Playing With The Mafia Prince

Chapter 2: Troublemaker

Coming from a Persian background, I had assumed that the Persian Studies class would be relatively easy.

I was wrong.

The minute I walked into class, I realized that I had been terribly mistaken to ever give myself the privilege of claiming to be fluent in Farsi because I could hardly understand a word being said by the professor.

From then on, I spent the entire 90 minutes of every lecture cursing whoever had decided that taking a foreign language should be a core class. I cursed them in different languages too, just to be ironic.

Yesterday was Russian.

Today was Japanese.

When I was finally able to escape the hell that my mother had allowed me to walk into unprepared, I bolted out of the hall to get to the other side of campus in time for my next class. I always just managed to make it on time, showing up breathless and sweating through whatever shirt I was wearing.

That was the curse of giving yourself a seven minute window between two classes that were so distant from one another. Nevertheless, Human Rights was quite possibly my favorite class of the semester.

Professor Reagan was in his mid to late thirties with a mischievous smile and a pair of twinkling brown eyes that watched me in amusement as I rushed into a seat in one of the long rows near the front.

There was a couple to my left that seemed to be glued to the mouth, as they were kissing through the entirety of every lecture since the beginning of the semester, and an empty seat to my right, probably because nobody else wanted to sit this close up.

“Good morning, class,” the professor said in a pleasant voice.

A few people out of the nearly 300 students stuffed in the lecture hall chorused back a greeting. He smiled.

“So, I’ve been noticing morale is pretty down with the midterms coming up,” he began, clapping his hands together. “Let’s remind ourselves why we’re in this class, shall we? I mean, human rights. What’s up with that? Shouldn’t it be obvious what human rights are? Why do we need a class to learn about them?”

He took a couple of steps away from the podium and closer to us, his voice carrying through with no need for his mic. “I’ll tell you why. Since the creation of mankind, human beings have always had a sense of superiority, a heightened sense of their own self-worth.

“First, it started out with humans looking down upon animals. They thought, hey, we can stand on our own two legs, you losers can’t, therefore you will be food.”

There was some chuckling in the back rows.

“Then, as humans spread to different parts of the globe and started changing, their eyes got more upturned, their skin got darker, their hair got lighter, and they started to apply this same sense of superiority to one another. Wars, slavery, persecution, segregation—history is a whirlwind of all these things that we, the people in this hall, can look back on and think of as horrific and disgusting.”

Professor Reagan paused for a moment, his gaze roaming the lecture hall, seemingly making eye contact with each of us and none of us at the same time.

“You see, we are constantly at war with ourselves, with our own demons, our own prejudices. They tell us we should always fight fire with fire, and yet we can’t do that in this case.

“That’s why we study this material. Ladies and gentlemen, knowledge is, and will always be, the extinguisher to the fire of ignorance and prejudice.”

The students all started applauding, some guys even whistling and hooting, and the professor smiled indulgently at us all until the applause died down.

I grinned at the professor when he winked at me conspiratorially.

Yup.

This class was definitely my favorite.

It went by in what seemed like minutes, and before I knew it, Alex was walking me from the lecture hall to Mel’s Burger Bar, where we both worked.

The place looked the same as any other fast food restaurant.

There was a long bar along which were stools with leather tops and in the back were plenty of cozy booths. The menu was written in chalk on a large blackboard that covered the whole back wall of the restaurant.

Alex and I greeted our coworkers when we arrived, talking about everything and nothing. I had afternoon classes, but I’d needed to pick up some extra shifts.

“You sure you don’t need a break, Em?” Alex’s voice was as gentle as his smile.

I nodded quickly, looking away. I was already feeling the drain of being up and at it from early, and knowing that the day wouldn’t be over until much later. I closed my eyes briefly.

The memory of my mother crying to herself in the kitchen, her shoulders heaving as she tried to keep as silent as possible, was enough to have me putting on my apron and name tag. Just a few more months and the payments should be done.

Then they’ll finally leave us alone.

“Fuck.” Alex came to a screeching halt in front of me.

I slammed right into the hard muscles of his back and winced.

“What the hell, Alex?” I mumbled, rubbing my forehead.

When he stepped away, I swore as well at the sight of Lucas and a couple of his friends sitting in one of the booths across from us.

Lucas lifted a hand in greeting, wiggling his fingers. He said something to his friends, smirking, and they all doubled over with laughter.

I narrowed my eyes at them all.

“Just ignore them, Emma. We’re at work. We can’t afford to cause a problem.”

I nodded reluctantly at Alex’s rational words.

*Twenty Minutes Later*

“ALEX, NO!” I screamed as my friend dove across the bar with his fist outstretched towards Lucas.

We’d been tolerating their rudeness, their obnoxiousness, and their insults since they arrived. I would grab Alex’s arm every time he came close to losing it, and he would do the same for me.

We were supposed to just keep our heads down, at least until the shift was over.

But then Lucas made a crude comment about how he could “put my smart mouth to better use,” and Alex exploded. He socked Lucas straight in the nose.

While the sight of that son of a b***h bleeding from the nose would’ve brought a smile to my face in any other situation, it made me panic now.

He could get Alex fired for that.

I knew it. Alex knew it. And based off of the cruel smirk that graced Lucas’s face, he knew it too.

So I acted quickly. Without thinking. I couldn’t let Alex get fired, definitely not because of me.