The Last Boss' Daughter

by Sam Mariano

  I wanted to get to her home first anyway because it could be a fortress. I didn’t know if she lived with her mom and stepdad or had her own place. If it was the former, evading notice would take a little doing.

  But when I get to the address, there’s no fortress. It isn’t some big, cushy, well-protected mansion, but a little blue house with too many windows. Wasn’t going to be hard to keep an eye on her.

  A green truck sits in the driveway and the back right of the house is well lit. I double check with the person tailing her that she’s heading my way, then I park up the street and wait.

  My mind wanders back to the tree, pushing between her legs. I had to believe she was playing me, but there was a certain gleam in her brown eyes that made me consider maybe she wasn’t.

  I couldn’t let her know I was there, of course, but I wouldn’t mind if I could. Show up on her doorstep, have the little act she pulled earlier be real. Follow her inside, push her up against her living room wall…

  I shift in my seat, attempting to accommodate my budding erection. No point thinking about all that. I need to observe and not interrupt her routine so I can see if she reaches out to her stepfather.

  Ugh, her stepfather. Fucking Pietro Basso. Just thinking his name swiftly kills my arousal. Fucker’s a rabid dog that needs to be put down.

  Before long, Annabelle pulls into her driveway in a beat-up little blue car—not what I expected her to drive with the kind of money her family has.

  I watch her climb out and size up her wardrobe, now that I’m thinking about it. She looks cute in her casual jeans and gray sweater, but nothing about her outfit seems especially good quality.

  Does she not have money? How would she not have money?

  Since she’s heading inside, I turn on the amplifier and there’s a sudden—if crackling—burst of noise, as if I had walked right into the house with her.

  There’s a sound like keys being dropped, then something unclear in the background.

  “Yeah,” Annabelle says, her voice lifeless.

  “Where were you?” I make out. The voice moves closer, so I can hear better toward the end of the question than the beginning.

  “Had stuff to do. What are you doing home so early?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” the other voice asks. A male.

  “I thought you were going to be out until later.”

  “No. I said I’m going out later.”

  “Oh.” She doesn’t seem interested and there’s silence for a few minutes. I wait for her to make a phone call or mention something about what she’d just experienced at the junkyard, but it never happens.

  A few minutes later, the male voice comes back, asking her if she cleaned the bathroom, “because it looks like shit.”

  I don’t know who he is, but I don’t like him.

  “If I cleaned it, it wouldn’t look like shit, now would it?” she asks sensibly.

  “I thought you were gonna clean it.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “What’d you do today?” he asks.

  “Survived,” she shoots back.

  “You don’t have to be an asshole, I was just asking a question,” he tells her.

  I already want to punch this guy in the goddamn face.

  “It’s the anniversary of my dad dying,” she states. “I did what I always do.”

  “Oh.” He pauses, and I hope he feels like a douchebag. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Her voice is so…unlike what I’d heard in the few minutes I’d been with her. Robotic.

  Guy clears his throat. “You never did tell me what that was, you know.”

  “I know.”

  He waits. “So, you wanna tell me what it is you do? I always wondered.”

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she says, as if he hadn’t spoken.

  And then there’s silence. I hear what I assume is the bathroom door closing, then him mutter, “Fucking cunt,” and I’m tempted to turn the amplifier off.

  A few minutes later the side door slams shut and a skinny dude with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a limp brown ponytail steps into the driveway. He drops an empty milk jug into a bin by the door and gets in his truck. I watch as it backs out and debate abandoning my post so I can follow the little weasel.

  But I stay put.

  I wait—and swat off fantasies—while she showers and remain where I’m at for the rest of the evening. Even after it seems like she’s gone to bed, I still wait.

  I’m not sure what I’m waiting for until the male returns, nearing 2:30 am. I was sort of napping in my seat with a hell of a sore neck when he came weaving up the road. He took the corner of his driveway too fast and knocked over the empty garbage can by the edge of the road.

  He’s muttering as he climbs out of the car, but he hauls his drunk ass to the end of the driveway to retrieve the garbage can. By the time he makes it back in the house, I have a bad feeling. Nothing too ominous, nothing relating to my job, but a hunch about the nature of their relationship that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

  I turn the amplifier back up and listen to his drunken fumbling for a few minutes. I eye up the windows. I already pinpointed her bedroom when she went into it. Against the interest of stealth, I drop the amplifier and creep up the driveway, alongside the house and around to the back where the bedroom is. Like the living room, it has more windows than it should. I find a good one and peer inside.

  The drunk asshole is climbing into bed with her. I feel like I should leave, but I stay. This is not what I was assigned to do. This has nothing to do with the mission. What’s more, I don’t want to see it.

  Her back is to him when he climbs in, her eyes closed. She doesn’t look peaceful, exactly, more like… determined?

  He rolls over and starts pawing at her. His hand closes over her breast and her eyes open, not a trace of surprise, like she’d just woken up, but her lip curls up faintly in disgust. When he doesn’t stop pawing, she finally lets him know she’s awake and pushes his hand off her, pointedly giving him her shoulder.

  It looks like he says something, but it’s quiet and I don’t have the amplifier so I don’t know what.

  She says something back and closes her eyes.

  He reaches over again and the scene unfolds just like before. Three more times before he gets pissed. He’s drunk and stumbling but he throws back the blanket and comes out of bed, whipping the blanket off her and throwing it on the floor. I watch her grit her teeth and visibly seethe, but he can’t see with her back to him. She closes her eyes again, as if unbothered.

  But then the douchebag crosses to her side of the bed. I look to the door, guessing at the floorplan. It wouldn’t take me long to get through the front door, even if it’s locked. A few seconds to get to the bedroom.

  Douchebag pounces on her and it’s the scariest fucking ten seconds of my day as I watch her struggle with him, kicking and scratching and finally throwing the motherfucker off the bed and onto the floor where he belongs.

  Popping up, he screams at her, and I don’t need an amplifier to hear, “Some fucking wife you are!”

  “Go to hell,” she says back, loudly enough for me to hear.

  “What the fuck do you want me to do, huh?” he demands.

  “Why don’t you go back to one of your dumb fucking whores?” she suggests, and though it’s loud enough I understand what she’s saying, she’s not screaming. And… she’s smiling.

  “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? You’d fucking love that.” He’s still screaming. He’s still pissed. Flinging his arms around. Acting a fool.

  “I would,” she tells him. “I would fucking love that. Stay all night. She can make you breakfast.”

  “You fucking jealous?”

  She literally laughs. Not an angry, bitter laugh, but like he actually told a joke.

  That infuriates him more and he whirls around, throwing his fist into the wall.

  She’s no longer laughing, but watchi
ng soberly to see what he’ll do next.

  “You’re a fucking psycho,” he spits at her as he storms out of the room.

  She seems to wait until she hears a door slam, then she gets up and retrieves the blanket from the floor. She drapes it back over the bed and then climbs right up in the middle.

  I’m about to wait for him to come back and see there’s no room in the bed for him, but then I hear him outside. I lean away from the window and back up against the house. I’m sure he’s heading to his truck, but I brace myself to attack just in case.

  The engine roars to life and his tires crunch the rocks beneath them as he rolls out of the driveway. He shouldn’t be driving, but I’m just glad he left the house, to be honest.

  I peek into her room one more time but she’s back in bed, seemingly asleep. She’s curled up in the fetal position with her blanket around her and this time she looks peaceful.

  Mission accomplished, I hustle back to my car and head in the direction I just saw her husband go. Partially I want to make sure he doesn’t cause any accidents, but mostly I want to see where he’s going.

  I follow him to another shitty little house on another shitty little corner. The porch light is on and he stumbles up to the stoop. Door opens and a chubby brunette stands there with her arms crossed at first, but then he throws his arms around her and gives her a desperate bear hug and she softens, securing her arms around him and hugging him back.

  He follows her inside and the porch light goes off.

  Shaking my head in disgust, I turn around and head back to Brooklyn. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to tell Raj, because I don’t want to tell him what I’ve seen. I’m so disgusted by all of it, I can only imagine what she feels.

  I try to shut down my interest in the life of Annabelle Whatever Her Last Name Is, but I find myself hoping I get assigned to keep an eye on her again.

  Annabelle

  I carry all the grocery bags in one trip, even though the weight makes the plastic stretch thin and cut the circulation off in my fingers. I would sort of rather lose a finger than have to spend even one more minute at my mother’s house.

  Well, Pietro’s house.

  It used to be my home, long ago, but it’s nothing like that now.

  By the time I make it to the kitchen, I can’t feel the tips of two fingers. I drop the bags on the countertop and look at my hand, squeezing the numb tips.

  “Can you cut up the potatoes?”

  My shoulders droop. “I can’t stay, Ma, I told you.”

  “It’ll take you two minutes,” she says, rolling her eyes and turning her back to me.

  Which is like four hours here, but arguing will only take longer. I grab a knife and a cutting board and start slicing potatoes in half.

  “Don’t forget to wash them,” she tells me, stopping what she’s doing to watch me. Pretty sure it defeats the time-saving purpose of me cutting them in the first place, but what do I know?

  I say nothing, plopping the halved potato under some water.

  Satisfied, she rifles through the bags, making the odd comment that I ignore completely.

  I ignore people a lot. It’s just easier. They annoy me and I don’t want to deal with it, so I act like I don’t hear them. Paul actually tells his associates (friends?) that I’m deaf in one ear, to explain why sometimes I blatantly ignore him even in front of them. If anyone notices that it doesn’t matter which side he’s on, no one mentions it.

  “How’s your depression?” pierces my veil of ignoring.

  I roll my eyes, because fucking fuck.

  “I’m not fucking depressed.”

  “Watch your language!” she says, eyes widening as if a pew of churchgoers are watching us prepare dinner.

  It’s Pietro. My goddamn stepfather told my mom I’m depressed. I’m not depressed. I’m miserable. There’s a huge difference. My problem is not in my brain, it’s my actual life.

  “You should spend more time with your family,” she tells me.

  Now that would depress me.

  “You were $2 short, by the way,” I tell her. I had no problem going to the store and getting her groceries, but I couldn’t afford to pay for any myself.

  “I’ll give it to you before you leave.”

  I really wanted that to be like 30 seconds ago, but I just slice another potato.

  “Why didn’t you get the baby carrots?” she asks, pulling out the bag of full-size carrots and holding them up by the corner like a bag of soggy waffles.

  “They were out of the ones on sale. Those were cheaper.”

  “Well, you’ll have to chop them up,” she tells me, tossing the disappointing carrots on the counter next to me.

  I chop the next potato a little more enthusiastically and hold it under the water. “When does he get home?”

  I never mention his name if I can help it, like he’s Voldemort.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she says, hand fluttering. She takes a seat at the table and begins leafing through a magazine. “Cut the carrots up the size of baby carrots. Petey doesn’t like his carrots to be that thick. If you get a really thick one, slice it in half.”

  My eyes narrow and I bite back some lewd remarks. I just wanna get out of here, so I cut the last potato and set to work on the carrots.

  By the time all is said and done, I’ve completely prepped the vegetables for her roast and chopped the tops off her bell peppers for the appetizer. Before she can find enough for me to do so I’ll be there to put everything in—and maybe serve it for them, if I can find a nice maid’s costume—I tell her I have to go, that Paul’s expecting me.

  “Tell him I say hi, and you’re welcome to come for dinner. Your brother and sister have been asking to see you.”

  “I already have dinner on,” I lie. Because it’s an old habit that she never let me break even after my desire to do it had long died, I go over and kiss her on the cheek before I make my break for the door.

  Only after I get to the car do I realize I forgot to get the money she owed me for her groceries.

  Oh well, it’s not worth going back in to get it.

  The dinner I lied about earlier being, well, a lie, I slide a frozen pizza into the oven a half hour before Paul’s supposed to be home. I actually can cook, I actually like to cook, but Paul enjoys it so much that I seldom do it. The last thing I want to do is make my husband happy.

  Turns out I could’ve that night, since Paul didn’t come home when he was supposed to.

  Or at all.

  The following day he isn’t home either. I consider shooting him a text to see if he’s alive, but I don’t care enough to type it out. Mostly I just want to know if I’ll have the bed to myself again, because I love having the bed to myself.

  By afternoon I still haven’t heard from him so I decide, fuck it, I’m gonna make myself a nice dinner. I never did get that money from my mom and I probably shouldn’t splurge on extra groceries since Paul hasn’t been bringing much home lately, but I do it anyway. I buy myself a nice—cheap—bottle of wine and all the ingredients to make my famous chicken parm. I’m literally humming as I stroll out of the grocery store, so excited for the night ahead of me.

  I pour myself a glass and turn on some music while I prepare it, swaying around the tiny kitchen, using my sink as a makeshift counter since there’s not enough room for all the dishes.

  I hate this goddamn house and its stupid, tiny kitchen.

  But I’m so excited to eat that I can’t even be bothered. Plus I’m on my second glass of wine, and the world gets pretty rosy when I’m on my second glass of wine.

  My thoughts, fueled by wine, drift back to the mean, sexy guard back at the old junkyard. Liam. What a sexy name. He has to be sexy with the name Liam, right?

  “Liam,” I murmur it aloud, just to hear it on my lips. Sounds nice. Like his shoulders. I’ve always been a sucker for a man with broad, strong shoulders.

  Paul has such lame, disappointing shoulders. Hate Paul. Not gonna think about Paul.r />
  Liam, sexy Liam. With his sexy hips all pressed against mine.

  I mean, sure, in real life he’s probably a bully asshole like all the rest, but safely tucked away in Fantasyland, I’ll pretend he’s just kinky.

  I giggle to myself and pour another glass of wine.

  I don’t even get two sips in when I hear Paul’s truck pull into the drive.

  “Oh no!” In my tipsy state, this seems like a bigger crisis than it is. I want all the chicken parm for myself. I don’t want Paul to know I even remember how to make chicken parm, because then he’ll start pestering me to cook again.

  I contemplate dramatically ripping it from the oven and throwing it in the trash before he can make it inside, because hate Paul—but I don’t, because love chicken parm.

  “Oh well,” I finally say, more mournfully than is justifiable, really, but fuck it, more wine.

  Life is good!

  The door opens and life gets less good, even with wine, but I suck down a few more gulps, trying to hold onto my happiness.

  “Damn, that smells good,” Paul says as he steps inside.

  Stupid Paul and his stupid long nose, smelling the food I cooked. He doesn’t deserve to smell the food I cooked.

  I ignore him.

  The fleeting thought that I should reinforce him saying nice things crosses my mind, but I strike it down, because of the whole “fuck it” thing.

  I gulp more wine.

  Too much wine, too fast, and I’m really starting to feel it. I place a stabilizing hand on the edge of the counter and blink hard a few times.

  “What’s the occasion?” he asks, since I cooked.

  “I didn’t think you’d be home,” I answer honestly, and with an earnest grin on my face.

  Any trace of cheer on his face drains at the jab, and that’s when I notice he has a black eye.

  “What happened to your face?” I ask without tact.

  He grows even surlier. “Some stupid motherfucker doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, that’s what,” he mutters.