by Avery Hawkes
The maintenance and repair shop was located just off the main road, but it was a quarter mile of gravel road that curved around a densely wooded area. The repair shop was the only destination. If you saw headlights, that meant someone was headed your way.
I didn’t care to be honest. It was past closing time and I wasn’t about to check out another car tonight. As it got closer, I noticed it wasn’t the type of vehicle we’d normally see in this part of town. Hell, I had worked my ass off the past four years and I couldn’t even imagine owning a car like that.
It pulled in, stopping with the headlights shining directly on me and the garage entrance.
“We’re closed!” I yelled. From the sound of the bass thumping, I doubted they could hear me. The windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see who was in the driver’s seat. After a tense moment that was like a stare off between the faceless driver and me, I shrugged and turned to lower the garage door to the floor.
The engine revved, and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise. It sometimes took a few seconds to remember that I wasn’t in a war-zone. My adrenaline rose sharply, but I tried to keep control of it. I was more than the chemicals that rushed through me.
Before I could turn around, I heard two car doors open and footsteps on the gravel. The hip hop they were listening to pierced the night air.
“Hey, aren’t you Lance Strong?”
Taking a deep breath, I secured the lock on the garage door and turned around. Standing in front of me, leaning on their car were the Rossi twins. Even though I told myself I wasn’t in a war zone, as soon as I recognized the two, I knew I had to be on my best guard.
“Yep.”
“Oh man, it’s been forever!” The older twin, Luca did all the talking, while the younger one, Simone sat back and watched.
“Yeah, since high school graduation, huh?”
“Oh man, it seems like so long ago. Matteo thought he had seen you back in town. I’d watch out for him, he still bitches about you making out with Rosabella.” He rolled his eyes.
Hm. The twins seemed friendly enough. At least I didn’t feel like they were going to jump me.
“How can I help you guys?”
“We’re looking for a place to repair our Maserati,” Luca said. “Our last arrangement with a repair shop didn’t end up going so well. All we ask for is a small bit of discretion when it comes to what you find on our vehicles.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Discretion?”
“Let’s just say, we’ll scratch your back and you can scratch ours.”
“I don’t exactly think that my back needs scratching,” I shot back. My voice was starting to become terse and knew I had to watch myself. The last thing I wanted was to start a fight, or even begin a war between the Rossi family and my own.
“Firstly, you’d get all of our family’s business. Detailing, fender benders, et cetera. Secondly, you’ll receive protection from us.”
My ears pricked up at that. I tried to stop my blood from boiling.
“My family’s business hasn’t needed protection for fifty years. Why would we need it now?” I growled. Something sparkled in the man’s eye. Did he fucking enjoy this in some, sick, twisted, way?
“Well, from what I hear, there’s been some nasty gang activity in the area. There’s no knowing what could happen, but what I do know it’s only a matter of time until crime affects your family.”
My hands turned into fists at my side. Immediately I was thrown back into the desert from my nightmares. I could almost taste the dust and feel the white hot sun, even in the darkness. Back then, only survival of myself and my men had mattered. The only difference between then and now was the threat. Before, it had been poor fighters, trying to take control of villages in Afghanistan. The threat that stood before me now were two stuck up rich kids with too much time on their hands. It was easy for me to underestimate them. They didn’t seem like the warriors I was used to, but I could tell they were clever. They played a different game than Al Qaeda did, and I had to change my tactics. I cracked my knuckles, trying to allow my hands to relax. I straightened myself and took a deep breath before replying.
“Now, you guys wouldn’t be threatening me and my family, would you?”
The twins looked at each other. The quiet one made a face. He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head. For some strange reason, the other man was able to translate his body language and he nodded back in understanding.
Luca opened his arms up and flashed a big, toothy smile.
“I don’t know why you’d think that, man. We’re just here to help.” He took a few steps forward and it took everything in me to not want to punch him in his gut. Instead, I let him grasp my shoulder, then turn us toward his brother.
“Hey, you don’t need to decide now. How about we do some sort of―what do you call it―trial period?” He kicked the front of his Italian car and I noticed the damage. His door was dented and covered in some sort of substance. Upon further inspection, I realized there were chunks of hair that were stuck to it.
Blood. It looked like he had slammed someone’s head in to the door so hard that it exploded all over the interior and damaged the closing mechanism.
He went on, “Get this fixed up by next week and we’ll talk again. Oh―“He dug in his pocket and I stiffened. Was he reaching for a gun? Thankfully, his hand returned with a folded piece of paper.
It was a colorful flyer, with bright white text that listed names of DJ’s on the front. “We own a club in south Jersey, we’re having a big show next Friday. Bring our car there, and we’ll talk business.”
Luca forced the flyer into my hand and gave me a pat on the back. In the corner of my eye, I saw headlights headed down the gravel road.
They were actually leaving their expensive car with me. I couldn’t fucking believe it. The younger brother had closed the doors and threw me the keys. I barely was able to catch them since my mind was racing.
“I’ll see you next week!” the man said, pointing toward me and winking. They then walked casually back to a black sedan that pulled up to the repair shop.
They squealed away, sending rocks and dust flying until they turned down the main road.
“Shit.” I said aloud, looking down at the crumpled flyer. What have I gotten myself into? I should never have gone to that damned funeral. “Shit. Shit. Shit. SHIT!”
I was so screwed.
CHAPTER SIX
Rosabella
I was so screwed.
My eyes stared down that the long, white object in my hands. I was in the bathroom, surrounded by empty boxes. When my father had dropped me off at the drug store, I had made an excuse to be alone and then about bought the store out of pregnancy tests. I had to be sure.
My eyes were red as I stared down at the result screen. It was one of those fancy tests with an electronic read-out. There, staring back at me were the words “Pregnant.”
It was the last test I had to take. All the rest that surrounded me said the same thing, whether it was two pink lines or text.
I was pregnant.
It hadn’t really dawned on me until I had taken the last test. I gathered them all together and studied them, hoping for some sense of relief.
There was none to be had. Every piece of plastic confirmed my fears.
With an angry swipe of the arm, I sent the stick flying into the trash can next to the toilet. I couldn’t breathe, my chest becoming tight as sobs started to bubble up.
They had told me in school that it only took one time, but I hadn’t expected for it to happen to me. With a even!
It wasn’t that I didn’t want kids. What made me feel like crying uncontrollably on my bathroom floor was the feeling that a baby would trap me to my family. If any of my family knew that I had gotten pregnant outside of wedlock, they would kill Lance and then make sure I never saw the light of day until the baby was born.
I could see my mom passing the baby off as her own just to save face in our church.
The thought of losing my child or causing my family harm was more than I could bear.
I had to hold my sides as I cried in the bathroom. What I knew was that I couldn’t get an abortion. No matter what, I had to have this baby. Even if his or her father was a jerk to me in high school, even if my family would explode from the fallout, even if I lost my inheritance, I loved my child.
Sitting on the bathroom floor, I made a promise to myself and to God, if he was out there.
“Help me protect my baby,” I whispered between sniffs. “I’ll do whatever it takes. Just please God, protect us and help us.”
Knock. Knock.
I about jumped out of my skin. My hand flew up to my face, trying to wipe the tears away. It was useless. It would take more than a few tissues to make me look like everything was alright.
“Rosabella? Are you okay?” Regina’s voice wavered from across the barrier.
“Yes!” I replied, “Everything’s f-fine!” My stomach dropped as the words left my mouth. It was pretty clear from how I sounded that I had been crying.
“Bullshit!” Regina said. She rapped on the door a few more times, then tried to wiggle the door handle. “You’ve been in there for two hours and I heard you crying! Let me in!”
Panic filled me. Regina was stubborn and probably wouldn’t stop until I let her in. She’d probably ask one of our brothers to kick down the door before she would let me off that easily. So much for privacy in this family.
“One minute!” I called, wiping my nose on my sleeve. Boxes were strewn about the bathroom and about half of the test kits hadn’t made it into the garbage can when I had thrown them earlier. I fumbled as I got up, trying to gather everything I could and deposit it in the waste paper basket.
“Rosabella! I’m going to go get Dad!”
“NO DON’T!” I yelled. You could still see the pile of pregnancy tests clearly in the basket. My hand flew to bat at the toilet paper roll, letting the paper fly until there was enough to stuff in the top of the basket.
Good enough, I told myself.
My hair was a mess. Running my hands through it seemed to help. With one glance in the mirror I turned to unlock the door.
Regina about burst into the room, looking me up and down. From my puffy, red eyes to my disheveled clothes, I wasn’t exactly the most put-together woman on the planet. Her judgment was palpable.
“What?” My hands flew up, palms out toward her. “Did you just want to see me looking like garbage?”
“What’s wrong?” Regina asked, grabbing one of my hands to try to calm me. I tugged it away from her.
“I’m just stressed out.”
“Um, you kinda look a little more than stressed out.”
A sigh escaped my lips and it shook with the aftermath of my previous sobbing. Of course I wasn’t well. I was pregnant and felt trapped in the Rossi family. One thing I did know, was that if Regina knew the truth, everyone in the family would know. She was a horrible gossip. I had to come up with a lie and quickly.
“I’m just …” I ran a hand through my hair and turned so she couldn’t look me in the eyes, “feeling really bad about what happened with Auntie.”
I could tell from the mirror that Regina wasn’t buying it, probably because it was something that she wouldn’t cry about. She raised her eyebrows and then crossed her arms.
“How much did she leave you?”
“Regina!”
“What?” She tapped her foot, her voice like ice. “Did she not give you enough money?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, alright?”
“Fine then. Soooo why are you crying?”
“I’m just on my period Regina. Even pictures of puppies in baskets will make me cry. I’m tired and stressed from the funeral and you just need to LEAVE ME ALONE!” I was yelling. I never raised my voice. Regina became a statue as my voice echoed off the walls of the large mansion.
This time, tears filled Regina’s eyes. She hadn’t gotten her way and was yelled at in the process. I should have known the crocodile tears would start.
I brushed past her before she started howling like a banshee. There was nothing I wanted more than locking myself up in my room. My need for my family not to find what was underneath the toilet paper in the bathroom garbage would have to be squashed. I hoped that Regina wouldn’t get curious, or was too distracted by her own sobbing to string together a few thoughts.
The door to my room closed behind me with a soft thud and I leaned against it.
I would have to tell Lance about the pregnancy. Across from the door in my room was my desk. The papers I had been given about my part of the will were strewn this way and that. I didn’t remember them being disheveled like that.
Regina.
Of course. She’d known all along how much money I’d been given and just wanted to bother me about it. Locking the door behind me, I shuffled over to the wooden table and sat down. All around it were framed pictures of me and various friends from high school. They were all from sports teams and clubs at school. Most, I only kept in contact with online. For some reason, friends didn’t seem to stick to me. “The plight of the introvert,” my mother called it. That was a nice way of saying I was a shut-in. Though, it had been easy for me to coast on the edges of lots of groups, solely off of my family name and looks. Ugh, it all sounded so childish and superficial now.
I rubbed my stomach and looked at the documents beneath me. Just glancing at them made me angry. Yes, it was great to have received such a huge fortune, but I was letting that money all turn to dust. My dreams were falling apart all around me. There had to be some way, something that didn’t involve getting an abortion.
As I was adjusting the papers and reading over the text, a spark ignited in my mind.
If there was a way to get my freedom and keep the baby, I’d try my hardest to take advantage of it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lance
“Finally,” I sighed as I wiped the sweat from my brow, probably leaving a dirty mark in its wake. It had taken a week of scrambling to get the right parts, taking apart the door mechanism and bloodied interior, scrubbing everything until it was spotless, putting it back together, and triple-checking my work. From what I had gleaned from the process, someone had their brain bashed in multiple times against the door. I kept finding large chunks of pink in the crevices and strings of black hair that had been pulled from the root.
Holy shit, I thought, the rumors around town were true. Now I was stuck in this mess. The larger problem was that it was my parents and their business that would suffer if I fucked it up.
So I had worked, night and day, without stopping. Ma would come through after dinner and hand me some leftovers and a large thermos of coffee for the night. I told myself I was doing this for them, for their business. However, whenever my mind wandered I would find myself thinking about Rosabella. Being more involved with her family’s business meant that I would be closer to her, that I had more opportunity to screw her.
It also gave more opportunity for her brothers to find us out.
I stepped back from my work. The Maserati had just been washed and waxed. The exterior looked smooth as butter. Sunbeams hit the curves, almost as sexy as the curves on Rosa. It was a beautiful car and now that it was free of human remains. It was difficult and morally ambiguous work, but it had to be done.
I walked back into the garage and picked up the flyer that Luca had given me. Its neon colors and headliners stared back. The last thing I wanted was to go to some gang-banger’s shitty dubstep party. Instead of thinking about it as the slimy club that it was, I imagined I was going behind enemy lines. It wasn’t a dark dance floor, but some desert compound that I had to infiltrate. Both situations could possibly end with me in a bloody pulp. The adrenaline rushed through me, giving me the balls to make my mind up about going.
I pocketed the invite, and swiped at the car keys, throwing them up into the air and catching them before making my way to the sports car in the dr
iveway.
It purred to life down the road, the radio at full blast. The steering wheel felt smooth in the palms of my hands and the engine revved as I pushed the gas as I turned the corner onto the main road.
It had been years since I had felt this powerful, driving a mafia boss’s car like it was my own. The only things that existed were me and the road.
The speedometer rose, and I paid it no heed. I knew that the police didn’t hang around these parts to catch speeding cars. If they did, then they’d probably think twice once they recognized who the owners were.
As the engine roared beneath me, an idea popped into my mind. I turned the wheel sharply, the tires skidding on the roadway. Before I went to the club, I’d make a little pit stop.
Talk about infiltrating enemy territory.
As I pulled up to the Rossi house, my hands were shaking. I made sure to park out in front, rather than around the corner, so that the members of the family could see it was the twin’s car.
Their house was the most expensive one on the block, and maybe our town. It was a turn-of-the-century brick mansion, with white pillars that framed a large set of white double doors. The driveway was a round-about, with a fountain that adorned the middle. Bright lights flooded a Romanesque statue of two lovers, water spewing from their mouths down below. I left the engine running and stepped out of the vehicle like it was nothing. As I stepped out, I glanced a camera hone in on my location. While the house hadn’t been gated, there was security, and they were watching. I acted like I didn’t notice and casually walked up to the mansion to ring the doorbell.
It took a few minutes, but finally someone opened the door. I was met with a large man in a black suit. He loomed over me, a hunk of muscle and testosterone.
So that’s what their security was like.
He raised his eyebrows, expecting me to talk.
“Hello, I’m here to pick up Rosabella Rossi on the request of Luca Rossi,” I moved aside to show off the car, “They sent me in their car.”
“One second, I―"
