by Riley Morgan
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “I’m too wired.”
Ramon believed her. He remembered when he was younger and he had run barefoot through a big pile of broken glass. He remembered when his mother, with tears in her own eyes, had stayed up late picking out the shards, one painful sliver at a time. He did not sleep that night, but he was not sure if it was because of the glass or something else.
“How can I help?” he asked.
“Can you just stay and talk?”
Ramon never thought that he’d hear Lena actually ask him to talk to her. He didn’t think she’d ever listen to anything he had to say, at least willingly. But he agreed. He didn’t tell Lena, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep either. She would be a welcome diversion for the insomniac nightmares that awaited him in the dark of his room.
“What do you want to talk about?”
Lena took a long time to answer. She hadn’t cried once since he’d come in. Not when he had to dig for splinters in the bottom of her feet. Not when he poured burning peroxide onto her hands. But he thought that she might cry now.
“Who was that guy?” Ramon asked.
“Damien,” Lena answered.
“What happened? I just saw you hit him and then everything else.”
“He surprised me at the door and ran inside. He was drunk.”
“Why’d you hit him?”
“Because the motherfucker deserved it.”
That was a good enough answer for Ramon, who had used the same answer on more than one occasion.
“Do you know why he came here?”
“Because he thinks I should give him a second chance.”
“I don’t really believe in second chances,” Ramon said.
“Not for assholes like him.”
They didn’t talk any more about Damien. Ramon sensed that the subject was more sore than any of the wounds that Lena had sustained that night, and that it was better left alone for another time.
“Your dad said you told him I made an inappropriate remark to you. I’m sorry, whatever it was I didn’t mean -”
Lena cut him off.
“That was my fault. I told him you did that so that you’d get in trouble. I didn’t mean for him to get angry.”
“Oh.”
“And I don’t want to get you in trouble any more. You’re not as bad as I thought you were.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
They sat in silence for a while. Ramon tried not to notice how beautiful Lena was when she wasn’t defensive and hostile. Lena tried not to let on how much she appreciated Ramon’s caring for her. Neither of them was fooling the other.
“You’re not so bad either,” Ramon said. “When I met you, I thought you were just some spoiled princess who got herself into more trouble than she could handle and needed somebody to babysit her.”
“How am I not exactly that?” Lena said.
“Well I’ve never met and princesses who would break a glass over somebodies head.”
They both shared a laugh.
“You know, your dad -”
Lena cut him off again.
“He’s not my dad.”
“Your stepdad is a scary sonofabitch.”
Lena knew what he meant. She told Ramon about what it was like growing up with him. It was good, she said, while her mother was still alive. He was kind to her. Whether he was actually kind or just pretending, it was all the same to Lena. After, though, it changed. He only ever saw her as his. Like she was part of the estate, one of the pieces of art on the walls just waiting for a suitable buyer to come along and take her off her hands. She told Ramon how she was afraid of her step-brothers, how they looked at her like hungry dogs, and how Zeus had laughed off her concerns with a “boys will be boys” wave of his hand.
“Why don’t you leave?” he asked.
It was a question that Lena couldn’t answer. She knew she should, but she was afraid. Afraid that she wouldn’t be able to take care of herself. What did she know about surviving outside these walls? What would she do if her step-father came looking? It made more sense to her to learn how to survive in this world. It was the only one that she knew, and she didn’t see how it was going to change any time soon.
Ramon knew how right she was. He’d thrown himself into the world too, not that many years ago. He’d gotten along for a while. Found a niche for himself and put his back into it. But things piled up and the world got on top of him. He never found a way to get out from under it for long, and ever time he went back down, he went down harder than the time before.
“Do you have any friends? Any family?”
Lena didn’t have many friends. A few from school, but none that could keep her away from Zeus. Same with family. She thought that her mom might have some, but she’d never found anything about them, had no idea who they were or how to get in touch with them. She didn’t think they’d be able to help anyway.
“What do you mean?”
Lena took a second to answer, she looked like she was trying to make up her mind about something.
“My mom and dad, my real dad, they were really poor.”
Ramon knew what that was like. Lena said that if she had any relatives, they were probably in a shack out in the glades, or living in a trailer somewhere up north.
“What about you?”
Lena
Lena had just shared more with Ramon that she had with anyone else in her whole life except for Tia and Michaela. Telling them things didn’t really count, since they always seemed to just know.
Ramon had been born in a little neighborhood in Miami. It was rough growing up. His family ran a small grocery store and made just enough money to make ends meet for their kids, their cousins, their grandparents. The whole family. They lived in a handful of row houses that Ramon’s dad had bought really cheap. Over the years, the family fixed them up and made them home.
Then some of Ramon’s cousins got into some trouble, and things got bad. They had to leave their neighborhood, and the family sort of scattered. Ramon didn’t know where his parents were. He’d lost track of them when he joined the Marines after school. He’d been a soldier for a few years, went over to Afghanistan a couple times, got kicked out his third time there.
He’d hitchhiked back to Miami, got back to town with the clothes on his back, and found that everyone he’d known before was dead or gone. For the last couple of years, he’d worked one shitty job or another until it broke him down. He’d ride out on any savings he had until he hit rock bottom, and then he’d do it again.
“So what’s this? Another shit job just to save up some more drinking money?”
Ramon only shrugged. He had become more distant than normal. Lena reached out with her one good hand and put it on the top of his leg trying to comfort him. He softened a little, and turned back towards her.
“I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m doing at all anymore.”
“Well you should keep doing this. You’re good at protecting people.”
Lena didn’t know what she said wrong, but Ramon turned away and went silent. A few minutes later he climbed out of bed and excused himself. Lena waited for him to come back, but she fell asleep before he ever did.
Tia woke her up the next morning. Technically, it was the afternoon. Lena had managed to sleep for the better part of fourteen hours, which wasn’t enough for Tia’s taste. Michaela joined them a few minutes later to look over her wounds. The old woman seemed to be pleased with Ramon’s work, and only went so far as to wash the cuts and change Lena’s bandages.
While Michaela worked, Tia begged Lena to tell them what had happened last night. Lena couldn’t refuse their eager request, so she told them everything that she could, starting with dinner. The women listened, enraptured. They both let out a little cheer when she told them about how she’d broken the glass over Damien’s head, and they both swooned when she told them about how Ramon had pulled him to the ground and embarrassed him in the middle of the living room.
Lena had never told them everything that had happened between her and Damien, but she didn’t need to. They sensed what was wrong when she came home unexpectedly from school a month before graduation. They’d both known what men like Damien would do to women like Lena. If there was anyone in the world who hated him as much as she did, it was Tia and Michaela.
Both women had always liked Ramon, the told Lena. They thought he was nice. Well mannered. Respectful. And very handsome. Lena rolled her eyes at them and made a sound of mock disgust. If they had liked Ramon before, they were now his biggest fans. Or at least among them.
When Lena’s story was over and her bandages refreshed, they left her to rest, smiling at Ramon as they walked past his chair by her bedroom door. Lena caught a glimpse of his leg through the door as it opened and closed, and thought for that split second about calling out for him. But she hesitated and the door closed and so she found herself again in solitude.
Damien did not stop calling or texting her. Every time he blocked his number, he got a new phone and harassed her again. She’d hoped that he’d learned his lesson last night, but Damien wasn’t really the learning kind.
Bolstered by food and a set of fresh painkillers, Lena found herself drifting back to sleep, thinking about the man sitting outside her bedroom door.
Ramon
Ramon was supposed to be writing his first security report for Zeus. He’d finished most of it, and was happy with the changes that he’d recommended, but as he got closer to the end, he found himself frequently distracted. His thoughts were with the young woman lying in bed in the room next to him. It was his job to keep her safe, and he had failed at least in some respect. It would always have bothered him professionally, but what he felt now was more than that.
He did not care to admit it to himself, and certainly not to anyone else, but he found himself caring more and more for Lena. He empathized with her life here. He knew first hand how much a home life full of trauma can stifle a soul, and she had lived with it longer than he had. She’d never had the chance to go out and make her own way. Never had the opportunity to prove herself.
And still, she was stronger than Ramon had guessed. He felt like a fool for underestimating her.
He took a deep breath and set his report aside. A walk would do him good, and he needed to inspect the outer walls of the compound.
It was nice outside. Hot, of course, and humid too. But Ramon loved it. It felt like home to him. He started with a short walk around the house, looking for any way that someone could get into the house besides the front door. He made a few notes and walked over to the outer wall. The compound was laid out in a big square. On the north corner of the square was the house. In the east corner was the pool and patio. The west corner had the garage, and the south corner was the entrance to the estate and an enormous lawn suitable for hosting big parties. The swamp surrounded the compound on all sides. It was lightest towards the south where the road came through, and thickest to the east where the fauna climbed up the outer walls and spilled on top of it.
The walls were all ten feet high and two feet thick. They were meant to be bombproof. As Ramon looked at the front gate, he wondered why the hell they bothered with almost one mile of reinforced concrete wall when the gate could have been overwhelmed by a guy with a pair of bolt cutters. That would have to be near the top of the list of improvements to make right away.
The rest of the perimeter looked good. Ramon noted a few places where the brush on the far side needed to be cut back, but otherwise, everything was in good order. It was on his way back to the house that he noticed Zeus standing at the inadequate gate talking to two men in a car. The man in the passenger seat had a bandage over the left side of his face. It was Damien. Ramon watched the men as they carried on in easy, friendly conversation, slipping inside before Zeus turned around to come back to the house.
That night, Zeus called Ramon into his office, not to scold him, but to inform him that his services would only be needed for another two weeks. The old man handed him a check for one week’s pay with a promise that the second would be delivered on his final day of employment in the Buldova house. In addition, he was not to inform Lena of this information.
Ramon was crushed. He had just settled into his new position and was taking a liking to his work, and to his client. But that’s not what kept him awake that night. What bothered him most was why?
Why would Lena only need protection for another two weeks?
Lena
After Zeus’s conversation at the gates of the house, but before he informed Ramon of his impending termination, the old man went to his daughter’s room to speak to her. He was pleased to tell her that two weeks from now, he would be taking Lena and her step-brothers on vacation to Cuba.
The family had taken many vacations before. They were always high points in her life. It was standard policy that the children could bring friends as guests. Lena was shocked and disappointed to learn that she would not be allowed to bring anyone on this trip. Her father gave a vague excuse pertaining to customs and border patrol, and made his leave.
Lena was not sure what to make of the change, but she was not terribly alarmed and saw no reason to be suspicious of her father. While she lay in bed recovering from her injuries, Ramon kept her constant company. He taught her card games that he had learned as a child and as a soldier. In turn, she taught him the songs that she learned as a girl from her mother and from Tia and Michaela. Ramon was surprised at how colorful the songs were, and frequently found himself blushing at the words.
The sight of the big strong man turning beet red at children's’ songs was almost too much for Lena to take. She laughed until she hurt, which only made Ramon blush harder.
Lena’s trips out of bed were few and far between. It was not out of any sort of obedience that she remained in bed, but because it was too painful for her to walk on her own, even heavily medicated, even a week after she had broken the glass over Damien’s face.
Ramon offered to carry her wherever she wanted to go, and twice, Lena took up his offer and had her carry him to the pool. Other times, finding herself bored while she was laid up in bed, she lamented the lack of a television in her room. Ramon took a ladder from the landscaping shed and hauled the flat screen TV that hung over the fireplace up to Lena’s room. This did not make him more popular with Lena’s stepbrothers.
She was smitten with his continued care. He went on to oversee a number of improvements to the security of the house, and when he wasn’t seeing to his responsibilities, he was with her.
Lena continued to hide her feelings for Ramon, not wanting to be beholden to him, and not wanting to cause any trouble.
One afternoon, three days after her injuries, she noticed Ramon acting strangely. She asked him what was wrong, and he snapped upright and his demeanor changed in an instant.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Everything’s fine.”
And as far as Lena could tell, outside of that one incident, he was fine. He sat with her watching bad TV, joining her when she made fun of the D list celebrities or Hollywood hopefuls humiliating themselves for ten minutes more in the spotlight. They talked about played cards and sang songs. Ramon had a light and agile voice that to Lena seemed like a strange match for his big, strong body.
They carried on like this for the seven days that Lena was bedridden. With only that one exception, everything seemed perfectly wonderful.
She never once sensed how much trouble was looming on the horizon.
Ramon
Two days after Lena’s injury, Ramon started to wonder about some things. His incipient termination still didn’t make sense, nor did how it fit with the timeline of the Buldova’s upcoming vacation. Ramon hardly saw the point in having a bodyguard if all you were going to do was sit at home. It was when you were out and about, especially in a strange country that you really wanted some muscle at your side.
He tried not to let it bother him too much, but the questions just kept g
nawing at him. He kept himself busy by tending to Lena. He enjoyed the time that he spent with her, and he made every excuse that he could to sit with her in her room. His feelings were completely out of line, completely unprofessional, and he kept them to himself for fear that his job might come to an end even sooner than planned.
What was hardest was watching Lena stuck in bed. She did her best to keep high spirits, but Ramon couldn’t help but notice the stack change in her personality between the first days he’d been at the house and the days now that she was bedridden. When she spoke about her family, her face slumped into an expression that was either empty or sad.
He had seen flashes of vivacity from her, he knew how much life she was capable of. He wanted to see it again. She was dying in this house. But she’d never had a chance to be happy so she didn’t know how bad it was. Ramon laughed at himself. He was sitting here feeling sorry for a spoiled girl who grew up in the lap of luxury. It seemed stupid to him. But he’d been here for less than a week and he already knew how hard Lena’s life must have been.
Zeus called him down to his office to review the first security report. Ramon was starting to dread these visits. They never seemed to end too terribly well. At first, it seemed like this might be a pleasant exception. Zeus had a lot of questions about the report. It occurred to Ramon that in all the time that he’d lived in this house, there were a lot of aspects of his safety that he’d taken for granted. It didn’t say much about his career as a crime lord. Anyone worth killing would have been long dead or learned to take care of themselves.
That wasn’t entirely true, Ramon thought. There was a perfect example right here.
While Zeus was thumbing through the spiral notebook, Ramon couldn’t help but to glance around his desk. Fanned out on the corner to his right were seven tickets for a chartered flight from Miami to Havana. Ramon counted three times. There were two tickets for Zeus, two tickets for Basil, and two tickets for Andris. There was only one ticket for Lena.
