She tenses, and I regret breaking the quiet mood, awkward or not. With a small shake of her head, she says, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I nod. I get that. “Okay. But if I know what he’s holding over your head, it might be easier for me to help you.”
Her head swivels, her eyes meeting mine directly. I can tell she hasn’t thought of that angle before. As she mulls what I just said, I can damn near see the thoughts rolling over and over each other in her brain. After a few long seconds she says, “The bakery.”
That makes sense. It’s usually something like that. Something that can be taken away without much effort. “What happened?”
Sarah takes another sip of her drink, this time as if she’s fortifying herself. “I’ve always wanted a bakery. Or a little restaurant. A coffee shop—you know, something little and intimate that adds character to a neighborhood.” With a shrug, she sets the drink aside, and from that small gesture I know she’s going to spill the whole story. “Mom and Dad wanted me to do something more useful with my life, but I just wanted that little restaurant. So I scrimped and saved and still I didn’t quite have enough. So…I took out a loan.”
“Ah.” Familiar story. I’d given out more than a few of those loans myself. It always seemed good at the beginning, but if you couldn’t pay, things got ugly really fast. “From Sal?”
“Yeah. And after a while, I couldn’t make the payments. I was having a hard time getting the place up and running. They decided it’d be a better return on their dime if they torched the place and collected the insurance money.”
I wince. Yeah, I’ve done that, too. I always told myself I did what had to be done, that the business had to go ahead of everything else. Profit. Success. Return on the dollar. Hearing it from Sarah puts a whole different spin on it. I don’t comment, though. I let her keep talking.
“Obviously I wasn’t keen on that plan, but I had no idea how to stop them. Or even if I could stop them. So I’m panicking, I’m already seeing my perfect little bakery going up in smoke, and when Sal comes around to collect his money, I beg him for a deal.”
She stops. After a moment she picks her drink up again and tosses off the rest of it in a single gulp. Her fingers are shaking as she sets it back down.
I decide to let her off the hook. “Sal was the deal. He’d let you keep the bakery if you moved in with him.” I put it in the most delicate terms I can think of. At the same time, my stomach’s gone cold. I suspected it was something like this keeping her under his thumb, but this is even worse than I thought. I’m queasy all of a sudden, thinking about the number of times I’ve put people in similar positions. I’ve never asked anybody to whore themselves, but I’ve done things nearly as bad. Threatened livelihoods, vehicles, homes.
In a way, though, being on the other side of it makes it easier to understand why Sarah ended up where she is. Because I know Sal was serious when he said he’d burn the place down. He would have done it just like I would have done it. Sarah just got stuck between a very big rock and an extra-hard hard place.
She just nods. “And now this. Now he expects me to spend the rest of my life with him.” I can tell from the shiver in her voice that tears are threatening again.
I move closer. “I’ll be sure that doesn’t happen. I promise you.”
Her eyes slide sideways. I know she’s wondering what the catch is. Because of course there’s a catch. Yeah, it’s probably enough that I’m giving Sal the double middle finger by stealing his girl, but I’m starting to want more. A lot more.
She doesn’t ask any questions, though, and when I lean toward her to kiss her, she doesn’t even pretend like she doesn’t want me to.
God, she’s beautiful. Even after everything she’s been through today, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman look like she does. She’s cried off most of her makeup, and without it her skin is pale like porcelain. Her eyes stand out, stark and wide. There’s still lipstick on her mouth, dark against the washed-out colors of the rest of her face. She looks so fragile, so vulnerable, and yet in her eyes I see a stubborn fire that I don’t think I want to cross.
Somehow, in spite of everything, Sal hasn’t broken her.
I smile a little at that thought, which brings with it an inexplicable surge of pride. I kiss her again, deeper this time. She’s not going to leave this house without me having her every way I can think of. And then I’m going to tell her exactly what I want from her, and she’s going to agree. Because I’m the lesser of two evils, and because I can give her things Sal can’t. Or won’t.