The Negotiator

by Gadziala, Jessica

  The door closed behind me.

  And my stomach knotted immediately.

  "My father didn't have friends," I informed Christopher.

  No one became friends with a black hole of a person.

  Something inside me said to run.

  I'll never understand why I didn't trust that gut instinct.

  "You were a kid," Christopher told me, shaking his head, eyes already getting sad.

  I was a kid.

  But I was too old enough at that point to think that my father might, you know, be a dad, take care of me, protect me.

  When I tried to go back and remember that moment, I couldn't figure out what had been in my head, what I had thought at the sight of the man.

  He'd been my father's age, stocky, pock-marked, oily-skinned, with these weird, short-fingered hands. I remembered focusing on the hands for some reason. And their jagged fingernails. And the dirt under them.

  "Mel, why don't you go put your bag in your room?" my father asked.

  There was something strange in his voice then. I couldn't wrap my head around it, but it sounded weird; it sent a shiver through my system.

  I did it, though, I walked into my bedroom.

  I closed the door.

  I didn't lock it, though.

  I was vaguely aware of the front door to the apartment closing. And I guess I just assumed it was my father's 'friend' leaving.

  There was a bit of relief in that assumption.

  But then my bedroom door opened, making me jolt as I turned, worried I would be on the end of my father's wrath again.

  But, no.

  I was on the end of my father's desperation.

  I was right; he didn't have friends.

  He had someone who liked young girls.

  He had someone who would pay him money to get access to me.

  So he could get just one more day high, one more day without being sick.

  That was all I was worth to him.

  "Your daddy made me a real good deal," the man said as he moved into my room, turned to close the door behind him, lock it, lean back against it.

  I knew enough about the world, about how women could be used by men, to understand exactly what was going to happen next.

  There was maybe one moment of hesitation before I turned, made a dash for the window, for the fire escape I knew I would find outside of it, for the chance at avoiding this horror.

  But the window tended to stick.

  And the room was small.

  Hands grabbed me from behind, pulled, sent me flying backward, landing on my bed with a grunt.

  Panic soared through my system, making my heartbeat go into overdrive, making my breathing quicken, shorten, making my skin feel electric.

  I attempted to roll off the other side of the bed, but my ankles got snagged in strong hands, yanked backward.

  Those short, fat fingers held on tight as I kicked, as I screamed.

  Screaming was useless, though, seeing as the guy in the apartment next door was blaring some metal crap like he always did. Even if someone heard me screaming, they'd have assumed it was part of the song.

  And pretty quickly, one of those hands went over my mouth, muffling any of the sounds.

  The other hand roamed over me, grabbed, pinched, yanked at clothing and what was beneath as my hands slapped, scratched, tried to hurt him badly enough to loosen his grip.

  Just as a hand slipped inside my pants, inside my panties, my head turned to the side, seeing my backpack, remembering what was stashed in the front pocket.

  It had actually been a gift.

  From this kid I'd met in foster care.

  He'd been aging out, and saw himself as some sort of elder, full of wisdom and experience.

  He'd walked up to me, all leather jacket and scarred knuckles, flicking it open, whirling it in his fingers, then holding it out to me, blade side facing himself.

  "Shit might get ugly," he'd told me. "You take this, you keep it on you, and you use it when you need to."

  I remember thinking it had seemed dramatic of him to say 'when' instead of 'if.'

  Turned out the kid had just been realistic.

  My hand shot out, digging inside, trying to find the handle as my pants and panties were pulled down, as I felt a weight move over me.

  Knees pushed mine open just as my fingers curled around it, pulled it out, flicked it open.

  I didn't think beyond feeling him curling over me, feeling his weight, feeling his dick against my thigh.

  I just swung out with every bit of force I possessed.

  The knife lodged itself in the middle of the man's neck.

  I remembered the bulging of his eyes, the internal panic as I saw the blade stuck in the center of the man's windpipe, the gut instinct to yank it back out, the gasping, and wheezing after I did so.

  And the fact that he was still moving.

  Still grabbing for me.

  A hand struck my cheekbone, sending sparks across my vision, creating an immediate migraine.

  My arm struck out again, stabbing.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Blood splattered everywhere.

  Over my face, neck, the bed around me.

  His body collapsed forward, unconscious, pinning me down.

  I fought against his weight as he slowly bled out, soaking my clothing through.

  "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God," I gasped, finally shoving his body off of me, scrambling away, falling off the side of the bed, tripping over my pants around my ankles.

  I fell backward against my bedroom door, gasping for breath, trying to think through the shock in my system, my racing brain.

  I don't know how long I stayed there like that. Eventually, though, the shock subsided into tears that dried and left me with dread.

  Regardless of my reasoning, I'd killed someone.

  Sometimes, they didn't care about the why. They just cared about the result. They just cared about getting a case closed. Getting a guilty party.

  I could go to jail for it.

  Eventually, I stood up on shaky legs, pulled my pants back into place, made myself take a few slow, deep breaths.

  And then my father came home.

  "I always used to think it was ridiculous when someone who'd been hauled in for a murder charge would say they blacked out," I told Christopher. "But, honest to God, I blacked out. The next thing I knew, I was standing over my father who had stab wounds to his chest and neck."

  I seemed to be on autopilot after that, showering, gathering my bloodied clothes in a trash back, grabbing the knife, and just... leaving.

  I walked out.

  I tossed the bags in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant.

  And I didn't go back.

  "Where'd you go?" Christopher asked, breaking into my memories, helping my stomach unclench.

  "I lived on the streets for a while. Which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was Spring. I imagine it would have been hell in the winter. But it was Spring. People took pity on me and gave me some food. I learned how to wash my hair in a sink with hand soap."

  "How'd you get into the world you're in now?"

  "I ran into this guy I knew from high school. He had been moving drugs on school grounds for as long as I remembered. And he was getting into a scuffle with some other dealer. From an actual legit gang. I stepped in. Brokered a deal that they were both happy with. I got a cut. Got off the street. The next time his boss wanted something from some other dealer, he came to me to help out. Eventually, word of mouth got out. I had a little business going."

  "Hey," he said, drawing my attention back to the present moment.

  "Yeah?"

  "You did what you had to do to survive, Melody. No one would ever hold that against you."

  "Yeah," I agreed. "I learned something when Quin made me legit, when I rejoined the real world again."

  "What's that?"

  "I didn't kill him. My father," I cla
rified. "I thought I did. Everything pointed to me doing it. But he lived. And he told the police some guys came in, attacked him and his friend, and took me."

  "He deserved to die," Christopher declared, voice icy.

  "He did. And three months after this whole ordeal, he did die. Overdose. With the drugs from the dealer I'd gone to school with."

  Christopher's arm reached across the table, his hand closing over mine.

  "Thank you for telling me," he said, voice soft.

  It felt good, I realized.

  Telling someone.

  Giving someone those parts of my past.

  "Why haven't you told your loved ones?" he asked a moment later, hand still covering mine.

  "I don't know," I admitted, shaking my head.

  Now that it was out, I couldn't quite figure out why I had felt the need to hold those secrets so close.

  What happened hadn't reflected on me.

  Maybe there had always been a bit of embarrassment and shame for being the child of such a destructive addict. Maybe I didn't want people to think it was possible for me to go down the same path. Maybe an insecure little part of me was terrified what people might think to learn that even my own father hadn't been able to love me. That it spoke to something lacking in me.

  It was absurd.

  But no matter how mature I got, no matter how much therapy I'd sat through over the years, there was a part of me that was a small, unloved little girl in a dark, scary world, who wanted someone to give a shit, who thought there was something fundamentally unlovable about her if her own parent couldn't love her more than the drugs that took over his life.

  It didn't matter that the older, rational part of me understood that his addiction—and the actions because of them—had absolutely nothing to do with me.

  There was damage done in those early years.

  And in running away from it, refusing to own it, to face up to it, had allowed me—even a small bit—to continue to believe those ugly things about myself. The repercussions of that were likely long and wide and unknowable.

  But moving forward, I had a feeling things would change.

  Opening up was something that couldn't be undone.

  Now that I dug up those buried parts of me, I realized they weren't as ugly as I once thought. They just needed some brushing off, some mending, some love and attention.

  I found I was committed to doing that.

  And I couldn't help but wonder what it meant that Christopher had been the one to bring about those changes.

  I had a feeling that if I analyzed it, I would realize it meant a lot.

  Which was why I went ahead and, you know, didn't do that.

  Because that pattern of burying and avoiding things had worked out so well for me in the past...

  TWELVE

  Miller

  I felt like it was a test.

  Which was ridiculous, of course, because absolutely no one doubted my skills save for myself.

  So I guess it was more like something I needed to prove to myself.

  That I could do something that no one would think I was capable of.

  Hell, I wasn't even sure I was.

  To keep house and home.

  To prepare meals.

  To do all the things that working so hard had made it impossible to spend time learning how to do.

  It was made especially hard by the fact that I had nothing and no one to reference.

  Anyone could copy a recipe off of Pinterest, follow it exactly, and create a halfway edible meal.

  But to have to start with raw ingredients and just... hope for the best?

  Quite the trial by fire, if you ask me.

  I had a giant, empty kitchen, several bags of fresh groceries, and spices on the back deck.

  "Are you afraid it is going to come back to life?" Alexander asked, making me realize I had been staring down at the chicken breasts in front of me.

  "I'm trying to remember what tastes good with chicken," I admitted. "I have suddenly forgotten every single meal I have ever eaten."

  "We're not picky," he assured me.

  "That's because you have Cora, master chef extraordinaire, making your meals," I grumbled.

  "We have faith in you," Alexander assured me, going toward the back door.

  "Oh, sure, go into town and pre-feed yourself," I called to him. "I won't be insulted at all!"

  "He insulted you?" Christopher asked, moving into the space, somehow looking better than he had looked this morning when I bumped into him on my way into our shared bathroom as he made his way out in a pair of black pajama pants, hair bed-messy.

  He wore gray slacks, a black belt, and a crisp white tucked-in shirt, the top two buttons undone, but without a jacket.

  There was no real work to be done here, no one seeing him but the rest of us, but he still felt the need to dress up.

  Which I found oddly endearing, to be honest. And since all of the clothes he bought for me were dresses, we sort of matched. I would have felt really out of place if I was always in a dress and he was walking around in sweats.

  "No. He's been trying to convince me that I have the slightest idea what I am doing here," I told him, waving toward the scattered possible ingredients spread across the island.

  "You'll do fine. Just think of what you like to put together taste-wise, and combine those things," he offered, shrugging.

  "I have forgotten what everything tastes like," I told him, tone grave, something that made a smile break out across his face.

  It was so unexpected, so uncommon on his stern face, that I felt like my chest was tight at getting to witness it.

  That was cheesy as hell.

  But it was true nonetheless.

  Maybe I liked things a little bit cheesy these days.

  "Alright. How about I make you a frappe?" he offered, already moving to do so, grabbing the milk, the instant coffee, and the chocolate syrup. "Then you can remember what some things taste like, and can focus on your food again."

  "That sounds like a good plan," I agreed, watching him as he moved around.

  I never gave much thought to someone making me coffee before. Kai had done it many times for me. And I had done it for him, for a lot of the guys in the office. It was just a normal, everyday gesture.

  Somehow, though, this felt special. Maybe because Christopher was not a friend, because my feelings regarding him were shaping up to be a lot more than friendly.

  And because the fact that he even knew how to make a frappe, let alone did it for someone else, had been shocking to Alexander and Cora —two people who seemed to know him better than anyone else.

  So maybe it actually meant something that he did it for me.

  Sure, I could have been fantasizing the issue a bit, but it just seemed something a little extra, a little special.

  And like being on the receiving end of that smile, getting a man like him to make me coffee just felt really nice.

  In fact, just about everything about Christopher was starting to feel nice.

  "Okay, try this," he offered, holding out the sweating glass as he stuck a stainless steel straw into it.

  Obediently, I took a long sip, tasting the milk, the coffee, the chocolate, and a hint of something else.

  "Something is different," I told him, looking up at him.

  "Yeah? What is it?" he asked, head dipping to the side a bit, making me realize he was challenging me to try to remember what things tasted like, how they went together.

  This was an easy one.

  What went really well with milk and chocolate?

  "Caramel," I told him, getting another of those warm smiles.

  "There you go. You got this, angele mou," he said, making his way past me, giving my hip a little squeeze, then disappearing outside.

  Angele mou.

  I didn't know that one.

  Mou was 'my.'

  And 'angele' sounded almost a lot like 'angel.'

  My angel?

  Could he possibly
have been saying that to me? Calling me that?

  I could practically hear the guys at work scoffing. That anyone would think of me as an angel, that anyone would dare to say it to my face.

  I would have been scoffing with them just a few weeks before.

  Now, though?

  Now, I had to admit, my stomach did an unexpected little flip-flop at the endearment.

  I wanted to hear it again.

  Preferably with his lips close to my ear while he was inside me.

  I should have cared about lines of propriety, about keeping professional and personal issues separate, about not sleeping with someone who had sort of kidnapped me, and kept me from the outside world.

  Yet, I did not.

  At all.

  For a second.

  I was going to get that man in bed.

  And I was going to enjoy every last second of it.

  After I figured out what to feed these guys.

  With another couple of sips of delicious frappe in my system, I seemed to start moving on autopilot.

  I lined a baking sheet with the chicken breast, carrots, potatoes, peppers, some lemons on the chicken, a little rosemary and garlic, and drizzled the whole thing with olive oil.

  About an hour later, I was arranging some olives around the baked dish, sprinkling some feta because, well, why not?

  And then, wholly pleased with myself, I was making my way to the dining room where Christopher, Alexander, Laird, Collis, and Marco were all situated, waiting for me.

  I never liked the idea of serving men before. It always seemed to come with a sort of built-in sexist undertone. Serving men. As though it was a woman's job to do so.

  But there was no denying that as I walked in with the sheet pan, and all those eager male faces turned to me, hungry, excited for what I had so carefully made for them, there was a swelling of pride inside at being able to feed them, to impress them with my concoction.

  I placed the pan down on the center of the table next to the small salad Alexander had already brought out for me, drizzled with a dressing I had made myself out of olive oil and spices with a hint of lemon.

  "Alright, well, dig in," I suggested when everyone just sat there.

  With that, they did, loading up their plates, digging in, making approving noises, going in for seconds.