CHAPTER
2: BELINDA STANDS STRONG
The corridor down which I was crawling led
to the back of the Grand Ballroom. When
the door shut behind us Vincenzo told me I could stand. I did so gratefully. It took me a moment to get my bearings, and
then I looked around.
We were in a huge, cavernous room. At first it reminded me of the floor of an
auto show my father had snuck my brothers and me into before opening time once,
at a big convention center downtown.
Then I thought it was more like one of those huge, cheap Chinese buffet
restaurants, the kind my family would go to before my mother died. A mix of both, I decided.
There was a traditional bar counter (two
drink maximum, I would find out), and restaurant-like tables and chairs. The smell of fried chicken wings
lingered. But there were also podiums
scattered throughout, as well as what looked like exercise equipment, and
Japanese screens, and ropes hanging from the ceiling and walls in haphazard
locations. Here and there workmen were
puttering around.
I realized that Vincenzo was watching me as
I looked around, his head tilted, a slight smile on his face. “Sorry, sir,” I muttered. He led me on a zigzag path through the jumble.
As we neared what I later learned was
the front, customer entrance to the ballroom, a man came in carrying a large
box. Vincenzo stopped him with a
gesture, and the man put the box on the floor and opened it. At first I thought it was full of snakes, but
in fact it was full of whips, made of dark, twisted leather.
Vincenzo picked one up with a nod toward
the workman and snapped it, making me jump.
"These are fine quality," the deliveryman said to him, a
trifle obsequiously.
"Hmm," Vincenzo grunted. "All snap and no strength, these."
"Oh, no, Mr. Dragna," the
delivery man protested. "Let me
demonstrate for you." He picked up
a whip and turned meaningfully towards me.
I involuntarily stepped back, behind Vincenzo, as if he would protect
me.
In fact, Vincenzo raised his hand
menacingly towards the delivery man.
"Try it on her and you'll regret it," he said. "This one is undamaged goods."
The man immediately dropped the whip, and
it fell to the floor with a dull thud.
"Sorry, I really am," he babbled. "I didn't know."
Vincenzo gave him his quarter smile. "No harm done," he said. "These whips are fine for our floor
models. Excite the men, keep the girls
fresh. That's why I ordered
them." He picked up the whip from
the floor, caressed it for a moment, tossed it back in the box, and strode out
the door. I had to trot to catch up,
humiliated at the look the delivery man gave me.
The foyer was like the concierge area of a
hotel, with a long desk with room for at least five clerks behind it. There were cubbies for keys. Vincenzo gave a nod to the lone man behind
the desk, who was paging through a three ring binder. Vincenzo led me behind the desk and into an
office there.
Two windows looked out onto a small
courtyard. There were benches and a couple of picnic tables in it, but no
people. A big and ponderous desk was in
front of us, facing the room, with stacks of papers in neat piles and a
computer with a shooting star screensaver.
The desk had a model sandbox on it, about a foot square, with real sand,
and miniature shovels, pails, and rakes. Someone had raked the sand into neat
rows. The wall on the far side behind
the desk contained three bookshelves, divided by the windows. Most of the shelves were filled with labeled
binders, but my eyes were too blurry from crying to read them.
To my left was a living room-like area,
with a sofa and two arm chairs. They
were, I noticed, covered with cloth, not leather.
It was the walls on that side of the room that
surprised me the most. I had somehow
expected whips, or at least swords, to be ceremoniously hung there. But instead, the walls were hung with lovely
photographs--a beam of light through a single leaf; a rock on a mountain that,
with its crags and bushes, looked so like a human head it could have been
carved; a huge wave lusciously about to break.
Vincenzo watched me take in the room with
his quarter smile and then gestured to one of the armchairs. I sat awkwardly, jumping when my hand brushed
my own naked thigh. I did not know what
to do with my arms.
"Relax," he said in a voice that
was soft and kind. My eyes filled with
tears again, and stung with a sharp throbbing.
I rubbed them with both hands.
While I did this, Vincenzo had sat on the footstool of my armchair. With a gentleness utterly belied by
everything he had said and done to me until now, he took my hands from my face
and held them in his until I looked at him, still crying.
"You don't have to do this," he
said. "Everything I said before
still goes. We'll protect you and you
won't have to pay us back, ever."
At first I could not figure out what he was
talking about. But then I remembered, he had made the same offer earlier,
before I signed the contract. "And
my father?" I said hoarsely.
Vincenzo's voice was deep and strong. "Your father doesn't deserve you. He doesn't deserve this. He's not worth
it."
I didn't say anything. I knew that, for me, there was no choice.
Vincenzo was still holding my hands. He watched me for a minute. "You know what I'm saying is true, don't
you?" he asked.
I
nodded.
"But you'll give up everything for
him?"
Suddenly it was important to me to explain
to him. I tried to keep my voice low and
even. "When my mother died, I
promised her I would take care of him, and my brothers," I said.
Vincenzo looked at me appraisingly. "She didn't mean this," he said.
I had no reply. My mind was made up.
Vincenzo said, "You can change your
mind now, but by tomorrow it will be too late to ever go back."
"It was too late when I signed the
contract," I said.
Vincenzo rolled his eyes at that, a gesture
I already knew was completely uncharacteristic for him. "You can always break the
contract," he said, "and we'll go after your father. But if you stay,
tonight you'll be broken in, and nothing will ever undo that."
"Then let's get it over with," I
said.
Vincenzo gave a double take when I said
this, and then a snort of laughter. And
then he looked sad. "I hope you
keep your spunk," he said softly, more to himself than to me. Nobody had ever accused me of having anything
remotely related to spunk before.
"Did you eat today?" Vincenzo
asked, with his soul piercing look again.
I nodded. I had had the same
breakfast bar I ate every morning. Vincenzo
said, in the soft gentle voice that belied his words, "When I ask you a
yes or no question you will answer ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘No, sir.’”
When he said this I felt a "ping"
in my clitoris, the same tingling feeling I had first known when I was a little
girl watching some teenage boys force a girl their age to sit in a mud puddle
while she struggled. After that, I sometimes
felt it when I watched a cruel scene on tv, like a hanging in a western. But I
had never connected the feeling with my own life. "Yes, sir," I said, and Vincenzo
raised one eyebrow slightly as if he had noticed the breathiness in my
voice.
