7. Phoenix
Phoenix
I smell them before I see them. Cigarettes. Gasoline. Cheap cologne. By the time I realize they’re parked a few doors down, it’s already too late.
I’m too wrapped up in mulling over Mr. Masterson’s offer as I approach my door. The mob has me bent over a barrel—right where they think I’m most useful. And least dangerous. How would they react to the discovery that I was out of their reach, however temporarily?
Not well, I imagine.
I need to find a way to make the proposal appealing to them. Maybe even think it’s their own idea.
I’m so lost in thought thinking about it that my eyes scan and dismiss the black sedan sitting a few trailers down.
Mistake.
Walking into my trailer, I take the sandwiches I stole from the resort restaurant out of my pocket. They owe me at least a couple of sandwiches. As I put them into the refrigerator, my front door crashes inward and bounces off the wall.
Pedo-stash is on me in a second, grabbing me by the throat and pushing me up against the fridge. His gaze crawls over me, slimy with intent.
“Do you have our money, bitch?”
“It’s only been a day,” I try to say around the pressure of his hand. I shouldn’t argue—but fear makes you stupid. He’s squeezing my throat hard enough that my vision tunnels, and my lips tingle. “You gave me a week.”
“About that,” Baldy says from just over his shoulder. “We talked to our boss, and he’s not inclined to extend that sort of generous deadline to a maid. So he wants the money today. ”
“What? He can’t…I don’t…I don’t have it,” I cry out just before Pedo-stash backhands me again.
“You’re going to come up with it, bitch.” He pulls me away from the refrigerator and slams me down on the kitchen table, his hand still at my throat.
He looms over me, forcing one knee between my legs. “We gave your father that money no more than three weeks ago. Where is it?”
“I don’t know,” I gasp.
“When did he die?”
“April eight,” I answer. The date does something, flips a switch.
Pedo-stash tilts his head to the side, considering, before he levers himself off of me.
I half sit, one hand going to my throat, and watch in horror as Pedo-stash begins pulling the kitchen drawers out one by one. “What are you looking for?”
He doesn’t answer. At the third drawer he stops and reaches in, wrapping his hand around the rubber mallet that was used to tenderize meat back when I could afford such luxuries.
He turns and eyes me, his silence somehow all the more chilling for its deliberation.
Baldy moves closer, leaning against a counter.
He shakes his head. “You’re telling me he offed himself the day after he got a hundred thousand from my boss?
” he says, clicking his tongue. “Ain’t no way.
Where the fuck would he have put the money? ”
“I don’t know! I swear?—”
“I don’t believe you,” Pedo-stash states calmly.
He takes the two steps required to reach me and snatches my hand away from my throat.
He pulls it roughly to sit, palm down, on the table beside me, then draws the mallet back and with a single swing slams it into my wrist. My scream nearly drowns out the pop of bone—or tendon, or whatever it was that just snapped like cheap kindling.
Pain. Oh, God that hurts. It sears through me, ripping through my chest and escaping my throat in a shrill sound I don’t recognize as my own.
They don’t bother covering my mouth. They know there’s not a single person in this trailer park who would dare call the cops. Hell, even if someone did, there was a good chance that whatever cop showed up was working for their boss, anyway .
No. They want me to scream. They want to hear me. The grin Pedo-stash is wearing and the lump forming in the front of his pants tells me he wants my pain.
This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening. It is.
Baldy just watches, his expression half-bored. He doesn’t give a fuck.
“Liar.” Pedo-stash hisses the word and hits me again, a few inches higher on my forearm.
“Please, I don’t know. I’ll look for it. I can get you your money, I promise,” I cry out, trying to curl my body in upon itself to protect my arm. Baldy reaches out and grabs my throat, holding me in place for his colleague.
“See, that’s the thing,” Pedo-stash muses.
“We know you’re just a maid at the resort.
You can’t get your hands on that kind of cash.
It would take years to earn it, even if you didn’t spend a single fucking dime.
We’re looking at…what—six, seven years for you to make that kind of money?
Why you holding out, sweetheart? You have to know this doesn’t end well for you if you keep on. ”
“Because I don’t know where it is, I don’t know?— ”
And just like that, I know exactly what happened to that money. He was still trying to fix it. Even then. And now I’m the one paying for his bet.
“What just happened?” Baldy said, narrowing his eyes and looking at me.
I close my eyes, inhale through the pain, and open them again as he grips my chin between two fingers.
“You know where it is. I can see it in your face. It just popped into that pretty little head of yours.” Loosening my chin, he jabs my forehead with a stout finger for emphasis.
“He lost it,” I say, with a sigh of acceptance.
This is it. This is how I die.
“What do you mean, he lost it?” Pedo-stash asks, his eyes narrowed.
“April seventh, the resort held a poker tournament with a ten million dollar pot. That’s where your money went.”
Baldy squints at me while Pedo-stash throws back his head and laughs, and then starts flipping the mallet end over end in the air.
“Looks like I get to play tonight,” he says, the mallet coming down on the inside of my elbow. This time I hold my scream deep inside me, pinching my lips tightly together.
I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“I still think we should give her a chance to pay off her debt,” Baldy says. He rips my shirt open, the buttons of my uniform popping loose and flying all over the kitchen.
Something inside me snaps. I can’t hold back the words, and although I’ve never been suicidal, here…in this moment…I mean every one of them.
“Just fucking kill me,” I say. “I don’t care if you beat me to death, shoot me, strangle me, drown me…just fucking end it, already. I’m tired of having to pay for the crimes of a man who was too much of a coward to face his own consequences. Just kill me.”
Pedo-stash grins at me while Baldy yanks at my bra with rough hands, exposing my breasts. My bra tears. My brain unhooks from my body, floats up and out. If I close my eyes, maybe I’ll find a door to nowhere.
I try to flinch away, but their hold is too strong.
“That would be such a fucking waste,” Pedo-stash says, grabbing one of my breasts.
“Do you see the size of these fucking things?” He glances at Baldy, whose gaze is more calculating than lustful.
“I thought maybe she was just a little chunky, but no, she’s got this tiny fucking waist, and them huge tits.
I say we talk to the boss and get him to agree to just whore her out.
How much do you think men will pay just to fuck these tits and come on her face? ”
“Well, it would be smarter to let her work off her debt than to just kill her. We won’t get too much money from her corpse, but whoring her out?—”
God, no.
I’m not ready to die. Not like this. Not without at least trying.
“What if I can get you the money?” I break in desperately. Sweat slides down my spine, pressed against the table. I will welcome death before I become their whore.
“We’ve already been over it, sweetheart. There’s no way to come up with that money.”
“What about information? What if I can get you information that is worth far more than just what my father owes?”
“You don’t know shit.” Pedo-stash sneers at me .
Words pour from my lips in a panicked, disjointed babble.
“No, I swear. I was just offered a job watching the Titans. I’ll be part of their inner circle as staff.
People think they’re killing people. I could spy on them.
I can get you information. Women have been disappearing from the resort.
Mostly workers, after they sleep with one of the Titans…
they go missing. I could find out what’s happening and you can tell your boss, and he can use that against them?—”
“Shut the fuck up, you lying bitch.” Baldy slaps me across the face, and this time I taste blood.
“What if she’s right?” Pedo-stash asks. “You know what a hard-on the boss has for those privileged little bitches. If he finds out that she said something like this and we didn’t at least tell him?—”
“Fuck,” Baldy says, pissed off. “Fine, call him.”
Pedo-stash lets go of my arm and leaves the room. I try to rise, but Baldy slams me back down, and Baldy takes the opportunity to hit me again, hard enough that the room spins. I can’t fight back as he wrenches my skirt up and yanks my underwear down .
All I can do is scream inwardly, the sound deafening in my brain but nothing in the silence of the trailer.
No. Please. Nononono.
Click.
Click.
I hear it—slow, deliberate—accompanied by the occasional grunt.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but I still feel the flash of exposure. Shame washes over me, thick like sludge.
Before he can do anything else, Pedo-stash walks back into the room and stands over me, his hand coming to grip my throat again.
He leans in close, the sour smell of his breath making my nose wrinkle.
“You’re lucky our boss thinks you might be useful.
Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to do whatever the fuck you have to do to get as much dirt on those little bitches as possible.
He will decide if and when it’s enough to pay your father’s debt.
If you don’t make good on your father’s debt, then we’re going to whore you out and then sell you to some South American cartel as a pet.
They’re going to fuck you until you die, and then probably keep on fucking your corpse after. Is that understood?”
I nod my head as much as I can, and after a hard shove as he pushes himself away, both of the men just leave.
Bringing my legs up, I curl into the fetal position there on the table, and I cry.
Thirty minutes. I give myself exactly thirty minutes to purge away the tears, the rage and the fear, and get myself together.
Then, as best as I can, I clean myself up.
I wrap an ace bandage around my hand and wrist, testing the movement of my fingers and joints.
They’re stiff and hurt like hell, but I can move everything. I think that means nothing is broken.
I take one of the sandwiches out of the fridge, lay it on the floor in case Scrappy returns, and then I pack the few clothes that I have.
I’m not running. Not really.
I’ll play the mob’s game.
But I’m going to level the playing field first.