by Rissa Brahm
But with that breath, a sense of peace seemed to spread over Antonio’s face. Suddenly and eerily calm, Antonio closed his eyes and said in podium-worthy English, “Jana obviously got all the strength and integrity in the family, while you, you spineless boy, got nothing. Have nothing. You will get yours. Karma alone will find you. But pray Karma delivers before I ever meet you. Be sure to pray very hard.”
He handed Jana the phone and stepped away from her to pace out his rage and maybe to plot the day he’d ever meet her big brother Dane.
*
Mind whizzing, heart racing, her soul screamed thanks to Antonio and to the heavens for its slight taste of liberating justice.
Jana now held and stared at the phone. Silence lingered, until, for the first time in her life, she heard in her brother’s voice a hesitance, the slightest hiccup of fear. She even heard the prick swallow before words came.
“Is he…fucking done?”
Done with you? Almost. But really, Dane wasn’t worth an iota more of breath or energy. Of Antonio’s or hers. But before ending the call, she needed answers. Closure. She inhaled slowly then eased out words. “Why Dane? Why did you tell them?”
“I didn’t. It was Cousin Daniel. He went to some bachelor party at your club. He saw you and told Mom. Mom told Dad. Hey, that’s probably why they continue to send me money when I ask for it. At least, they have one kid who does something reputable with life! You’re so pathetic it’s sad. And then, Jesus, you go from bedroom fantasy fodder to bedpan maid! Embarrassment to embarrassment!”
Antonio stopped pacing, looked up, and made his way back to her, next to her, took her hand and squeezed it, as if trying to infuse all of his strength into her.
Her profession was her identity, her life. The whore comments rolled right off, they meant nothing. But her struggle and strife for her esteemed nursing position, that hit her gut and raised further hell in her heart.
*
She couldn’t hide her tears. And her breathing hitched. Antonio wished that arrogant bastard a slow, brutal death. Fuck her brother and her parents. Antonio was taking Jana far from her abusive, so-called family. Far from this psycho thinking and insanity.
He watched her collect a breath and wipe her tears. She seemed ready to say her piece, although he couldn’t imagine any of it registering with the bastard. But he knew she needed to finish this once and for all.
“Who knows what you do day-to-day, Dane? You say you’re in the entertainment business in LA, but more than likely, you’re waiting tables. Or gambling it away again. Yes, I know shit about you too, big brother! Whatever you do, though, you aren’t here right now for Dad. You aren’t giving, but always taking. You are thirty-three years old, for Christ’s sakes, and the money you get is the money I made! My ‘dirty money,’ as you call it, you self-righteous son of a bitch! At the end of the day, I sleep like a baby at night. How about you? How do you sleep knowing your little sister supports you? You tell your wife and kid the truth? You’re a pathetic excuse for a man.” But there was no response. Antonio watched her eyes zone out, just staring at the phone screen, where a flashing summary of minutes showed the call had ended who-knows-how-long before her rant had.
CHAPTER 45
Dane Park had hung up on her. Like her parents, he was deaf to her words.
And just like her brother, her parents had known for all those years that she’d been stripping to support them all, filling their bottomless trough. She really had been a slave and still was a slave, a whore. And her parents and brother were her goddamn pimps.
A ding hit her ears. A text. It was probably her mother having just heard from her brother—a tattle tail into his thirties. Like any of it mattered. On autopilot, she opened her messages.
From Luly: Dr. R. put Ilana on perm with T. Team. So sorry. Call me ASAP.
Her heart rocketed into her throat then plummeted down to the pavement. She’d been gone not even three weeks!
“Fuuuuuuck!” She threw her phone clear across the parking lot. It shattered on the ground in a thousand pieces.
She looked over at Antonio and without need for a single word of explanation, he pulled her to him on cue, tight into his chest. She’d lost her position at her ER now because of her parents. They were the ruin of her. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It was never supposed to be this way. She screamed into his chest as he held her hard, held her together. She screamed her lungs out and her heart out. Her soul unleashed, unraveled. Antonio kept her upright while endless moments passed.
Chest heaving, she looked up into Antonio’s loving eyes and knew he could read her intentions. She needed to do this, to go inside and buck up, rise up, stand up to the man who was supposed to protect her and love her unconditionally.
So she pushed back from Antonio, wiped her eyes, turned around, and marched back into the hospital, into her father’s wing to tell the man who’d given her life that she knew. She knew the depths of his transgressions. And she didn’t care about his state of health or mind. She didn’t care about his wellbeing, just as he had never ever cared about hers.
But when she got to the door of his room, it was vacant.
*
She ran to the nurse’s station. “Where is Chang Park? What happened? What’s going on?”
“You are…the daughter?”
“Yes”––also known as the goddamn pocketbook. And I’ve been here almost daily for Christ’s sakes!––“Yes, the daughter.”
“They rushed him to surgery about five minutes ago. Cardiac arrest.”
The nurse’s words hung like lead in the air as Jana crumbled to the floor.
*
The next thing she knew, Antonio and a nurse were walking her to a chair. “He had another one…another attack.” Jana’s own whisper echoed in her ears.
“I heard. The nurse said it would be five or six hours until they know anything more. Only that he has to undergo another bypass procedure.”
“Stress. I did this.”
“Jana! Jesus, no! The nurses say your mother’s been sneaking him food, maybe even cigarettes too.”
Damn her mother!
But damn herself, too. Her anger for their treatment of her had made her care less for his wellbeing. How selfish of her. She may as well have wished him dead. Dear God, how cruel was she? Her dad on the brink again. Shame and a horrible torrent of guilt overwhelmed her.
“It wasn’t you, Jana. Never you. You’re only good. A good that they don’t deserve.”
Good? No. Not good. “He’s my dad, Antonio. I don’t want him to die. I never wanted that. What can I do? I have to do something. Something more!” Jana could only stare, tearless now, wrung out, but searching for relief from the dense severity yanking her heart out of her chest.
She looked up at Antonio.
His eyes were on her, willing her to be brave, his strong, firm hold of her shoulders keeping her upright. “Nothing more, Jana. There is nothing more you can do.” He kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes to absorb it.
CHAPTER 46
She stood up.
A sudden feeling of raw strength swelled in her chest.
Nothing more. His words echoed loud and strong.
All at once she realized what she had to do. What she owed herself. She had to live.
She could no longer be beholden to her parents. They were lying in their own beds. She couldn’t lie with them anymore. No more.
Antonio was standing, watching and nodding, waiting for her thoughts to become words. But the glimmer of pride in his eyes made her think he already knew her lines were being drawn, finally.
*
“Take me to Newark, to the club. I’m done there. If we go now, I can still be back before Dad wakes up.”
Antonio took and squeezed her hand, then walked with her to the exit.
“Oh, I’ll meet you at the limo. Need to take care of the payment really quick.”
“You sure? Now? I mean, you did pass out….”
�
��I’m okay, really. It will put my mind at ease to get this taken care of,” she said, her eyes wide referring to her purse’s holdings.
He nodded, however reluctantly, and she veered to the business office window.
*
“My father’s name is Chang Park. Here is forty thousand to put toward the balance.”
“Let me look here, Ms.…?”
“Park. Jana Park. I’m the primary contact on the account.”
“Yes, yes, I see here. Well, Ms. Park, the file shows the balance is at zero. There is nothing due.”
“That’s impossible. That can’t be right…is there an uninsured fund I don’t know about? Because I already asked if—”
“No, no fund, but if you wait right here, I can get Ms. Buchard for you—”
“I actually don’t have time to wait right now. Can you hold the file? I’ll be back in about five hours.”
“Yes, of course,” the clerk answered while Jana was already running out the door.
What kind of tease was this? Close to two hundred grand, wiped? Just like that? Huge billing errors happened all the time in her hospital, but this, this amount was insane!
Also insane was the glorious sight of her guardian angel waiting for her at the limo. She walked toward Antonio as fast as she could, with an urgency pushing her through time and space. It was like the inertia that moved her during a code blue in her ER…
…which was no longer her ER.
No, not now, Jana. Don’t let your mind go there now.
She shoved it down deep and resumed her quick steps forward. Because now, the difference; this energized speed walk took her not toward the possibilities of death and despair, but toward the promise of life. She’d been given a green light to live, to really live! And Antonio was that vibrant light that made her see it all so clearly now.
*
As soon as she reached him, her guardian angel, he kissed her, a deep, penetrating engagement of their mouths, one she wanted to last forever.
But he pulled away to catch his breath. “Mmm…my warrior princess.” He beamed at her proudly, kissed her again lightly, then he ushered her into the passenger seat.
She watched him walk around the front of the car to get in, loving his man-jog, his energy, him. He fell into the driver’s seat and started the car, smiling at her the entire time. God, she could melt from now ’til eternity in those morphing hazel eyes of his.
“Oh, here. You need to eat.” He handed her a cold sandwich wrapped in plastic. “I got it from the shitty cafeteria, but it’s something.”
She thanked him by leaning over to kiss him sweetly as her hand went up to caress his face, loving the feel of his perfectly rough five o’clock shadow. Then she unlocked her lips without wanting to, pressed her forehead to his, and let her hand slide down his jaw line and back to her lap.
She smiled at the token of care that the crappy little sandwich represented, then unwrapped it. She took an enthusiastic bite silently as he backed out of the space. God, she hadn’t realized how hungry she really was.
“It’s not half bad when you’re running on donuts, coffee, and acidic emotion,” she said smiling through her very full mouth.
He smiled sweetly at her, then took his thumb to her chin to catch some dripping condiment, then quickly returned his eyes to the road. “So…I’m sorry to have to tell you this, mi princessa, but when your father comes out of that surgery doing just fine as I am sure he will be…I’ll have to break both his goddamn legs.” A slight smile lifted his face to note his mock seriousness, but his deadly tone resonated in the cab. Her heart pounded from the protective vibration.
And it triple-timed when he took her free hand and squeezed.
She squeezed his hand back. No words were needed for her guardian angel.
*
He remained quiet, giving her time to breathe, to settle.
But now, only minutes before getting to the club, he needed to know, after she’d decided to be done at the club, what her plan would be. Where were they headed? God willing, they. Yes, they could do anything now.
“Talk to me, princess. What are you thinking? What’s going on in that gorgeous mind of yours?”
She took a deep breath and looked at him. “The text. It was from Luly. They gave my position away.”
“The ER? They didn’t hold your spot? Jesus!”
His heart pounded hard, forcing a flood of hopeful warmth through him. Yes, despite his awareness of her distress, he felt a wave of relief. And he didn’t feel bad for it, either. Was he being selfish? Yes, a bit. But damn it, even her precious ER hadn’t appreciated what they had in Jana! Giving her spot away? She didn’t need another entity squeezing her. Taking and taking from her.
“No. Now I have to start over.” She sighed while he let his mind relish the thought of them starting anew. Together.
“I’ll have to track down Nora and get a solid recommendation to one of the other hospitals in the City. One of the other, God, fifteen near-worthy facilities have to have a spot for me,” she said as if to herself more than to him.
He took his eyes off the road and glanced at her, eyes narrow. He didn’t understand. He thought she’d finally gotten it. Turned the corner.
God, was it even worth his breath stating the obvious? If all of the shit—her family, Johnnie and the club, now the hospital—weren’t enough to wake her up fully, what would his two cents do? It was so ingrained in her, being used and tossed out, then used some more.
A painful burn spread fast across his chest. The fact that now, with a clean slate in front of her, she didn’t turn to him, see him, and choose a future with him, it fucking burned like acid. Mexico or Timbuktu, or hell, Manhattan, even! It didn’t matter, if she’d just picked life with him, and they could go from there, have driven from there. If she’d said the words, “We get to start over.” Instead of, “I have to start over.”
But no. He hadn’t been in her equation at all.
While, for him, like he’d told her in the parking lot earlier, the money, his built-up business, his ‘number,’ were of no importance to him now. All that mattered was Jana, his universe was Jana!
But the feeling, apparently, was not mutual. Not reciprocated. Not synergistic.
There was no they.
CHAPTER 47
Jana left Antonio at the limo, saying she’d only be twenty minutes. She ran in past Erin at the bar. It was four o’clock and she hadn’t even meant to be on time. She hadn’t actually known the time since getting out of the shower with Antonio that morning when they’d rushed to get to the bank.
Careful going up the rickety back steps to the dressing room, she laughed out loud. With as much money as the Demontes made, they’d never thought to fix those damn steps. They’d been a hazard since she started at The Wet Spot more than nine years ago. All they needed was for one of the dancers in her five-inch platforms to bite it, break a bone, or worse. On the same lines as what Antonio had said, it’s strange what rich people notice and care about, and what they overlook.
A few strides more and she was at the dressing room door.
But she didn’t even need to open it to know what was behind it: the rhythmic noises, the laughter. Her prediction? It was a scene they’d definitely want her to overlook. If she was staying on, that is.
She opened the door despite herself. And the scene that was sprawled out in front of her eyes confirmed her prediction.
Sugar was on the loveseat, spread eagle, the DJ eating her out, making slurping sounds Jana could only try like hell to ignore. But her ears took them in, and her stomach turned.
Sugar’s long red pinky nail was up her nose, having probably just inhaled all of her last night’s earnings in the form of fine white snow.
Then there was Laynie and the back door bouncer, James. He had her bent over a stool, pounding her from behind while the girl nonchalantly snorted white powder up her nose with some rolled-up monetary denomination; her nails weren’t as long as Sugar’s beca
use, as she had told Jana during the short time they’d known each other, her father and brother made her clip them for their own safety.
“For fuck’s sake! Laynie, Sugar, Jesus! James and whatever the hell your name is, get the hell outta’ here!”
“No, James. Keep fucking me. I’m definitely…not…done…ahhh…yet!” Laynie screamed.
“I’m going to get…”
“Security?” Sugar laughed.
“He’s right here, sweetheart. Fucking the ever-loving hell out of me.” Laynie laughed through her panting. “Could you maybe give us a few minutes?”
Sugar started laughing hysterically and pushed the DJ’s face harder into her crotch. “Winter, I swear girl! All high and mighty because you’re fucking our little boss man.”
Jana’s teeth ground out their fury as she walked out and directly up to Brandon, the bouncer at the front. But what the hell would he do? Probably take his own damn turn. So instead, she marched upstairs to Johnnie’s office, even though he usually wasn’t there this early––or at all, it being Thursday. He’d said he be back from Merrick on Friday.
And what was the point anyway? She was only there to be done, to say goodbye.
She stood there staring for a minute. How ludicrous, thinking she could change these girls’ lives. She went to the empty bar, pulled a beverage napkin off the top of a pile, and started writing a note to Johnnie. She was done, she wrote. Thanks for the opportunity. Goodbye.
She’d leave it with the phone and the apartment key.
“Winter, this new girl is here to see you. Jasmine?” Brandon called from the far corner of the bar.
One of the girls she’d snagged from Piranha. Shit. Okay, well, she’d get her oriented for a minute then leave this shithole for good.
“Hey, come on over, Jasmine…and where’s Courtney?”
“She changed her mind,” the petite dark-haired beauty said.
“That’s not good…is it, Winter?” came Johnnie’s voice over her shoulder. He’d been hovering for who knows how long, and when she looked over at him, the tad of white dust above his upper lip made her know his state of mind. He was assuredly worse than last night. God, she needed to get out of there.
