Page 4 of The Dominator

It hurt that he could go that length of time without checking on me, leaving others to raise me. It hurt, but I wasn’t the sort lash out about it. I always just thought of him as broken. Who wouldn’t be broken after finding their wife dead in a tub with slit wrists?

I was supposed to have been picked up from school after a field trip that required parents to pick up the kids late since we were back at 7:00 at night. Nobody showed up. I sat in the principal’s office for hours while they tried to find someone to pick me up. The principal had been huffy and snippy, too, clearly with plans for the evening that had to be canceled due to this poor little neglected girl who hadn’t been picked up from school.

Finally, my Aunt Carol had come along and brought me to her home. She didn’t give me an explanation, treating me like kids should be seen and not heard. She did, however, not even try to lower her voice to stop me from overhearing her on the phone as she told someone she was stuck watching me for the evening because my father was a wreck, mourning his dead wife who’d killed herself. What a way for me to find out.

She never bothered with me all these years, just wrote me off. Mom hadn’t had any family step up either. I heard she had an older brother, but it seemed she was a bit of a black sheep with her family because I never met anyone from that side and no one sought me out after she died.

* * *

So, here Dad was, all smiles for the camera, looking well-fed, well-groomed, and yet there was a weird aura about him, something in his eyes, a nervousness in his laugh. He seemed off, like there was something shifty going on. He kept checking his phone and looking around suspiciously. When everyone had gotten their fill of camera flashes in their eyes, Rose tried to corral everyone so we could go back to her house where a big buffet and gifts were waiting.

“Please join us, Gregory,” she said to my dad.

“I’d love to!” he beamed. “Tia, ride with me. We can catch up on the way.”

Did he have something to tell me? It’d been ages since I’d seen him and while I was happy he was here, I knew something wasn’t quite right.

He had a decent enough car, surprisingly. We drove through a coffee shop drive-thru for Dad to get a coffee and me to get an iced cappuccino and then we parked so Dad could get out and have a cigarette first, saying he wouldn’t smoke in the car with me.

“Thanks so much for coming, Dad.”

“Like I’d miss it!”

He gave me an are you kidding look. As if he hadn’t missed most other milestones in my life so far.

“What’s new, then? You working?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been working at an auto parts place for about seven months. I do parts counter, a few minor repairs. Got a nice apartment. Got myself a nice girlfriend, too. You’ll like her. Sadie. She’s a schoolteacher. Teaches kindergarten. This is her car.”

“Really? That’s awesome.” It’d been the longest he’d held down a job for ages and this was the first relationship he’d ever told me about. He evidently knew what was going on with me already; I’d filled him in with my Facebook message where I’d invited him to come to the grad ceremony.

“Something off, though, Dad? You seem stressed.”

He nodded quickly and lifted the lid off his coffee and took a sip. “Yeah, we need to talk.”

I frowned. “Okay…”

He sat at a picnic table outside the coffee shop and picked at a loose thread on his suit pants. “I’m in some trouble. Chickens coming home to roost, sort of thing.”

My heart lurched. “What kind of trouble?”

He let out a heavy sigh. “I have old debts from when I was gambling. I haven’t gambled in a long time, Tia. I go to a support group. The debt was sold to someone high up in organized crime, someone who hates my guts and has a vendetta from years back. He’s decided to make life… difficult.”

I nodded, urging him to continue, feeling dread spread through my gut.

“I need to figure this out, find a way to get them paid. They’ve already given me an extension, but they want a marker. I just need a few days to sort this out. I was hoping you could help me.”

“How? How could I help you?” I didn’t have any money. Well, $248 in my savings account from my job at the ice cream parlor, but that was it.

“You need to be my marker,” he said, resigned.

“Your what?”

“Yeah. I know it’s not ideal, but I have a plan to clear it up and then there won’t be anything else. This is the last loose end from my old life, Tia. I’m really sorry to drag you into this, but I have no choice.”

“Dad…” I began.

I noticed a black SUV pull in beside us. The passenger window rolled down and a guy in the passenger seat wearing dark sunglasses eyed us.

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