A shadow falls over the corridor and I look up. It’s the man from before, but this time he’s flanked by two smaller men. In a split second, my heart is hammering at a thousand beats per minute. I want to stand, run, scream, but I’m frozen. They all wear suits but none of them wear them as well as Vince. They look like monkeys in fancy clothes. The slow determination in the way they walk toward me robs the sight of any humor. There’s murder in their eyes. I glance backward to where the corridor eventually leads to management offices for the Jets. It’s empty during halftime, because all the coaching staff is in the locker room. I could run that way, but I’d be trapped in a labyrinth of hallways and rooms. And I sure as hell can’t run passed them toward the field. They’d grab me.
“I knew you couldn’t wait to taste my fat cock. You even went and found us a private place. Boss told me to lay low for now, but damn. You’re practically begging me for it. I figure me and the boys can each take a turn on you. Don’t worry though, we’ll leave your face pretty.”
“Leave me alone!” I shout in desperation.
He taps his chin thoughtfully. “Tell you what. If you cooperate, I’ll even eat that tight pussy of—”
Something dark moves across the opening of the tunnel and the man’s words cut off with a mumble. I hear a loud thud and then several more meaty thumps.
Vince!
He ran in and hit the man who was speaking and now he’s grappling with the other two. The man he hit is on the ground and slowly rising to his feet. Everything happens so fast that I can barely tell what’s going on. There’s shouting, grunting, muffled yells. Vince has a man pinned against the wall, pushing the man’s wrist into the concrete and trying to wrestle the gun free from his hand. With deadly efficiency, he jerks his elbow back into another man’s face and I hear brittle bones give. The man slumps to the floor like a ragdoll, leaking blood. The first man Vince knocked down gets to his feet and pulls something shiny from his sock.
“Vince! Knife!” I shout.
Vince turns just in time to sidestep the blade while still holding the other man’s gun to the wall. He pulls the man with the gun forward and spins him, using him like a human shield to absorb the knife. There’s a wet sound that makes my stomach churn and the man grunts. The one holding the knife curses. Vince throws the stabbed man down and rushes the guy with the knife. He pushes him down and kicks him hard in the head three times. Then he kneels, punching the guy’s face again and again.
“Vince! Stop!” I cry.
He looks up at me, face peppered with blood and brows drawn down in dark fury. One man lies motionless in a pool of blood. Another scoots away, clutching his bloody stab wound. The last—the one who threatened me—lays in a gory heap, face a ruin and chest completely motionless. Vince killed him. My heart hammers and I feel like I can’t catch my breath. I start to teeter backwards, but Vince catches me in his strong arms. I hear him mutter into a cell phone.
“...need cleanup. Yeah. The fix was in with some of the security, but get here quick. It’s messy. Yeah. Going to put the leftovers in the back.”
The next few minutes are a blur. I keep looking out into the tunnel where I can see the backs of people standing on the sidelines watching the halftime show. With all the music, no one heard a thing. I can’t believe a man was just murdered only a dozen yards from a crowd of people and no one knows it. I follow Vince numbly as he drags the body deeper into the offices, leaving a long trail of blood in his wake. The two injured mobsters shuffle out of the tunnel, but I suspect they will stand to lose as much as Vince if they draw attention to themselves. They probably just want to get clear of here.
My head feels like it might just spin off my neck and I start to feel nauseous. I just watched people die. “I might be,” I say thickly before bending over and vomiting everywhere. Vince takes me from behind with a surprisingly tender grasp, moving my hair out of the way and wiping my mouth with a silk handkerchief when I’m done. “Ruining it,” I mumble, still feeling like I’m about to pass out.
“Nothing’s too good for you”, he whispers in my ear. I feel the wetness of the blood on his face as he leans close to me and a deep revulsion takes me. I shudder, but he pulls me closer and I’m too overwhelmed to resist. “We’re going to get out of here. I’ve got some questions for you and you sure as fuck better have the right answers. You’re coming to my place.”
“I still have to be on camera after the game,” I say. Everything is a numb wash of confusion, but the threat of losing my job still sends jolts of panic to the surface of my thoughts, even past the slowly forming reality of what my dad did to me.