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28
Mare
It was windy, the breeze blowing my blonde tresses around my shoulders and face as I closed the distance between the car and the door to the restaurant. Jensen stayed close, the beep of the car locking nearly lost against a gust of chilled wind that howled around the buildings. The restaurant was slow since it was the brief slump between lunch and dinner; only a couple of tables still had people leftover from the first rush. Weaving around the space, I cut towards the office before stopping outside. I inhaled a steady breath and glanced one final time at Jensen who had just been seated at one of the tables near the entrance that had a view of the entire room, the place where he’d promised to wait for me while I talked with my boss one last time. He gave me an encouraging smile, the gesture granting me the last bit of courage I needed to lift my arm and knock on the office door.
“Come in,” Donny called out. I turned the knob and stepped into the cluttered space anyway.Just quit, get the bugout bag and get the hell out,I reminded myself. Simple. Easy. Quick. “Ah, Mary, what can I do for you?” Donny’s eyes drifted down to my shirt. It wasn’t even low cut, but he leered anyway. I didn’t resist the eyeroll that came on hard.
It took everything in me to not chuck the closest object at him when he shot me a salacious grin.Quit and you’ll never have to come back, I told myself. No more being yelled at, no more creepy as hell eye-fuckings.
“I’m sorry this is such short notice, but I’ve had some family emergencies come up that need my full attention, so I need to—”
“You better not be quitting, Miss Peterson,” he ground out, cutting me off. I clenched my teeth tightly, irritated he had interrupted me.
“Actually—”
“I’m already down one waitress, and I don’t have the staff to lose another,” he interrupted again, all of the earlier leers and grins gone as anger colored his expression. “So, unless you’re here to tell me that you can take more shifts, I suggest you turn your pretty little ass right around and walk out that door. If I even catch wind of you thinking about quitting—”
“You’re not catching wind of it,” I snapped. “Iamquitting. That’s exactly what I’m doing. What’s come up doesn’t have a definite timeline of being dealt with, and it’s more important. I’m going to go clean out my locker and then I’ll be gone.”
“What could be so important? You need money to pay rent and eat, don’t ‘cha? Hell, if this is some kind of ploy to get more hours or a raise—” he started but I cut him off.
Mary Peterson may have let him talk over me, let him interrupt whenever he damn well felt like it, but right now, I wasn’t Mary Peterson. I was Mare, and no one got to walk all over me. “It’s none of your business. I’m done. I quit. I’m sorry it had to be this way, and I appreciate my time here, but I can’t work here anymore.” That was a fat lie. I’d made enough to survive but not enough to live, and I’d had to deal with him as a horrible manager. If he wasn’t related to the owner, he would’ve never been hired in the first place. “I thought I’d at least do you the service of coming in to tell you face to face.” I turned to leave but not before stopping in the doorway, the lie flowing easily from my lips as I glared at Donny. “Oh, and one more thing, I want you to know that I put in a call to your father and let him know that you’ve been sexually harassing the staff here for months—probably years. I may have mentioned the possibility of a lawsuit. Maybe you’ll think about that next time you try to look down one of your waitresses’ shirts or try to shove your hand up her skirt.”
“Bitch!” he snarled, but I was already walking away. I didn’t need to storm out of the room or slam the door. I’d never actually sue, but just the mention of it would certainly get Donny’s family to look into how he ran the business, and hopefully they’d finally kill that nepotism ring they had going on.
As I strode away from the back office, I heard something being flung across the room behind me, but when the office door opened behind me, I didn’t even think. Turning to the left, I made a beeline for the one place I knew Donny wouldn’t follow. I heard his footsteps in the hallway just as I reached the bathroom and shoved my way inside.
Thankfully, the ladies’ room was empty, all four stall doors slightly cracked letting me know no one was there. Taking a deep breath, I leaned back against the thick wood door and waited for the anger to settle. I could take a moment to calm down. There was no doubt in my mind that as soon as I left, he’d follow me into the employee locker room and I’d rather avoid any more questions—about me quitting and about the bag I had stashed there. When my thudding heart slowed to a normal pace, I pushed off the door and stepped into one of the stalls.
The door opened and closed, another stall clicking shut as I finished up. The automatic flush whirled, the noise loud against the hard surfaces of the bathroom. By the time I was drying my hands, my irritation had finally disappeared. In its place was the reminder that once I walked out the front doors, I wouldn’t have to come back. I grinned, and a thread of excitement that I might be able to pick a new job down the line overshadowed any worry about dealing with Donny on my walk from the bathroom to the front door. I’d just have to move fast as soon as I got out because he couldn’t stop me if I kept moving.
I was turning away from the paper towel dispenser when a steely grip circled around my neck from behind. Adrenaline flooded me as the arm tightened, holding me secure against a solid chest. It wasn’t muscle though; my adrenaline pumped hard when I realized it was once again the hard material of a bulletproof vest. My eyes shot to the mirrors and saw only black. The same fear from the night before assaulted me.
Lifting a leg, I kicked off the counter; the man dressed in all black stumbled back but didn’t lose his grip completely. Reaching behind me, I clawed at the mask he wore, but his free hand snatched my wrist out of the air in a near bone crushing grip. Spots started to form in my vision, my body growing heavy despite my continued attempts to loosen his grip. I flailed, kicked, and stomped. Hell, I even tried to go limp, but nothing worked long enough to get out of his chokehold. I felt my foot connect with something as I was lifted off my feet, and the wall container holding the towels cracked and crashed to the ground.
Fighting harder and struggling in his grip, I felt as if my eyeballs would burst out of my head at the lack of air. I swiped the extra soap containers from the counter with my legs, kicked until the sole of my boot connected with the glass mirror and cracked the damn thing, but none of it was enough.
Finally, though, he seemed to grow tired of the struggle; he released my wrist and lifted something above my head—a dark blob that flashed in the reflection of the broken mirror. Was it the butt of a gun? The handle of a knife? I couldn’t tell. Whatever it was, he used it to hit me in the side of the head, sending a blinding pain radiating through my skull. My vision blackened quickly. My muscles gave out, and try as I might to do something,anything, my body wouldn’t respond. Right as the darkness overwhelmed me, one whispered murmur filled my ear, sending shivers up my spine.
“Good girl.”
