Chapter 3 Sophia

Schwartz

He strode along the corridors of the newly constructed block at the Club. Business was peaking at the Club and it was late evening. Schwartz was frowning as he looked at the phone , trying to make sense of the messages that were landing on his phone. His men tailed him, Big Joe Barron and Leslie Lee. He trusted them. After what had happened with Shark, both Gaston and he were alert.

Now he was scowling. Gaston had called, his raspy voice punctuated with anger and wariness.

Dmitri was back.

***

Sophia.

I hurried along the heavily carpeted corridors of the gentlemen's club called just that The Club.

Like it was some iconic building, I thought rudely. Like it was The White House or Buckingham Palace.

Egoistical buggers.

Just another place where men came to vent their sleazy desires.

Yes, the newly opened Fight Club in the lower level attracted a fair share of the revenue. Especially since one of the owners, a burly grey-haired man called Gaston St. Claire regularly participated in the fights. It was said that he took pleasure out of beating his opponents to a pulp in the ring. The man was taciturn and was known to be dangerous. In the week that I had been here, I had seen him just once, a cold-eyed cruel-looking man, built like a bull, who sent a shiver of fear down my spine. Shuddering, I had already decided to stay out of his way. Rumour had that he had killed men with his bare hands.

Not that I had any stomach for that. Not that I had seen it. It was just one of the tales that the girls carried up when they were taking a well needed smoke break.

I shuddered and kept on walking, fighting the urge to look back. I knew that Paul Worthington had seen me. I was running away from him.

He was the man who had single-handedly destroyed my sister and turned her into a junkie whore.

And now he was coming after me.

***

I worked at the newly opened Casino which was in a renovated part of the building. The Club had been set up a long while ago but the Casino and the underground Fight Club were recent additions. One of the girls had told me that it had been set up soon after one of the partners had been killed in a shootout.

I had nodded absently. I was genuinely not interested in the history of the place. It was simply a meal ticket for us, my Mamma, poor little Paddy and I. And of course, my sister Sondra when she deigned to turn up in . Being a lowly serving girl, I was not really counted as being very important in the hierarchy. In fact, given a chance, I would have run a mile from here.

But I had no choice.

***

The thoughts sped through my mind as I trotted along, desperate to put as much space between myself and the horrid man.

***

Life had not always been so awful

My dad had been in the Navy, a handsome all American guy, sandy hair, a wide smile and the pride of his family. He would often lift tiny Mamma in his arms and we would giggle, Sondra and I, watching them. Mamma would burst out in a string of Italian, pretending to be cross. But she had loved every minute of it.

My sister Sondra had Dad's looks, fair hair and height while I had inherited my mother's colouring and her buxom figure.; I knew Dad loved us both but Sondra was the apple of his eye. The unfairness of life had hit us squarely when he was killed in a stray shooting at the local Mom and Pop store. He had been home on vacation and had rushed out at night to get us some ice cream. Unfortunately, a gang war between two teen groups had erupted as he was leaving the store and Dad had been caught in the crossfire. He had succumbed to his injuries on the spot.

We had been shattered. I had been fourteen at the time; Sondra had just turned sixteen.

My sister, Sondra, had been a blonde-haired beauty, slim and tall with a trim figure. I had inherited our mother's Italian genes, short, rounded and buxom with my hair the colour of mahogany and brown eyes that Dad had said were like molten chocolate.

Dad had never believed in saving a lot of money. Now we discovered that there were quite a few debts that had to be cleared. . The house we had grown up in had been mortgaged and we had been forced to shift into a seedier part of Hollowford.

And a different school. A school where drugs and smoking, sex and rape happened often and the authorities seemed helpless to stop things.

Sondra was two years older than me. But she had been devastated. Suddenly, she turned against us, against the world at large. Against Mamma and me for no reason, that poor Mamma could figure out. She threw tantrums, wanted more money and began to steal.

Sondra had begun to stay out at night, coming in late. She had also begun to sport expensive clothes, shoes and stuff that we could not have dreamt of buying. Once I had entered the kitchen at the fag end of an argument between my mother and Sondra. Although Mamma had stopped immediately and Sondra had stormed out, I had heard enough to know that it was about money.

She also began to drink and smoke. Naturally enough, the next step was drugs.

Mamma was at her wit's end. She was becoming steadily skinnier and looked grey-faced and tired. When she tried to reason with Sondra, it had soon deteriorated into ugly arguments. Luckily, we now stayed at an apartment where raised voices and abusive behaviour were the norms.

***

Then one day, one of the girls at the new school had sniggered,

"Your sister is one helluva girl. She keeps the entire football content, single-handedly. Single c*ntedly, actually,' she had trilled and everyone dissolved in laughter.' The other kids with me had laughed, taunting me.

I had stopped walking, clutching my satchel to my chest as the truth sank in.