Chapter 4 - The Scent of Ammonia and Coffee
Amelia sat on the cot in the private room behind the kitchen, holding an ice pack wrapped in a blue dishtowel against her left eye.
Six black nylon threads pulled the skin together near her eyebrow. The pain was no longer a fire; it had settled into a rhythmic, throbbing weight that matched the beat of her pulse.
Angela was sitting on a wooden chair beside her, peeling an orange with a paring knife.
“You should have let Tony hit him with the skillet,” Angela muttered, handing a segment of fruit to Amelia. “Tony had the cast iron right there. He could have taken the boy’s ear off.”
“Tony would have gone to jail,” Amelia said, her voice muffled by the swollen lip.
“In this neighborhood? For hitting a Lawson? The cops would have shaken Tony’s hand and asked for a slice of cherry pie.” Angela shook her head, her dark curls bouncing. “You don't understand how things work here yet, Amy. You’ve been here six months, and you still jump every time a car backfires.”
Amelia looked down at her hands. The nails were short, scrubbed clean, but the cuticles were ragged from dishwater.
She knew how things worked. She knew better than Angela did.
She knew that when men with power became interested in your pain, that interest was never free. In Philadelphia, Raymond Fletcher had started by protecting her too. When the landlord had tried to double the rent on her mother’s small apartment, Raymond had stepped in. He had spoken three quiet words to the man in the hallway, and the rent had dropped back to its original price.
Amelia had thought Raymond was a hero.
Two years later, she had climbed out of a bathroom window at three in the morning with three broken ribs and seventy dollars stuffed into her sock, running for the Greyhound terminal because she had realized that Raymond’s protection was only the first stage of ownership.
The door to the back room opened.
Vincent Castellano stepped inside. He had removed his overcoat, wearing only his charcoal waistcoat and a clean white shirt with gold cuff links shaped like small knots.
Angela stood up immediately. “Mr. Vincent.”
“Go home, Angela. Your husband is waiting with the dinner.”
“I can stay with her—”
“I will sit with Amelia,” Vincent said. It was not a request.
Angela nodded, patted Amelia’s shoulder with a warmth that felt hurried, and slipped out, closing the door softly behind her.
Vincent pulled the wooden chair closer to the cot and sat down. He did not ask how she was feeling; the swollen purple flesh around her eye made the question an insult.
“Dr. Rossi says you will not have a scar if you keep the grease away from the stitches,” Vincent remarked.
“Thank you, Mr. Castellano.”
“Do not thank me. It happened in my house. The shame is mine.”
Amelia shifted on the cot, feeling the cold wall against her shoulder blade. “You didn't have to do what you did to Derek. His family... they’re important people, aren't they?”
Vincent let out a short, dry chuckle that barely moved his mustache. “His father sells dry cleaning and buys cheap whiskey. They are not important, Amelia. They are merely loud.”
He rested his forearms on his knees, looking at her with a focus that made her skin prickle.
“When you came here six months ago,” Vincent said, “you gave Tony a social security card from Pennsylvania that was issued in 1982 to a girl named Sarah Jenkins.”
Amelia went perfectly rigid. The ice pack slipped an inch down her cheek.
“Sarah Jenkins died of scarlet fever in Scranton when she was four years old,” Vincent continued, his tone conversational. “The birth certificate you used to get your driver’s license belonged to her cousin.”
Amelia could not breathe. The room seemed to shrink until the walls were pressing against her temples. She gathered her weight onto her feet, preparing to stand, to find the door, to find her duffel bag—
“Sit down, Amelia,” Vincent said.
There was no threat in his voice, only the steady, unyielding gravity of an anchor dropped in deep water.
May you like
“If I wanted to give you to the men looking for you,” Vincent said, “you would not be sitting on a clean mattress with an ice pack on your face. You would already be in the back of a car heading south on the Turnpike.”
***
