16. Juliet #2
Ma-Ri eyes me warily but drops back into her chair.
A beat of uncomfortable silence passes between us and she sighs, reaching for the long cigarette holder perched at the front of her desk.
Balancing it between her fingers, she sticks a fresh cig into one end and lights it before sucking back a long drag.
By the time she lets it out, I feel marginally less like a fish out of water and more in control of my own emotions.
I hadn’t expected to feel so lost stepping back into this building, but I do.
There’s a strange sense of unease and displacement sitting in my chest at the reminder that I’d been on the backside of this establishment.
I’d been not just allowed back here, but expected to know this place well.
Now, I have to sneak in just to talk to the manager.
I take a seat in front of her desk. “I wanted to ask you something,” I confess.
Ma-Ri’s dark eyes remain fixed on me as she sucks back another lungful of cancer. Her red-painted lips don’t smudge and with her free hand, her equally red-painted nails tap evenly on the scarred surface of her desk.
“I figured you might,” she acknowledges, “but I thought you’d be smart enough not to come here and ask.”
“Consider me dumb as fuck then,” I say snidely before shaking my head. “No, I’m sorry—that was rude. I just…” Slow. Calm. Breathe in. Breathe out. I count backwards from ten and when I reach five, I let it go and focus on the woman in front of me.
“Why did you fire me, Ma-Ri?”
“I—”
“The real reason,” I snap, narrowing my eyes before she can even think to offer me another lie.
I’ve been lied to so much in my life that I’m fucking over it.
If one more person that I’m trying to trust lies to me again, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I fear it might send me over the edge.
The place on the other side of that edge is…
well… dark, and I don’t know what going there will mean for me.
All I know is it won’t be good and there may not be any coming back from it.
Ma-Ri’s cloud of cigarette smoke drifts over my head. She’s silent for a long moment and then, finally, as she ashes the end of her cig into a glass tray, she speaks. “The answer to your question won’t change anything.”
“Maybe not,” I agree. “But I still want to know.”
“Even if it puts you in danger?” She arches a brow and I can’t help but laugh.
“I’m already in danger,” I tell her. Danger is no longer something to even be in for me, but a way of life. Danger is my existence and there is no getting away from it.
“True.” Ma-Ri dips her head in acknowledgement of my words before leaning forward. “Fine, if you want to know why I let you go, it’s because your presence upset a very integral person in my world.”
“Who?”
She flicks more ashes into the tray. “It doesn’t matter if you know or not.”
“Then it shouldn’t matter if you tell me.”
She eyes me, pursing her lips as she sucks around the end of her cigarette holder.
More smoke fills the air between us. “You’re a smart kid, Juliet,” she finally says.
“Smarter than I think anyone gives you credit for. This might be Tangier, but it’s still got connections to Silverwood and those that run the place. ”
Ma-Ri wants to say it, I realize. “Darrio Vargas.” It’s not a guess, but it is a statement with no small amount of finality to it. The older woman nods.
“I pay the man a protection fee every month as most businesses around this area do,” she says.
“That’s illegal.”
Ma-Ri’s smirk is self-deprecating. “Honey,” she snaps. “If you haven’t already figured it out, most of the businesses run in this world are done illegally. People will do anything for power or money.”
“Why?” I demand, leaning closer. She knows I’m not asking why people would do anything for power or money—if anyone knows the answer to that, it would be me. Someone who is all too familiar with both of those things.
“Why did he want you gone?” she asks, clarifying.
I nod. She sighs again and more smoke filters into the air between us.
My nose twitches, but I hold back my sneeze.
“Darrio is a bitter man,” she tells me. “He doesn’t like being an envious bastard and yet, that’s all he is.
He doesn’t like seeing other people have what he doesn’t.
Beauty. Strength. Money. Power.” She tilts her head. “ Women .”
Something sinister invades my veins. If what Ma-Ri is saying is right then Gio’s father reminds me of someone I know well. Dread slithers up my spine.
“That still doesn’t explain why he wanted me gone,” I press.
“Because of what you represent, Juliet,” Ma-Ri replies. “You had everything he wanted and he didn’t like seeing you. I know those boys kept you out of here when he visited.”
“They did?” I frown. “When?”
She shrugs. “Oh, they asked me to move your schedule around on occasion when I knew the man would be here.”
“And you did? Just like that?” It’s hard to picture this woman bending to anyone’s will much less a man’s.
As if she hears the condescension in my thoughts, her eyes sharpen on my face once more. “I’m a smart woman, Juliet,” she states. “I hire smart women and under my guidance, they are mine to protect as well. I have to think about what’s good for all of my employees, not just one.”
I stiffen at the implied statement but press my lips together to keep from saying anything disrespectful.
“Darrio isn’t powerful to those rich pricks on the north side,” Ma-Ri continues. “But to the rest of Silverwood, and yes, even out here in Tangier, he’s someone to be contended with. He wanted you gone and he was willing to kick up quite a fuss to make it happen.”
“So, it was either me or your business.” An old bitterness swells within me and try as I might, it’s impossible to completely tamp down. Ma-Ri was the only person who gave me a chance as an employee. My past is not her fault.
“I am sorry, Juliet.” Her petite fingers grip the cigarette holder like a lifeline, her knuckles whiter than usual. “I tried to make it right, but…”
Her words drift off, but I already catch her meaning. Skin cold and feeling like clammy ice stretched over bones, I slowly rise to my feet. “Thanks for answering my questions.” The words are hollow and Ma-Ri’s gaze flickers with something I recognize—a mixture of sympathy and concern.
“Juliet? Perhaps you should?—”
I turn away from her. “I won’t bother you again,” I say, cutting her off. Each step towards the door feels like another nail in my coffin. I was never going to make it after my family lost everything. I was never accepted. Not in Silverwood. Not here.
Ma-Ri says something else and the sound of her big, plush rolling chair scraping over cheap hardwood floor hits my ears.
I don’t look back as I push out of her office and into the back hallway.
She calls out for me, but I don’t answer as I take the same route that led me in here back to the parking lot.
The sun is well and truly sunk by the time I make it back to Silverwood. I don’t need to look at the clock on the dashboard to know I’m late. The consistent buzzing of my phone the last fifteen minutes of the drive tells me that too.
The road blurs in front of me as I drive the last several blocks to Cory’s Gym.
This town has never been anything but poison.
Cruel, wicked poison that slips into your veins and drags you into the depths.
Those born here don’t even know it but they were born with it already surrounding them, and it’s hard to see the appeal of life when all you’ve ever known is death.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, but I don’t care. I don’t. Fucking. Care. Anymore. The whole world can live blind for all I give a shit. I’m tired of being everyone’s punching bag. I don’t deserve this. I never did.