Chapter Text
“Mama? I'm home!” I holler in a sing-song voice, setting down my bags just inside the door and shrugging off my coat to hang on one of the hooks dad had lovingly installed when we first moved in some twenty years ago when I was a cute and chubby eight year old. I sniff the air as I slip my shoes off. Mmm. There’s the sweet smell of cinnamon and apple all wrapped up in the delicate flakey crust my mom is so proud of. Mom makes the best apple pie I’ve ever had. No one, and I do mean no one, makes apple pie the same way she does and maybe it’s because I grew up on hers, but it is my humble opinion that her pie is second to none. It smells like home. Even at twenty-eight and firmly independent in my own little studio apartment two states away, my parent’s house feels like home. I feel the tension of every day life slip away as I step further into the entry way. “Mama? I’m home!”
No answer.
Uh, okay, that's weird. Mom or Dad are always close by and waiting for hugs when I get home. I pad quietly down the short entryway, sock bedecked feet sinking comfortably into a plush rug that I don’t recognize. That must be new. While more comfortable than the old rag rug that used to hold this spot, I kind of miss the multicolored collection of repurposed rags my grandpa had weaved together as a house-warming present for my parents all those years ago. Grandpa’s been gone for years and while I’ve adjusted to the loss, seeing his rug every time I made the trip home was comforting, like an old friend always there to greet me. This new one is fluffy like a cloud and colored about as interestingly. There isn’t a stain on it’s clearly factory made luxury and I can’t help but think sadly that it lacks personality. Out loud, however, I say, “Nice rug! Did you get it from that little shop downtown that you were telling me about?”
I turn right into the kitchen and stop in my tracks, heart pounding in my chest as confusion quickly turns to alarm. The oven door hangs open and forgotten, warm fragrant air filling the kitchen and there on the floor, smashed to pieces is Mama’s beautiful pie. I dash forward, stepping around sticky apple pieces expecting to find my mother on the floor behind the island counter in the middle of some sort of medical emergency but once again, there’s no one to be found. “Mama?” There's a note of panic in my voice that hadn't been there before. I reach over and turn the dial on the stove to off, using the heel of my foot to close the door at the same time, “Are you okay?”
Worry slinks low in my gut as I exit the kitchen the way I came and continue down the hall to the living room. Relief and anxiety mingle as I round the corner and see my mother on the couch, face streaked with tears, but otherwise looking unharmed. Without a thought I rush to her side. “Mama? Are you okay? What happened? Are you hurt?”
That’s when I notice my dad on the floor, hands cupped over his face where he’s trying to staunch a bloody nose with absolutely no success, crimson rivulets fall to splatter and stain their gorgeous new cream colored carpet that matches the rug in the hall. “Dad! What happened?!”
Something hard touches the back of my head and I freeze in mid step. My eyes lock with Mom’s and for the first time I notice that she isn’t hurt, she’s scared.
“Don’t move.”
The voice is a smooth, deep, baritone that is completely unknown to me but instinctually I obey, freezing with my hands extended before me at shoulder height. My blood runs hot and then cold, fear sinking like a stone in my gut. “Listen, if you want valuables you can have them. My purse is by the door. There’s two-hundred dollars in there. Just please don’t hurt my family.”
To my horror the man chuckles. It’s a cold sound completely devoid of mirth. “We are not thieves, Ms. Finley. Keep your money. It’s worthless to me.”
“Okay. What do you want then?” My eyes flick around the room, taking in half a dozen armed men that I had not noticed at first, and then my eyes lock with mom’s. I’ve never seen her look so frightened in my life. Not even that time in highschool when I'd been in a car accident with my friend Kara and we’d both had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance did she look this scared. She’s always been calm and collected but right now she looks like she can’t decide if she wants to run or scream or puke.
The man ignores me and speaks instead to my parents. “I didn’t know you were expecting company.”
“Leave her alone.” My dad says pushing himself up from the floor. His hands and face are stained with blood but there’s steel in his watery blue eyes. “She has no part in this.”
“You’re in no position to be making demands, Jerry.” The man says mildly before kicking my father in the face and driving him back to the floor, a fresh spurt of blood erupting from his nose.
I scream helplessly. Oh god, his nose looks broken. The gun on the back of my head never wavers. “Stop! What are you doing?!”
“Jerry!” Mom yells, lurching forward to go to her husband only to be stopped by a harsh hand from one of the men on her shoulder.
“T- T- T-.” He tsks, reaching around me, all the while making sure I can feel the barrel of his gun pressed harshly to the back of my head. I'm struck by how pleasant he smells, like spice and tobacco and just a hint of cedar. Bad men should have the decency to smell bad too. He pats my mom on the cheek mockingly while saying, “Stay in your chair like a good bitch. Jerry will be just fine.”
“What do you want?” I demand through gritted teeth. This man has threatened me, hurt my father, and disrespected my mother. If it were only him I might try fighting him, but his cronies stand like sentinels around the room, ensuring that this stranger– this rudely good smelling stranger– firmly maintains the upper hand.
“I want what your family owes me.” He says simply and I can practically hear the shrug that accompanies it.
Okay, I have no clue what that means. “As I said, there are two-hundred dollars in my purse-”
“Pocket change.” The man interrupts me.
I grit my teeth. “O-kay. How much are we talking here?”
“How much do you think is fair, Lorraine?” The man says, redirecting the question to my mother.
“What? Mom, do you know this guy? What is he talking about?” She doesn't answer me but I can see a flash of recognition in her eyes. “Mom? What is he talking about?”
She ignores me. “They paid me a little over two million dollars.”
“What? Mom, what are you talking about?”
“Two million,” he says, ignoring me just like mom did. There's an odd note to his voice, a pain that seems real beneath the carefully crafted facade of anger. “Lets go ahead and add emotional damages, you’re looking at a twenty million dollar tab that just came due.”
“We don’t have that kind of money” My mom says, agast. “All we have is the house! Jerry’s retired! I haven’t worked in years! How are we gonna find that kind of money?!”
“You really should have thought of that before you took a giant steaming shit on my father.”
“How– I didn't– I didn't know–!” Mom cries.
“You didn't know?!?” The man practically screams and there is a shift in the demeanor of everyone in the room. Tension spirals as he waits for a response that doesn’t come. Mom just cries harder and buries her face in her hands saying over and over again how she knew it was a bad idea. “Are you telling me that you can’t pay me? That you won’t pay me?”
Mom cries harder.
“Answer me, Lorraine.”
Silence echoes around the room, chased by Mom’s hiccupping sobs. It stretches on and on and like a rubber band stretched to its max, there comes a point when you have to let go or it breaks, and the tension breaks like an explosion as the man in charge loses what's left of his temper and screams, “ANSWER ME!”
I feel a kick behind one of my knees and I fall forward with a surprised squeak, barely keeping myself from toppling over completely as I’m forced to my knees. The gun is instantly there again, pressed hard against the back of my skull, the man’s spare hand tangled roughly in my auburn curls holding my head in place.
“Give me an answer, Lorraine, or I’ll kill the girl.”
A chill spirals through me. I have no idea what’s going on or how my parents got mixed up with a guy like this, all I know is that there’s a loaded gun pressed against my skull and a man willing to pull the trigger. Something very much like hysteria bubbles in my chest. “Answer him, Mom!”
Mom finally looks up, wet eyes begging me to understand something completely beyond my grasp and then she says, “We don’t have- we don’t have the money.”
“You took something very dear to me, Lorraine.” The man says tapping the gun’s barrel against the back of my skull so that we all can very clearly follow his thought process. “Perhaps I ought to take something very dear to you, huh?”
“No!”
I feel a rush of affection for my father. He’s pulling himself up from where he’s been on the floor cradling his nose but at the threat to me he springs into action, voice thick from his broken nose. “Don’t! Please! Please don’t hurt her! She’s had no part in this! She doesn’t even know what we’re talking about! Please don’t hurt my baby! Lorraine, say something! Say something!”
But mom stays silent. There are tears rolling down her cheeks but she does not beg like my father does, in fact she looks away, ashamed.
“Lorraine!” Dad’s voice is thick from his broken nose and full of horror. He turns to our captor instead. “Please don’t hurt her! Look at her face! Look in her eyes! She’s innocent! Hurt me! Kill me, not her! Please!”
“Interesting.” The man stops tapping the gun. I assume he’s looking down at my father or maybe over at my mother, but clearly he is thinking through something. Several long minutes pass like this as I hold my breath, barely able to breathe for fear each breath might be my last. Dad’s still begging but mom remains silent. She doesn’t plead for my life or dad’s. She simply sits in silence, face turned away from her family. My brain can hardly process the betrayal.
An eternity passes and then the man steps around me, never loosening the grip he holds on my hair. First I see his shoes, brown leather polished to high shine with a high ankle. The round laces are tied neatly and the sides and toe are decorated with the ornate holes iconic of brogue shoes. Above that is the neatly pressed pant leg of a navy blue suit made to fit exquisitely over the man’s muscular frame and powerful thighs. A white dress shirt tucked into those trousers and a brown leather belt with a simple clasp– And then there is a tug on my hair, pain flares in my scalp, and he has my head pulled back so that he is looking directly into my frightened eyes.
He is, rudely, not nearly as ugly as he's supposed to be. In fact, he is upsettingly beautiful. Thick black hair sits perfectly coiffed atop his head, matching brows and the stubble of a five o'clock shadow highlight the sharp cut of a strong jaw and high cheekbones. I feel my pulse quicken and it has nothing to do with the gun still pressed to my head. Villains are supposed to be ugly. Apparently he didn't read the manual. Hatred and something else that seems to mirror my own confused feelings spark back at me from the obsidian depths of his eyes and his dark eyebrows knit together as he glares at me. “Hmmm. Are you innocent, as your father claims?”
I want to glare. I want to curse and rail and make plain my anger but I don’t. Maybe if it was just me, but I could never risk my parents, even if mom will not stand up for me. Too much is at stake. Instinctively I know that this man will not hesitate before murdering me and my family so instead I swallow my pride, stare up into his unsettlingly handsome face, and beg, “Please- Please don’t hurt my family.”
“You’re scared,” he chuckles at me and I can’t help noticing how full his lips are as they pull up in a lopsided smirk or how white his teeth against the darkness of his stubble, “that’s good.”
I mash my lips together as disgust and rage flare in me like a struck match. This man is getting off on our fear– on my fear. My lip curls as I utter my response through clenched teeth, but I force myself to once again beg for our lives. “I don’t know what this is about. I don’t know about any damages or money. We certainly have never lived as if we had the kind of money that you’re talking about. But perhaps if you gave us a bit of time we could find a way- I mean- who has that kind of money laying around?”
“No one,” he grins, straightening up and I feel myself flush crimson at how close to his crotch he’s holding me and try to shuffle away from the bulge in his trousers but he twists his hand in my hair and tugs me closer yet. I fall still. “That's the point.”
“So you came in here intending to murder my parents!” I’m livid now. No two ways around it. This man is playing with us, knowing full well that he has no intention of letting any of us live. To make matters worse, he’s not content with just killing us, he intends to humiliate us first. “What’s the point, asshole? If you kill us you don’t get your precious money, you know that right?”
“Oh, I'm aware.” He seems only too delighted to say, tilting his head to the side and mocking me with a sing-song voice. “I came in here fully intending on committing a double homicide. I did not, however,” he straightens up and narrows his eyes, suddenly becoming quite serious again, “count on you. I'm not wasteful, you see.”
“You know what?” I say, at the end of my patience, “Fuck you!”
“Is that an offer?” Those dark eyes sparkle.
My heart hammers. Not in this life, buddy. Call me crazy but threatening my life just isn’t the romantic overture he seems to think it is. “I’d rather die.”
He laughs. His men laugh. And I look between my mother and father, trying to remind myself that there are worse things in life than death but as I am quite literally staring down the barrel of my own demise, I can’t help but mourn the life I’m never going to have. Think of all the books I'll never have time to read, or mistakes I'll never make– shit, I can't die now! My college boyfriend Colin, who smelled like corn chips and cheap beer, cannot be the only man I ever fuck. That's the real tragedy! But then I look at my mother. Her eyes are huge with fear and she seems to have been rendered silent. Dad’s face and hands are crusted in blood and his eyes are sad when he chokes out a single, sad word. My name. “Lottie-”
“Change of plans, gentlemen.” Dickhead says to his men and hope leaps in my chest for one excruciating moment but then he pauses and says to my parents, “You have one year. If I don’t have my money, then she,” he twists his hand in my hair and pulls me up so that I’m kneeling as tall as I can and he grinds the pistol against the side of my head, “dies.”
Owww. I release a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. One year. Okay. We can work with that. I can work with that. We’ll figure something out. I can disappear. Go abroad. Shit, I’ll take mom and dad with me. We’ll go somewhere he’ll never find us. We’ll be okay, I tell myself as I stare him down with nothing short of pure determination in my green eyes. We’re going to be okay.
“We don’t have that kind of money!” My dad says, clearly not on the same wavelength as me and panicked at the thought of him hurting me.
“I’m sure Lorraine will think of something.” The man tosses me sideways, releasing my hair, and I am forced to catch myself with my palms which sting with rug burn. To his men he says something in a language I don’t understand, but the message is clear, ‘let’s go.’
My scalp aches and I’ve barely regained my feet. Confident prick is already halfway across the room, so sure that his commands will be followed that he never even pauses to look back. I turn back to my father and am just about to help him up from the floor when I am yanked back by rough hands around my waist, lifting me in the air.
I shriek like a hellcat, shock and horror turning my blood to ice as I instantly begin writhing in my captor’s grasp. “Put me down, you fucking bastard!”
“She’s got spirit.” Dickhead says with grudging admiration in his voice. “I’ll give her that. C’mon.”
“Mom!” My voice cracks. Half formed plans fall around me like Jenga pieces as I realize that this man, this monster, has no intention of letting me out of his sight. “Dad! Help me!”
There’s a scuffle behind me and I see one of the other men subdue my father harshly with a punch to the face. I scream as dad crumples back to the floor. Mom is silent, watching everything with wide eyed horror. I scream bloody murder, praying one of the neighbors hears and calls the cops. Someone’s got to hear me with all the racket I’m making. “Put me down! You bastard! You fucking bastards! Let me go! Help me! Help!”
“Give her to me.” I hear the man say and then I’m being forced into a car and onto this monster’s lap, one hand clamping hard over my mouth to silence me but I just keep screaming through the meaty appendage. “Let’s go.”
It isn’t until I feel the car lurch into motion and take several sharp turns that I realize how well and truly fucked I am, the realization making me fight worse than ever. The man’s big hand is covering my mouth still but I do my utmost to yell obscenities at him, wedging one arm between his torso and myself, attempting to break free. “LEMMEE GOOO!”
“Quiet, girl.”
I am proud to say that he is having a hard time keeping his grip on me as I twist and writhe. His hand slips and I take the opportunity, sinking my teeth as deep as I can into the soft webbing between his thumb and forefinger, knowing I’ve done a decent job when I taste the tang of iron and he curses, releasing me. I do not hesitate. I launch myself at the door and wrench it open to see asphalt blurred beneath the car’s movement. Shit this is gonna hurt. I steel myself for impact and– the second I’m about to jump there are hands on me again, pulling me back into the car and the door closed as well.
“Lock the fucking doors, Jessup!”
We grapple with each other but I know it’s only a matter of time before I’m subdued. My back is pressed to the car seat, this guy is larger than I had realized, looming over me. He gets hold of my right hand first, probably because I had been in the process of raking my nails down his cheek as hard as I could with it. Next is my left hand and he huffs out a satisfied sort of sound as he presses my wrists to the carseat and I buck futilely against him. Breathing heavily, rage and defeat mixing in my chest. I stare into the face of my captor, memorizing every inch so that if I ever get the opportunity the police will have a sketch so accurate they’ll be able to pluck him out of a sea of impersonators.
“God, you’re feisty.” His deep voice is rough with excitement. He’s pressing his weight along my body, immobilizing me. I fall still when I feel the proof of his excitement pressed against me as he uses his weight to hold me down. “That’s it. Know when you’re beat, girl.”
“Get off me!” Disgust flares like nausea. I do the only thing I can think of. I spit in his face.