by Terina Adams
I couldn’t. Not yet, maybe never. Beaten down, Mum no longer asked me to pretend my feelings and instead tried to fill the gap created from the love I’d withdrawn.
“That’s good to hear. You can’t go messing up this year, sweetheart. It’s important. What happens from here will decide your future. And I want to see my girl going places. I want you to have choices.”
He slid his hand across the table but stopped when he almost reached me.
“Thank you for being there for your mother and Ajay. It’s important you all stick together. I’m not there to back you up, so you need to be there for each other.”
I wanted to shut my ears to any kind words, but the lure of his gentle tone sucked me in. I was broken like my world, torn apart by conflicting needs; I wanted my dad back but he needed to know how much he’d destroyed me.
“Of course.”
He smiled. “That’s my girl.”
He swept Ajay into another neck hug and kissed him on the head.
“So you coping financially? I’m doing everything I can from in here to try and lighten things a bit for you. It’s taking time though. I’ve still got contacts willing to help out.”
“No, baby, you shouldn’t. I don’t want you in any more trouble. We’re doing fine. I’ll look for work. Once Sable finishes school, she could also help out with the money.”
“I don’t want my girls working some diner to bring money home for the family. Give me time. I’ll make sure you get enough flowing your way.”
Mum pursed her lips and frowned but said nothing, instead played with his hands, which still rested in hers. She turned one over and ran a finger down the tattoo on his wrist, absentmindedly trailing the swirl like she’d always done.
Dad pinned me with a hard look. I knew what was coming, what always followed a look like that.
“You keeping away from boys?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed.
“Oh, yes, Sable’s not interested in boys. She’s home every day after school and focuses on her homework.”
As if hoping to pluck the truth right from my brain, Dad continued to eyeball me. While staring in his eyes, I realized one thing; I was like him. The magnitude of my lie was nothing compared to his, but a lie all the same. Seventeen years and I’d never thought, never dared to hide anything from him.
“Who would want to be stuck with a girl whose dad’s a criminal?”
He didn’t even flinch at my jibe. Faced with his uncompromising wall of strength, I retreated an inch and sat back in my seat. To shy away from the force that was his will, I glanced around the room to a sea of orange, most with only one visitor. Dad was unique in having three, which made him seem loved. The gum-chewing girl slouched four tables down, still staring at her phone. I glanced across to the guards, sentinels at the door, eyes forever scanning for any misbehavior or rule breakers.
Dad’s movement drew me back to our table, to him sitting opposite me, to his determined stare, then to Ajay and the solemn expression I saw on his face too frequently now.
“I mean it, Sable. Boys will only mess with your future. Keep focused, and know what’s important.”
Hands withdrawn from Mum’s hold, he leaned over the table, reducing the distance between us, and for the first time, I noticed the strained look in his eyes, the tightness in his jaw. Dad had always held an aura of serene dominance. Ajay and I had learned young there was no getting around him, no fighting back because we were bent to his indomitable will. Ruling his family like a benevolent dictator, determined and unrelenting but fair and loving, made it easy to relent. I’d never seen stress mar his handsome face. I guess jail would screw anyone’s equilibrium.
“I want so much for you. I want you to want the world. Don’t get lost in something that will only bring you down.”
I blinked, swallowed my breath, glanced away. The orange prison overalls became a dot pattern to my unfocused eyes. The relevancy of his words to my current predicament dragged a hot spear down through the center of my being. I was too shocked, too afraid to muster the courage needed to match Dad in his death stare, the one he used to force his will on me, perhaps even those within his crime world, the same he also used on his enemies, no doubt.
Too late, Dad. Too late. I was already lost. Jax would drag me into something I couldn’t escape from. I just knew it. He was going to bring me down.
Chapter 7
With hands in pockets, I jiggled up and down on the corner of Lincoln and Forty-Fifth to keep myself warm. I pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time, five to eleven. A bus passed, blowing my hair from my face as it went. Once it was gone, I saw him on the other side of the street, standing by the streetlight with his hands in his pockets, looking at me. How long had he been there? He neither waved nor made any indication that I should join him, just stared, still and quiet. Fine, if he wanted to play like that, I would stay put and make him cross to me. He didn’t move, of course. He stood like a statue, staring at me.
“Stubborn asshole. Fine, it will only end once I go through with this.” I stepped off the curb.
“What’s this all about?” I said once I joined him on his side of the street.
“Anxious to start?”
“Anxious to get away from you.”
He leaned against the pole behind him and folded his arms across his chest. “I like your honesty. In fact, I’ve been surprised by you so far.”
“How could you be? You don’t even know me.”
“But I do. I know more than you think.”
His arrogant confidence reminded me of Dad. It had been something I’d admired in him because, from my innocent point of view as a child, it appeared as if he was in control of everything.
“How about we get over the creepy innuendo and finish this?”
“At some point soon, I’m going to remind you you said that.”
And I’d been so foolish to hope this would be a one-off meeting. “We’d better get on with it then.”
He pushed off from the pole and led me down the street. “It’s only a short walk.”
“To where?”
He had long legs. When he got a pace going, I had to speed to keep up, not to mention this was the busy part of town, and the Saturday shoppers were in an equal hurry to get their bargains. I had to dodge the greedy while he seemed to sail through on a direct path.
“You know the Adolphy Tower?”
“Of course.”
“There’s your answer.”
“We’re heading to an apartment block?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Totally. Do you own an apartment there? I’m not going to your apartment.”
“Nothing so mundane. No, we’re heading for the roof.”
“Now I’m worried.”
“Good. Fear builds anticipation. Sharpens your senses, makes you alive.”
“Great, an adrenaline junkie.” And a drug addict and probably into really bad things.
“That’s for kindergarten. What I do is so much better.”
The Adolphy took up a large portion of the square corner from Forty-Fifth and Mayfair. Home to some of the most exclusive apartments in the city. The rooftop gardens were a well-known feature and popular tourist destination up until four years ago when the wealthy decided they’d had enough of people stomping all over their private garden and put a petition together banning non-apartment owners from stepping foot on the roof. The city mayor was quick to agree since most who owned the apartments effectively ran the city with their big political campaign payments and the like.
He pressed buttons and the door clicked open.
“Can I ask how you got the code?”
“No.”
The inside of the tower was more impressive than the rumors—marble, pillars, polished everything so that you saw your reflection in all the surfaces. Giant pots, bigger than our bathtub, were filled with miniature ecologies of their own, and in the center, a huge mermaid spouted water from her open mouth into
a pool the size of our whole house. I was stalled by all I saw, so Jax left me behind as he hiked it across the open space to the lifts.
Confined inside the lift, a fresh blend of woodlands and citrus spices permeated the air, a pleasant smell if not for the person who wore the cologne. I shut out the distraction and watched the numbers climb rapidly to thirty, pretending to be fixated while casting a surreptitious glance sideways at Jax, who leaned against the wall of the lift, watching me. Caught out. I resumed my number counting, conscious of his eyes on me. The unreadable mask of his face made it impossible to know what went through his mind while he stared at me.
Unable to stand being a deer in the headlights any longer, I found my courage, turned to him, and asked the first thing that came into my head. “They have any meaning?” I nodded to the tattoo on the inside of his left forearm.
“Yes.”
I rolled my eyes. “And that’s it, huh? I don’t get any more. You’re really one for great conversation.” The digital numbers were more interesting.
“It’s my guide when all is lost.”
“Sounds significant.”
Up close, the ink was more than squiggles. The design looked intricate. A good tattoo artist put it there.
He pushed off the wall, ignoring me, and looked at the lift doors. “It could end up being the difference between life or death.”
The doors slid wide to an empty corridor.
I followed him out. “Are you trying to be Zen?”
He looked back at me. “I wouldn’t know how.”
Before he went any farther, I had another question. “And what does that one mean?” I pointed to a tattoo on the inside of the right wrist, one I’d not seen before.
“My enslavement.”
“And the one behind your ear?”
“You have been studying me closely.”
I turned away from his smug smile.
“It’s a symbol of my strength, courage, and loyalty to my family.”
“Wow, you really have some strange symbolism going on with your ink.”
“What’s the point otherwise?”
“I don’t know, pretty pictures. Some people like the idea of using their body as a canvas.”
“I draw for meaning, not pleasure.”
“Whoa. You did those?”
“Only this one.” He trailed a finger along the design snaking its way down his left inner arm. He turned his right wrist over. “I would never have chosen this one.”
Jax headed down the corridor, leaving me to watch him depart. At the end was a door. It was quite possible that, when I passed through the door, I would never be able to turn back. Behind me the lift slid shut with a gentle whoosh. Jax stood with his hand on the door, looking at me, waiting for me to follow.
Something weird was going to happen. I couldn’t put the feeling into words, but goose bumps ran along my back. I lost my traction. This was a terrible idea. Get back in that lift. But I couldn’t. No matter that a sixth sense told me I would soon regret this day, my feet moved, one after the other, and carried me to him. He neither smiled at my acquiescence nor frowned in impatience at how long it took. He waited like he had all the time in the world.
Out in the day, I stopped in my tracks. This was not the rooftop garden I’d expected that had brought all the tourists, no flower beds, edible greens, or topiaries. Instead, looming from one end of the tower to the other was a huge hedgerow at least seven feet high. The magnitude astounded me. Perhaps not for something grown on the ground, but thirty stories in the sky, it was a dazzling feat of horticulture. A plane flew overhead, a mere speck as a backdrop to the giant wall of green.
“They never mentioned this in the tourist brochures.”
“I’m sure the residents think of it as the eighth wonder of the world. Come, I’ve got something more to explode your mind.”
No den of drug dealers up here.
We headed left to the edge of the tower. Up close, the hedge appeared as though the gardener used a ruler to measure the symmetry. Not a leaf or a branch ventured out of place. At the end of the row, which happened to be the edge of the building and a waist-high brick wall, Jax stuck his hand through the leaves, feeling for something. A clunk like a latch drawn and a part of the hedge transformed into a door.
“The surprises just keep coming.”
“We’re only getting started.” He winked at me. The suddenness, coming from him, made me feel like I’d just been slapped. People winked when they were being nice, not threatening. This whole exercise was a threat. There was no innocence or fun in why he brought me here. And the last thing I would believe was a flirting Jax.
I stepped through the living door and was brought up short by a wall of green about a meter in front of me. Left and right, plus towering above, more hedgerow. The only thing not green was the concrete beneath my feet and the gray clouds drifting across the sky, which had the strange effect of washing the color from Jax’s face, and mine too, no doubt, making him look like some nightmarish walking dead.
“What’s this?”
“A maze.”
“You’ve got to be joking. How big is it?”
“As big as the dimensions of the tower.”
“What’s it here for?”
“Fun. I guess the residents get bored playing with all their money and come up here to lose themselves for a while. The roof is made up of slates. Each slate grows a certain number of hedges. These can be slid around like Rubik’s Cubes to create new corridors, which means the maze can be recreated over and over. Ingenious.”
“How often do you come here?”
“Once I found it, a lot in the beginning. Now the novelty has worn off. But I like bringing greenies, like yourself, here.”
“Greenie? Greenie at what?”
He walked backward. “So this is the idea. We’re going to race each other to the middle.”
“You brought me here to play a game of chase?”
“No, but that’s how it starts.”
I should’ve known that wink of his was not because he suddenly wanted to play nice.
“What’s in it for the winner?”
“You agree to follow me.”
“No way. I’ll follow you nowhere.”
I looked for the smirk in his smile and surprised myself in not seeing one, but neither was his smile warm or inviting. Nothing about him was warm or inviting.
“When I’m finished with you, you won’t be able to back away.”
I spun around, looking for the exit. All I saw was green. “How do I get out of here?”
“By playing the game.”
“What if I don’t want to play?”
“There are no choices.”
“This is childish.”
“No, this is the beginning. You have to follow through to the end.”
How stupid was I? A lump welled in my throat, impossible to swallow. I clenched my fists as I stared at his perfect face, imagining the spot where my fist would meet his flesh.
“Once I play your stupid game, I’m out of here.”
There was the smirk. I clenched my fists harder. All it would take was enough courage and conviction to kick him in the nuts, but I still would not find the exit.
“Like I said, Sable, this is the beginning of the game.”
“You’re going to cheat.”
“I’ll give you a hint. If you go that way, you’ll head in the right direction.” He pointed in the opposite direction to where he was going.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t. But you’ll soon find out.”
“That’s not enough. I want a head start as well.”
“I’ll give you two minutes before I move.”
“And I have to trust you on that as well.”
“You have trust issues. That’s good.”
I hard stared him, hating the sight of him. I turned and ran. Maybe this was the wrong way, but by now I didn’t care. He’d probably spent all mo
rning memorizing the maze. Besides, what choice did I have?
I ran down a green corridor, around a hedge, only to find yet more green, another long corridor. Halfway along and I had a choice of two more directions to follow. Nothing looked promising, so I ducked left and kept jogging. The more turns I made, the farther I tunneled into the maze, my problems compounded. Everything that had happened the last two months licked at my heels. I increased my pace, my breath laboring. With each turn, each dead end, I felt like I buried myself deeper and deeper until I could almost feel the dirt and grit running down my throat.
I gasped a sob and staggered to a stop when a rustle came from close by, just the other side of the hedge. The hard sawing of my breath drowned the subtle noise. Did it mean he was a hand’s reach away on the other side of the hedge? I inched over and tried to peer through, but the hedge was too thick for me to see.
Behind me, another crunching of leaves. Was this me wasting time? Or it could be a false lead, taking me away from the center. Cheating would be his primary goal. Lying, cheating, luring me into his twisted reality.
I rounded another corner only to see more green. This was some maze. Why couldn’t I hear him? I had to be making a racket with my boots slapping the concrete while I ran. Perhaps he was already there standing in the middle because he’d cheated.
I got to the end, turned into another corridor that looked exactly the same. Was I going in circles? Hard to tell as I didn’t even know which compass point I headed in. The end of another corridor and more choices, both equally likely.
Dammit. What a stupid game. Everything was the same green and gray. No variation to give me a hint at where I’d been or where I was going. How long had we been at this?
“Jax.” Silence. “I want a clue. I’m going in circles here. I’m sure of it.”
His voice came across the hedge. “If I give you a clue, it means you lose.”
“It’s not fair. You’ve done this before.”