by Linda Verji
“Cabrera.”
That brought Timo’s head up fast and the man’s blue eyes widened as he stared at Nic. “You’re Cabrera?”
Nic didn’t answer. He wasn’t surprised that Timo knew his name but not his face. He’d gone to a lot of lengths to make sure he was a shadow in the criminal underworld. A myth everyone whispered about, yet no one had proof of its existence.
Allowing Timo time to get over his shock and have his fill of staring at him, Nic tasted his tea. It was worse than crap, like tasting sewer water. His face expressionless, Nic set his cup on the table and said, “I want to know about Hoffman.”
The change in Timo was immediate. Wariness flickered in his eyes and his shoulders stiffened. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” Nic held out his hand and Rafaél placed a phone in it. Nic swiped his finger over its screen to unlock it before pressing on the play button.
Timo’s voice filtered through the phone.
“Hoffman will be in Paris by Monday. I hit him there and no one can trace-”
Timo slammed his fist over the phone with such strength it shattered into several pieces. The table shook with the force of his blow and some of his coffee spilled onto it, but his actions had the inevitable effect of quieting the recording. However, the damage had been done.
“No worries. That’s not the only copy I have.” Nic’s lips twisted into a crooked smile. “But that’s you plotting to kill your own boss, isn’t it? Tsk, tsk, tsk.” He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “You’ve been a very busy man, Mr. Kuhn. Does Hoffman know what you’ve been up to? I wonder how he’ll react when he hears this recording.”
Timo was visibly shaken when he asked, “Where did you get it?”
Nic grinned. “I believe the better question would be what do I want.”
Timo was silent for a moment as he stared at Nic. Then his gaze lowered to the table and his shoulders slumped in defeat. “What do you want?”
“Gute frage,” Nic said. Good question.
After that, convincing Timo into his way of thinking was easy enough.
Nic wanted details about Hoffman’s gun running operation. As his number two, Timo was well placed to get that information. After giving Timo the time and date of their next meeting, and assuring him they’d be watching in case he chickened out, Nic walked out of Chez Homme.
They’d just settled back in the limousine when Nic’s phone rang and his screen flashed the name Brett. The moment he saw the caller ID, Nic’s pulse sped up and dread pooled at the pit of his stomach because it could only mean one thing.
Melanie was in trouble.
CHAPTER 2
Maybe she was in denial.
No, there was no maybe about it. She was in denial.
Even three days after Vance’s visit and pronouncement Melanie still refused to believe that this was happening to them again.
“You and Sly gotta get out of here,” Marcus’s tone was both insistent and pleading.
Avoiding his gaze and words, Melanie looked around the wide open room that served as the visiting area. Noting the chitchatting families and the general air of forced cheer that permeated the room, she gestured towards the vending machines. “Do you want me to get you something?”
“Mel, listen.” Marcus drew her gaze back to him by grabbing her hand. “Walk away.”
In the last couple of years, he’d filled out into manhood. When he’d gotten in his clothes had been falling around him. Now the blue chambray shirt and denim pants fit his muscular frame right. But it was the anxiety in his expression that held her attention.
She wasn’t used to a worried Marcus. He’d always been a ‘you only live once’ kind of guy, taking life where it led him. Even being sent to San Quentin State Prison hadn’t seemed to faze him. But today he looked genuinely scared.
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you.”
“You don’t know how crazy Va-” He abruptly stopped talking. His nervous gaze skittered across the crowded room before it came to rest back on her. Leaning forward, he lowered his voice. “You don’t know how crazy Amber is.”
“I know how crazy she is,” Melanie said. “And that’s why I can’t leave you. She’ll hurt you if I don’t do what she wants.”
She had no idea how her brother had found out about Vance, but the moment she’d turned up at the prison for Saturday visitation, he’d confronted her.
“Quit worrying about me,” Marcus insisted. “I’m cool in here. She’s out there and can’t fuck with me.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re the one who told me that Amber has friends in here.”
“Why you gotta be so hard-headed?” He ran a frustrated hand over his face.
Seeing him so frustrated softened her. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “I’m not being hard-headed. I’m trying to keep you breathing.” She leaned forward and whispered, “You’re out in three, we can…” In case someone was listening to their conversation, she said, “…renegotiate,” instead of run.
“Three month’s too long for you to be messing around with Amber.”
“We don’t have a choice,” she reminded him. “Besides it’s already been three days and Amber hasn’t come back to the store again. Maybe she changed her mind.”
Marcus’s eyebrows shot up. He sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “Now who’s being stupid? You know she don’t change her mind.”
I know. Melanie sighed.
Vance had commanded her to clear up one corner of the store in preparation for the jewelry shop Iona was about to open there. Melanie wasn’t stupid enough to think that they were actually going to sell jewelry there, so the longer they stayed away the better she felt.
Was it so bad to hope that he’d forgotten them or changed his mind? Maybe he’d discovered that Darlene’s wasn’t the ideal location for whatever he was selling. Maybe he’d decided that Berkeley was too far from Oakland. Maybe just maybe!
“I can handle mys-” Marcus started.
She cut him off. “You get out then we ru - renegotiate.”
Her mind was made up and not even her brother could change it. When Vance had visited her he hadn’t made any explicit threats, but she knew how he operated. If she didn’t do what he wanted he would come for someone she loved.
It was the same thing he’d done to Marcus. He’d corralled him into taking the rap for a murder he’d committed on the threat that something would happen to Melanie if he didn’t. She was Marcus’s Achilles’ heel as he was hers and Vance knew it.
Marcus had made a lot of mistakes in his life. But for him to get locked up for something he didn’t even do - for her – was the stuff tragedies were made of. She’d protected him for so long, only for her to end up being the albatross that brought him down.
Though she’d hired the best attorney she could afford, it was hard to defend someone intent on falling on his own sword. Marcus had gone down for voluntary manslaughter, six years. It wasn’t a far stretch to imagine Vance doing something far worse to Marcus.
She wasn’t going to let it happen.
She’d protect her brother even if it killed her.
Fortunately Marcus dropped the subject and instead asked, “How’s Sly?”
“He’s doing good. Making those A’s.” She rolled her eyes as she added, “Bothering the little girls in his class.”
“A’ight.” Marcus chuckled. “My man’s stuntin’ like his daddy.”
Melanie joined in his laughter before further updating him on his son’s latest escapades. Marcus had gone in when Sly was just three years old leaving Melanie to raise him. As it stood her nephew had only tenuous memories of his father, kept on life support by the photos and anecdotes she kept feeding him.
She tentatively offered Marcus, “I could bring him with me next week.”
Marcus eyes filled with a wistful expression and he smiled sadly before shaking his head. “Nah. Not like this.”
The only upside to his new attitude was that he was actively working to improve himself. Though his stay in prison had been bumpy, he’d gotten his GED and finished a course in mechanics. He was finally becoming the man Melanie had always thought he could be and she was beyond proud of him.
Hopefully, when they got out of here, he could make even more of himself and be the father Sly needed.
That is if Vance didn’t kill them first.
“We’ve only got to do what he wants for three months,” she reminded Marcus as she hugged him goodbye. “We’ll be fine.”
By Friday, Iona still hadn’t turned up to claim her corner. Her absence stoked Melanie’s fragile hope that the threat was gone, but come early afternoon the tides turned. At exactly two forty five, Iona marched into Darlene’s trailed by two men, each carrying two briefcases.
Two forty five.
Melanie watched their entrance with the sinking feeling that her life had taken a U-turn she couldn’t back out of.
The redhead didn’t even bother to greet Melanie. She headed straight for the left-hand corner of the shop and slapped her purse on the counter. One of the men set one of his cases on the counter and she flipped it open. Surprisingly, the inside of both cases was lined with jewelry – if you could call those garish, oversized medallions jewelry.
“This would look lovely on you,” Melanie told her client as she furtively watched Iona arrange the gleaming pieces of metal on the counter’s glass shelves. She waited for Iona to reveal the jewelry in the other three cases, but she didn’t. Instead Iona made her way to Melanie’s office with the cases in hand. When she came back out, she didn’t have any cases and headed straight to Melanie.
Stopping in front of Melanie and her client, Iona pointed toward the office. “You not go in office,” she said in heavy Slavic accent. She gestured towards Jo. “You or girl.”
“What do you mean?” Melanie shrilled. “That’s my office. Where will I work?”
Though she still designed the clothes, she now outsourced the actual sewing to a tailoring shop downtown. However, any minor adjustments after the second fitting were done in-store and that office doubled as her sewing room.
“Vance said.” Iona shrugged as if that was all the explanation needed. She glanced toward the front door. “Where is key?”
Melanie offered her a hard-eyed glare. Find it yourself, bitch.
“You give me key to front door,” Iona insisted. “Vance, he said you give me key to door. Everyday morning, I come to shop first then you come. Evening, you leave then I leave, Da?”
What was Melanie supposed to say? Da?
Did she even have any other choices other than to say, Da? Vance had boxed her in a corner where the only path of exit was obedience. Sullenly, Melanie strode to the front desk, unzipped her bag, pulled out a ring of keys and unclipped one of them. It took all her effort not to smack the grin off Iona’s face when she handed her the front door key.
The moment Iona opened shop her clients trailed in. Well - clients was a generous term. Most of them were young men who looked like they’d missed the route to Felon City and ended up in Darlene’s. Muscle shirts, oversized pants, tattoos all over, grills in their teeth, cussing with every word they spoke; most definitely not Darlene’s usual patrons.
Their presence was enough to deter many of Melanie’s regulars. The few women brave enough to venture in endured leering looks and catcalls, and they too hurried away. With each passing hour it became clearer that if this continued, Melanie would lose her business. And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
It was all too much.
Melanie really thought she’d handle this better, but the realization that Darlene’s was practically dead tipped her over the edge. An overwhelming sense of helplessness filled her.
She stroked the handgun in her bag - the one she’d started carrying the moment Vance had reappeared in her life – as she watched them walk in one by one. What would they do if she flipped out and started shooting?
She’d given up so much for this little place. Teenage years supposed to be filled with fun, college education, even her marriage. To have it all taken in one swoop…
Her fingers tightened around the gun.
They were killing her dreams, why shouldn’t she kill them?
Sly and Marcus. Their names floated into her subconscious forcing her to ease her hold on the gun. She had to stay sane for them. Tears pricked at the back of her eyes.
She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry.
But a few minutes later, she found herself barricaded in a cubicle in the restroom, seated atop the toilet seat with her face buried in her hands. Like a torrent, the tears streamed unabated, unleashing every emotion she’d held hostage in the last week. Fear, anger, disappointment, sadness; they all spilled out like a dam bursting its banks.
The life she’d built for her family was tumbling all around her ears like falling dominoes. They’d already lost so much. Both their parents, any hope of a normal childhood courtesy of the alcoholic aunt, Marcus’s freedom…
Darlene’s was supposed to be their ticket out. That this time something would work out for them and they could finally etch out a glimpse of normal for themselves. She’d put everything into the store; worked her fingers to the damn bone so she could give them a better future to look forward to.
Every sleepless night, every hoarded penny, every drop of sweat she’d put into her dream was now laid to waste. And it felt like pieces of her body was being torn away from her and thrown into the trash like they meant nothing.
It hurt.
It hurt like hell. The pain tore through her heart like a knife being shoved into her. Melanie clasped her arms around her stomach, rocking backwards and forwards as her tears fell. This was too much for one person to handle. She’d been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders for so long that all she wanted to do was lie down and give up.
Just give up.
CHAPTER 3
Melanie didn’t know how long she sat in that toilet cubicle crying. But when her tears finally dried up she decided she’d wallowed long enough.
No, she wouldn’t to give up.
Her mama hadn’t brought her up to be some wilting flower that buckled under pressure. She exited the cubicle and washed her hands in the sink. It was time to strap on her big girl heels and find a way to get them out of this. They’d been in worse positions before and she’d found a way out. This? This was just another bump in the road. Somehow, she’d get them through it too.
Whatever it took!
The first order of business was to firm up their escape plans, Melanie thought as she unzipped her purse to remove a handkerchief.
“This time we’re going as far away from California as we can,” she announced to the empty bathroom. She wet the handkerchief and wiped her smudged makeup. They’d need money – lots of it. She had a little nest egg, but she wasn’t sure how far it would take them.
Pity she couldn’t empty Darlene’s of its current stock without setting off Vance’s alarms. The thought of losing those clothes and the money she’d paid to lease the store brought on a brief return of melancholy but she ruthlessly shoved it down. Their safety was more important than fabric and square feet of concrete.
“Let him keep the store,” she snorted as she reapplied her makeup. The world was full of sewing machines and wherever she went there was nothing stopping her from making new clothes. If things got bad, she’d take a job in a department store, restaurant or whatever else she could find. They would survive. As they always did.
With new resolve, she made her way back to the store
. She went about her business of the day, acting like Iona, her bodyguard, and their ugly jewelry didn’t even exist.
That didn’t mean she didn’t note the strange going-ons in that particular corner of the store.
A client would come in. He’d select a piece of jewelry from the glass case and pay for it. Iona would remove the selected jewelry and carry it to Melanie’s office. A few minutes later, she’d come back out carrying a gift bag and hand it to her client. She was very careful to lock the door each time she left the office.
But that wasn’t even half of it..
An hour or two after the client left, Iona would go back to the office and come back out with a piece of jewelry identical to what she’d just sold.
Isn’t that the same piece? Melanie could’ve sworn it was. But she wasn’t sure, and it was hard to confirm when Iona glared at her and Jo if they came within two feet of her corner.
Melanie had her suspicions of what was going on. The jewelry was a decoy for whatever it is they were really selling. In her estimation, it wasn’t a very good decoy considering the clientele and the ugliness of the jewelry. Anyone with eyes and quarter of a brain could figure this out.
Damn it!
It was all well and good to say she could survive three months of Vance but how possible was it with these buffoons being so obvious? Someone was bound to get suspicious soon, maybe even alert the cops. And when they came she’d look guilty as sin. She was the owner of the shop and was right there when it was going on.
Oh no! She couldn’t go to prison. Who’d take care of Sly then? He’d be sent to foster care. Foster care.
Hell. No.
Sitting pretty and twiddling her thumbs for the three months until Marcus’s release was definitely out now. She needed to find leverage against Vance. Something she could use either to blackmail him or to save herself if the police stormed Darlene’s.
“What kind of meeting is this that’s happening past seven p.m.?” Cece asked when she turned up at Melanie’s doorstep later that evening.
“It’s a work thing.” Melanie hustled her into the apartment. “I’ll be back by eleven - midnight tops. But if I’m late leave the hallway light on for me.”
