Chapter 4 - The Price of ProtectionI had never seen violence before. I had only heard stories.
When my mother finally opened the closet door, the living room was empty. The lights were back on. The only sign that anyone had been there was the shattered window and a single, pristine business card lying on the kitchen table.
Vincent didn't wait to be thanked. He had his men clear the intruders. We didn't see the aftermath, but the next morning, the news reported that three men had been found in an alleyway, badly beaten, with their pockets turned inside out.
David Sterling disappeared. No one saw him again. The rumors said he had fled to Mexico, or that he was at the bottom of the Chicago River. But for us, the threat had vanished.
However, the "protection" came with a cost.
My mother was no longer just a waitress. She was now a woman who had been saved by the underworld. People started to notice. Her old coworkers whispered. The landlord raised our rent, then lowered it to zero after a visit from "associates."
We were living in a cage made of gold and iron.
“We have to leave, Rory,” my mother said. “We have to disappear.”
“Why?” I asked. “We’re safe now.”
“Safe is a relative term,” she said. “We are living on his time. And I won’t have you grow up thinking that this is how the world works—that we need monsters to save us from other monsters.”
She began planning our escape. It was frantic and secretive. We sold the furniture. We packed bags. We were going to go to a town where no one knew our names—not the Bistro, not Sterling, not Vincent Kane.
But the night before we were set to leave, the man himself showed up.
He didn't knock. He just appeared in our living room, sitting in the armchair as if he owned the place. He looked tired.
“You’re running,” he said.
My mother stood in front of me, her spine straight. “Yes. We are.”
“You think if you go to Nebraska, or Idaho, or wherever you’re heading, that Sterling’s ghost won't follow you? Or that the people I deal with won't eventually come knocking for the girl who stood up to a king?”
“We’ll take our chances,” she said.
Vincent looked at me. “Rory. Tell your mother why you walked up to me that day.”
May you like
“Because we were hungry,” I said.
“No,” he said. “You did it because you were fearless. You have a fire in you. If you run, you extinguish that fire. You become a victim again. A victim who is hiding.”
