Page 14 of Killer Peep Show
“You picked a real shit time to show up,” I hiss at the man standing in front of me. Cain scoops up Joelle and lays her in the bed while we deal with this.
“I know. I’m kind of a dick, I did kill her mother,” he sneers.
“And you just expect a happy family reunion?” Cain asks.
“Nope. I know what I did was wrong, but I did it in the name of your father,” which shocks the shit out of me. What the fuck? I look at Cain who looks just as confused as me.
“You might want to sit,” he says.
“Let’s go outside to the bench,” Cain says, knowing a smoke might be needed to hear this. How is he even out of prison?
“Money buys everything,” her father says.
“She grew up poor, how do you have money?”
“I proved my loyalty. The seeds of brainwashing were planted a long time ago. Joelle remembers her mother as this nice woman when she wasn’t at all. She didn’t even want Joelle. Her mother left. The woman that she remembers was a family friend.”
“The fighting, the bruises?”
“I was a bastard and drank a lot. Your father picked me up off the street one day and gave me a job, that of a soldier, gave me a paycheck. I selfishly gambled and drank it away. The fights were about Joelle needing clothes or food. I got a little rough with the woman posing as my wife. I will admit that. It was about the time I started moving up the ranks, my actual wife came back. She would try to act like she cared about us, and Joelle, but she didn’t. She was trying to get info for a rival mob family. Your father brought it to my attention and I sat on it for days, trying to think of a way out of it. I never wanted her mother killed, until the day I heard that she put out a hit on Joelle. I should have thought it was strange when she took out a life insurance policy, but when you do the things we do, sometimes casualties happen. I let it go until a birdie on the street told me about the hit on my little girl. Turns out she was only with me for that info she kept pressing me for, your father was right. She was sleeping with the underboss of another mob. I had to protect Joelle, so I killed her. I knew if she thought I was doing it for the right reasons, she would have given up her life. Thank you by the way for taking out all my family members. I never thought they would turn their backs on her or try to harm her in any way. I appreciate that.”
I sit there for a minute, staring at the embers on my cigarette.
“My father let you go to jail?”
“I had to. I kept all the secrets, passed him info when I could from the inside. He kept my commissary stocked and when the time was right, he paid for my release,” he shrugs.
“Mr. Ricci,” I start and he holds up his hand.
“Call me Marco.”
“Marco. Why didn’t you just tell her when she got older? You have no idea what she’s been through. If things were different, she’d be a librarian with her nose stuck in a book, not at some sex circus, killing people,” I growl.
“I want to help with that,” he says, “I hope to make it right somehow.”
“Did you ever think of me?” We hear her behind us. I turn to see she’s dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt. She looks so small and vulnerable.
“I did. Every day. I wish I had figured out what to do with you before I went off that day. I was so angry. I was a shit father but I still loved you. I never told Abel’s dad about you. If I had thought of it at the time, he could have pulled some strings and you would have been well taken care of. By the time I got the chance to tell him, you were already on your own. I’m so sorry,” he says sadly.
She says nothing at first or does nothing. She shocks the shit out of me when she hugs him. But if she forgave me, she can forgive him. The ex? Not so much. He needs to be six feet under for the torture he did to her.
“This is a weird place for a family reunion,” Cain snorts.
“I didn’t know how else to contact her. Your father told me to contact you, that you were with her and where you would be. You don’t like to answer your phone,” he chides me.
Well shit. I had been getting called from a number all day but ignored it.
“Sorry about that,” I shrug.
“Now, what do we do about the cop?”
“We haven’t thought of a plan yet,” Cain admits, “we just figured out how he was using her.”
“I think we need to fix her programming first,” I chime in.
“When you hear that word, what do you feel?” He asks her.
“I don’t know, I honestly don’t remember anything,” she tells him.
