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Her path to her car was around the other side of the building, directly where Vito and the injured man were standing. Vito ran his hands through his hair casually, holding the man by the back of his neck as they waited for something.
A car came around the corner, zipping into the parking lot. It had tinted windows, so Liz knew exactly what was going on.
Vito took the man and tossed him inside the back of the car. He yelled instructions into it, then slammed the door shut. The car sped off, hopefully heading to the hospital.
“Fucking asshole,” Vito muttered to himself.
Liz could feel her breathing picking up its pace as she realized she was alone with a man who was likely the foot soldier of the mob he worked for. That meant that he was willing and able to get anyone out of the way. He would get rid of them like old meat at the butcher shop.
She nearly went into a frenzy as Vito walked in her direction. Liz scoured her mind for memories of the self-defense classes she had taken in high school, but the thoughts dissipated like blood in the rain, vanishing completely. She moved closer to the back of the dumpster, pressing her body up against it so that she was as small as her frame could muster.
She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping it would all go away, like the nightmares she used to have as a child. She used to imagine that the tighter she squeezed them, the faster they would dissipate.
Liz squeezed her fists, stupidly ready for a battle she couldn’t win.
Chapter2
Liz
Liz heard a thump against the dumpster, and she squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could. She waited for Vito to come around the corner, grab her, and break her thumbs too. All logic inside her mind had vanished, and a sheer survival instinct was in its place.
But he didn’t come around the dumpster. His footsteps faded into the darkness, and Liz stood once she felt safe enough. Her legs felt like noodles. She peered boldly around the corner, her hands ready to strike, and she breathed a massive sigh of relief when she saw no one at all.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered.
Liz clutched her chest as she was starting to feel a little bit dizzy from the abrupt panic attack. She breathed in and out deeply, the way she had learned to do when she woke up from nightmares, and her body was fooled by the images that had risen from her dreams.
She calmed herself enough to walk through the parking lot and get in her car. She immediately started the ignition and whipped into the road. Her fear was that Vito would pop up and keep her from getting to her home, where it was safe and sound.
Her nervousness caused her to continuously check behind her to see if anyone was following her. Her heart was smacking against her ribs like a direct punch. She continued to breathe deeply as she drove into the underground parking area of her apartment building, habitually checking the backseat and then, as she speed-walked toward the elevator, checking over her shoulder.
Once she was on her floor, she began to truly calm down. She was greeted by the sight of a hideous, vomit-yellow notice clamped to her door. She scowled at it, ripping it off the pin. It informed her in bold, condescending letters that her rent was long overdue.
Her landlord was heavily mistaken. She was as organized as they came, having set up automatic payments to go out each month to the owners of the building. That way, she never miscalculated or, God forbid, got attached to the amount that disappeared like water through her fingers each time a hefty amount landed in her bank account.
She crumpled the piece of paper in her hand as she opened the door, scoffing to herself as she shut the door and flicked on the light.
Liz was neat, just as the stereotype of her appearance implied, but she wasn’t rich. Her apartment was ill-lit and bare due to the minimum wage she relied on, being forced to live on the means of practicality rather than indulgence. She had a two-seater couch facing an early 2000s flat-screen TV her mother had given her and a coffee table that doubled as a dining set. It wasn’t like she entertained much anyway.
The centerpiece of the entire living room, which had a suitable kitchenette in the corner that would work for a first-year college student, was her desk. It was the place where Liz felt most at home ... surrounded by her books, smooth jazz playing as she read, and the world blasted by outside her window.
The bedroom was simple and empirical for her need, which was merely sleeping. She hadn’t engaged in sex in what felt like ages, despite the naughty thoughts that filled her mind in the depth of night when she couldn’t sleep. She would stare out the window at the moon, feeling like a werewolf, craving touch, and unbridled ardency.
For the time being, she had to figure out what was going on with her payments. She tossed the notice into the garbage bin after removing her sneakers, then started up her desktop computer. It took nearly twenty minutes to come to life, so she boiled some earl gray tea while she waited, pulling the few remaining wafers from the cabinet to keep her anxiety at bay.
But once she sat in the flimsy office chair that was donated to her by a coworker, she knew that nothing, not even her nightly routine, was going to keep her stress abated.
“What the hell,” she whispered to the screen.
Liz had signed into her bank account and read the news that made her blood run cold. Her savings and checking account were both in the negatives. Her heart picked up its pace like a racehorse as she combed through the details, even signing in and out to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.
Liz’s stomach churned when, after a few minutes of frantic research, she realized that her bank account had been hacked. She’d had nearly three thousand dollars in her accounts total, but she was in the negative, so the amount with charges totaled nearly four thousand dollars lost.
“Oh, shit!”
Liz slammed her fist down on the desk, which was already on its last legs. It shook like the man she’d seen in the parking lot, its bindings as weak as the little bit of his thumbs he had remaining.
But she didn’t care. She shot herself up from her desk and scraped her hands up and down her face, whipping her hair out from the ponytail for some brief relief. She ran her hands through her hair and down the back of her neck, her movements reflecting the frenzy of anxious thoughts surging through her mind.
