My father’s office is located in a more secluded part of the building, away from the noise and commotion of the main floor. He has his own private reception to help filter the people who want access to him.
When I get there, his assistant, Eileen, isn’t at her desk. I check my watch and see it’s just past twelve thirty.
Lunchtime. That explains her absence.
My father and I don’t have the type of relationship where I can just walk into his office without an appointment. In fact, I’d say we don’t have a relationship at all and this recent marriage announcement has soured what little there was.
He won’t appreciate me stalking in without warning but I don’t appreciate him trying to sell me off to his golf buddies so we’ll call it even.
I straighten, draw my shoulders back, and march purposefully towards his office door. It’s open, which is bizarre. He hates being interrupted as much as he hates hearing women speak, and that’s saying something.
In the two years I’ve worked here, I’ve never seen this door open while he’s been in his office. But I hear a voice, so I know he’s in residence.
In fact, I hear multiple voices.
Instinct and intuition warn me to turn on my heels and walk the other way, but my curiosity urges me to move closer, to see what’s happening.
A pained howl filters through the door. I know I should run, but maybe I’m not as smart as I think I am, because I inch closer instead.
I take my shoes off and pad quietly towards the door. Each office is outfitted with technology that turns the windows opaque on command when privacy is needed. Thankfully, my father has that setting turned on right now. With my back pressed against the windows, I slide to the side until I reach the open door. Pained groans filter through. Even though I’ve never heard him make those sounds before, I recognize them as my father’s. What the hell is going on in there?
My heart is pounding so hard I’m afraid it’s going to break free of my chest. Worse, I’m afraid whoever is in there with my father will hear it. It’s an impossible thought but my heartbeat is echoing so loudly in my ears it seems even more improbable that they not be able to hear it.
I flip onto my stomach and push myself all the way to the edge of the door. When I reach it, I look around the lip of the frame and get my first look at the scene.
My father is on his knees, head bowed, bleeding profusely from various cuts on his face. A man stands in front of him, tall and well-built, brass knuckles strapped on his fingers.
Horror locks my muscle in place, my fight or flight instinct telling me to freeze instead of run. I’m powerless to move and for some reason, I can’t look away.
Another man stands off to the side, one arm resting on his belly, the elbow of the other propped on it as his face rests in his hand. He’s older and looks on at the gory scene impassively.
My gaze is forced back to my father when Younger Guy grabs him by the hair and yanks his head back.
“It’s not a hard question, huevón,” he growls. “Where the fuck is our money?”
“I told you, I-I don’t have it.”
Dissatisfied with the answer, Younger Guy jerks his knee upwards. It smashes into my father’s face. Blood explodes from his nose and splatters across all the nearby surfaces.
“I find that hard to believe,” Paunchy Guy says, stepping closer. “This entire building, a townhouse in Kensington, a mansion in the countryside, three houses in Greece, Italy, and France, a villa in Bali and you can’t repay a little twenty million pound debt?”
My eyes bulge at the sum. What has my father gotten himself into to owe these people, whoever they are, that kind of money?
My mouth parts on a silent scream when the brass–knuckled hand comes down once more on my father’s face. Blood spurts from his mouth and lands on the white minimalist painting hanging on the wall. I’m shaking, my knees weak, fear threatening to make my bladder give in.
Meanwhile, the two men are talking with ease, like this is a routine Wednesday afternoon. That only serves to push the terror deeper into my marrow, like wind slithering through my winter jacket and chilling me to your bones on a glacially cold day.
“I-I swear! I don’t have it, but I can get it. I promise,” my father pleads. “I just need time!”
I’ve never heard my dad stutter, let alone beg, and he’s done just that twice in the last minute.
Blood thumps so loudly in my ears, I miss what Younger Guy says in response. I only hear the crack of the brass knuckles against bone and then my father is on the floor.
I don’t know what to do. What if they kill him?
Patting my skirt and blazer with trembling hands, I search for my phone. My heart drops into my stomach when I realize I left it on my desk. I didn’t even bring it down to Wiz’s with me.
“Stop.”
I freeze.
Dread unlike anything I’ve ever known slides down my body, starting from the top of my head and moving down, spreading an arctic chill through me.
I think I’m about to die, that I’ve been discovered.
Tears sting my eyes at the thought. I can’t die before I’ve gotten to do anything.
I can’t die before I’ve even lived.
But I realize two things simultaneously. First, the order wasn’t directed at me, but at the two men. Both of them step back in deference when the single syllable is uttered.
And second, there’s a third stranger in the office, one I hadn’t noticed because he was sitting in a chair in the corner of the office along the wall of windows.
It’s only because I hear him stand, followed by the sound of his footsteps getting closer to my father that I know he’s there.
I jerk away from the door and flip onto my back, my chest heaving as I try to fight the hysteria crawling through me. I attempt to calm my racing heartbeat because my breaths are getting louder, more distressed, and those I’m sure they could actually overhear.
“Alex,” I hear the man say, his voice nothing more than a whispered threat. It sends a shiver through me. No one calls my father “Alex”. He hates it. He finds it disrespectful. “Didn’t your mother teach you not to take money from people who’ll kill you for not repaying it?”
There’s a dark edge to his tone that quietly emphasizes just how serious he is. This man, whoever he is, will kill my father if he doesn’t pay him back.
With my heart in my throat, I turn back around and look through the doorway once more, hoping to get a glance at the stranger. Paunchy Guy is standing closer to the door and in front of him, almost completely obscuring my vision of him. All I can see is a black suit and his left hand holding a lowball glass at chest level. He helped himself to my father’s private whiskey collection.
There’s a tattoo running down his hand. It starts from the top of his index finger and goes to his thumb. There’s a chain linking from the midway point of the tattoo down to his wrist. I realize with a scared shudder that it’s an open metal collar.
If he were to wrap those long fingers around someone’s throat, the tattoo would close around their neck, making it look like he collared them.
My lower belly flips, the feeling unexpected. It’s almost like… anticipation. Not fear.
“I didn’t steal! I was… am going to pay it back. I’m short on cash right now, a couple of bad investments, you understand.” Even to my own ears, he sounds pathetic. He’s no longer the looming tower of terror.
Part of me enjoys seeing him abased in this way.
But it’s the first I’m hearing of him having money troubles. I’m in charge of the company’s books and we’re obviously doing well, but I have no visibility into his personal finances.
“You gambled and you lost Alex,” the man says, his voice fearsome even though he never raises it above a conversational volume. “And now you need to pay.”
My father flinches and looks away.
I blink and the man is gone. His speed is unnerving, the way he was able to move across the room in a split-second downright frightening. The other two move deferentially around him, making it obvious that he’s the boss of whatever enterprise they’re a part of. I wonder if my father realized what he was getting himself into when he took their money.
His money.
He’s standing in front of him now, his back square to me. He’s poised with his legs apart, his posture relaxed, his left hand bringing the glass to his lips, his right buried in the pocket of his trousers.
His suit is fitted. Designer. Expensive. Not what I expected. Not a thug.
Even from the back, he screams power. It exudes from his frame, falling off him in almost suffocating waves, making him seem larger than he is.
And he’s big. Six foot four at least, with broad shoulders. Slopping, strong arms that bulge against the trappings of his suit. The only visible skin I can see is that of his hand and his neck, and every inch of it is tattooed. Two wings emerge from the collar of his dress shirt and spread out on either side of his nape. His black hair is short at the back and on the sides, and longer on top. More tattoos crawl up the back of his head, disappearing under his hair – roses, a crown, a massive skull, and words I can’t make out from this angle, stamped along the side.
Sick fascination – there’s no other way to describe what I’m feeling – momentarily stuns me.
I’ve never met someone who looks like him.
He nods at Paunchy Guy who steps forward and grabs a chair, placing it next to my father.
“What are you doing?”
He starts thrashing when the same man grabs him by the shoulder and lunges for his arm.
“No! No, what are you doing! Let me go!” A blood curdling scream rips from his lips. Younger Guy grabs a couple sheets of paper from his desk, bunches them and shoves them down his throat, effectively silencing him.
Paunchy Guy punches my father in the face. Disoriented, he stops fighting for a moment. Paunchy Guy takes advantage of that mistake to grab his arm and pin it on the chair.
“Push his sleeve up.”
When Younger Guy pulls a long, thin machete from under his suit my father screams once more, although the sound comes out garbled around the paper. He flails about, trying to get away, but there’s no give.
Younger Guy approaches him with the machete. It glints sickeningly in the light and I feel my stomach threaten to turn.
I slap a palm over my mouth to stifle my scream.
“Please, I’ll pay,” my father begs. A sour smell hits my nostrils, followed quickly by the awful realization that fear made him relieve himself.
Younger Guy laughs cruelly. “He pissed himself, the disgusting fucker. Are you afraid, cabrón?”
“I need you to pay that money back, Alex, so unfortunately I can’t kill you,” the boss says, ignoring his man. “Doesn’t mean I can’t start cutting little chunks off you, piece by piece, until you’ve paid me back in full.”
Another nod and Younger Guy places the machete on the area where my father’s arm meets his shoulder. He’s outright sobbing now, a sight I’ve never seen before.
I have no idea what to do. I can’t interfere, I can’t watch.
I can’t look away.
Both my hands are pressed against my mouth to keep the screams that demand to be set free from bursting past my lips.
Younger Guy raises his machete.
My eyes flutter shut.
“On second thought.”
They fly back open at the words. The machete is down against Younger Guy’s side. The boss leans forward and pats my father’s cheek twice, hard, the gesture humiliating in its disdain.
“The only person I’d be punishing by cutting your arm off is the cleaning lady who’d have to scrub your blood off the floor. As it is, she’s already going to have to clean your piss out of the carpet.”
“Thank you,” my father mumbles.
The boss straightens and laughs. His entire frame shakes, the honeyed sound thick with obvious amusement.
He steps up to him, raises his leg and brings his heel violently down on the joint at my father’s shoulder. There’s a nauseating crack and then his arm bends behind him at an unnatural angle.
My father’s agonized howl tears through the silence.
My stomach turns. I think I’m going to be sick.
Paunchy Guy shoves my father halfway forward until his elbow hangs off the chair. The boss repeats the motion.
A second crack, a second howl.
“You’re welcome.”
Even if I can’t see it, I can hear the sadistic smile in his words.
I stumble backwards, away from the wall.
“You have thirty days, Alex. Twenty million quid plus an interest payment of my choosing for your tardiness and to pay me back for the mercy I’ve shown you today. If I have to come back here, I’ll slice you into a hundred pieces and scatter them around this office you love so much.”
Fresh panic seizes me when I realize the confrontation is coming to an end. If they come out now, they’ll find me.
I look around frantically, my eyes stopping on Eileen’s desk. I dart across the reception area and duck under her work station just in time.
Moments later, I hear footsteps walk past her desk and down the hallway. Their steps sound composed, unhurried. They don’t seem scared in the least to be apprehended for what they just did.
And that scares me almost more than anything.
I stay under that desk for long minutes, searching for composure. I’m shaking like a leaf, my body struggling to calm down after the extended bout of fear and trauma.
I’m in complete disbelief at what I just witnessed. This isn’t our life. Criminality, violence, torture. Those aren’t words I ever thought I’d have to use, let alone witness.
When my legs stop shaking long enough for me to stand, I crawl out from under the desk and get to my feet.
I smother the small part of me that wishes I’d seen his face. I’d probably be a dead woman walking if I had. Whoever that man was, I hope I never see him again.
He’s a monster.
But maybe I’m no better than him in the end, because I don’t go and help my father.
I don’t stop to consider it, I don’t even look back at his office.
I put my pink stilettos back on and walk away.
