Consent (The Loan Shark Duet 2)

Magda splays her fingers and rests her fingertips on the desktop. “We kept on looking, searching everywhere. We turned their house upside down and swept every nook and cranny of Marvin’s workshop, but the tape never turned up. Yet, Owen kept on delaying their killing, using that damn tape as an excuse.”

“When Owen died you ordered Charlie and Valentina dead to prevent them from ever talking and to take revenge on Valentina for your unjustified jealousy. The debt was just an excuse so no fingers from the mob family could be pointed at you.”

“Yes. I paid Jerry to take Charlie to Napoli’s.”

“That’s why you had Scott shoot Jerry. No witnesses.”

“Yes.”

“The break-in in Valentina’s flat?”

“We’d searched the flat before, but when I heard she was selling it, I had to be absolutely sure the tape wasn’t there.”

Then I fell for Valentina, not only unknowingly honoring Owen’s promise to marry his only son off to the girl he raped, but also making Magda’s biggest nightmare come true, dragging the memories of my father’s hideous crime over her doorstep. What a big fucking ironic turn of events.

Her voice shakes. “I told you not to fall in love with her. I begged you.”

I’m dead inside for the people who conceived and raised me. My family no longer exists.

“Your brilliant plan to have Charlie hypnotized worked.”

“It did. He told Christopher where the tape was hidden.”

“And then you thought you could kill Valentina by showing her in brutal detail what the father of her husband did to her?”

“I’d never kill the mother of my grandchild. I only hoped she’d leave you.”

“Well, you almost killed her.”

“Almost?” she asks in a small voice, very unfitting for Magda.

“Valentina went into labor yesterday from shock. Not only did she almost lose my baby, she also almost died.”

Joy flares in her eyes. It’s brief, lasting only a split-second, but I don’t miss it. She would’ve been glad if Valentina was dead, maybe even relieved if my child was dead, too. This, I can’t forgive. I don’t care that she shot me and turned me into a killer. I enjoyed being feared. I won’t lie. What I won’t accept is a threat to my child and the woman I love, the woman this family has wronged in every way. We took her virginity, her parents, her brother, her home, her money, her fiancé, and her protection. We brutalized her, disfigured her body, destroyed her studies, her dreams, and her life. I forced my child into her body, and now she knows. She knows the ugly truth.

Magda breaks my train of thought. “What are you going to do, Gabriel?”

“Make this right.”

“I see.” Her tall, straight body hunches. She looks fifty years older. “This is what it comes to, then.”

“It should never have started.” Owen should never have laid a finger on Valentina.

Her gaze is desolate as it searches mine. “What now?”

“It’s in Valentina’s hands. It’s her call if she wants to lay charges or send the tape to the Jews.”

She purses her lips, as if in deep thought. After a while, she asks quietly, “Boy or girl?”

“It’s a boy. His name is Connor.”

“Connor. You kept it in the family. That’s nice. Gabriel…” She hesitates. “There is something you need to know about Carly’s death. I don’t think the baby was the reason for her suicide.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sylvia and Carly came over for lunch the day before she passed away. They had an argument about Carly going out to a party with her friends. Sylvia wouldn’t let her go. She said after what happened with the drugs she couldn’t trust Carly. Carly was being dramatic, accusing Sylvia of ruining her life. She said she’d rather be dead, and if she were, Sylvia would be sorry. I don’t think she meant to overdose on Sylvia’s sleeping pills. I believe it was another one of her attention seeking stunts that had gone terribly wrong.”

I don’t have to ask why she didn’t tell me before. She wanted me to feel guilty about keeping Valentina. It was a matter of, ‘See, I told you so.’ Nevertheless, some of the weight lifts off my shoulders.

“Thank you for telling me.”

She nods.

I look at her one last time, because when I walk out of here, I never want to lay eyes on her again.

“Goodbye, Magda.”

She doesn’t answer. She’s still nodding, her head bobbing up and down, when I leave her office without bothering to close the door. I don’t get as far as the front desk when the shot goes off.

16

Gabriel

The all too familiar sound of a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun tears through me. I stop dead. The metal explosion vibrates in my skull before the walls absorb the last echoes. My first reaction is to listen. For sounds of life? That she missed? I don’t know.