Page 124 of House of Cards

I suck in a breath and valiantly fight the manic giggle creeping up my throat.

I was right. I was fucking right!

Good job, Zoey. You’ll make detective one day. If you survive this. Which you won’t. But good job.

“You, me,” Elonzo says in a throaty whisper. “The diner, midnight.” It almost sounds like he’s asking me out on a fucking date.

Guess he is.

If you swap out the roses and chocolates for gasoline and matches.

I stay silent, because God forbid I interrupt him again.

“Bring me my money, honey, and I’ll reunite you with your little rat brother. Then the two of you can scurry away and live happily ever after inside a little hill in the countryside.” Elonzo chuckles. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Marconi?”

Marconi?

That’s our step-father Franco’s last name. We’re Dennens, through and through.

Jesus, could this just be a case of mistaken identity?

Ricky’s whimper annihilates the frantic thought.

There’s a scrape, a loud clatter, before Elonzo’s voice comes back on the line.

“Isaid, you’d like. That. Wouldn’t. You?”

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Every unseen punch makes my body flinch, my eyes squeezing closed tighter and tighter. “Stop!” I yell into the receiver, clutching it so tightly the plastic digs into my palm. “Please, stop!”

“Pain is how we learn,” Elonzo says, his voice strained.

Thud. Crack.

“Please!” I scream.

The punching stops. There’s a wet, ragged rasp, another loud scrape. Someone slaps their hands together like they’re dusting them off.

“Pucha.”?3 Elonzo laughs, the sound cutting off too soon, like someone flicking a switch. “Only a mother could love that face now.”

Ricky makes a blubbering sound, says something that might have been, “I’m sorry.”

I want to double down on hating him, but I can’t. Not when he’s getting the shit kicked out of him. Ricky might be the biggest asshole this side of the equator, but I won’t be able to live with myself if something happened to my brother.

He was always there for me, helping me with homework in the corner booth of the diner while Mom worked. Despite our step-dad hardly being around, Ricky took it hard when Franco disappeared. He started drinking, gambling. It only got worse after Mom, Ricky disappearing for longer and longer stretches, sometimes coming back with money, sometimes only coming back with black eyes and broken ribs.

“Please stop hurting him!” And then, because poor working conditions and stress frayed my last thread of common sense, I blurt out, “I’ve got your money!”

Elonzo’s laugh was nasty, but his sudden silence is worse. It stretches for so long, I wonder if the call got disconnected.

“I—I have your money,” I repeat quietly.

Elonzo’s voice sounds nothing like him now, deep and stripped of any humor.

“And instead of bringing it to me, you hide in those fucks’ basement like a sneaky little rat?”

I want to tell him I’m not hiding, but the alternative appears to be that I’m cahoots with the fucking mob. So I stay quiet, trying to keep down the nausea. This guy is bat shit crazy, and what’s worse, he has my brother.