by Riley Morgan
“I swear to God Ramon, you do good work.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Twenty years I live here, none of my people have ever been so thorough.”
Right about now, Ramon was beginning to wish that he hadn’t been.
“I have a concern, though.” Zeus said. “These improvements you suggest they’re a little, uh…”
“Extensive? I thought so too. If you flip to page 23, I’ve made a list of suggestions. Some of the changes will be rather expensive without yielding a huge increase in safety. Some of them you could put in today and would make a tremendous difference.”
“Like the curtains?” Zeus said with one cocked eyebrow.
“Exactly.”
Zeus considered the report in his hand and looked up at Ramon. He opened up a desk drawer and pulled out the fattest wad of cash that Ramon had ever seen in his life. A conservative guess would have been twenty-five grand, although it could have easily been more depending on how many of the bills bore Benjamin Franklin’s ugly mug.
The big man pulled a few thousand dollars off of the top and handed it to Ramon in a neat fold. Ramon did his best not to look surprised by the amount of cash that he was now holding.
“Take my sons first thing tomorrow and buy whatever you can get at the store. I’ll have some help here tomorrow afternoon to help you make things happen.”
“Yes sir. Anything else?”
“You’ve been spending a lot of time in Lena’s room. I trust you haven’t forgotten our conversation.”
He hadn’t. He remembered it in excruciating detail every time he thought about leaning in to kiss Lena, or inching his hand over towards hers.
“No sir. She’s getting a little, uh, restless being cooped up. I figure keeping her company is the best way to keep her from jumping out the window or walking around too much.”
“How are her feet?”
“Honestly?”
“Of course.”
“Pretty fucking gross.”
Zeus nodded and looked down at the paperwork on his desk. Ramon supposed that he was dismissed, and excused himself from the office. As soon as the door closed behind him, he collapsed against the wall and took a deep breath. His chest felt like it was going to collapse, it was hard to breath, his head was spinning.
Something was very fucking wrong in this house, and he wasn’t going to stop until he figured out what it was.
Lena
Lena was sad to see how bad Ramon looked when he stepped into her bedroom. He’d just finished with another meeting with her step-father.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
“Better than the rest of them.”
“Why are you so shaken up, then?”
“I don’t know,” Ramon lied. “These improvements, they’re going to be a lot of work. I’m just stressed about them I guess.”
The half truth was enough to satisfy Lena.
“Guess where we’re going for vacation.” she said.
“Kansas City.”
“Very funny, funny guy. No, it’s worse than that. We’re going to Cuba.”
Ramon pretended to be surprised.
“What’s wrong with Cuba, I’ve always wanted to go.”
“I’ve been before, and it was awful.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. Ramon asked her to tell him the story of her last trip to Cuba, just five years before. After some measure of pestering, she agreed.
They had gone as a family, Zeus, the boys and two of their friends, along with Lena and one of hers. She wasn’t really Lena’s friend, she explained. Lena hadn’t wanted to bring anybody on the trip, but the stepbrothers insisted. She ended up inviting a girl from her class who she was friendly with, which wasn’t the same as a friend.
The trip had started off well enough. They flew into Havana and had lunch in an amazing little cafe. The city was alive in a way that put even Miami to shame, with handsome men in old American cars and beautiful women in flowing dresses. There was color everywhere and the smell of slow cooked food and pungent tobacco gave everything a magical scent that she remembers to this day.
They had a house right on the water with beautiful views of rolling green hills and the Havana skyline in the distance. The house was beautiful, even to Lena’s high tastes, and the beach was, in her words, completely spectacular. As soon as they had put their things away, Lena ran out to the beach and into the water. The children played in the water for hours, until Lena had an unfortunate tangle with a jellyfish.
She spent the rest of the afternoon in agonizing pain in a hospital waiting room. Zeus was furious the whole time, not because his step-daughter wasn’t receiving care, but because he was spending his vacation surrounded by the sick and lame. The other children stayed at the house and played, and when Lena returned late that night, her guest had become fast friends with the stepbrothers, and she hardly saw her for the rest of the weeklong trip.
To make matters worse, Lena had contracted quite the sunburn in her one day on the water, so she sat in the house, alone, sick and shivering and in an excruciating amount of pain. And while the house was nice, it lacked anything that might pass as entertaining to a teenager. The closest thing to it was an old transistor radio that picked up three local stations. None of them were in English and only one played music with any regularity. So Lena listened to people she didn’t know talk infinitely in a language that she didn’t understand, just so that she’d feel like she wasn’t completely alone.
“It was a lot like right now, with the glass,” she said. “Except that I didn’t have you to keep me company.”
“That sounds awful,” Ramon said. “I’m sure you’ll have a better trip this time.”
“Don’t you mean ‘we’ll’ have a better trip?”
It was too late. Ramon could not lie to her, not in a way that Lena would believe.
“You aren’t coming?” Lena shouted. “Why not.”
“I don’t know,” Ramon said. He did not even begin to suggest that he would not be seeing Lena after she returned. If she returned. “And please, don’t tell your father about it, you weren’t supposed to know.”
“What, was it supposed to be a surprise? I get on the fucking plane and you jump out of the security at the last minute shouting ‘bon fucking voyage’?”
Ramon sighed. Lena was outraged.
She calmed down a little when Ramon promised to talk to Zeus about it. He would make the case that it was in the best interest of her security. It would do no good to have Lena beseech her step-father. She could not remember the last time he’d yielded to her wishes on any matter of any importance.
And so she said goodnight to Ramon and they parted in sour moods. After he left, she stayed up thinking about why her Zeus would not be bringing him along, why none of them would have guests.
It was certainly strange, but Lena figured that her step-father must have his reasons.
Ramon
The next morning, Ramon climbed into the huge SUV that the Buldovas kept for hauling large cargo. As far as the truck was concerned, carrying the necessary materials to reinforce the stronghold of a drug lord was one of the less insidious things that it had been party to over the years. Ramon was unaware of this, although he was suspicious of it. Presently, the cargo that concerned him most was the pair of borderline psychotic men in the back.
Andris and Basil were just about the worst kind of person that Ramon could imagine. They’d grown up every bit as spoiled as Lena had, but with buckets more privilege. Everywhere they went, scared peons worshipped the ground that they walked on simply because they were their father’s son. The same people who would not recognize Lena would lavish the boys with gifts and praise. All of this, naturally, disabused the boys of any sense of decency or good nature, and so they went around committing heinous acts with absolute impunity. Why wouldn’t they? Rules and morality were concepts that existed to rule the wills of lesser mortals. They did not apply to the only given sons of Zeus Buldova.
Of course, Ramon didn’t know all of this, but it was an educated guess on his part and one that was closer to the truth than he imagined.
Now, they chattered ceaselessly behind him as he drove the tired old truck up the road to the nearest hardware store.
It was hard to make out their words as the road rumbled beneath them. Every once in a while, one of them would shout an order to the front of the van. Turn up the radio. Change the station. Stop so we can get food. Both stepbrothers were older than Lena. Andris was 22 and Basil was 24. But they both seemed to Ramon like petulant children, hardly out of school.
Begrudgingly, Ramon honored each request.
More than ever, Ramon realized how important it was to keep on Zeus and his awful spawn’s good side. If he was going to figure out what was going on, he needed them to be convinced of his loyalty. It pained him to play along with them. He couldn’t stand their abusive and predatory nature. But it was a ruse he was willing to live in order to protect Lena.
After three stops, once to use the bathroom, once for cigarettes, and once to get fried chicken from a gas station, they finally arrived at the hardware store that Ramon had planned on going to to get the first bunch of things he’d need to make the house safer. Safer, that is, if the threat to Lena’s health was outside their walls, and not on the inside.
“This place is a dump,” Andris said, climbing out of the van.
“Yea, a real shithole,” Basil added.
Ramon ignored them. It was the only hardware store around. The next closest one was in Miami almost two hours away. It had the added benefit of being next to an old outlet upholstery store. Zeus wasn’t exactly going to love the decorations Ramon picked out for him, but he didn’t have time to wait for custom curtains from Venice to arrive, not when Lena’s safety was in question.
The old man could choose between eyesores in his living room or a happy, healthy step-daughter. Ramon was beginning to wonder if he knew how Zeus would pick, given the option.
They went into the upholstery store first and Ramon found the only matching curtains that would fit the windows. They were, even to his unrefined eye, fuck ugly. Maroon with shades of deep brown and faded gold. It was though they’d been made by two people. one who wanted an earthy floral pattern, and one who liked the sweeping geometric designs of the late 1980s. The result was a mutt of poor taste and visual offensiveness. But at least they matched.
After purchasing the curtains with Zeus’s money, they went to the hardware store to get the equipment that they needed to hang the curtains, plus a hodgepodge of other items that Ramon could use to make various improvements. The brothers disappeared immediately upon entering the store, and Ramon shook his head, silently apologizing to the poor employees of the store who would no doubt be bothered by their antics any second now.
It took Ramon nearly an hour to fill his cart. He only needed to go through each aisle once. Last night he’d called the store with his list and ensured that he would find everything that he needed. About fifteen minutes in, there was a loud crash and the sound of hundreds of tiny metal things skittering across the concrete floors. A flustered employee walked past Ramon with a broom and a large dustpan. Ten minutes later, he heard the clatter of falling lumber, and then a sound that Ramon was unable to identify. It was, in fact, the sound of a sledgehammer being taken to a porcelain toilet.
He finished his shopping before the brothers were able to destroy anything else, at least as far as he was aware. The cashier up front rang him up to the tune of just over twelve hundred dollars. Ramon turned around and looked at the devastation that his tagalongs had caused, and pushed the entire remainder of the two-thousand dollars, minus the cost of gas and curtains, to the cashier. When he started to remark at Ramon’s massive overpayment, Ramon raised his finger to his lips and winked. The extra money would pay for the things that the brothers had damaged, but not the added misery of the workers’ days. Still though, it was everything Ramon could do short of locking them in the truck and pushing it into the swamp.
“That was fun,” Andris said as they walked back to the truck.
“Yea, did you see the look on that woman’s face when she saw all those screws?”
They both started laughing hysterically. Ramon loaded his haul into the van and climbed back into the driver’s seat. He noticed that neither of the brothers was wearing a seatbelt as he pulled out of the parking lot, and he entertained the idea of swerving off the road and into a sturdy looking tree on more than one occasion on the drive home.
When they returned, Ramon wanted to get right to work, but Zeus called him in to talk. Ramon gave him a brief overview of the timeline that he had made for the improvements, explaining to Zeus how many hands he would need to help and when each task would be completed. Zeus was relieved to hear that the curtains would be installed first, and that use of his living and dining rooms would be restored. He wasn’t going to be happy when he saw what they looked like, Ramon thought. Or when he realizes that the TV is in Lena’s room.
Ramon was eager to get back to work, but Zeus seemed dismissive.
“Do you see this tattoo?” he said, rolling up his sleeve and brandishing the macabre cephalopod on his wrist.
Ramon had seen it for the first time many years ago. Back then, it did not have as many enemies dead in the water. Nor did it have so many wounds.
“Every spear, ever jagged tooth, every slash. They all represent people who have tried to best me and failed,” Zeus explained. “Whenever somebody tries to kill me, I add a wound to this magnificent creature. On most occasions, I also add a body.”
Ramon wondered how many of the bodies on Zeus’s arms he knew. At least one.
It used to be, Zeus said, that he worried about people making threats on his life. If people wanted him dead, then surely they would find a way to make it happen. But people are predictable. They take a long time to make up their minds. Zeus learned to force their hands. Wait until someone gets to the breaking point, then give them a push over the edge. They respond with passion and emotion. They don’t think. Zeus laughed. He pointed to one body. The father of a man who had died in Zeus’s service and who had tried to kill him with a butter knife. Andris shot him dead before he even raised his arm. Another, a man who had hired a hitman to kill Zeus. At the end of a gun, Zeus talked the man down and tripled the assassin’s pay to kill the man that hired him.
There were dozens of bodies on Zeus’s arm. Surely there was more blood on his hands than was tattooed there.
“Anyway Ramon, you see why I’m not terribly worried. I can handle myself. Nobody. Nobody fucks with me.”
Ramon was going to ask the old man why he needed someone to watch over his step-daughter then, but he was interrupted by a ringing phone.
Zeus pointed to the door, and Ramon stepped outside. For the first ten minutes, the only sounds that Ramon could hear from inside the officer were jubilant laughter. Then it went quiet for a few minutes. When he heard Zeus again, he was screaming. Ramon strained to hear the words. The boss sounded hurt and defensive.
“I know, I know, I know,” he said.
Ramon waited, holding his breath.
“Well he shouldn’t be such a giant pussy. Would you have ever let that happen to yourself?”
“I didn’t think she’d break a glass over his fcking head!”
He had to have been talking about Lena. And by extension, Damien. Ramon wondered if Zeus was talking to the man he’d seen in the car at the gate the day before.
“Listen to me. I promise you…”
“I know that she’s a difficult little bitch, trust me, I know better than anyone.”
“You have my word. My little bitch will marry your big pussy.”
PART THREE
Lena
Lena was sitting up watching a cooking show that was indistinguishable from all the other cooking shows, starting a celebrity chef that was indistinguishable from all the other celebrity chefs. She’d seen this episode before, she though
t, but it was still a welcome distraction from her bedroom prison.
She was relieved when there was a knock at the door and Ramon came inside. She reached to her nightstand and grabbed a voice-changer toy that she’d found while digging through the drawers looking for something to keep her from going crazy.
“Good morning handsome,” she said in an artificial chipmunk.
Lena had taken to embarrassing Ramon with little pet names like this. Yesterday, when she old him how much Tia and Michaela liked him, how they thought he was cute, Lena realized that he was completely oblivious to the effect that he had on them. How typical, she thought. The entire idea that he might be desirable to someone seemed to make him uncomfortable, and Lena was happy to abuse that.
In the grand scheme of things, he had been the cause of a great deal of discomfort for her, so it only seemed fair that she could repay the favor. Ramon sat down on the bed now and asked how she was doing.
“I’m good,” Lena lied, sounding like a robot.
The truth was that she was feeling even more empty than she had the day before. She hadn’t been out of bed except to hobble to the bathroom since the night that Damien had showed up. She was starting to go crazy in her room, and wanted more than anything to get out. But her feet were still bloody and swollen and hurt like a motherfucker to stand on.
“I could carry you down to the pool,” Ramon suggested. The idea made Lena throw back her head and laugh.
“I’m serious,” he said, taking the voice changer and answering her with the “slo-mo” setting.
And he was.
Lena considered it for a moment, and couldn’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t.
“Get my swim suit, it’s in the top drawer there.”
Ramon opened her dresser and found the top and bottom to a matching teal bikini. He did his best to ignore the other lacy contents of the drawer, and not to think about what they’d look like on (or off) of Lena. He turned around to leave and give her some privacy, but Lena stopped him.
