Twisted Loyalties (The Camorra Chronicles 1)

He eyed the dollar note as if it was something dirty. “Where did you get it?”

“I found a job,” I said with a smile.

He didn’t look happy. “And they paid you fifty dollars on your first day?”

He made it sound like I had been doing something forbidden, something dirty.

“No, not yet. I will get paid today.” That’s what I hoped at least. I wasn’t sure how Roger handled things but since he didn’t ask for my social security number or any other relevant information, I assumed that he wouldn’t exactly follow a regular payment plan.

“Then where did you get that money?”

He looked angry. What was the matter with him? He and Mom had definitely never asked many questions when it came to money. “Fabiano gave it to me.”

He jumped up. His chair toppled to the ground with a bang. I flinched in my seat. Distant memories rose up, of him fighting with my mother, of him raising his fist and she clawing at him in turn.

“You leant money from…him?”

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“You can’t go around lending money from people like him. We don’t need more attention from people like him.”

“People like him,” I repeated. “What kind of people exactly?”

He looked torn. I wasn’t sure who or what he was trying to protect, but it certainly wasn’t me. He had never been the protective dad.

“I know he’s a cage fighter, Dad. I saw him fight, okay? So please mind your own business.” Like you’ve done in the last five years.

“You did? Why?” Then something seemed to click in his mind and he closed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re working in Roger’s Arena.”

“I do.”

He picked up the chair and straightened it before he sank down as if his legs were too weak to carry him. “You should have never come here. I shouldn’t have let you. You’re going to get us both in trouble. I really can’t use that kind of baggage right now.”

I frowned down at my coffee. “I’m a grown up. I can handle myself. I can’t be picky with the jobs I do. It’s not like I have much of a choice.”

“Give him that money back today. Don’t use it for anything. And—”

“Stay away from him?” I interrupted. It was too late for a protective Dad talk.

“No,” he said quietly. “Be careful. I don’t need you to mess things up. It’s too late for me to tell you to stay away.”

I got the feeling that he meant it in a different way than I had. “I could stay away. It’s not like I’m bound to him.”

Dad shook his head. “No, you can’t stay away. Because that’s no longer up to you. He’ll decide from now on, and he won’t let you stay away until he gets whatever it is that he wants from you.” His lips curled, like he knew exactly what that was.

I hated how he could make me feel dirty with that one expression. As if he had a right to judge me when he’d gladly let my mom sell her body so he could pay his gambling bills.

“We’re not living in the middle ages, Dad. It’s not like he holds any power over me.” I wasn’t even sure why we were discussing this. Fabiano and I had done nothing but talk and he’d been the perfect gentleman so far. Perhaps Dad had a worse drinking problem after all, or did harder drugs. Mom had been paranoid too.

He pulled a cigarette – his last one –from a battered packet before lighting the stub and taking a deep pull. “The Camorra owns the city, and its people. And now he owns you.” He released the smoke, cloaking us in it. I coughed.

“Camorra?” I had heard the term in a report about Italy on TV a while back. They were a branch of the mob, but this was Las Vegas and not Naples. “You mean the mob?”

Dad got up. “I said too much already,” he said regretfully, taking another pull. His fingers holding the cigarette were shaking. “I can’t help you. You’re in too deep already.”

In too deep? I’d been in Las Vegas for three days and worked in Roger’s bar for only one day. How could I be in too deep? And what exactly did that mean?

Dad didn’t give me the chance to ask more questions, he rushed out of the kitchen and a few seconds later I heard the entrance door slam shut.

If he insisted on beating around the bush, I’d have to pepper Cheryl with questions. She seemed to know more if her cryptic warnings from yesterday were any indication. I wasn’t going to ask Fabiano directly about it unless I had no other option. He’d probably laugh in my face if I asked him about the mafia.

When I walked into the bar, Cheryl was already there, putting glasses into the shelves attached to the wall behind the bar. The red neon lamps were still off, and without their glow the area looked dull. There was also another woman wiping the leather of the booths. She nodded in my direction when she caught me staring. Her hair was a nice shade of light brown but her face looked drawn, used up. Hard drugs. It made her age difficult to guess. She could have been forty or thirty. There was no telling.