Page 70 of Mob Star

“I still don’t know how the rumor spread so fast, but Chris and Jared told people I slept with them at the park. They said the men watched us. I’d gotten a new watch for my birthday a few days earlier, and they claimed I got it as payment for fucking them. I told my parents. I explained everything that had happened and that I’d been too ashamed to say anything to anyone but Jamie. They understood that, but they were pissed. My dad left the house that night and didn’t come back for two days. When he did, his knuckles were raw. The rest of him was fine, but his fists showed he’d been in a fight. He was gone on a Wednesday and Thursday. That Friday, Elijah told me what happened with my dad.”

And this is when shit got complicated.

“Elijah said Papa showed up at the clubhouse— some dive bar in south Boston —and threw a chair at Chris and Jared’s dad. It smashed into the guy’s head. Before anyone could stop him, my dad had the splintered leg and whaled on this man to within an inch of his life. People tried to pull Papa off, but he swung the chair leg like a club. He broke one guy’s nose and shattered another guy’s cheekbone. Elijah said Uncle Corey pulled a gun on Papa, so Papa threw the chair leg at his uncle. Apparently, it hit him square in the forehead and knocked him out. My dad spotted Elijah and insisted he tell all the members how Elijah and his cousins, along with Chris and Jared, targeted me— a fifteen-year-old girl who still had braces. Papa accused Chris of grooming me. He called me jailbait. I guess Elijah’s dad was there too, and he used to be super close to my dad when they were growing up. Elijah’s dad lost his shit because Papa accused Elijah and the others of planning to assault me. Elijah’s the one who calmed his dad down, but not until after Papa broke two of his ribs with another chair leg.”

I recall how sick I felt while Elijah recounted this story to me. How I wanted to run straight home and hide. I was certain all of it was my fault. I knew something was off all along, but I still left school with Chris and Jared. I could have called my mom to pick me up or asked one of my friends’ parents to give me a ride. But I didn’t.

“Elijah appointed himself my bodyguard. He knew I wouldn’t get on his bike, and my parents would never allow it, so he’d give me a ride home every afternoon in his car. I played volleyball, and Jamie had a job, so we didn’t leave school at the same time most days. There were a few times Elijah said he had to run an errand on the way to my house. He wouldn’t let me stay outside in the car, so I went into the stores with him. I didn’t know until way later that he was collecting Uncle Corey’s protection money. Uncle Corey and Elijah’s dad were training him to be an enforcer. I was upfront with my parents about getting rides from Elijah. At first, they weren’t pleased. But no one came near me again. Summer came, and I figured I wouldn’t see Elijah again because he graduated. I was a summer camp counselor at another school. It wasn’t walking distance, so he started giving me rides in the morning and the afternoon.”

I sit up, so I can twist and see Finn better. I suspect he has some idea of where this story is going since it’s so cliché.

“Elijah was my first kiss. I was still fifteen, but he was nineteen. I thought I was so cool to have an older boy interested in me. I knew it probably toed the line of statutory, but I never planned to go all the way with him, and I didn’t. It was at a party Jamie let me go to with him. Elijah was with friends I didn’t know. Jamie knew them, so it seemed fine. I didn’t drink, but I didn’t care that everyone else around me was. I had fun, anyway. Elijah had his arm around me nearly the entire time, and I felt so special. He kissed me off to the side of the house before Jamie took me home. There was so much I didn’t understand.”

I shake my head and look down at my lap where my hands now rest. I’m a lot older and lot wiser now. If only my fifteen-year-old self knew what my thirty-three-year-old self does now.

“The first couple of weeks after that party, Elijah would sneak a kiss when he picked me up and when he dropped me off. My parents knew he was still giving me rides. When Elijah asked me out on an actual date, I didn’t tell my parents. I knew they would never go for that. I lied and said I was going out with a friend. I considered him a friend, so I justified it wasn’t a lie. I saw it as a selective truth. He took me to the movies, and we sat in the far back. We made out the whole time. It was all over the clothes, but I thought it was amazing. When we pulled up to the clubhouse— which was more like a roadhouse bar —after the movie, and I figured out where we were, I refused to go in. He guilted me into it.”

One of so many things he guilted me into. I feel the old anger bubbling within. I don’t think of my teen years often, but when I do, I’m usually able to do it without the rage I once felt. I might not make it through this story without wanting to throw something.

“I recognized the guys from the party who I didn’t think were affiliated. I found out later Jamie had no idea either. They offered me drinks, but I refused. Elijah tried to guilt me into that. When he insisted, I got up and walked toward the door. I could hear the men taunting Elijah about getting his Ol’ Lady in line. He flicked them off over his shoulder and wheedled his way into getting me back to the table. But I felt like an idiot with the men taunting me. The next morning, when Elijah came to pick me up, I thought I dumped him. It pissed him off, so he tried to yank the screen door open. I’d made sure I locked it before he arrived. I wouldn’t go outside with him. Jamie took me to and from work for the next week. Elijah would call when he knew I was home, but my parents weren’t. I could see it was him on the caller ID. I’d pick up the phone, then hang up. He followed a group of my friends to the movies. He sat next to me. I was still angry, but I missed him. When he slid his hand up my leg, I moved my popcorn to keep the other girls from seeing him cup my pussy.”

Finn’s stayed quiet through all of this. His arms are wrapped around me, and he’s nodding his head from time to time. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but apparently he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

“Thea, tell me the rest or stop now. Whatever you want. Either way, let me hold you. I may not always show my emotions, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel them. I want to know the rest, but I won’t push you. But either way, I’m not okay with this. Holding you is the only thing that’s keeping me from losing my shite.”

That makes me seriously consider not saying another word. But if I don’t get the rest out, he’ll wonder what I didn’t say. And as shitty as all of this is, telling Finn is cathartic. I take yet another deep breath.

“I asked my parents if I could go out with Elijah, and it was an immediate and emphatic no. They said they trusted him to give me a ride, but nothing more. I found out later, the only reason they agreed to it was because Elijah saw what happened to his dad when he spoke badly about me. Elijah didn’t take it well, but I wouldn’t defy my parents again. No matter how he tried to guilt me about that, I wouldn’t go on another date with him. I wanted to. I really did, but I feared the consequences too much. Once I turned sixteen, I didn’t need any more rides. Jamie was off at college, so I got his car. Two weeks after my birthday, Uncle Corey sent men to talk to Papa.”

I cock an eyebrow. He knows Corey didn’t want his enforcers to chat.

“They followed my dad from work to a gas station. Security cameras captured the entire thing. They jumped my dad, and he beat their asses then called the cops. That didn’t go over well with Uncle Corey. Go figure. Elijah showed up and said he would smooth everything over if my parents agreed to him dating me. My dad laughed and shut the door in his face. The house got egged that night, and a brick went through my bedroom window.”

Sounds familiar.

“I was so naïve back then. After a few weeks, it seemed like everything died down. I started going out with this guy, Tyler, who was in my grade. He was so sweet and so much fun. I really liked him. We’d been dating about three months when someone slashed my tires in the school parking lot. A month later, someone broke into his car and slashed his seats. My parents wound up paying for the repairs to keep his parents from filing a police report that would inevitably name me as a witness. Needless to say, he and I were through. Something similar happened with every guy I dated between sophomore and junior year. I rarely went on dates because I was afraid. I’d try it when I thought long enough went by that they’d lost interest. They hadn’t. It was the perfect shitstorm. Uncle Corey couldn’t strong-arm Papa into riding with him like he did when my dad was in his twenties. Elijah couldn’t control me and make me defy my parents. And Papa humiliated one biker after another when they came for him. My senior year, one of my friends heard about a cool place to party. The moment we pulled up, I told the girls we had to turn around. I told them this was the worst place we could be. I recognized it immediately and had no interest in going inside the clubhouse. I warned my friends, but they got out anyway. I couldn’t just let them go. In the two minutes head start, I walked in to find them surrounded by guys in their forties and fifties. They all knew who I was when I walked in. The mood shifted in a second. They converged on me.”

That rage that’s been building is crawling up my throat like bile, burning me from the inside out. I don’t know how I didn’t piss my pants or shit myself that night. I believed they would rape and kill me.

“I spotted Elijah against the back wall, just watching what was happening to my friends and me. I fumbled around in my purse, and when three men stepped forward, I pepper sprayed them. I’d never used it, so the can was full. I shook it and sprayed it toward anyone who came near me. I’d nearly backed out of the bar, and I knew my friends were already outside when I ran into someone. My fucking luck. Uncle Corey blocked the only door. Maybe it was some miniscule sense of family duty or morals, but he didn’t let any of his men touch me. But I had to stay until my dad got there. He came in calmly, but the men started lobbing insults about me, my mom, and my dad. They all had to do with our skin color— that my dad and I thought we were too good for the club because we aren’t as dark as my mom. He and I ignored them, but a guy grabbed my arm and tried to pull me away from my dad. It was like he went from Bruce Banner to the Hulk in a blink. He broke the guy’s nose. When he bent over in pain, my dad plowed a right hook into his temple. It knocked him backwards, and his head hit the corner of the bar. I knew he was dead. My guess is my dad’s punch severed an artery in his brain, but the biker’s head was also bleeding profusely. Alcohol consumption makes it harder to clot. Anyway, men tried to mob him while I kept pepper spraying anyone who got close. Through it all, Elijah didn’t do a fucking thing but watch. My dad grabbed a bottle from the bar that was near us. He shattered it against a man’s head, then jabbed him in the throat with the jagged edges. Where he struck was no accident. He got the guy’s jugular. He pulled me behind him and withdrew a gun. I knew they banned anything inside but a knife because people lost their tempers too fast for club members to be in an enclosed space with a weapon like that. After that night, no one came near me. I watched my father kill two men to protect me. My friends assumed my father and I would get out alive and took off without me. I couldn’t even be mad because it meant they witnessed nothing they could tell the cops about later. Obviously, the bikers wouldn’t say shit to the cops.”

“When I saw Corey the second time, he said you have duties and responsibilities that you needed to go back to.”

Wonderful.

“Uncle Corey came by the house the next day. He came alone, which he’d never done before. He walked up to the stoop but didn’t try to come inside. He said that after the previous night and whatever my dad did in the past to protect us— I got a feeling it was a shit ton more than what Elijah told me —they would leave us alone. But only until I was eighteen. Then I was fair game. If I wanted to protect my parents, I would ride with them. That I would be a Sweet Butt with whoever wanted me. My dad shot Uncle Corey in the kneecap. That’s why he limps now.”

“I thought he was just fat.” Finn grins at me, and it lightens things for a moment.

“I graduated early to get away from Boston before I turned eighteen. My mom’s family is from Jersey, so they would come down here to see me. I’d stay with my grandmother during school breaks. I went straight from college to med school to residency. My parents moved down here the week after Rod graduated high school. I’ve been back once, and that was to watch Rod’s graduation. I think part of the reason my brothers and I moved to New York was to get lost in the crowd. Until now, Uncle Corey rarely came near Papa. But he collects monthly to let my parents keep it that way. This is his way of getting back at my dad and me. I don’t know how he found out Papa lost his job.”

“Thea, he got your father fired.”

Chapter Seventeen

Finn

I listened to Thea’s entire story without interrupting. That was a Herculean feat, considering how much I wanted to demand each man’s name. I want to find them and beat them all to death. I’ve killed far too many times, but it’s never been because I desired their death on an emotional level. I wanted men dead because they fucked us over or tried to fuck us over. I wanted them dead because they were an inconvenience. I wanted them dead because they posed a threat to my family, our people, or our businesses. But it was always with coldhearted detachment. This is different.

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