Page 14

Story: Ache For Her

“Revenge?” She finally looked up at me. “I never did anything to you. I don’t even like what my grandfather does for a living.”
“But you know about it,” I seethed.
She shook her head.
I threw her back onto the couch. “And what does he do, Delilah? Explain it to me.”
“He runs the biggest drug ring in and out of Philly,” she said, her voice heightening along with her anger. “He’s basically a mob boss, a fucking Don Corleone.”
She had it half right. On the surface, that’s what he did. It wasn’t a legitimate business, but it was a business. That wasn’t what I was talking about though. “He doesn’t just run drugs, Delilah,” I said, trying to make her see deeper into it. I knew I was no saint, but at least I was aware of what I did—what I was. “What does hedo?”
“I just told you!” she screamed. “He distributes drugs to people in the area.”
“Then what?” I asked, charging right toward her. Fangs bared, I stopped mere inches from her face. She withdrew, and I snapped my mouth shut. Softer now, I asked, “Then what happens?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“What happens after the drugs get into the hands of the people, Delilah?”
She shrugged. “They take them. I don’t know. That’s their business.”
“Fuck that. That’s a lame excuse. Then what happens?”
“I. Don’t. Know.”
Anger surged inside me. “I already told you one thing that happens. Mothers die. Kids are left without parents. Whole lives are disrupted. Do you think I’m the only fucking one who wants revenge against your grandfather for the hurt he caused? If you do, you’re lying to yourself. There could be hundreds lining up behind me to get their hands on him, and here you are, just fucking living off that money like it’s nothing.”
I pulled her hand to me, staring down at her fake nails. She tried to pull it back, but I gripped it tightly.
“Where’d you get these, huh?” I asked, flicking one of the perfectly shaped and colored nails.
“Don’t,” she seethed, trying to twist her hand away from me.
“I want to know. Where’d you get them?”
“The nail parlor. Of course.”
“Nope.” I ripped one of the nails from her fingers.
She screamed in agony.
“That was a bag of cocaine that got a businessman high. On his way home from work, he got into an accident, killing a hard-working father of three.” I grabbed another one.
“Don’t, please,” she said.
Her face was blotchy. Through the cuts I’d made on her face, I saw the makeup that had run from her eyes, making her look like an angel of death. She certainly looked nothing like the posh woman who stepped out of the black sedan the night I took her. I ripped the second nail off. “That was from a school teacher who fucking ruined her life after she got hooked on your grandfather’s drugs. Her husband divorced her and now she lives in an abandoned factory downtown and gets raped every fucking night by the homeless guys, but she’s too fucked up to stop them.”
One-by-one, I ripped her nails off, telling her every fucking story I could remember about how her grandfather’s drugs ruined people. These weren’t just tales I made up on the spots. These were the ones I remembered as a child. The ones that stayed with me all these years as regaled to my mother from the other high, lost souls on the street.
I saved my story for last. She’d already heard it before, but it was worth telling again and again. She needed to understand why I was doing this.
Fat tears tracked down her cheeks. “But I didn’t do anything,” she sobbed.
“You hold yourself high with his blood money!” I roared.
“You’re not some princess, Delilah. You’re a fucking money whore.”
I slid the fly down on my jeans and forced them to the floor along with my boxers. I shoved my hard cock in her face.