There had been many sleepless nights because of the noise coming from my mother’s room. Either because she was at it with a john or because she was having a drug-induced crying-fit. But now the noise in my head kept me awake.
Fabiano’s blue eyes flashed before my inner eye. Cold and calculating. Attentive and alert. Seldom anything else. Except for when we’d kissed. There had been a warmer emotion in them. Perhaps only desire or lust, but I wanted to think something else as well.
I pressed my palms against my face. Stop it.
I needed to stop seeing something in him. I needed to stop wanting his touch when the same hands did horrible things to others, things I couldn’t even imagine, things I didn’t even want to know.
There was a sick fascination I couldn’t deny nor suppress. The mafia had always been something out of movies, something mysterious to me. I knew this was real life, not a Hollywood movie with a good ending. Mobsters in real life weren’t misunderstood antiheroes. They were the bad guys, the ones you didn’t want to encounter.
Bad. It was such a difficult term. What was bad?
I was trying to sugarcoat this. It was something I had a lot of practice doing. I twisted and turned, then eventually sat up on my mattress and reached for my backpack in the dark.
I shoved my hand in and found the knife. I yanked it out, then pressed the button that made the blade shoot out with a soft click. The steel of the blade gleamed in the dim moonlight streaming in through the dust-covered windows. I’d never used it, not really. I’d pointed it at someone once. The same guy I’d stolen it from. He’d been one of my mother’s johns. The worse kind. The kind that liked to beat and insult women like my mother, the kind that enjoyed making them feel even more like crap than they already did. Who liked to barter over the price after the deed was done and often paid close to nothing. If my mother hadn’t been desperate, she probably wouldn’t have had him more than once, not after he’d barely paid her anything for sucking his disgusting dick and do other disgusting things.
I’d been locked in my room when I heard them argue, and despite my mother’s warnings to keep my room locked at all times when she had clients, the fight had drawn me out.
I’d found his trousers on the couch. And I’d decided to check them for money. Instead I’d found the knife. I’d hidden it behind my back when he and mother had stormed out of her bedroom. Mother had been half naked, and he, too, had only worn socks and underpants.
“You’re not worth thirty bucks.”
“You asshole, I let you come in my mouth without a condom.”
“As if your dirty mouth is worth anything.”
He stopped when he spotted me. A sick grin curled his lips. “For her I’d pay thirty.”
I’d been fifteen back then.
He had taken a step in my direction. My mother’s eyes had darted from me to him. They had been hazy and unfocused. She needed crystal.
I jerked the knife forward, and released the blade.
“That little shit stole my knife,” he snarled.
“Don’t move. Or I’ll stab you.”
I’d wanted to, and I probably would have without remorse, if my mother hadn’t started pummeling him with her fists, shrieking. “Get out! Get out, you sick fuck! Get away from us!”
He had left without his pants, muttering curses, and leaving us with sixty bucks and a knife.
I moved the knife from side to side, considering it in the moonlight. I knew I was capable of using it if need be. I wasn’t as innocent as Fabiano perhaps thought I was. I knew there were people out there who deserved to die. I slid the blade back in, then shoved it under my pillow. Fabiano beckoned to a side of me I didn’t like, a side that had thrived under the harsh years of growing up with a whore as a mother and a gambling addict as a father. Perhaps that was why Fabiano’s closeness scared me.
Perhaps I worried he’d bring out my dark parts. I was my parents’ daughter after all, and they both weren’t good people. I’d always made sure to try twice as hard to be nice, not to suspect the worst in people. I’d learned to smile even when it was hard.
I wasn’t sure where this was going between Fabiano and me. But fighting it was something that cost too much energy and head space, both of which I needed if I wanted to build a new life. If I kept my focus on working and perhaps finding a new job, I’d be gone from Vegas in a couple of months. Fabiano would be a thing of the past then.
Someone banged at my door. I looked around blearily. The sun was low in the sky. The door swung open and Dad stumbled in.
I sat up sleepily. “What’s wrong? What time is it?”
“You need to give me some money. I know you must have gotten money for work this week.”
I had gotten money, but apart from getting us food, I’d set it aside to finally buy another (less expensive) dress. I rubbed my eyes, trying to get rid of the brain fog. “I thought you were working too.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. “They fired me.”
“Before I came here?”
He sighed, then nodded. So he’d lied to me. “Leona, I really need that money.”
“Who is it you’re owing money? The Camorra?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. I could talk to Fabiano—”
“Are you stupid? Only because he’s fucking you, doesn’t mean he’s going to listen to anything you say.”
I snapped my lips shut, suddenly wide awake. Had he really said that?
“Don’t give me that look. People are talking. You’ve been seen riding around in his car. They call you his whore.”
My stomach tightened at the insult. I’d fought so hard to have never put that label on me, and now, away from my mother, in Las Vegas, people actually did call me whore.
“That’s none of your business,” I gritted out, becoming angry. I didn’t want to lash out at him, even if he deserved it for lying to me constantly. “I don’t have money for you.”
“I let you live here, and that’s what I get for it?”
He was drunk. It became more and more obvious. “I pay for our food. I clean the apartment, and you already took money from me.”
Even though he’d hurt me with his insults, I still felt guilty for refusing him.
Without a word, he barged in and grabbed my backpack. He rifled through it, but I’d learned from last time. He made me jump when he grabbed my wrist, dragging me to my feet. “Tell me where it is.”
I smelled tequila on his breath. It had always been his favorite, and my mother’s.
His grip was even harder than last time. Tears burned in my eyes as I ground out, “Let me go. You’re hurting me.”
“Tell. Me. Where. It. Is.” He shook me with every word he said.
Anger, hot and blinding, burned through me. “That’s why mom left you. Because you always lost it and beat her. You haven’t changed a bit. You disgust me.”
He shoved me away, so I fell back on the mattress, before he whirled around. Then I heard another male voice. I stiffened as steps came closer. I quickly got to my feet and pulled my jeans short over my panties. Dad came in, saying, “She’s nice to look at. Have a go at her. That should pay my debt.”
I sucked in a breath. Addiction turned even the kindest people into ruthless criminals, and my father wasn’t even all that kind. Still I’d have never thought he’d do something like that to me. That he was the reason why my mother had sold her body was something I’d suspected all along.
Dad pointed in my direction. A dark haired man with grey streaks came in. He seemed distantly familiar, and one glance at his forearm showed me that he was part of the Camorra. My chest constricted with terror. I squared my shoulders, my eyes darting to my backpack on the ground between them and me. I wished Fabiano was here, and that realization, too, scared me shitless.
The dark eyes of the man scanned my face, then he shook his head. “No can do, Greg. She belongs to Scuderi.”
What? I stopped myself from contradicting him. If being Fabiano’s meant, I was safe from my father selling me off like cattle, then I was gladly his – for the time being.
Dad spluttered, and opened his mouth to argue, but the mobster turned on him and smashed his fist into Dad’s face. Blood shot out of his nose and he dropped to his knees. “Soto,” Dad gasped. But Soto hit him again and again. I jumped over the mattress and grabbed the man’s arm, trying to pull him off my father. Perhaps Dad deserved it, but I couldn’t bear seeing it. I couldn’t stand back and watch him being beaten to death.
Soto pushed me aside, so I stumbled backwards and landed with my butt on the mattress, but he finally let up from Dad. “Two hours,” he told him. “Then I’ll be back.”
“No wait,” I called when he was halfway out the door. Dad was sitting with his head between his knees, blood dripping on the floor from his nose and lip. I went over to the moving boxes stacked up against the wall and reached behind the one on the ground, pulling out my entire money. Two hundred dollars. I handed them to Soto. He counted the money without a word. He gave a nod and just disappeared.
“How much did you owe him?” I asked.
“150,” Dad rasped.
“But he took two hundred.”
“That’s for his trouble to pay me a visit,” Dad said bitterly. He pushed himself to his feet, one bloody palm against the wall. “If you’d given me the money right away, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s your fault.”
He stumbled out of my room, leaving only the bloody imprint of his palm on the grey wall. I sank down on the mattress, drained.
Fabiano
I kicked the sandbag once again. I really needed another fight soon.
Soto strode through the training hall toward me. His expression was a bit too triumphant for my taste. That was never a good thing with the idiot. “Hall offered me his daughter as a way to pay off his debt,” Soto said as he stopped beside me.
“Hall?” I asked, the name was ringing a bell somewhere. He wasn’t someone who owed us big money, or I’d have been sent to take care of him. Not important.
“Leona Hall.”
He didn’t get the chance to say another word. I thrust him against the wall, and dug my elbow into his throat. His head was turning red, then purple, before I let up slightly. “If you touched as much as a hair on her body, I’ll rip you to shreds.”
He coughed, glaring daggers at me. “What the fuck? I didn’t do anything.”
Remo strode in, glancing between me and Soto, still pressed up against the wall. I released Soto, and took a step back. He rubbed his throat. “Next time I won’t tell you shit about that girl of yours.” He reached into his pocket and tossed a heap of bills to the ground. “There. That’s what she gave me.” With a nod toward Remo, he staggered off.
Remo perched on the edge of the boxing ring, elbows on his thighs, dark eyes watchful. “What was that about?”
“Nothing important.”
Remo tilted his head to the side, studying me. I hated when he did that. “I don’t suppose it had something to do with that girl of yours.”
How long had he been listening to the conversation? Damn it.
“I don’t like to share my spoils,” I said angrily.
“Who does?” Remo said. “If she’s getting your blood up like that, perhaps I should have given her a try before I allowed you to claim her for yourself.”
My blood boiled but I kept a placate mask in place. Remo was baiting me. He would never take a woman from me, nor would I from him. That would be the ultimate betrayal.
“You missed a spectacular fight. Savio destroyed his opponent.”
“Good for him. People will stop thinking you favor him because he’s your brother. They’ll see he can handle himself.”
Remo nodded. “You worked a lot with him.”
I was glad he didn’t press the matter with Leona.
We kept discussing the upcoming fights as well as Remo’s plans for an expansion of the illegal races, but my mind kept returning to what Soto had said. I needed to have a word with Leona’s father.
He reminded me of my own bastard of a father, who would have sold me off too if it had meant gaining an advantage. He had as good as sold off my sisters to their husbands after all. Old, long buried anger resurfaced. It caught me off-guard.
After I left the abandoned casino, I went to Leona’s apartment but nobody was home. I hadn’t ever dealt with her father. After questioning a few of my contacts, I found out where he usually spent his day, losing money and drinking himself into a stupor.
It was one of the smaller, and definitely shabbier casinos we owned. The navy blue carpet had faded to a worn off grayish blue in many places, and the cigarette burns and unidentifiable stains just added to the overall image. I let my gaze stray through the long, low-ceilinged room filled with slot machines as well as machines for Black Jack, Poker and Roulette. This place wasn’t profitable enough to invest in actual Roulette or Poker tables. The guys frequenting this casino didn’t have high standards anyway. On the screens in the back, to the left of the bar, Savio’s fight as well as the latest street race was shown. I had to admit that Savio had shaped up nicely. With his sixteen years, he had taken out a much older and more experienced opponent. Arrogant as he was, he didn’t shy away from hard work.
Dick, the casino manager, rushed toward me the moment he noticed me. I hadn’t been here before. This was usually a casino one of the low soldiers handled if there was a problem.
“Mr. Scuderi,” he said with a small tilt of his dead. “What can I do for you?”
That name always reminded me of my father, and being compared to him was the last thing I wanted. My mood dropped further but I kept my anger in check. Dick wasn’t the one I would direct it toward.
“You can tell me where Greg Hall is,” I said.
He didn’t ask why. He pointed to the far right.
Leona’s father was sitting at a black jack machine. He’d only just forced his daughter to pay his debts and he was already gambling away money he’d probably loaned from one of our credit sharks. If I killed him now, I’d do Leona a favor. She probably wouldn’t see it that way.
I tilted my head in acknowledgement, then let him standing there and made my way toward the despicable coward.
I was still a few steps away when Leona’s father spotted me. He dropped the plastic cup with chips and leaped off the stool, then made a beeline for the exit. I gave a sign to the security guard at the door, who body checked Hall. I wouldn’t be running after that fucker. He wasn’t even worth that much effort. Hall tried to get back to his feet but the guard shoved him back down and kept him in place until I arrived at their side.
“I’ll take it from here,” I told him, then grabbed Hall by the collar of his shirt and dragged him outside toward the parking lot, then around the corner to the dumpsters. He was making choked sounds, which I enjoyed very fucking much.
I let go of him and he scrambled back. “I paid!”
“Do you think I’m making my way over to this stink hole because of a few fucking hundred dollars?”
That silenced him. His dull blue eyes were nothing like Leona’s. That someone like him could have fathered someone like her, it didn’t seem possible.
“And your debt isn’t settled. Soto may have accepted your daughter’s money, but I won’t. That money, you’re owing it to me now, and I won’t be very patient with you.”
“But,” he sputtered.
“But?” I snarled, and punched him hard in the stomach. “And how dare you try to sell off something that’s mine?”
Hall’s eyes were saucer-like.
“Your daughter. She belongs to me. So you think you can offer her to other men, yes?”
He shook his head. “It was a misunderstanding. I didn’t know she was yours.”
My lip curled in disgust at his fucking cowardice. I grabbed him and rolled him over, so he was sprawled out on his stomach. Then I lifted his sweaty shirt and pulled my knife from the holder at my leg. He began fighting my hold but I didn’t ease up. I dug the tip of the knife into his skin. Blood welled up. A fucking marvelous sight. He screamed like a little girl as I cut a ‘C’ into his skin. “C stands for coward. Next time I’ll finish the word. Got it?”
He nodded weakly against the asphalt, panting.
I pushed to my feet. He’d peed his fucking pants. Fucking waste of air and space. With a last glance at the disgusting man on the ground, I got into my car. I needed to see Leona.
