by B. B. Hamel
He was a monster. A gorgeous, enormous monster. Even with the broken nose and the scratched-up face, I felt attracted to him. Attracted and repulsed and disgusted with myself. He was an animal, a brute, a maniac. And I still thought the suit he wore clung to his body like a glove, and the way he carried himself with perfect confidence made me want to throw myself at his feet and let him have his way with me.
I thought I might throw up.
“Are you done?” he asked.
I nodded.
“No more poles?”
“No more.”
“Knives? Sharp fucking things?”
“Nothing.”
“Should’ve tried to stab me.” He released my throat and stepped back. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at his nose.
Then gripped it with both hands and straightened it out with an audible snap.
I had to turn away. I wretched but nothing came out.
He grunted and took a deep breath.
“Better,” he said. “You nearly got me.”
I steadied myself with a hand against the wall. “You’re insane.”
“And you’re god damned stupid.” He stepped up behind me and grabbed my hair, pulling me away from the wall. “Don’t you understand what I’m trying to do here yet?”
“Get off me.”
He let me go. I stumbled and steadied myself on table.
“I’m trying to give you a chance. You think anyone else in my crew would think twice about killing you? After this, you’d be more than dead, little diamond. You’d be wishing you were dead. But you can’t see that, can you?”
“Oh, yeah, you’re a saint for using me to sell your drugs and launder your money. What a fucking great guy.”
He laughed, deep and honest.
“I don’t need you to like it, but I need you to accept it.”
I stared at his handsome face and said nothing.
He sighed and dabbed at the cuts with his handkerchief. It came away bloody. He dabbed it again then tossed it onto a table.
“Maybe I’ve taken the wrong tact with you.” He leaned against the door and looked tired. “Maybe you need more incentive.”
“What the hell could you offer me?”
He smiled. It looked deadly and terrifying. “I could offer you a lot. What do you want? Money? Power? I could give you that, if you wanted it.”
“You don’t have enough money to buy me.”
“Oh, don’t be so sure.” He tilted his head. “How about this. I’ll cut you into the sales. I’ll give you ten percent of the profits.”
“Ten percent?” I snorted. “No, thanks.”
“Ten percent of around twenty million dollars.”
That got my attention. I stared at him. “Two… million?”
“Around there. Might be more, might be less.” He made a vague gesture with his hands. “Depends on how many pills we have. I don’t have good numbers just yet. My men aren’t great at counting, believe it or not.”
“Two million.” I almost laughed. “You’re seriously going to give me two million?”
“I promise you on my life. Ten percent of the profits will go in your pockets. Two million is the potential, if you work hard and sell it all.”
“Fuck.” I turned away from him and stalked across the room. “You’re crazy.”
“And now you’re tempted.” He laughed, soft and low. “I knew you would be. It’s a good offer.”
“It’s dirty money. It’s drug money.” I turned back to face him. “I just tried to kill you.”
He shrugged. “You failed. It was a good try though.”
“Two million.” I looked down at the floor. I could do so much with that kind of money. I could start over somewhere and take care of my mother the way she deserved. She could quit her part time job at the diner and never work another day in her life. She could do whatever she wanted, and I’d have enough money left over to build another business.
“But here’s the deal. If you so much as lift a finger to mess with all of this again, it’s over. I gave you two chances just now. Two chances to try and kill me, and you failed both times. You didn’t go far enough, little diamond.” He pointed at the online orders boxes. “There are scissors in there sharp enough to sink deep into my throat. You might’ve gotten me, if you tried.”
I refused to take the bait. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
“Because I have no reason to. I could keep blackmailing you into working for me. I’d rather you did it for the right reasons, though, and perhaps money is enough. Life-changing money.” He stepped toward me, eyes narrowed and intense. “But I won’t give you a third chance. You make things hard on me on more time, and this is finished. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” I felt a trickle of rage, like the dying embers of a fire. Maybe, if I wanted, I could ignite it again and burn at him.
But I didn’t think I had it in me.
No, the fire was cooling, dying.
Replaced by something else.
Desire. Greed.
Two million dollars… and him.
“What do you say, little diamond?” He walked toward me. Blood trickled from his nose but his eyes were bright and gorgeous and almost manic. “What od you say? Be my partner. We’ll make you rich.”
“I don’t know.”
He stopped just in front of me. I breathed deep picturing his hand around my throat. He reached out and I managed not to flinch away as he touched my cheek with his palm.
“I can give you so much.”
“I don’t… I don’t know.” I kept looking into his eyes. “How can I come back from there?”
“There’s no coming back. But it’s better on the other side.”
I chewed my lip. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll be your partner.”
“Good.” He leaned closer. I felt his breath on my skin. I nearly screamed, but I couldn’t tell if I wanted to scream from fear or need. “We’re going to have so much fun together.”
He pulled back and took my hand. I let him lead me away from the back. I stared at my shop and saw something else in the tile floor, in the neat rows of t-shirt designs, in the retro washing machine counter.
I saw my doom. I saw my downfall.
But when I looked back at Owain, I saw my future, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it.
5
Owain
I grimaced as Dr. Chen reset my nose. It hurt like hell and made my eyes water. He adjusted it slightly then nodded to himself.
“You’ll have some bruising, but it’s not too bad.” He took off his rubber gloves. “How’d you do it this time? Get into another fight?”
“Something like that.”
Dr. Chen shook his head and ran a hand through his graying hair. He looked more and more tired every time I saw him, but really he was probably tired of my shit. He sat on the coffee table in my living room and had his bag open beside him.
“You won’t need any more bandaging. Just be careful for a few weeks.”
“How about swelling and bruising?”
“Should be pretty minor. Like I said, you were lucky. Broke in the same spot you broke it a couple months ago.”
“Guess I need to stop pissing people off.”
That almost got a smile from him. Almost, not quite.
He cleaned up his medical gear and stood. His shirtsleeves were rolled above his elbow and he wore slim dark trousers.
“I’ll take a check,” he said.
I laughed, got up, and found my checkbook. “Not a lot of gangsters put cash in the bank, doc.”
“I know. But you do.”
“Guess I’m old fashioned like that.”
“Guess so.”
I wrote the check and handed it over. He slipped it into his back pocket.
“It was a pleasure.”
“I’m sure.” He walked to the door. “You know my number. Call if you need me again.”
&
nbsp; He left and shut the door behind him.
I stood alone in my living room and breathed in through my nose. It felt a little stuffy from the swelling, but all in all, the doc was right, it wasn’t so bad.
Clean break. Nice and neat.
I smiled to myself. I didn’t think Leigh had it in her. She was right to try and kill me, that really was the only way out of this mess, at least other than working for me. All her other options must’ve seemed pretty fucking bad for her to actually try it.
But she only went half way. I keep thinking of those long, orange-handled scissors and their sharp blades. There were probably a bunch of other weapons in that plate that would’ve worked better than a shelving unit rod.
Maybe, deep down, she liked me.
Or maybe she didn’t know how to properly kill a man.
I cooked dinner and set it down on a tray. I carried it upstairs to her room, unbolted the door, and knocked twice.
“Come in.”
I opened the door. She was sitting in bed, knees drawn to her chest. “This a bad time?”
She gave me a look. “How’s the nose?”
“It’s better.” I scrunched it up. “Doc fixed me.”
“You look good.”
“I bet I do.” I walked over and place the tray down at the foot of the bed. “Chicken breast pounded flat, breaded, and baked, steamed broccoli, and some roasted potatoes. Not fancy, but good enough.”
“Do all mafia guys cook?”
“Pretty much, yeah, they do.”
She almost cracked a smile. I liked it when she was withholding, as fucked up as that was.
“So how’s this going to work? Are you going to keep me locked up in this room all the time?”
“I thought we’d talk about that, actually.”
She came closer and pulled the tray toward her. I saw hunger in her eyes, but she hesitated for a second, then dug in. She probably figured it wouldn’t make any sense for me to poison her, and that was right. I needed her too much to hurt her, and anyway, I wasn’t the poison type.
When I killed someone, I did it with my hands.
“Well?” she asked.
I smiled as she took a few more bites of chicken and seemed to actually enjoy herself.
“We should establish ground rules. I don’t want to leave you locked up in your room all the time, but I also need to be able to trust you.”
“Okay. I understand that.”
“First rule is, you never leave the house without my permission. You don’t step foot outside, you don’t even think about the outside world. From now on, I’m the gatekeeper.”
“Fine.” She ate some broccoli. “What else?”
“No phones. No internet. No email.”
“Seriously? How am I supposed to live without that stuff?”
“You’ll survive.”
“What about my friends? My family?”
“Call your mother and tell her you’re going out of town for a while.”
“And friends?”
“Post it on Facebook if you have to.”
She waved her fork at me. “They come into the shop sometimes.”
“Then think up a better lie.”
She let out a breath and kept eating. “Alright, fine. No communication with the outside world. No leaving the house. What else, warden?”
“I prefer boss, but I’ll accept warden.”
She finished eating and put her fork down. It took her less than five minutes to shovel it in and I realized she must’ve been starving.
“How long do you think this can last before someone comes looking for me?”
“As long as it has to.”
She shook her head. “You haven’t thought it all through, have you?”
“Don’t worry about that.” I moved closer to her. “Last rule is, you do as I say. If you do your job, keep your head down, and don’t make trouble, you’ll walk away from this with a lot of money. But if you make trouble, you’ll get trouble. Do you understand?”
“Sure, I understand. I make your life hard, you make my life hard.”
“Exactly. It’s a give and take. We’re in a partnership, see?”
“Less like a partnership and more like a dictatorship.”
I laughed and stood. “I like that. I can be your dictator and you’re my little subject.”
She crossed her arms. “Are you going to let me leave the room now?”
“If you want to.”
We stood in silence. I watched her closely. I wanted to see how she’d react, and I smiled when she finally looked away.
“I’ll stay in here.”
“Your choice. I’ll be downstairs if you want to come join me.”
Her face contorted into something confusing and angry. I repressed a smile and drifted over to the door.
“Wait,” she said. “Can I get… a TV for in here?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. What a simple, absurd request, but I wanted her to feel like she was at home.
I needed to make her feel comfortable and happy. The happier she was, the less likely she’d be to do something stupid and frustrating.
“If you want a TV, I’ll get you one.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
“But one more thing. Some of my guys are going to start working at the shop. They’ll show up when I send them. Don’t expect them to do anything to help the business, and they will need free run of the back.”
Anger flashed over her face. “So I’m just supposed to let your goons do whatever they want in my store?”
“More or less. Unless you want to be the one who handles shipping and storing the pills?”
She glared at me and crossed her arms. “I guess not.”
“Then my guys will show up and you won’t get in their way.”
I could tell she wanted to argue. The idea of letting strangers into her shop and giving them the freedom to do whatever they wanted probably felt like dying to her. She had an independent streak that I admired, but needed to be tamped down if this was going to work.
“Fine. Whatever you want. This is your show.” She inched closer and nudged at the tray with her toe. “Can I ask you something?”
I leaned against the doorframe and gestured. “Go ahead.”
“Who do you work for?”
“What makes you think I work for someone?”
She shrugged. “Everyone works for someone.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s a good point.”
“So who’s your boss?”
“His name is Hedeon.”
“Hedeon,” she repeated. “That’s a strange name.”
“It’s Russian. He’s the head of our crew. I suppose we’re a family now, actually.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I spread my head. “It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
I considered that for a moment, trying to decide how much she needed to know. Truth was, she could go through this without ever hearing about the details of Hedeon and the crew, but I couldn’t see the harm in telling her.
“We used to be a small and distributed outfit. We worked in individual cells. But about a year ago, we took over a major Russian mafia family called the Volkovs and won a lot of territory. Since then I’ve been operating my own little crew under the umbrella of the family. We pay them tribute and take orders from the top, but I mostly have freedom to do whatever I want.”
“So your boss doesn’t like to micromanage.”
“As long as the tribute payments flow and there aren’t any problems, Hedeon lets us all do what we want. He had his own plans to pursue.”
“Interesting.” She chewed on that for a moment. “Will I ever meet the others? I assume there are other groups like yours.”
“There are, and probably not. If you do, I think you should assume that shit’s gone very wrong.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, I think I understand how this works now.”
“Try and get some sleep, little diamond. Works starts in the morning.”
She looked away from me and didn’t answer.
I lingered there and felt a strange desire to walk back over to the bed and take her hair in my fist. I wanted to pull it hard and make her understand that my boss didn’t matter, that as far as she was concerned, I was the only man in this world worth a damn. If she wanted to survive this, if she wanted to flourish, I was the one she needed to worry about.
But that was just insecurity. And I wasn’t the kind of man to give in to that sort of impulse.
I left and show the door behind me.
I didn’t bother locking the bolt. It was time to start trusting her. Baby steps at first, but if she proved herself, maybe I’d allow more freedoms.
I hoped she learned how to behave.
But until then, I’d make sure to lock my bedroom door at night.
6
Leigh
The next week was a blur.
Leigh drifted from Owain’s house to her shop and back to the house again. She barely left the room, and when she did she made sure that Owain wouldn’t be around. He was home constantly for the first few days, but then he started disappearing for hours at a time without a word.
She was tempted to push her boundaries. The firs time she realized she was home alone, she wanted to jump on the internet and start posting on Facebook.
But she quickly realized how stupid that would be.
Spending a few hours on social media wasn’t worth the risk to her mother’s safety. And the more time she spent with Owain, the more she was positive that he meant exactly what he said.
There as almost no guile to him. He was straightforward and honest. When he said he thought something, he really meant it. When he said he was going to do something, he always followed through.
Most nights, he cooked her dinner. And most nights it was really good.
Work dragged. The guys he promised would show up eventually appeared on the third afternoon. They carried in big cardboard boxes and stacked them in the back. She recognized one of the guys, a man named Rolan, but she didn’t talk to him and they didn’t bother her.
It was strange how quickly it felt normal. Even trapped in a strange man’s house, terrified that he’ll change his mind at any moment and decide I wasn’t worth keeping around, I still settled into an easy rhythm.
