Indebted to the Mafia King

Walk of Shame

Eleni

I slip out of the front door of Piacere without looking at the stage, where the auction is still going on, or the line of people outside. People—men—from both groups jeer at me, but I ignore them. The envelope of money weighs down the inside pocket of my jacket. Fifty thousand dollars. I hurry through the streets. I have to get home before Baba and Mama wake. The last thing I want is to worry them.

Only when I’m already on the ferry back to the city proper do I think about Dante. My face heats. I threw myself at him, and he refused. I bite my lower lip, still tingling from the heat and pressure of his kiss. I really thought he wanted me. Stupid. Men like him only ever want me for my body, but I could tell he wanted someone with more to them than that. He just didn’t see more in me.

Tears bead in my eyes, and I shake my head. Sure, I sold more to Dante than I ever wanted to, but I have the money. Mama can stop cleaning up Baba’s blood, at least.

When we arrive home, I lock the door behind me, slide the security chain into place, strip out of my funeral dress, and collapse into bed. Sleep evades me for a while. I just keep picturing the look in Dante’s dark eyes when I climbed onto his lap. In that moment, I felt like a completely new person, sexy and powerful. And he rejected me.

I take a deep breath and try to put the whole night behind me. Dante, his dangerous eyes, auctioning my virginity, they all stay on Staten Island. Everything but the fifty thousand dollars, in the top drawer of my little desk.

***

I startle out of my sleep to a metallic sound I can’t place. Maybe Baba woke up early and is banging around in the kitchen downstairs.

Something shatters. I sit up. That sounded like glass. And I don’t hear any of Baba’s furious Greek cursing.

Everything goes quiet for a moment. I slide out of bed and pull a sweatshirt on over my nightgown. Then, my heart pounding in my ears, I pull the envelope of money out of my desk drawer and slide it into the front pocket of the sweatshirt. My door swings open quietly, and I grab the nearest thing I think counts as a weapon—one of my computer science textbooks.

Baba stands in the door, clutching a baseball bat. “Go to Mama in our room, chryso mou.”

I grab the envelope and start to shake my head. “No, I—”

“It’s my job to protect this family.” His face turns deadly serious.

I’ve never seen Baba look like that, not even when he said Mama and I should move back to Greece. Not even last night, when he was getting patched up in our kitchen. Something terrible is happening. The money won’t fix this. I nod.

He steps out of the doorway to let me pass as the security chain rattles. He goes pale, then turns and marches toward the door. Sometimes, when Christos and I were young and couldn’t fall asleep, he would tell us stories of his baba, my pappous, and his time in the war. Christos preferred them, especially the ones where pappous escaped some terrible fate by sheer ingenuity, but we shared a room, so I heard them all the same. When Baba marches to the front door, he looks exactly like he described Pappous, straight-backed and determined to face whatever comes. My stomach sinks to my toes.

I scramble down the hall to Mama as, with a splintering of wood, the door bursts inward. Baba looses a war cry. I open the door to their bedroom, duck in, and shut it behind me. Mama perches on the edge of the bed, deathly pale in the early morning light. I sit next to her, and she takes my hand with a crushing grip.

Someone grunts in pain. I can’t tell who. Something smashes. Baba curses at the same moment something splatters, and Mama winces.

“Run, my—” Baba’s words cut off on a gurgle.

I shoot to my feet. I said never again. I snuck out in the middle of the night to sell my body so I could protect everyone. What am I doing, sitting here and waiting for whatever will come? Mama stares up at me blankly.

“It’s over,” she whispers. “Frank wanted you, and that’s the one thing we would never give him.”

“It’s not over until I say so.” I yank open dresser drawers until I find a pair of pants Mama can pull on under her nightgown and throw them at her. I’ll have to make do. “Put those on, then go out the window. I have to do something.”

Baba screams, a pained, animalistic sound, and my skin turns to ice. Mama doesn’t move.

I grab her by the shoulders. “I can’t lose you both.”

My voice cracks, and though she never looks away from the door, she starts to move. That has to be enough. I sprint into the hall. Whatever monsters Baba is facing in the living room will pursue Mama and I. That fact crawls into my bones. They—

No point in saying they. Frank Lombardi will never give up. A hot, tight feeling takes hold of my ribs. Baba screams again, and a smell creeps down the hall. Something overwhelming and metallic.

Blood. My stomach twists.

I race for the tiny bathroom Baba always wanted to redo. He hated the old-fashioned drop ceilings, those little square tiles that gave the super such easy access to our pipes. One time, I was the only one home when the super was fixing the shower. He let me watch him work and showed me a secret. A secret I need now.

Footsteps down the hall. I pray Mama listened, that she left.

I fling open the door to the bathroom and clamber onto the toilet. My feet slide, covered in panicked sweat, but I punch up the ceiling tile I need. Third from the wall, two up. This building changed supers a lot for a while, even got a reputation for it. So the supers installed a box in the ceiling, to leave notes for the next one of the buildings weird quirk. I slide open the little wooden box, fold the envelope of money, and stuff it behind sheets of yellowing paper.

The door crashes open. I slide the ceiling tile back into place, leap off the toilet, and misjudge my landing. My heels slide, and I collide with the tile floor, hard.

A massive man I don’t recognize looms through the doorway. “You.”

I spit at him.

He hauls me off the floor by my hair in a bright burst of pain and stuffs a bag over my head. I scream, claw at his arm, anything I can think of, but he’s inexorable. He tightens the bag until it almost chokes me and throws me over his shoulder.

“I’ll get you back for this,” I yell. “I don’t know who you are, but I’ll find you, and you’ll regret the day you ever heard the name Calimeris!”

“All right, cutie.” He smacks my butt a few times, condescendingly. “This’ll go a lot easier if you quiet down.”

“f**k you.” My first ever curse word slips from my lips, just another thing ruined in this awful day, and I try to remember everything I’ve ever learned about self-defense. Go for the groin. Not useful, in the air. Don’t get grabbed. Too late for that. And the eyes are always weak.

I snarl and claw for where I hope his face might be. My fingers, newly manicured by Mama a couple days ago, catch skin and tear. I hold on and sink my nails in. He howls and dumps me on the nice, tan carpet Mama was so pleased when we installed in the living room.

It squelches underneath me. I draw back my hand and find it sticky. The metallic reek overwhelms me, and I just know.

Baba is dead, and I’m sitting in his remains.

“You bitch.” The massive man cracks something hard and metal against my cheek.

Pain explodes through my world, and I topple to the side. Another squelch. More Baba. This man, this monster, slams the metal thing into my face again. A second time. A third.

“Regret the name,” I mumble woozily.

On the fourth hit, I slip into unconsciousness.