Dark Secrets

by Jessica Gadziala

  "Now from here," she said, looking down at him, "you slam your palms into his eye sockets and nose until you think he's down and you get up and run." She demonstrated the beating.

  "Me, Faith, and..." Trey added, motioning to Danny.

  "Danny," Faith supplied.

  "Danny," he said as the two got off the floor, "are going to put on head gear and you are going to beat the shit out of us."

  With that, they did.

  The class ended with a recap of the five moves they learned and Faith watched in silent satisfaction as the girls seemed to leave with a bit more confidence in their gait, in the lift of their chins, in their squared shoulders than they had when they came in.

  "So, we got ourselves a new team member?" Trey asked after having downed half of his water bottle. Despite his head gear, he had a nasty bruise to his jaw which, when he received it and the girl who caused it had a near heart attack trying to apologize, he had simply beamed at her and offered her a high five.

  "Yeah, no," Faith said, twisting the top off her bottle and avoiding eye contact with Danny.

  If she was being perfectly honest, she would say that she was more than a little affected by the grappling with Danny. She couldn't help it. To her, the fighting was as good as foreplay.

  "Aw why not?" Danny asked and when she looked, she saw humor pulling at his lips. "I think I proved my worth here today."

  "First, because it's a terrible idea. Second, most of the jobs aren't paying gigs. We do it out of the goodness of our hearts."

  His head tilted to the side at that. "You don't think I have it in the goodness of my heart?" he asked and, if she wasn't mistaken, there was almost a hint of offense in his tone.

  "I honestly don't know you well enough to make that conclusion."

  "Alright well," Trey said, smiling big, "I will leave you guys to the fake fight foreplay. Faith, shrimp, I will see you tomorrow. I will probably owe Vin some money after..." he said, waving over his shoulder as he grabbed his gym bag and walked out the door.

  "Owe Vin money for what?" Danny asked, his tone serious.

  "Oh," Faith said with a smirk. "So... right after I started working at Lam, I was still doing grappling and we go full force. They don't hold off 'just because' I'm a girl. So I was always coming in with bruises. And Vin showed up at the gym one afternoon and informed the guys that for every visible bruise I had, they owed him a hundred bucks. You know, because bruised female bartenders don't exactly help business. They took the deal and have been paying him ever since."

  "Interesting group of people you know, shrimp," he said and she smiled warmly. "Nice nickname by the way. Surprised you haven't cut out his tongue."

  "Well, compared to all them, I'm tiny. That's what they called me when I showed up and demanded they train me. Whether it was to piss me off or some way of dragging me into the fold, I don't know. All of them have nicknames for each other. But," she added with a pointed brow raise, "if you call me that again, I will happily cut out your tongue."

  "You're great with those girls," he said, changing the subject.

  "I've had a lot of practice," she brushed him off, walking toward the bathroom to grab her clothes.

  What she didn't expect was for the door to slam behind her. When she looked up into the mirror, Danny was leaning against it, watching her reflection.

  "Why do you train them?"

  Faith shrugged a shoulder, tried to shrug off the deep meaning of it to her. "So no man can get the better of them."

  "Did a man get the better of you?"

  Her eyes closed for a long moment as she drew a breath. When they opened again, there was a vulnerability in them that she wasn't sure she had seen there in years. "Yes."

  She watched his face in the mirror as he winced slightly then met her eyes. "I get it if we're not at that point, but eventually, would you tell me that story?"

  Faith bit into the inside of her cheek, suddenly swept with the overwhelming urge to tell someone, to trust someone else. K knew a big chunk. The guys, including Trey, knew part of it. The girls she trained, especially at the shelter knew bits and pieces as well.

  Vin, Anthony, Gio, and Salvatore knew it all.

  And they were the only ones.

  And that fact somehow made her feel almost painfully alone in the truth. Because where Vin and his sons knew, it was something they never, ever talked about. For good reason. The story suddenly felt like it grew inside her, spreading out and overtaking her, becoming bigger than her. Never before had she truly wanted to purge it like she did right then.

  So she did.

  "I was sixteen," she started, watching his face in the mirror as he realized she was doing it, she was opening up, she was giving him something other than the mask. "My father was," she paused, knowing there were parts of the story that would always have to be censored, no matter how much she wanted to shout them to the world, "involved with some illegal things. He just so happened to, as a form of protection, keep records of some of the more sinister things his associates had done. One night, two guys showed up to the house. My father shoved me into the hall closet and demanded I didn't come out, no matter what happened."

  She paused and Danny moved closer, so close that she felt the warmth of his body against her back, but he didn't touch her. "What happened?"

  "They came in and screamed and demanded to have his files. They beat him. The door in the hall, it had those slats so that you can see through, you know?"

  "Yeah, sweetheart," he said, his voice low, sweet, understanding.

  "Anyway. He was almost unconscious," she added, remembering the twisted, painful knots her belly was tied in so vividly that her stomach mimicked it in that moment like she was reliving it all over again. "And just about then, my mother came in, asking why a guy was sitting in the car in the driveway and," she swallowed hard, pushing the bile back down her throat, "and then they used her against him. They beat her too. And then, and then they started to tear her clothes off and... and I couldn't stay in that closet anymore."

  "You needed to save her."

  She gave him a completely humorless smile in the mirror, her eyes completely empty. "I was sixteen and soft. I flew at the guy on my mom and I wailed at him as my father screamed, as the guy holding him down laughed at me as my mother pleaded. Then he slammed a fist into my mother's head and she went out. Then he came at me."

  "Faith you don't have to talk about it if he..."

  "I was a wildcat. I might have been young, but I wasn't stupid. I wasn't some little kid. I had the body of a woman. He would just as easily rape me as he would rape my mother. So I scratched and hit and kicked and screamed and bit. I guess it made me too much trouble and he eventually just beat me unconscious."

  "Small miracle," he murmured, moving closer still, his front pressing into her back.

  "When I woke up," she went on, once she opened the floodgates, she found there was no closing them anymore, "my father had a bullet between his eyes and my mother was in a corner, rocking, sobbing, half her clothes gone, everywhere bloody."

  "They were gone," he guessed.

  "No," she snorted, shaking her head. "They were waiting for me to wake up. They obviously had no problem with rape but I guess I had to be conscious for it. Guys like that, they like a fight."

  "Sweetheart..."

  She shook her head, shook off his sympathy. "One of them had me down, he had my shirt up and my bra down and his hand was slipping under the waistband of my pants. But then the guy my mother mentioned before, the one sitting in the car, I guess he got tired of waiting. He came in and froze for a second, taking everything in. Then he was screaming at them and they all begrudgingly left, but not before one of them took a boot to my temple again."

  "Did the cops ever..."

  "The next day," she said, brushing off a line of questioning that was none of his business, "I walked into Axe's Self-Defense and I demanded they train me. And I trained my ass off. Once I was good enough, I volunteered at every women's sh
elter in the city and at the Y. I wanted to make sure I could prevent as much damage as possible."

  His arm folded around her waist, pulling her tightly against him as his other hand folded across the upper part of his chest and his lips pressed a kiss into the side of her head.

  "I think I get you now, baby," he murmured and her belly did a little flip at the words.

  He got her.

  She was pretty sure no one she had ever met had ever gotten her before.

  "Your mom?" he prompted, his face ducking down and nuzzling into her neck. There was nothing sexual about it either. It was just sweet, comforting, intimate.

  "She survived," Faith said, and that was about all she was willing to say about that.

  "And you became some kind of badass, butt kicking, takes no shit from no one, warrior goddess."

  "'Goddess' is really pushing the line of cheesy there, Danny-boy," she teased, trying to lighten a very heavy mood.

  "Daniel," he corrected, squeezing her tighter when she tried to jolt away.

  "What?"

  "Daniel. My name is Daniel," he said, further proving his resume and all his credentials were fake. His official paperwork had his name listed as Danny. "Someone once told me that Danny was the name of a five year old boy," he added with a smirk.

  There was never a better time, she decided with a sinking feeling. She didn't want to ask. She didn't want to confront him. But she gave him something real about her. He owed her something real about him.

  "Daniel, why does..."

  "Faith, we have another class in five," the girl from the front desk called after rapping on the door twice.

  "Right. I'm coming. Sorry, I just needed to change," she lied as Daniel seemed to begrudgingly release her and step back.

  She threw on her shirt and jacket over her workout top and opened the door, going out like it wasn't somewhat suspicious that she was locked away in the bathroom with a man.

  If they wanted to think they were fucking in there, so be it.

  If they thought her neat hair, not sweaty body, and un-flushed cheeks spoke of a good romp, then they were idiots and she didn't give a damn what idiots thought.

  "Faith," Daniel called as he caught up with her on the street out front.

  "It's broad daylight, Daniel. I don't need a walk home," she said, shivering slightly against the cool air.

  "What were you going to ask me in there?" he asked instead.

  Faith exhaled, looking around at the street.

  The moment was gone.

  It didn't feel right to ask him in crushing foot traffic in the middle of the sidewalk.

  "It doesn't matter," she lied with a shrug. "I'll see you at work," she added for good measure as she brushed past him and walked a little faster than necessary away from him.

  NINE

  Danny

  He went back to his apartment with way too much rolling around his head.

  First, if he wasn't mistaken, the shift the night before had Faith watching him. For the most part, that was nothing new. She had been keeping a too-close eye on him since he started. At first, he figured, because she wanted to make sure he was doing his job well. Then after that because she was equally annoyed by and attracted to him. But this was different. If he didn't know any better, he would say she was onto him. She seemed almost... suspicious.

  And that, well, it wasn't fucking good.

  He needed to know why she was suddenly suspicious.

  Was it just because she had decided to open up to him? Because he could handle that. While his intentions at Lam might not have been what they appeared on the surface, his intentions toward Faith were sincere. He had no plans to fuck her over.

  From the looks of it, she wouldn't have let him get away with that anyway.

  It was just fucking serendipitous that when he walked down the hall of his gym toward the locker room, he caught sight of a self-defense class. Having had training himself, he had stopped to check out the technique of the instructors. He saw first the latino guy- tall, strong, with practiced, easy moves as he lifted a girl up from behind by the throat.

  But when that girl turned, oh yeah, he forgot the guy even existed.

  Because there was Faith in some tight as hell workout clothes, her tits on even better display than ever before, her generous hips in all their perfect abundance below a slim waist and above toned thighs. Her work clothes weren't exactly over the top, but he had gotten a good eyeful of her body. Though, he got a much more intimate eyeful of her body in all that spandex material.

  It was the first time he got to see her with her hair back though, removing all the distraction away from her face that was all but makeup free- just seeming to have a trace of some mascara. It was like a kick to the gut to realize that even without the window dressing, she was still the epitome of drop dead fucking gorgeous.

  She moved around calmly, with ease, with the proof of a lot of practice as she addressed the group of completely mesmerized young girls. There was no giggling, no goofing off, no messing around. They were apt. They were hanging on every word she said like it was life or death, and judging by the seriousness of Faith's face as she spoke to them, that was because she was teaching it as though it was.

  Which was good. Because, unfortunately, some day... it might be for one of them.

  When he critiqued her and offered to demonstrate a new move with her, feeling her struggle against his hold, he genuinely thought he had her. Only to realize when they showed it again that nothing was further from the truth. While she might not have done the move before like he did it with her, she knew exactly how to get away. Everything she taught was right- go for the eyes, nose, throat, and groin; attack only until he is injured enough for you to be able to get away; always turn to face someone and demand to know if they are following you if you think they are following you because attackers are less likely to complete an attack if you show a dominant move like that.

  Nothing she taught put any guilt on a victim. She didn't preach about going to the bathroom or to clubs in groups. She didn't tell them to watch what they wore. She didn't tell them to placate men so things wouldn't escalate.

  No.

  She showed them exactly what to do if, through no fault of your own because there was never any fault of your own, someone came at you.

  It was all straight out of the self-defense playbook with some Krav Maga mixed in and some altering of moves to make up for the fact that most of the girls would be much smaller than their attackers.

  It was perfect.

  She was perfect.

  "Shit," he hissed at himself as he unlocked his doors.

  That was exactly the kind of thinking that would get him in trouble on the job, would fuck with his head, would make him sloppy or unaware.

  Things with Faith, they were going to happen. He accepted that fact. But he couldn't let that cloud his judgment or get in the way of his job. They were two separate things.

  "So, from what I can tell, she's not dirty," Max's voice stopped him dead as he closed his apartment door.

  "The fuck are you doing here?" he snapped, dropping his gym bag on the floor.

  True, he had given him keys, but that wasn't an open invitation and he fucking well knew that too.

  Max held up a hand, shaking his head. "I couldn't exactly sit outside your apartment and wait for you, Daniel. We can't be seen together."

  That was true enough.

  "My phone bill is up to date and the ringer is on," he said, going toward the kitchen to put coffee on, only to find that Max had already made a pot so he poured a cup instead.

  "Haven't seen you in a while. You're a good liar on the phone, but I can see through you in person," he said with a shrug as he reached for his coffee cup on the table next to the chair and took a sip.

  "What do you think I'm lying about exactly?"

  "Maybe lying is a strong word- omitting."

  "And I might be omitting..."

  "That you have something going on with th
e sexy bartender."

  "Alright," he said, leaning back against the wall. "I have something going on with the sexy bartender."

  "Fucking Grade A Prime piece there, man," Max said with a serious nod. If there was one thing Max was serious about, outside of work, it was women. "I fucking hate that expensive shit I was drinking at Lam, but I had to get a refill just to get another close look at her. That fucking face..." he trailed off on a exaggerated sigh. "Don't blame you in the least. But I feel it's my duty here to remind you how important it is to not have your head get mixed up, to let your emotions get in the way of the job."

  "I've been doing this just as long as you, Max," Daniel said, shaking his head.

  "And this isn't the first time you've gotten physical with one of the girls. But this is the first time I think there might be more to it than a fuck to blow off the steam."

  "You're not wrong," Daniel agreed.

  They didn't lie to each other as a rule. It was bad for the job. It didn't allow for trust to grow between them. And, beside that, they were friends and friends just didn't do that shit.

  "Well, like I said when I came in... she's not dirty as far as I can tell. There aren't any cash deposits that equal anything near what you said was in that envelope. She deposits cash once a week which, I'd think, equals what she earns in tips per week. She's got a shitton of money saved though. Lives pretty frugally."

  "Then what is she doing with that kind of cash? Doing hand-offs?"

  "Dunno," Max said with a shrug. "But she has no record at all. She has a direct deposit from Lam every two weeks and erratic deposits from various classes she teaches. Her bills withdraw automatically and there aren't many of them. Financially, seems like all she does is work either at the bar or teach self-defense."

  "Did you look into her friends I mentioned?"