“Two.” I was eyeing her luscious round tits.
“Cup or cone?” she asked.
“Cone.” I raised a brow.
“Sugar cone?”
“Oh yeah,” I said low and gave her another grin.
She gulped, fumbled, and got the ice cream for me. Then she put a cherry right in the middle of the top scoop. A fucking cherry. I could’ve come in my pants right then and there.
“That’s three bucks,” she’d said, holding it out to me with both hands demurely but something flirty in those eyes. Gorgeous eyes. Jade green, long thick black lashes.
Oh it’d be a lot more than three bucks. I could buck all fucking night if I had her in my bed. I’d put a $20 in her hand, then grabbed her wrist for a second before she could turn to the cash register and told her to keep the change and then wiggled the tip of my tongue against the cherry and winked at her before letting go of her wrist. Then, I walked out.
I used the tip of my tongue to scoop the cherry into my mouth and dropped the cone in the trash bin outside the shop and glanced in the window. She was staring at me, mouth open. After a few flicks of the tongue behind my teeth, I pulled out the stem and showed her that it was now knotted and then put it between my teeth, winked and then I got into my car and drove directly to my father’s office, tonguing that stem while I drove.
I didn’t knock; I strolled right in, interrupting a phone call and ignoring the 4 other people sitting there with him at a conference table, one of them my brother.
Pop had looked up at me and put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.
“Tia O’Connor? Make it happen,” I told him, dropping the knotted cherry stem into the trash can beside the table.
“On it,” he’d answered with a huge smile and then lifted his chin at Dario, my brother. Dare got up and cracked his knuckles, “Let’s go,” Dare said to Bruce, Gus, and Earl, who were all sitting there with him.
Later that night, Dare called me and told me he’d visited with Greg O’Connor and told him the score. He walked in and told him Tom Ferrano was calling in his debt. If he didn’t have cash on the spot, he was to hand over his daughter Tia, that Tia would be presented to Thomas Ferrano Jr. as potential marriage material and that if marriage didn’t happen, she’d remain Ferrano property in order to clear his debt. Dario had brought muscle with him, expecting resistance even though Pop told him not to bother.
O’Connor hadn’t even seemed all that surprised, according to Dare. Said he knew that my father wasn’t done with him yet and had a feeling this day would come. That my father had warned a few weeks prior that Tia might be the payback for what’d happened back in the day, whenever and whatever that was. O’Connor had told my brother it was almost a relief that the day had come and that Tom had chosen to handle things this way because he’d been carrying around the worry for years. What the fuck? Piece of shit. Whatever the beef was between him and my Pop, he wasn’t even gonna try to barter or fight for his daughter? What a sorry excuse for a father, for a man.
Of course she was already mine in my head so there was nothing he could do even if he had the money to pay the debt but that the man wasn’t even trying? He’d get zero respect from me.
Dare thought it was funny that Pop had done this to get me married off and said he was surprised that I was going through with it. I told him it was a means to an end and we joked about the fact that he’d be next. I’d seen Dare date plenty; he got a lot of female attention and had even been engaged already but she’d broken his heart and in return he’d broken the jaw of the guy she was fucking as well as bankrupted the guy’s family’s business. Since then, he was about as interested in settling down as I was.
I saw my Pop the next evening at dinner at his house with him, my two sisters, their families, and Pop’s wife, wife #4 if I hadn’t lost count yet, and he told me on the side that he’d told O’Connor years back that he’d have his daughter someday. I tried to ask questions but again he brushed me off.
Why that son of a bitch didn’t leave the country to protect his little girl was beyond me. I mean, we had reach across borders but if you’d at least tried to get out of his line of sight maybe you’d have somewhat of a chance of getting off his radar. I knew that O’Connor had left his kid to rot in foster homes right under my Pop’s nose while he put cocaine up his own nose, while he repeatedly bet all his earnings on the horses and in card games, while he paid no attention to his kid whatsoever. Knowing Pop was threatening his kid, how could he stay around here?
I didn’t know what the beef between Pop and O’Connor was about as Pop was being tight-lipped but it had to be a pretty big beef for Pop to let a wound fester for years and then decide that the payment would come in the form of about 120 pounds of flesh. For whatever the reason was, I’d be getting that flesh in my hands right after she graduated from high school. It was all arranged. Dario would pick her up and deliver her to me.
Tia
The SUV stopped in front of a gatehouse and then when the gates opened, it pulled up a driveway in front of a gorgeous Tudor style house. A mansion, really. I clutched my purse close and when the SUV emptied, big black scary dude reached for my hand and helped me out. He gave me a little smile. Hmm, not so scary, really. Now that he’d smiled at me, he reminded me a little of Michael Clarke Duncan. The guy from the Green Mile isn’t scary, just misunderstood. Maybe this guy wasn’t scary. The other two, burlies one and two were scary, though. Burly Number Two from the back seat looked a tad
like Lou Ferrigno, the Incredible Hulk. Burly One looked like a total criminal --- Sopranos or Godfather henchman type --- angry dark eyes, uni brow, deep acne scars on his cheeks. All three of them were huge men. The blond driver in the front looked little less scary but his attitude was scarier than all the other guys. He was in maybe his mid-20’s, and while he was good-looking, wearing an expensive suit, he looked pissed off and impatient. He seemed like the one in charge.
The Michael Clarke Duncan-looking dude finished helping me out of the SUV and blond angry hot guy motioned for me to follow him. I did, wondering what the heck I was walking into here. I was on a gated property with several big scary guys and I’d bet money they all carried guns. The blond guy led me through a big foyer into a room down a long hallway and rapped on a door.
“Come in,” A man answered from the other side.
The two burlies and the Michael Clarke Duncan guy stopped and waited in the hall while the blond guy opened the door and signaled for me to walk ahead of him. My heart felt like it was in my throat.
I was inside a large office and a man was behind a desk. He had salt and pepper hair and light brown eyes and looked handsome for his age, kind of George Clooneyish. He wore a suit and he looked tall and muscular. He looked more businessman or hot shot lawyer than mobster.
A guy in a mansion with all these thugs or whatever was buying debts from bookies? It didn’t add up. How big could Dad’s debt actually be? Who would front him more than a few hundred dollars on a poker game, knowing he wasn’t capable of earning more than the minimum wage?
“Athena, I’m Thomas Ferrano. Call me Tom. Please sit.” He motioned for a chair in front of his desk.
I sat. His name sounded familiar. His face sort of seemed familiar, too.