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Savva returns from the bathroom with a glass of water and two blue gel capsules, handing them to me. “Take these and we’ll go down for some breakfast, unless you want to crack open the safe first.”
I throw the pills back and chase them with the entire glass of water. “Safe.”
He chuckles. “Okay, let’s go. I just need to put my shoes on and grab my equipment out of the garage. I have a power saw that can grind through a tank. I’m pretty sure it will get through Angus’s safe.”
“You know, part of me expected you to try to blow it up,” I reply, following him as he leaves the room and heads downstairs.
“I’m not in the business of blowing things up anymore.”
“Anymore?”
We arrive on the ground floor, and he slips into a pair of casual shoes, pointing to some slippers by the door. “You can wear those out. I don’t want the sparks to burn your feet.”
I put on the comically oversized slippers and follow him outside. It’s cooler this early in the morning than it usually is when I wake up. I’m so used to going to sleep at 5 AM that I never get the opportunity to wake up before noon.
The morning dew tickles my ankles as I walk through the grass, looking around at the large expanse of greenery that makes up Savva’s front yard. It’s even bigger than it looked yesterday coming in.
I can picture myself here a year from now, watching our baby take their first steps through wet grass, fully protected from the outside world by the towering brick walls built around the property. Here, a child could grow and learn, developing without judgment into a capable adult.
I feel a sense of pride at the thought, and I smile, placing my hand on my belly.
“Thinking about kids again, huh?” Savva says, grinning as he carries a large saw with an orange cable dragging behind it.
“No,” I blurt, throwing my hand down to my side. “Just thinking about food.”
He laughs. “We can have breakfast first, if you want.”
“No, no. I want to see what’s in the safe,” I reply, faking an excited smile. In truth, I can’t think about anything else aside from how I’m going to break the news that I’m pregnant. The safe is insignificant beside that announcement.
However, I’m still curious to see what’s inside.
Savva puts the saw down and retrieves the safe from the van, kicking it out and pushing it along the pavement until it’s sitting in the grass in front of me. “It can’t be too difficult to cut open. I think most people would go for the door, but it’s probably best to work from the top down. I’m sure the door is thicker than the body.”
I hold my hands up in surrender and step back. “You’re the boss.”
He picks up the saw, pulling a pair of protective clear plastic glasses from his back pocket and putting them on. I laugh at little because he looks like he works at a hardware store. In another life, he’d be showing people where they can find the right kind of screws for their fixtures.
I have to cover my ears when he starts it up, metal screaming in a grating, high-pitched tone. He cuts into the top of the safe, the metal flying off in thin fragments as he shreds through it.
I would’ve thought a safe would be harder to tear into, but in under a minute, Savva has already succeeded in cutting a square hole in the top. The metal falls into the safe with a muffled thud, and he steps back.
“What’s inside?” I ask, standing on my toes and trying to get a look in from my position nearly two yards away.
“Come look,” he says. “I want you to see it first, since it’s yours.”
Nervous, I walk slowly up to the safe, stepping over the orange power cable to Savva’s saw as though it’s a poisonous snake. I almost don’t want to look inside the safe once I arrive, afraid that I will see something I wasn’t meant to see about my father.
My mental image of him is pure. I’d like for it to remain that way.
But curiosity overrides my fear, and I look through the top of the safe at what’s inside.
At first, it’s difficult to see anything. The sun isn’t high to illuminate the interior, so I have to wait for my eyes to adjust to make out the contents.
When they do, I gasp.
“What is it?” Savva asks, putting his saw down in the grass. “What do you see?”
I take a deep breath. “It’s… cash. Lots of fucking cash.”
