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“No, he’s not.” Which is putting it mildly. “And you still want me to do it?”
“Yes, Brice. Yes, I do.”
The elevator doors ding, but Grandpa doesn’t move. They slide open and it feels like my world is being dragged into that elevator shaft, dragged into the darkness and thrown onto the concrete below.
Carmine stands in the car with his lawyer. Both men look at us and neither seem surprised to see me and Grandpa waiting in the executive lobby right in front of them. Almost like they were expecting it.
“Hello, Carmine,” Grandpa says, moving away from me and shaking the gangster’s hand. I note that he’s not limping as much now. “Gareth. How are you?”
“Thank you for letting us visit the offices,” Gareth says, glancing at me with a sly smile. Carmine’s staring, not moving, holding himself stiffly like something offends him about the very air he’s breathing.
Typical arrogant bastard. He doesn’t know a thing about service and doing what’s right. This whole deal is a game for him, from getting his stake in the company to forcing me to be his wife, it’s all just another conquest. Even though it’s my life, and all the lives of the people that work here.
Gareth and Grandpa begin walking back to Grandpa’s office, but Carmine doesn’t move, and I feel like he’s holding me down in the dirt again, pinning me there beneath him. How is this happening? What is this man doing here? I want to turn and run away but I can’t embarrass myself like that, and I’m sure Grandpa would never forgive me. I hate this so much and I feel like everyone’s staring at me and waiting for me to crack.
“Is there somewhere we can talk?” Carmine asks.
Before I can tell him absolutely not, Grandpa says, “There’s a conference room just over there that should be empty.” And he disappears with Gareth.
Leaving me alone with Carmine.
A thought strikes me then as Carmine moves over to the conference room door. It strikes me hard and fast, like a lightning bolt.Grandpa knew Carmine was coming. This isn’t some wild coincidence. He knew Carmine would be getting off the elevator at that exact moment and he made sure I was standing there with him so that I’d run into Carmine. Someone must’ve alerted him without me noticing and he set this up. The clever old man knew and he set the trap with perfection. I can’t be sure but that’s exactly the sort of trick my grandfather used for years, and I can’t imagine he’d be above using it against his own granddaughter.
“Brice,” Carmine says, holding the door.
I move woodenly past him and into the conference room.
The long table is polished and gleaming. Three black telephones sit at even intervals along its length. Carmine walks slowly to the front and I stick near the door, ready to bolt.
“I’m glad you came to meet with me,” he says without looking back.
“I didn’t know you’d be here.”
He tenses for a moment and lets out a grunt. A small smile slips across his face. “Your grandpa is a wily bastard then. He told me you wanted to talk.”
“And he didn’t mention you were coming at all.”
“Seems like he’s determined to make this a match.” He leans back against the windows, arms crossed over his chest, that arrogant smile plastered on his face. “And yet here you are, still resisting.”
“Can you really blame me? I’ve had two interactions with you. They’ve both been mortifying and painful.”
He seems to take that in stride like it doesn’t bother him at all. “Let me ask you something. Of everything you did at Blackwoods, how much of it do you remember? I mean,reallyremember? Clearly, in detail, how much of it has stuck with you?”
I refuse to look at him. Memories flit through my mind, most of them weak and hazy like half-forgotten dreams, and there are so few of them—a handful at most like snapshots of the four years I spent at school.
And chief among those memories is that one moment I shared with Carmine.
He says, “You hate me because I shoved your face in the dirt, but you remember that moment. You can still taste it, can’t you? You can still feel my body on top of yours and you can hear my voice in your ear.”
“Yes, Carmine, you’re right. I do remember trauma. That’s how human brains work. Trauma sticks like tar and it never goes away no matter how much you wash. No matter how hard you try to make it disappear. Thanks for that.”
He shakes his head “No, that’s not it. Your life has been so cute and orderly and comfortable for so long that you’ve forgotten what it means to feel anything.”
Rage flashes down my spine. I hate the way he talks like he understands everything about me when we’ve barely had two conversations in our lives. It’s absurd and arrogant and it only makes me want to turn my back on him even more. “You don’t know me. You come storming back into my life and act like you’ve been following me around for the last seven years. But, Carmine, you don’t know me at all, you have no clue what I’ve been doing.”
“After graduating, you got a job with Bowman and Shale Advertising. You spent three years there, and when Bowman split off to form BoneMan Boutique, you went with him. You’ve lived in the same apartment all that time. You did Pilates for a while, then switched to Zumba, and also delved into yoga and that heart rate gym, what’s it called?”
“Orange Theory,” I whisper feeling like my bones are made of ash.
