“W-What is it?”
Since I drop my focus to the official-looking document, I miss what he says, his words muffled by a wrathful snarl. The single sheet of paper appears to be a deed of some type, and the address cited at the top is for the exact location we’re standing.
When worry gurgles in my stomach, I snap my eyes back to my father. “O-Old Man Stephens owns this p-property outright.”
“He does,” my father agrees, his smug grin doubling. “But he hasn’t paid taxes in over a year.”
I shake my head, confused as to why he cares if Old Man Stephens is sidestepping the Internal Revenues Department. He’s done it for decades, so what gives him the right to highlight other business owners’ flaws as if he has none?
My jaw grits when I realize he isn’t referring to the IRS. He’s talking about the money he forces the businesses in Hopeton to pay the Petrettis to remain in their good books. It’s meant to be for protection, but everyone in this town knows the only people they need protection from are the Petrettis.
“H-How much does he owe?”
My endeavor to fix-up Old Man Stephens debt pleases my father so much he doesn’t whack me up the side of the head like he did a trillion times when I stuttered as a child. I’m not surprised. Dollar signs are flashing in his eyes. Nothing distracts him when money is on the line, especially when it doesn’t belong to him. “Too much for you to pay on his behalf.”
I scoff at his claims before marching to my ‘desk’ in the middle of the warehouse and throwing open the top drawer. The checkbook inside is the only proof I am Col Petretti’s son. I can’t forgo protocol at a bank, and since that is where the hefty restitution my father sought for damages to my hearing and ‘acute mental psychosis’ was deposited, it has remained open dispute my multiple attempts to commence a new identity.
“How much?” I ask, pleased I held back the stutter this time around. It lingers when I’m uneased, but since I’m more angry than nervous, it won’t return any time soon. “Two, three million?” When he mocks me with a grunt, I snarl out, “Ten million?” A greedy flare darts through his eyes, forcing me to say, “Take it. Have it all. I’ll give you every fucking penny if you promise to walk away and never come back.”
I think I have him hook, line, and sinker, then I remember I don’t turn twenty-one for another two weeks. The settlement I was awarded by the state was placed into a trust fund so my father couldn’t squander it like he did the mammoth payment he received from the death of my mother. No one knows what he did with the money. They just know it’s gone.
“T-Two weeks. That’s a-all I need.” I’m not stuttering because my father’s smirk is a replica of the one he wore every time I spotted him sneaking out of my baby sister’s room. It’s because to men in this industry, two weeks is the equivalent of a lifetime. His wolfish sneer during the middle of my offer assures me of this, not to mention him gesturing to his goon for him to light the rag he doused in gasoline partway during my realization the three thousand dollars stuffed in the bottom of my toolbox is the only cash I have access to right now. “I-It’s two fucking weeks. I’m sure you c-can wait two f-fucking weeks.”
Ignoring my pleas, Mario, my father’s head honcho when it comes to dishing out punishments, tosses a lit rag under a stack of wood at the side of the workshop. With the varnish acting as an accelerant, thick black plumes of smoke fill the air and my lungs in a matter of seconds.
When flames lick at the wooden slats holding up the workshop’s roof, Old Man Stephens races outside with a fire extinguisher in his hands and a grave look on his face. He isn’t solely panicked his livelihood is about to go up in smoke, he’s also worried about the gun Mario directed at his head within a nanosecond of him interrupting our negotiation. Disobeying my father by any means is usually followed by Mario lodging a bullet into someone’s skull.
Since I don’t want that person to be Old Man Stephens, I stammer out, “I-I’ve got this. I can handle this.”
By ‘this,’ I mean my father. He didn’t arrive here for no reason. I have something he wants. I just need to work out what that is.
After straying my eyes from a man frozen by both fear and shock to my father, I ask, “What do you want?” When a familiar gleam brightens his icy blue eyes, I tack on, “I’ll do anything you ask… once the flames are extinguished.” It takes everything I have not to stammer when his conceited grin forces me to speak words he coerced out of me more than once during my childhood. “I swear on my mother’s grave I’ll do anything you ask.”
The smoke is almost at choking level before my father gives Old Man Stephens permission to smother the wood with white foam. The fire extinguisher does its job, but even someone not in the relic furniture industry still knows the damage is significant. Agarwood is hard to come by, and its expensive price tag reflects that.
Old Man Stephens lost more than a pile of wood today.
His very existence is on the line.
“I-I-I’ll pay you back. I swear to you, I will r-replace it all,” I promise while being led to my father’s blacked-out Audi by Mario, conscious it isn’t his fault he took a chance on a man not worthy of his time.
Mario’s grip on my elbow would have you convinced I’m the criminal of our trio. I can assure you I am not. I haven’t done a single illegal thing in my life. I haven’t even touched a drop of alcohol yet, and if the furling of my father’s lips when I slide into the back seat of his town car is anything to go by, I may not get the chance.
My eyes rip awayfrom a dusty, blood-stained boxing ring in the middle of one of my father’s derelict warehouses to him. “I-I’m not a fighter.”
I fought many times during my teens, but not a single fight was my choice. I have a surname that causes controversy, a stutter that encourages bullies, and two younger siblings to defend. I either tell people to back off with my fists or watch Dimitri and Ophelia be relentlessly bullied like Roberto was most of his childhood, both at home and in school.
“I’ve never been professionally taught.”
“Neither has your competitor, so this will be a fair and just fight.”
My father’s smile is as off-putting as our previous four hours together. We ate at Petretti’s Restaurant before attending his tailor to purchase me a suit. I knew he was up to something, but since I gave him my word I’d do anything asked if he spared Old Man Stephens’ workshop from going up in flames, I went along with his twisted game of pretending he is a devoted father.
But, in saying that, these final proceedings aren’t close to what I was anticipating. I thought he was bringing me to heel to ensure the leash was short once my trust fund unlocks. I never considered the idea that he’d want me to be a participant in his illegal fight circuit.
I’ve never been an overly cocky man—Dimitri snagged the pompousness needed to succeed in our family’s ‘industry’—so not only do nerves take flight in my stomach when my father suggests I warm up for my fight, my naturally engrained flight mode activates as well.
I would have been out the door ten minutes ago if I didn’t see a blacked-out SUV parked half a block up from Old Man Stephens’ ranch. If I don’t go through with this fight, five decades of hard work will be removed with a tin of gasoline and a handful of dirty rags.
