Never Look Back - a Gripping Bad Boy Mafia Romance

by Gabi Moore

  The first was Naomi. After Sophia gave up her massage studio and decided to work for an NGO that helped victims of trafficking, we soon found more like us. People who were trying to escape from the past, running so hard that they didn’t even care where they landed up. But they landed up with us, in our crooked little house in our avocado tree-lined street with our cats and dogs and a parakeet Bingo, also an orphan.

  Naomi had acted as our Ukrainian translator for a few years, but her role had extended to include everything from impromptu godmother, housekeeper, PA for Sophia and fundraiser. Soon, more girls came. Leah opened the door on a trafficking ring that bought us so much attention and funding that we decided to ramp up operations and open an official halfway house. She was the one who encouraged us to help the girls find work, new homes, purpose.

  And so that’s what we did.

  The newest members found a household of women who’d escaped years ago and knew the ropes. We learnt about the law, about the extent of the trafficking problem in Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. Leah started getting licensed to practice law in this country, and quickly became an integral part of everything. Nita had only been with us for a few months, but had our kitchens up and running like a five-star hotel’s.

  There were some days when we had upwards of 25 women and girls staying with us. It wasn’t always easy. Some brought painful drug habits with them. Some had dangerous partners, some had children, some were sick. But we became their family, no matter what their past was. We were the ones that took them in when the police were not an option. When their support system had abandoned them, when they were lost to the world and completely alone. Whatever state they came to us in, when they left, they were different people.

  And they all loved Josh to death.

  I would laugh and tell Sophia that one day we could tease him about the fact that more than half of the people who came to his fifth birthday party were gorgeous ex-strippers and sex workers from Russia. I didn’t care, though. Josh had been showered with more love and doting in his first five years of life than had taken me a lifetime to accumulate. And I liked it that way.

  “Oh, by the way, I spoke to that new girl on the phone last night. Remember her? Ksenia?”

  Naomi said, and started to help Sophia clear away dishes.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. She’s at the CPP center in town and they told me they’d have someone send her over in the morning. From what I understand she’s in pretty rough shape. Her English isn’t great. Do we have anything in the account for a montage this weekend?”

  It was an old in-joke of ours.

  The first two girls that landed up with us had lost all their personal belongings along the way, and so we had to take them shopping and literally buy it all back again. Clothing, toiletries, shoes. Sophia had taken charge of all that, but she had quipped that the whole day felt like the shopping montage scene from Pretty Woman, and the nickname had stuck. Now, the ‘montage’ was something of an initiation rite around here. Shopping made me want to pull my hair out, but there was something about watching Sophia fuss over a timid new girl that put a lump in my throat.

  “We should be fine, go for it,” I said. “When’s she arriving?”

  “This afternoon.”

  I put down my coffee cup.

  “Invite her to the party,” I said.

  “Leo, baby, she’s probably exhausted, she won’t want to come to a kid’s birthday party,” Sophia said from the sink.

  I shrugged. Sophia knew best about these things. She just had a knack. I was good at taking care of the practical stuff, sure, but it was really Sophia who was the beating heart of this house. Of everything here. The more we took on, the more she seemed to shine. She was so competent she made me look bad, honestly, but I didn’t care. It was me who took her to bed every night. Me that knew what she liked, and how. Me who could do things to her that nobody else could… so as far as I was concerned I was constantly getting the better deal.

  The afternoon rolled around and everyone fussed over little Josh, running around to hang up the decorations and laying out the snacks and treats on the table. Josh dashed underfoot and stuck his fingers in the cupcakes and asked roughly every four seconds whether he could open his presents yet. I didn’t mind.

  Not so many years ago, he was found crying and locked in a wardrobe after his mother put him there and decided to go to Vegas and never come back. I don’t know yet what I’ll tell him when he asks about his past. For now, I just want to make the present as good as I can.

  What else can I tell you? News that Vito had passed away in prison reached us a few years after we found our new place and moved over. It may sound strange, but I mourned him a little. As far as I can tell, his cronies and hangers-on all seeped back into civilian life and the days of seeing Vito’s ugly mug in the papers kind of drifted away, like the era of Al Capone – something people can only vaguely remember, and don’t even want to in any case.

  Ordinary, gentle life seemed to fold over the hole he had left, and soon the wound was covered up in the soft new growth of my life with Sophia. We married soon after we bought the new house, and it was just the two of us, the two cats and a moody day that turned into a heavy storm later that night.

  For a long time we spoke often about all the crazy things that had happened to us, about Vito, about that night we crawled through the bushes together. We replayed all the moments again and again, until we couldn’t hold onto them anymore and they drifted off into memory, and then even the memories grew stale after a while, and that part of our life together became nothing more than an old sepia photograph – we knew it had happened, but it all seemed inconsequential after a time. I had spent the first half of my life running away from my past, and the second half …well, these days I often woke up buzzing with anticipation about the future instead…

  “Daydreaming, baby?”

  I snapped my attention to Sophia standing in front of me, a giant bowl of pink and white marshmallows in her hands.

  “Yeah! Just …thinking,” I said and leaned over to kiss her, then swipe a marshmallow.

  “Hey! Those are for later,” she said and pulled the bowl back. “OK, give me one.”

  I smiled, picked up a pink one and gently placed it between my teeth, then hovered in front of her, wiggling my eyebrows so she knew to come and get it. She laughed, moved forward to catch it with her own teeth and just as she did, I snatched it out of the way so her incoming lips landed square on mine. We both burst out laughing.

  “Oldest trick in the book,” I said, stuffing the marshmallow into my own mouth and giving her a devilish grin.

  “Asshole,” she giggled, and made a halfhearted attempt to bite me instead.

  “Dad! Dad! Everyone’s here now so I can get my presents!”

  Josh came skidding into the room with the triumph that only a child who knows he can’t officially be put off any longer can muster up.

  “Ok, buddy, let’s go,” I said, and we all went to the patio. Everyone was there. Naomi, about a million of Josh’s friends from pre-school and their parents… they all stood talking loudly and laughing, kids and dogs weaving lines between the adults, our two patio tables laden with party food.

  Sophia sat him down in front of his cake and everyone sang happy birthday. I stood a little ways off and watched them, a strange, warm feeling swelling inside me. Sophia never had a mother, but damn was she a good one herself. She didn’t know I was watching her. Her graceful movements, her patience with the kids, her warm, easy smile. A body so curvy it could make a grown man weep. Eyes, one blue and brown, like mine. A little dark, a little light, but still a pair, even if it was an unusual pair.

  Josh blew out the candles and Naomi got to work cutting everyone a slice of cake.

  “OK, moment of truth, buddy. Here’s your present,” I said, and reached up to the top of a tall cupboard to pull down a brightly wrapped gift.

  I had handled many boxes like this as a child. Boxe
s with unspeakable things inside them. Bad boxes. Boxes that were small yet big enough to carry a whole lifetime of guilt. But this one? This one was covered in blue and red tractors.

  … And it was light.

  - THE END -

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  FANTASY/SCI-FI

  Manipulator Of Elements

  - Earth

  Chapter 1

  The Fromatius Mall stood at the edge of the parking lot and dominated the countryside around it.

  No one seemed to know where the mall had come from; it just showed up one day in the field and sat there empty until the stores began to open. After six months, the mall’s owners held a “Grand Opening” celebration and employed the local marching band and trade guilds to help in the celebration.

  Since the trades anticipated a profitable relationship with the mall, they were glad to help out. The schools were thrilled to have a place where the high-schoolers could work during the evenings and weekends. It would be a much better place for them to hang out in than the local Drive-In or bowling alley.

  A few people down at the township hall talked among themselves about how quickly the mall had appeared and were stunned it showed up so fast. Although the building plans were submitted and the proper forms filled out, it seemed strange everything went as smoothly as it did when the mall was constructed.

  Some of the local firms were hired to do the finishing work and pour the concrete for the sidewalks around the structure, but no one could recall ever seeing the construction firms who were hired to build the mall in town before. And before any of the trade guilds could complain about a lack of their involvement, it was there. As soon as it was constructed, the other trades were contracted and given lucrative contracts to maintain it.

  Granted, some of the stores in place seemed a little odd for a suburban shopping mall, but there were enough major retailers in it to defer any bad thoughts from the local suburban moms. Besides, it was spring and people were getting ready for the summer. The big auto plant in the nearby town of Scipio was planning to shut down for two weeks of inventory. This would allow them the chance to make certain they had everything they needed for next year’s models and allow the employees to take vacations. Some employees had additional time in based on years of service and could take as much as two more weeks of vacation. Therefore, if your father or mother were one of the lucky ones to have started working there right after the Korean War, you could spend an entire month at some pleasure dome in Florida.

  Lilly Arrad wasn’t one of the lucky ones. Her father ran an insurance company in Fromatius out of their house. Her mother stayed home and took care of her and her older sister when they were coming of age, but now she was looking into a job at the mall. Lilly didn’t want a job at the mall when it opened. She didn’t care for most of the kids she was stuck around all day at her high school and found a job with a catering company. However, most of the jobs her company pulled were at the mall for the various out of town dignitaries who came in to see how their store branches looked and what the sales represented. So, she might as well work at the mall. Perhaps next week’s job would take her somewhere else.

  She sat on the hood of her Pinto and looked at the mall again. These things sprang up everywhere. Was the entire country turning into one big shopping mall? The 70’s surely brought with it a lot of novelties. Right now, she could look forward to attending college in the fall at Cincinnati. She had her future mapped out: international studies, find a diplomat, get married and spend the rest of her life throwing parties for foreign dignitaries.

  She looked down and sighed.

  Her shoes were still in the mall. She’d forgotten them and walked barefoot all the way to the car. She really needed to get beyond that, it was so childish. Now she would have to walk back in that place and get them.

  Maybe she wouldn’t. She could drive home barefoot and find her spare sandals in the bedroom closet. She had the dance class tonight her sister taught.

  Her sister, Rachel, had learned belly dancing in college and used it to supplement her spending money. Although Rachel married last month and left the house, it still felt as if she was around. With her older sister moved out, Lilly started to feel lonely. She still had a few good friends from the neighborhood, but everyone was headed to different places for college in the fall.

  She wanted to stay close enough to come home on the weekend, but far enough to enjoy the life on campus and socialize with the right kind of people. She would be forced to stay in a dorm the first few years, but afterwards, she would find a better place to live. Somehow, the sorority life didn’t appeal to her, and Lilly doubted she would pledge one. She could see herself sharing an apartment after a year or two. Her friend Cindy started college a year early and wrote her letters about how crazy the college dorm life was in Indiana. It was one of her reasons for attending a school in Cincinnati.

  The hood of her Pinto started to burn into her butt, so Lilly decided to hop off it and go home. It was early enough in the year to walk barefoot across a parking lot, but she had no desire to go back and retrieve the shoes. They were an older pair and she had more at home. She’d look for them tomorrow. The jeans, on the other hand, were precious. She’d spent the weekend fading them to just the right hue in her mother’s washing machine. They matched the light sweater she wore.

  Lilly was small and, at five foot in height, didn’t expect to get much taller. She wasn’t a big eater and kept her weight at a comfortable hundred pounds. She even dieted down to ninety at one point, but didn’t like the way it made her feel. She stayed away from the pot smokers and druggies at her school, although she did enjoy her time on the literary magazine and French Club.

  Lilly decided to forget the shoes and turned to open her car door when she saw something.

  It was the new guy who transferred into school this year. He was sitting on the edge of the fountain at the entrance. He was staring at it and moving his hand over the water in the pool. The fountain was huge and filled up with coins every day from well-wishers who wanted to bring good luck by tossing three coins in it. But he wasn’t dropping coins in the fountain; he was busy with his eyes fixed on the pattern his hand traced through the air.

  Now she was curious.

  She finally remembered his name. It was Dion Bacchus. She remembered it because he was in her homeroom. One of the strange things she noticed one day was how many of her close friends had similar names to her last name. The school was huge. Her senior class had five hundred in its enrollment. Not only did the local auto industry contribute to its size, but the regional air force base added to it as well. It wasn’t unusual for her to call a friend’s house and have a “Colonel Adams” answer the phone.

  Dion started school that year as a transfer student from some place in California that year, but mostly kept to himself. She had said little more than “hello” to him since he started. It was strange to see someone start school in their senior year and he didn’t seem to interact with anyone. Dion’s locker was two sections down from her, but Lilly seldom saw him speak to anyone. He was in her biology class as well, but she couldn’t ever recall him asking a single question.

  This was too bad for Dion because plenty of the girls at school were obsessed with him.

  He stood almost six foot tall, had dark features and black eyes with hair that cascaded down his back to a school-acceptable length. He wore the standard jeans and t-shirt apparel, which dominated in the school, but had an intense look on his face and a tight set of chest muscles that showed through his shirt.

  A few girls approached him one day and, although he was polite, he didn’t speak very long with any of them. A few of the local tough kids who were into drugs and hard rock tried to corner him in the hall one day. He took the hand of one and gently pulled it off him. The kid who placed it there walked away swear
ing under his breath with a look of pain in his eyes. Lilly remembered the tough one later coming to school with his hand in a cast.

  Rumors abounded about Dion’s background.

  He lived with his aunt and uncle in one of the nicer houses on a good street, but people seldom saw him leave the house. The rumor most people believed was that his real parents died in some kind of tragic accident and his relatives were the only ones who could take him in. Some said his family were foreign spies, others said they were extraterrestrials who were under the protection of the air base. Among other things, the base was rumored to hold the bodies of aliens who’d crashed on Earth in a flying saucer. Some people believed Dion’s family were all black magicians who sacrificed goats in the back yard, although no one had ever seen it take place. The house where he dwelled was quiet and never gave the neighbors any reason to be concerned about what happened over there.

  There were plenty of other strange things that happened in the neighborhood over the past few years, such as the professor of chemistry who was busted for making illegal pharmaceutics in his basement. The man later turned out to be deeply in debt to mobsters.

  “I wondered why he always was on the pay phone at the grocery store,” Lilly’s mother had said to her when the arrest hit the news.

  Since the fountain stood between her and the entrance to the mall, Dion would be directly in her path if Lilly wanted to go back in it for her shoes. This would allow her to see what he was up to by the fountain and retrieve her shoes at the same time. You weren’t supposed to enter the mall if you didn’t have shoes on, but she didn’t worry about it, as Lilly knew some of the mall security guards. They were constantly flirting with her.