by Gabi Moore
“What’s this?”
She shrugged.
“I found it at the strip club. It was in a back room, hidden away. I saw other things there too. Folders of …women. He’s obviously trafficking girls in…”
My brain struggled to latch onto the strings of numbers before me but I couldn’t make sense of anything.
“What does it all mean?” I asked, then closed it.
She shrugged again.
“I don’t know. But we have to go back there. We have to find that camera footage and destroy it.”
I laughed out loud.
“I’m serious Leo. If they have no footage, they don’t have anything else. They picked you because you didn’t appear to be connected to him in any way, right?”
I tried to think. I had no idea where Vito was or what his next move would be. I had no idea what I was doing. I was playing a dangerous game, with an opponent I didn’t trust, and I wasn’t even sure of the rules.
“But going back to the scene of the crime? What if Vito’s there?”
She raised herself up onto her haunches and stared deeply into my eyes, taking my hands.
“Yeah? So what if he is?”
The wicked glint in her eyes nearly blew me away. She was right. So what? Vito had stolen my childhood from me. He had barged in, used me as a pawn and now, years later, I was letting him do it all over again. I kissed her forehead and hugged her tightly. So what if he was there? Well, perhaps it was time I took a page out of Sophia’s book. She was right. Vito might be going to jail, but that didn’t mean that justice had been served.
“Get your coat,” I said, “…and bring that book. We’ll leave right now.”
Chapter Eighteen – Sophia
If there’s anyone in this world I wanted to be bad with, it was him.
I had tried being someone I wasn’t. I had tried to stuff all the memories down, tried to forget, tried to ‘process’ and come to terms with and rehabilitate and move on. But what had that really done for me, in the end? What if what I really needed was not to avoid everything that made me different and damaged and wicked …but embrace it?
I hadn’t had a green smoothie in days. In the last week I hadn’t thought once about wedding flower arrangements. My hair was kind of greasy, I ached all over, my boyfriend had turned into some bloodthirsty fucking machine and I had discovered that just under the surface I was certainly no angel either …and I felt amazing.
As we bundled ourselves into the car and sped off into the night I was overwhelmed with the thought that now I was really living, now I had finally come alive after a long, dormant sleep in some kind of shell, some kind of good girl costume that had never really fitted me.
I was scared shitless. I was sure I had gone crazy. And I looked over at Leo in the driver’s seat and felt a little intimidated. But I loved that, too. I had fucked him with the blood still on his hands. It was so easy to give myself to him. My mind could find no logical explanation for it but my body knew what it wanted, and it wanted him, in all his strong, forceful glory.
I loved the way he stared at the road in front of us. I loved how solidly his hands folded around the steering wheel. I loved the way his strong thighs relaxed open and I loved the bulge in his worn jeans and I loved what that bulge meant, and most of all I loved how good it felt to let him take me, to let his strong body lead mine.
The trees and shrubs in the night sped past outside our windows like hungry ghosts trying to flag us down. But we drove on, in heavy silence. As we neared the spot he slowed down a little and leaned forward to scan the landscape ahead. There was nothing but road and trees and gravel. But eventually he steered the car gently into an almost invisible clearing and looked at me.
“This is it,” he said, and then swerved the car into some bushes, turned off the engine and exhaled loudly.
“We should walk up to the house. It’s a long walk.”
Old Sophia would have balked at the suggestion. But after what I had done that night at the club, nothing had quite the same sting of fear in it anymore. Breaking and entering, being turned on by what I was supposed to be repulsed by, even fear itself – all these things just seemed like flimsy veils – veils that I could fling off at any time like I was on a great cosmic stage, and I got off on all who watched me strip down to nothing. I was the god Shiva, dancing the end of the world in a strip club, and it felt fucking fantastic.
I nodded and we got out the car, then stole away into the night, nothing to guide us but the vague path shadowing the main driveway straight up to the main house. Leo moved swiftly, his body crushing a path for me that I followed easily. I could still feel him, inside me. He had done things to me. Dirty things. Again and again. But I never wanted to recover from those things. I never wanted the dull ache he had left between my legs to fade. Even in the icy night air, in the silence, my body was roaring for him.
As though reading my thoughts, he quickly spun around and caught me by the waist, planting a hot, insistent kiss on my lips. I hungrily kissed back, relishing how warm his lips were on mine, how good it felt to be here with him, on the edge, flirting with death.
“You don’t have to come all the way, Sophia,” he said. “It’s dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt. This is my past, and I’m the one who has to put it to bed…” he whispered in the chill of the night.
I shook my head and held him tightly. No. I would come with him. He leaned in for another kiss, but this time, the gun tucked in at his waist pressed hard into me. I gasped. Without thinking, I leant in more deeply to wrap my tongue around his and curl my hips up closer to grind against him. He moaned and stroked down my hair, and then we dashed off again.
The woman in the strip club, Lily with the ankh tattoo, well, she had been right all along. There was nothing wrong with being an addict. It’s just that when you’re addicted to the right thing, it gets called a different name. It gets to be a calling. Intuition. People don’t say it’s obsession, they say it’s ‘passion’.
After what felt like a lifetime I slowly saw the edges of the house emerge from the darkness. It was clearly enormous, but so poorly lit it looked almost abandoned. I crouched behind Leo at the rim of some shrubs as he surveyed for an entry point. He spied what looked like an open window and we scrambled over, crouching low and flanking the house till we reached the window.
The room was dark, but it was easy enough to squeeze inside the window. He went first, and I followed, silently. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the new level of darkness in the room.
A bedroom?
It was hard to tell.
My heart skipped a beat as I thought I heard something.
“Shit! What’s that?” I whispered. The sound grew more distinct and then louder. Footsteps and voices, rapidly approaching us.
Leo quickly grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the room, and, feeling his way along the contour of a wall, found something like a closet door. He yanked it open and we tumbled into a recess in the wall. He slid it closed quickly and only two seconds later the light in the room flickered on. It came streaming through the wooden slats in the closet door. I had stopped breathing; I felt like I could almost feel my blood rushing around my body, pumping with adrenaline.
It was a walk-in closet, angled away from what I now understood was the main bedroom, and soon the voices were loud and clear behind us. An ice-cold wave of delicious fear washed over me from head to toe. I peered over at Leo, and could only see the wet shine on his beautiful eyes as he looked back at me and mimed zipping his lips closed.
Two voices.
A man and a woman’s.
I heard things being clanked and opened, drawers being slammed shut, bodies moving.
“Where the fuck is he?” said the woman. “Is this what it’s come to? I have to bury the fucking thing myself?”
I heard her mutter more complaints under her breath but the man’s voice was relatively quiet. I could feel the warm skin of Leo’s hand brushing against mine. It wa
s the most maddeningly erotic thing in the world.
“Yeah, sure, obviously nobody expects you to do a damn thing, huh? You just sit around and bitch, right?” said a man’s tired voice. His accent was straight from a gangster movie. I could hardly believe my ears.
I turned to look at Leo but he was watching intently, the slats of light mirrored in his wide eyes as he peeked inside. We were two naughty kids spying on the grown-ups. But could this really be him? The infamous Vito Roselli? He sounded like nothing more than an exhausted, hen-packed dad to me.
“Yeah, yeah, poor you, sorry I forgot,” came the woman’s voice again. “Must be hard getting all these people to do what you want all the time.”
“Can you lay off? You think I brought you out here just to chew me out?”
The woman laughed angrily.
“Bunny, please, I’m having a hard time, can a man not come somewhere nice with his wife and just enjoy things for a second? Is that so much to ask, huh?”
“Cry me a river,” she spat, but her voice was softer now. I felt like all the blood in my body was slowly pooling somewhere at my feet.
Through the slits I could make out a little of the woman moving around in the room. She was undressing.
I was transfixed.
I had only ever seen Vito Roselli on the news before. He was an enigma. Not a real person. Not someone who had to coax a belligerent woman into bedding him. And yet here he was, and this was his life, playing out in thin, bright bands right before my eyes. Leo grabbed my hand and squeezed it. If we were discovered, we would be killed for sure. A little knot of fear seemed to tighten between my legs.
We watched as the woman blinked in and out of view, removing her clothes and revealing a mature but shapely figure. She kept her garter belt and stockings on. Who even wore that kind of thing anymore?
“Bunny, look how fucking beautiful you are. Why you gotta give me such a hard time, huh…?” he cooed. One of my feet was cramping from being held so still.
Leo and I strained our ears to hear them kissing and groping one another. Fabric rustling. The sound of more clothing dropping to the floor. Vito himself was still out of sight.
“People steal from me, Bunny, the dancers are all jumping ship, I got shit with the licensure for the bar, I got a million things going on …but fuck when I see those …I can forget about all of that, you know?”
Oh god, they were going to fuck. Right here, with us just a few feet away in their closet. Oh god. What if they needed to get some clothing and came looking in here?
I peered out the slatted doors as far as I could to either side and made out a long passage to our left. Leo caught my eyes and saw what I was thinking. We could make a run for it, provided they were distracted enough and we didn’t make a sound.
“I know baby, I know. But we have Joe as an alibi, we have the video of Leo doing the deed, and we have eye witnesses to put the girlfriend at the club,” she said between noisy kisses. “So let’s just focus on getting rid of the goddam body now, OK?”
Vito mumbled his agreement. Shawn T. His body was still here? Leo flashed me a shocked look, which I returned.
“You know, you were right about that girl, Bunny. They told me she was a bit of an ex-junkie, but man, the stories I heard…” Vito said, chuckling. I heard the bedsprings groan a little as both of them settled onto the bed, still kissing and breathing heavily.
I felt Leo’s hand squeeze mine as quiet, guttural sounds started coming from the bed. The springs creaked. We couldn’t see much but the bobbing feet. Now was our chance. Leo looked to me, placed a cat-like hand on the slatted doors and eased them open one atom at a time. The door cooperated and glided open smoothly. The light in the room felt like an assault on our eyes.
We dove out, hugged the wall and dashed into the relative darkness of the corridor to our left, not daring to look behind us at the grunting couple on the bed. My hand still in Leo’s, we fled, his other hand feeling out a path for us in the semi-darkness. This place was huge. I followed, high on the balls of my feet, and soon we had raced down an arching staircase and landed in what looked like an enormous office. His hand yanked the chain of a small green table lamp and the layout of the room appeared softly illuminated before us: there were several desks, chairs and bookcases, all stinking of smoke and leather, and to the far end of the room was a giant safe door with a rotating lock shaped almost exactly like a dumbbell.
We exchanged glances. I immediately fumbled for the book as Leo went over to examine the giant swivel on the door.
It required two sets of codes.
I flipped through the book looking for something that would match, but my fingers trembled and the numbers swam before my eyes. By sheer luck, I turned to a page with a triple underlined pair of codes and saw a little dumbbell sketch – yes, a dumbbell just like the handle! – was doodled next to it.
Leo’s fingers flew to enter in the digits I whispered loudly to him, and a steel bolt popped out and allowed entry for the second code. He entered this in too. I knew Leo was easily two hundred pounds of mostly muscle, and yet he when he threw his full heft against the door it took its time hinging open. It was a tiny room, completely dark, and in a heartbeat something made a great whoomp sound.
I screamed as a dead man down slumped at me feet.
“Shhh!” hissed Leo, and he raced to grab the dead weight off of me and shove the body upright and back into the vault. But it was too late. My body had screamed without my permission, and everyone in a ten-mile radius must have heard me, nevermind the lovebirds upstairs. I clapped my hands over my mouth and stared down at the ashen face and dead, rubbery mouth. I had never seen a dead man before. I couldn’t tell if I was going to pass out or scream again.
“Sophia, Sophia baby – listen to me carefully. They know we’re here now. Get inside and hide, and don’t make a sound, OK?”
“Leo he’s …he’s …is this the guy you…?” I stammered.
“Just get inside Sophia!” he said and pushed me towards the body. I resisted with every fiber in my being.
“But—”
“Sophia, I love you. Please. You’ll be safe inside, just do as I say. He’s dead. He can’t hurt you.”
I could hear hurried footsteps coming down the stairs. I swallowed hard and forced myself to step over the body and into the darkness of the vault. Leo closed it behind me but didn’t lock it, so that a thing crack of light still sliced through.
The next few moments unfolded on only one sensory channel: sound. And smell. In the pitch dark, I realized with a lurch to my stomach that the body smelt so bad I had to actively stop myself from retching. My hands fumbled for a light switch, a table, anything, and that’s when I heard them.
“Ha! Will you look at this! You’re a little trip down memory lane, aren’t you?”
I froze.
Vito.
I pricked my ears so keenly it felt like the air itself had a sound. Silence. I wondered what they were doing out there.
“What you gonna do with that, buddy? You gonna kill me, too?” said Vito, arrogantly.
I felt sick with fear for Leo.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” Leo said calmly. I clung to his voice, savoring every piece of proof that he was still alive, still well. He was standing close to the safe, only a few feet from me but separated by a thick steel door. I felt more protected by the prospect of his body shielding me than I did by the thick steel door.
“In fact, looking at you now, I can see why you never picked on anyone your own size,” Leo continued. He spoke slowly, like he didn’t want a single syllable of his insult to go unheard. I could feel the tension in the air.
“Just put the gun down, Leo. That won’t help you now,” he chuckled. “You’re guilty for murdering Shawn T, end of story.”
I heard the trigger pull back and click. I whipped my attention to the space around me and furiously, my hands flew around the dark to find a switch. I had the revolting fear of accidentally touching him,
but just when I had almost giving up, my hand caught a string on the roof and I tugged down hard, illuminating the inside of the vault. I scanned quickly. I saw a little ledge, several dead CCTV monitors. It wasn’t a safe. It was a safe room. I noticed woven bags on the floor and peeled back the lid to reveal tightly packed blocks of fresh $100 bills. I gulped and covered them back up again.
All of a sudden I heard a tussle outside and then the woman’s voice, high and shrill even from inside my metal cage.
“No!” she cried. “Leo, don’t!”
I heard Leo yell something back at her and she shut up instantly.
“I was just a kid, Vito! You knew that. I trusted you. I looked up to you! Do you know the guilt I’ve carried around for all these years?”
I had never heard so much emotion in his voice before. Suddenly, I spied a recording case on the ledge. On it was written: Shawn T. I snatched it and glared at the real Shawn T. Yep, he certainly was crossed out. I stashed it into my jacket pocket.
I heard the two men clash, and the woman screamed. I couldn’t stand it any longer; I poked my head out and tried to see what was happening.
The two men were rolling one over the other, stumbling across the floor, first one on top, then the other. Vito had pinned Leo down and was straddling him, arms outstretched and trying to pry the gun from him. Leo’s arm was stiff and outstretched to clamp him at his neck, and both men were red and wrestling, the gun held just out of Vito’s reach.
Vito managed to swing up his left leg and in a split second had kicked the gun from Leo’s hand and sent it skidding along the floor. Like my life depended on it I flung open the door, flew from the vault and grabbed the gun so tightly it hurt my hands. The woman screamed again when she realized I had been hiding there all along, then in the next beat lunged her hands towards my throat. As though possessed, my fingers moved swiftly to cock the trigger and I squeezed, exploding the room in a loud bang as a bright, red spot appeared square in the center of her chest.
Everyone in the room froze and stared at me, horrified, their faces nearly as ashen as the late Shawn T’s, who had been watching mute from the door of the vault.
