Page 2 of Paying the Mafia Don

“Not my problem.” Now it’s my turn to smirk. “See you in Chicago.”

I disconnect the call. The time for talking is over—time for results.

Chapter 1

Lynn taps on my door, waits a second, and comes in. I shake my head, and she grins. She never waits and only knocks out of habit. When you’ve been best friends with someone since your first bra days, privacy is kind of nonexistent. I figure sisters are the same way, but since neither of us has one, what do we know? We both agree we’d do better if we had a man, but since neither of us has that either…

She plops on the bed. Her braids float around the wake of her mattress splash. I can’t remember the last time I saw her wear any other style, which is crazy because she has naturally long curly hair, but she swears the braids are easier.

“What’s up?”

“Your mom called me. Said you’ve been dodging her calls for the last three days.

I sit up straighter in the bed and put my book on the nightstand. Nothing ruins a smutty rom-com faster than a message from Mommie Dearest. “I know. I figured I might as well wait until I get my paycheck before calling her back. It’s the only reason she’s calling now, anyway. She probably keeps a better record of my direct deposits than I do.”

“Your father is playing again?” She tilts her head sympathetically.

“Probably.” I shrug as if the hurt from the last time he gambled and lost our house isn’t still a red hot poker through my heart. “I didn’t call back to find out.” First-year teachers in Chicago earn close to fifty thousand dollars. I live rent-free with my bestie in a duplex her parents own. I catch the bus and take two trains to get to my job. My only expenses are food and student loans, yet I have not one penny saved. It’s my second year of teaching, and I live no better than a waitress. Which I know because Rosalyn Hernandez is one. She is also a grad student at the University of Chicago.

“You can’t just hide away from them … That won’t change anything. What’s your plan?”

Lynn’s getting her masters in psychology, and I’m her therapy guinea pig. “No plan.” I shrug again and then cave and give her what she wants. She’s not going to let it go until I dig deeper. “I’ll call her. But we both know that she only wants money. That’s the part that burns. Lynn, I’ll give them the money. I always do. They’ll thank me and swear that it will never happen again—even though we all know that it will. But I don’t care about their thanks. If they could just say they were sorry. Acknowledge that they screwed up my childhood with this crap. Drove away friends they air quotes borrowed from. Ruined every relationship I’ve ever had and, worst of all, put me, as a child, in incredibly dangerous and vulnerable situations. All because he couldn’t stop gambling and she couldn’t stop enabling him—working three or four jobs sometimes just to pay his debts.”

Whew. I hadn’t meant to spew. But sometimes, my teapot had to release steam or explode. Rosalyn had a way of helping me vent. She was going to make an amazing counselor if she ever quit studying and just start working on someone—besides me.

“Okay, as a therapist—”

“You’re not a therapist.” I flopped back down on the bed. Scooting over to give her space.

“As your bestie, slash future therapist, you need to accept that the parents you got were what you got.”

“That’s your advice? Well, as an English teacher—“

“You teach first grade—“

“As a bestie, slash English teacher, your sentence was not only dramatically incorrect it also made no freaking sense.”

“You understood me. That’s the purpose of language.”

I sighed. I did get her. It’s my parents I would never understand. “I’ll call them in the morning. I want to spend at least one night with my check before I have to give it away.”

“You don’t have to give it away. As a therapist—”

“Future therapist—” I teased again.

“It’s okay to move away from toxic relationships—even if they’re family. You’re so busy saving them, it’s okay to save yourself.”

“You don’t understand…”

“I do.” She tugged a curl that had fallen out of my messy bun. “Think about it like this. What do you want out of life? Picture it in your mind. Hold it. Focus. Now, is this relationship bringing you closer to your goal or taking you from it?”

It wasn’t that simple. In my mind, in my most secret places. I pictured myself safe. Living behind a white picket fence with three kids wrapped around my legs and point five still in the oven. My strong, handsome, protective, but not crazy, husband by my side. In my dreams, in the romance books that I devoured, I had the best. The pinnacle. In reality, I had the worst family ever. My eyes watered when I quit her stupid exercise. What did it matter if my parents stole another a dream I no longer believed in?

* * *

Chicago’s Gold Coast ranks among the world’s top ten most expensive places to live and shop. Like most Chicagoans, I live and shop elsewhere. I travel an hour each way from our Southside duplex to the far Westside school where I teach. But I rarely make the half hour journey downtown. My parents surprised me when they didn’t ask for money. But my relief vanished when they instead asked me to come to an appointment in The Sindicate Towers. Of course, Sindicate wasn’t its real name. But it had earned the eponym so many years ago that it stuck. It earned the title because of the reputed mafioso who managed and frequented the skyscraper. I didn’t want to meet with any associates who worked out of The Sin Towers.

When she explained that I’d be meeting with the Ismailov family, I dropped the schoolbags I’d been carrying. The Ismailovs were big-time mafia guys. Why would they be involved with a low-level gambler like my father? Then I thought of Kolya and Yara Ismailov. Their son Danny was a student in my class. Danny and his family had only recently moved to Chicago. Yara had shared with me that Kolya had only recently come back into their lives and that Danny and his dad were still finding their way to each other. Was this a meeting about Danny? If so, why weren’t we meeting at school?

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