won't!” she yelled out after me. “You won't!”
I knew I would though – I just knew it, and as I walked off, I smiled to myself. I would be seeing her again soon. Very soon.
CHAPTER 4
Bethany
I watched Benito leave, and as I stared at his broad, muscular back, my hands shook with rage. How did he have the nerve to come and do what he had just did? How did anyone have that kind of nerve?! I was in a state of sheer shock, confusion and disbelief – and anger. A lot of anger. Most of it was directed not at Benito, but at my late step-father, Sal. I had never liked him, even though my late mother had been crazy about him. I think they had had some sort of weird intense love-hate thing going on; they would have the biggest fights, which were really traumatizing to watch actually, but then after the initial screaming bouts, which not only involved hurling of insults but also hurling of plates and mugs and other heavy objects, they wouldn't speak to each other for a few days – and then they'd make up, and my mother would just forgive Sal for whatever transgression it was that he had done, and they'd be a couple of love birds again.
Sal had been a great manipulator; he may not have been very good at many other things, but in terms of playing people, of subtly twisting their arms to get what he needed from them, he was a master artist. His tricks hadn't worked on me though; even as a teenager I'd been able to see right through his fake facade, as if it had been made of glass. But I'd always had that ability – the ability to see people's true characters, and judge them for who they really were rather than who they pretended to be. And that was something that I had found confusing about Benito; like I said, I'd always been able to tell a person's true character pretty accurately, despite whatever airs and pretensions they put on. And Benito, well, despite the fact that he was a mobster, and had come here with this utterly outrageous proposal – my sixth sense or whatever it was that allowed me to see through people's facades was telling me that underneath it all, beneath this tough, serious gangster persona, there was a good person in there, as weird as that seemed.
But anyway, back to Sal – now there was a real piece of work. Like I said, he was a master manipulator, and when he had met my mother he had seen a walking wallet. It sounds mean and judgmental, I know, but it was the reality of the situation. He had met her six months after my real father had passed away. He had been a heavy smoker and had contracted lung cancer, and had died a long, protracted and agonizing death, one which had been as painful for us to bear witness to and live through as it had been for him. Needless to say, she and I were both devastated, and she was stuck in a funk for a very long time afterward. I was too, but I at least had my friends at high school to comfort me and give me the mental and social and emotional support I needed to get through that terrible time. My mother had me – and nobody else. She was an only child, and both of her parents had died before I was born, and because of her busy schedule running the diner for so long, she hadn't really had much chance to make any real friends for years. My father had been her rock, her everything, and when he had passed, her world crumbled around her.
She had thrown herself into her work, and had made the diner more profitable than ever – but it hadn't been enough. She had also started eating almost obsessively, and had put on a lot of weight.
Part of me blamed myself for what happened. Not with my father, I mean. He had been a lovely, kind man, and I missed him terribly, but he had been a slave to those cigarettes. Two packs most days; that's how much of a hold they had had on him. No, I blamed myself for Sal. If I hadn't spent so much time with my friends at that time, maybe my mother wouldn't have been so depressed and lonely. And if she hadn't been so depressed and lonely, she wouldn't have fallen so easily and so hard for Sal's fake charm.
He had come into our restaurant just before closing time, asking if we had any stale donuts or sandwiches that we were gonna throw out that he could have at half price or for free. At the time, he'd been a traveling insurance salesman – the latest in a long line of short-lived failures in terms of jobs – but the shoddy, cut-rate insurance he was trying to peddle was so worthless that not even he, with all his abilities to charm and manipulate people, could convince any suckers to buy it. He had laid on the charm thick from the outset with my mother – he had just wanted to try scam some free food off us with his sob story, but as he talked to my mother he soon figured out that he could get a lot more than just a free meal out of her. They ended up talking until well after closing time, and cleaning up and counting the day's profits had been left to me, despite the fact that I had a big test the next day at school. Sal had been a good-looking guy, and he knew how to use his looks on vulnerable women, and my mom, with the weight she had put on, the streaks of gray she had developed in her hair from stress, and the permanent lines of sadness etched onto her face after my father's death, had not had any attention from a man for a long time.
Sal ended up persuading her to let him stay on our sofa for one night, just while he “had a relative back in Baltimore”, where he said he was from, “wire him some money to pay for a hotel”. Apparently, he had been mugged earlier that day, and all his cash and cards had been taken. I say “apparently” because I didn't believe a word of that story.
That one night on our sofa turned into two weeks, and after two weeks he and my mother were holding hands and giggling like a pair of teenagers, and soon after that they were sharing her bed. They got married a mere six months after he had first walked into our diner, and with more of his skillful manipulating, he soon legally owned half of it.
And then, as soon as all the papers were signed and half of that diner was in his name, that's when he started to reveal his true nature. He would start staying out late and coming home blind drunk in the early hours of the morning – or not even coming back at all, and simply showing up hungover and disheveled sometime the following day. On one occasion, he disappeared without a trace for a whole two weeks, and then just sauntered in at the end of it as if nothing had happened – after my mother had worried herself to the point of filing a missing person’s report with the cops and almost having a stroke.
I would notice money missing from the cash register – increasingly substantial amounts. He would deny it of course, and my mother, more often than not, would simply believe him, and blame me for being “dishonest” and “trying to drive a rift between them”. It had been painful for me to watch, and to experience, watching him sink his manipulative claws so deeply into her, and to not be able to do anything about it.
I knew that he was gambling, too. One more than
one occasion, when I had to wash his clothes – yes, I had to do that too – I would find casino chips in his pockets. There weren't any casinos nearby, so I had no idea where he was going to do this gambling, but I suspected that it may well be some sort of illegal underground operation. I had always suspected that Sal was connected with some pretty shady characters. Once, maybe two years ago, I found a briefcase full of cash hidden in his closet – yeah, I snooped around in his closet sometimes, but only to try to protect my mother – and there was about forty thousand dollars in it. I never said anything about it to anyone though, as I was too scared, because I knew, I just knew that it had to have come from someone shady and very possibly someone dangerous.
And now I knew – that briefcase full of cash I had discovered had to have been the money loaned to him by the Sciotti family. And what would I have done at the time had I realized that I had been the collateral with the loan had been secured from them!
I still couldn't believe it. As I had said to Benito, this was the twenty-first century! People were no longer objects who could be bought and traded! Who the hell did he think he was? And for that matter, who the hell had Sal thought he was, that he could use me as a bargaining chip to get cash from these gangsters?! It was beyond outrageous. Sal had done a lot of awful things to my mother and me from that first moment he had strolled into our diner with that fake sad-sack look on his face, but this, selling me like a damn slave, this was by far the worst.