The Woman in the Trunk

by Gadziala, Jessica

  "Anything I need to know?"

  "Don't know much. She's small. Five-two. Black hair. I was told that you would know her when you saw her."

  "Okay, got it," I agreed, nodding. "You want me to handle the contact with her father? Our usual check-ins?" I clarified. "Take some burden off you," I added, stroking that notorious ego of his, because he never seemed to sense my subtle ways of stealing the risky jobs out from under him.

  "I have a lot going on now. That should work."

  "Great. I got it. I will head out tomorrow," I added, making my way out to the door. "I will tell Frank to get you more coffee on my way out."

  With that, I left before he could engage me in another argument. It was important I stayed as diplomatic as possible. With my father's temper, there was no telling what he was capable of. There had been more than one capo who took out his own son in the past. I didn't want to be added to that statistic.

  Sure, from the outside, the simple answer would be to take out my old man, get Biblical and shit. But if I did that, the other bosses would take me out. Because you didn't get to take out a made man in the mafia unless you got the approval of all the other bosses.

  So for the time being, I had to adapt, accept, work things behind the scenes like I had been doing for years.

  Back at my place, I packed a bag, had a couple drinks, tried to tell myself that it didn't bother me that I was heading out of town to fucking kidnap a woman—something that didn't go against my father's moral code, but did go against mine.

  I consoled myself that this leg of the job would be easy, just a quick snatch and grab. Not too much of a hassle. No one would get hurt.

  Then, hopefully, it would all be over quickly.

  I had never been more wrong about anything in my life.

  Chapter Two

  Giana

  "Gigi, you're here," Penny, the housekeeper of the Cape May house, greeted me as I made my way in the door.

  "Oh, Jesus," I hissed, hand flying to my chest as I whirled around to find the woman sitting in the rocking chair my grandfather used to occupy every summer of my childhood.

  "Didn't mean to startle you, dear," she said, giving me a sweet smile.

  "What are you doing here?" I asked, no edge to my words. I loved Penny. Even if she was only supposed to be in the house to check the mail, make sure the air, in the summer, and the heat, in the winter, were working properly. As well as the very occasional dusting or general upkeep. If there was any sort of heavy lifting, there was no way we would have continued to employ Penny, who was somewhere in her mid-eighties, though she was spry enough to pass as a full decade or so younger.

  She was a sturdy, average-height woman with a shock of long white hair and bright blue eyes that shined out of her well-lined face. As always, she had on a dress in plain white, adorned with about half a dozen necklaces and stacked bangle bracelets that went nearly to her elbow.

  "Oh, I come now and again. Enjoy the silence. Let the strangers see that someone is around. I like it here. It has many fond memories."

  Penny had engaged in a short and—at the time —tawdry affair with my grandfather just weeks after my grandmother passed. While my grandfather never got serious about a woman after his wife's death, Penny clearly carried a torch, even after his passing. "I would have cleared out had I known you were coming to visit."

  It almost sounded like she was chastising me for visiting my family vacation home. Had I loved her any less, I would have been offended. As such, she was like a kooky great aunt that I couldn't help but adore.

  "It was a spur of the moment idea. I needed to get out of the city for a little while."

  "I don't know how you live there. It gets so loud and packed."

  "And Cape May doesn't, in the on-season?" I clarified, putting my rolling suitcase beside the door, moving to sit down on the hideous floral armchair across from Penny.

  "Yes, well, it passes," she said, waving a hand.

  It wasn't passing right now. Which might have been why she was in my family home instead of her own. Penny lived in a beautiful Victorian on the corner of the main street in downtown where the shops and restaurants and nightlife were crazy all through the summer.

  My family home was a small ranch-style white structure with black shutters that was a fifteen-minute walk to downtown, but only two blocks from the beach. I wasn't here for the beach. I would go, but at sunrise or sunset. I wasn't a fan of the nearly shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, of crappy music blaring from someone's portable speakers, or shrieking kids. I liked kids, but I was here to unwind, and I knew that would put me on edge.

  I'd had a rough month.

  I needed some space to breathe.

  And since there was no extra money to get myself a hotel room somewhere quiet, I had to settle for the family vacation home. With its awful décor and the fact that it was the worst time of year to visit when you wanted to be alone.

  "You look tired, Gigi," Penny said, clucking her tongue.

  "I am," I admitted. I wouldn't lie, I wanted a little sympathy. I had been running myself ragged for months. It was thankless work. And I was feeling drained and needy.

  "Well, you will be able to unwind here," she said, rising from her rocking chair, reaching for her oversized paisley bag. "Just let me know when you head out. I will come back to keep an eye on things. And if you need anything while you're here, you know where to find me."

  "Thank you, Penny," I said, watching as she made her way to the door, inwardly wishing she would have stayed around, would have shared a cup of tea with me.

  I didn't mind being alone. I was used to it. But it would have been nice to have someone with me for a little while, so I didn't wallow too much.

  But if she was leaving, instead of tea, I was going to have a stiff drink.

  With that in mind, I made my way into the small kitchen, dominated by truly heinous green backsplashes and mismatching wooden doors on the cabinets which almost—but not quite—distracted you from the fact that the linoleum on the floor had been only partially replaced a decade or so before, leaving half of it dingy and faded, and half of it bright and new. All of it, however, was ugly, with its faux parquet that fooled exactly nobody.

  We didn't keep much in the pantry at this house, seeing as we never knew how often we would be able to visit. When I opened the door, I found a few cans of tomato soup, sugar in an airtight container, beans, and what I was after. An entire shelf of hard liquor that, luckily, never went bad.

  I reached for the whiskey, twisting off the top, and drinking straight from the bottle. It was fine. I was planning on drinking every drop of it before I packed up and headed back to the city bright and early on Monday morning.

  I drank a solid two fingers' worth standing right there in the center of the kitchen before making my way back out onto the front screened porch, tossing one of the musty cushions to the floor, and sitting down directly on the wicker. Propping my feet up on the coffee table,I watched the crowds of people making their way down the street toward the beach with their rainbow umbrellas and their folding beach chairs, their towels and swimmies and blow-up pools for babies who can't go in the ocean.

  I was still there when they returned a half an hour shy of dinnertime, parents' shoulders drooping, faces flushed, children grumbling, babies whining, everyone probably itchy from the sand and starving and dehydrated.

  I was working my way to dehydration thanks to the whiskey and the ungodly hot temperature outside.

  I probably needed to eat too, I decided, screwing the cap back on the bottle, making my way inside, going for one of the cans of tomato soup, knowing that ordering in was out of the question. My budget was tight, and I wasn't looking forward to making it any tighter. So, I would make do with what was here as well as the couple things I had packed in my suitcase. Which meant a lot of protein bars and some instant oatmeal packets.

  I had no business escaping the city, shirking my responsibilities, getting some time away.

  Time awa
y meant my father could sink the business even further into a hole.

  But I had just hit my wall.

  I couldn't take another minute of it.

  I had to get away from the pressures of it all before I snapped and did or said something I would regret.

  As a whole, I had my family's notorious temper, but I had always been better at controlling it. Maybe because I learned at a young age that when my father blew his top, things went sideways quickly because no one acted rationally when on an irrational tirade. But I had been controlling it for months. No, years. And from the looks of things, there seemed to be no end to the frustrations, so I would need to control myself for months or years to come.

  At least, if I couldn't figure this out, if I couldn't get us out of the bottomless void my father had trapped our family in when I was a little girl.

  So I needed a little distance, a little room for some calm and patience to burrow back in. Then I could go back, keep plugging away at my five-year plan to fix this situation. If I could just keep my freaking father from making it any worse in the process.

  Lofty goals, with his track record, but I was going to do my best.

  We had to fix it.

  Or he was going to get himself killed.

  And possibly me in the process.

  My life might not have been worth much at this point, but it was mine. And I would be damned if I'd let my father's stupid business decisions take it away from me.

  In my back pocket, my phone buzzed six times in a row. Texts. Likely frantic ones from Liane who was having a heart attack over something or another at work. I ignored it, trying to remember that I promised myself a weekend away. But on the eighth buzz, I set my soup down, reaching for it, scrolling through the texts.

  Liane had been working at the family business since the beginning of time. I was pretty sure she was my grandfather's first hire when he'd opened shop. She was high-strung and prone to getting overwhelmed easily and overreacting to the most minor of problems. But she had become a sort of face of the business, always stationed at the register bright and early every morning, knowing more customers by name than I did.

  Apparently, the shipment I'd ordered in earlier the week had come in. With a third of the items I had ordered missing. Liane, bless her sweet heart, was convinced there was simply some glitch, some misunderstanding as to why we were getting one-fifth the flour I knew we needed, half of the butter, nearly none of the fruit.

  I, unfortunately, was just jaded enough to know the truth.

  My father had gone behind me and edited the order, cutting corners that couldn't afford to be trimmed.

  This was why I never left town, damnit.

  On a sigh, I dialed my father, feeling my pulse pounding in my temples and throat. This man was going to give me a heart attack at the ripe old age of twenty-two.

  "I'm busy right now, Gigi."

  "Not too busy for this," I told him, reminding myself not to grit my teeth. "Why did you screw with the supply order? We needed everything I ordered."

  "Berries are expensive. We need to cut back."

  "Berries are necessary," I insisted, closing my eyes, willing myself not to cry out of sheer frustration. "We have that order for the wedding this week, Daddy. Remember? They ordered strawberries and blueberries and freaking goji berries. We have to have them."

  "Yeah, well," he said, trying to buy time, knowing he was wrong, but not wanting to admit it. "I will send someone out to the store."

  "It will cost twice as much at the store! That's why we order wholesale. Jesus Christ. This is not rocket science, Daddy. You need to stop screwing around with the orders. I know what I am doing." I had, after all, been doing it since I was sixteen years old, since he proved wholly incapable of doing it himself.

  "Yeah? If you know what you're doing, why are we just barely scraping by every month?"

  His voice was raised, that notorious temper rearing its ugly head.

  He had the worst combination of traits. Complete ineptitude blended with too much pride to ever admit he didn't know what he was doing. And then a sprinkling of denial, a heaping tablespoon of anger, and a nice dollop of entitlement to top it all off.

  If it weren't for my grandfather and his legacy, I would have walked away as soon as I was legally able to do so. But I had made my grandpa a promise on his death bed. I would take care of the bakery. I would make sure it continued on. It would be around for my children, my children's children.

  Nerves frazzled, I was beyond taking a deep breath and letting his accusations go. The whiskey and the sleepless nights were wearing me too thin.

  "I think we both know why we are just barely scraping by every month, Daddy. And it has nothing to do with how successful the bakery is, and everything to do with those friends of yours in the mafia."

  "Watch your mouth, Giana," my father snapped, voice rough.

  Just this once, I didn't. I didn't want to. I wanted to unload all the rage, all the frustration, all the utter helplessness I had been feeling for years for him, on him. Where it belonged. I'd been carrying the burden of his shitty decisions around for too long.

  "Why should I? You know I'm right. You took a shitty deal with shady people, and then continued to let them walk all over you for decades, dragging our family further and further into debt because you didn't have the balls to stand up to them, because you were too enamored with them to even want to? Newsflash, Daddy, they don't want you in their organization. They think you are a pawn to be used, nothing else. You are embarrassing yourself by kissing their rings like you have been doing all this time."

  "You know what, Gigi? Fuck you," he snapped, hanging up.

  Tossing my phone onto the table, I stood there in the middle of the kitchen with shaking hands, anger an uncomfortable, bubbling sensation inside, something that couldn't be denied, something I had no outlet for.

  So I gave up on dinner, reaching instead for the bottle of whiskey.

  If nothing else, it would ensure I would finally get a full night of sleep for a change.

  Or so I thought.

  I was down the hall, curled up in the king-sized bed in the master bedroom I never got to stay in before, finding the mattress lumpy and hell on my hips and shoulders when I tried to sleep on my side, so I ended up halfway on my stomach, my leg cocked up, face buried in a pillow. My body was damp with sweat since I refused to put the air cold enough to actually cool me off, seeing as it simply cost too much to do so, and no one was typically around to have it matter anyway.

  Sleep was restless, marred by dreams that had been plaguing me since I was fifteen—not dreams at all, but awful memories, ones that made me wake up gasping, panicked, unsure of my surroundings for a moment before falling back to sleep.

  It was the fourth time I woke up that I realized it wasn't a bad dream that woke me.

  Oh, no.

  It was the harsh reality.

  Where I was alone in a house.

  And a man was looming in the shadows.

  My heart flew upward, lodging in my throat as a choked gasp escaped me. Why I didn't scream was beyond me. Maybe because of that pesky heart-in-throat situation. I felt it bubble up but get trapped, letting only a whimpering animal sound escape me as I flew upward in the bed, whacking my head against the wooden headboard. I tried to shake off the traces of sleep, think straight enough to figure out how I could get away, what weapons might be nearby to use against him.

  There were no guns here. I had one at home. We had them at the bakery. Both legal and not-so-legal thanks to the nature of my father's connection to the mafia. But I would never leave a gun in a house that was rarely occupied. And the place was sparsely decorated after my father sold off a lot of the collectibles his parents had once filled the space with.

  There was nothing.

  Except...

  Oh, thank God for drinking yourself to sleep, I decided as I realized the clunky, thick, glass whiskey bottle was on the floor beside the bed. Likely just out of sight. If he g
ot close, I could reach down, grab it, bash him with it, then get away.

  "Don't scream," a deep, gravelly voice commanded. It shouldn't have sounded sexy given the circumstances, but it did somehow.

  "Fuck you," I said with a scoff, opening my mouth to suck in some air, deciding that this was the perfect time for a horror movie scream queen impersonation. The houses were practically stacked on top of each other this close to the shore. Someone would hear me. Someone would call the cops or come running. Something.

  But before I could even finish pulling in that breath, this giant of a man was across the small space, his hand grabbing my ankles, yanking me down onto the mattress, allowing his other hand to clamp down over my mouth. I'd never really had the occasion to notice the size of a man's hands before, but with one covering damn near all of my face, I was noticing his. As well as his dark eyes, and the juts of his cheekbones. And what looked like maybe a scar down his eyebrow? It was hard to see with just a glint of moonlight coming through a crack in the curtains.

  "Don't make this more difficult than it has to be," he demanded, using his free hand to reach down.

  I couldn't see what he was reaching to do. But it didn't seem to take a lot of thought. Men didn't break into the room of women while they were sleeping to offer them pamphlets about our Lord and Savior.

  They were there to lay claim to the canvas of your body, to splash it in shades of red, to make what was once something safe and beautiful, foreign and scary and ugly.

  I knew.

  God, did I know.

  And I would be damned if I ever knew that again.

  I was small. I knew this. I got confused for a child more than once a week. I had to provide several forms of ID to get into clubs. I was short and slight and I wasn't exactly a big fan of lifting weights, so I wasn't all that strong either.

  But women could lift cars off babies.

  I could fight off this man to save myself from rape.

  Decision made, my feet lifted as my brain scanned through memories of the self-defense videos I had watched online when I was younger, both legs widening like a butterfly's wings before ramming outward, slamming into the man's hips, catching him off-guard enough to stumble back a foot.