Page 10 of The Bargain

“Oh, do you now?” she said with an edge to her voice, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

“Si.” He took her hand and kissed it. “Getting the medication is getting harder, mami. Soon Amberina will have to wait hours for just a box and we know the surgeon appointments are so difficult to get. If she goes with him, he’ll get Timmy fixed in no time.”

I nodded, looking down at my hands folded on the table. “It’s my main reason too. Once Timmy’s heart is fixed, once they replace the valve and repair the hole in his heart, he’ll be good.”

Dee sighed, “He doesn’t strike me as a man willing to make a deal he can lose.”

I nodded. “No, he doesn’t, but he thinks I'm a druggie, alcoholic, promiscuous woman. The likelihood of Opal failing if she had money is close to a hundred percent; we both know that.”

“You really think you can pull this off? Living six months with a man who clearly despises you?”

I shrugged. “There isn’t much I wouldn't do for Timmy and it’s either that or I lose him, so what choice do I really have, Dee? This could change everything for us. I have to try.”

She turned to Raoul.

He took her hand and kissed it. “She can do it, Mama. I’m sure she can.”

Dee sighed. “Be careful sweetheart, men like that - they have appeal, but you can’t trust them.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t! And he wouldn’t either. I disgust him.”

Dee rolled her eyes. “You’re so innocent, my girl.” She sighed. “Promise me though, if anything, anything at all, goes wrong, you will call us. We’ll come to you, okay?”

“I promise but it will work. It has to, for Timmy.”

She nodded, uncertainty still obvious on her face. “For Timmy.”

I hoped for most of the day, as I arranged everything for this woman to invade my life, albeit temporarily, that she would change her mind - take the money and walk away. Let me raise Edward’s son the way he was supposed to be raised. Educated in the best schools, taught polo, chess, and art like all proper men of our society.

I was so hopeful that, even after my lawyer had finished drafting the contract for the six-month trial, I asked him to redraft the parental rights abandonment papers, leaving the amount to be paid blank. I was ready to give her more money, even a million, just to make sure she would not be in my life. She was the reason for Edward's death, the enticing snake that had brought my brother down one time too many.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as lucky as I'd hoped; Opal was already dressed and ready to go when I made it to her apartment.

She wore black leggings, a long red sweater dress, which had clearly seen better days, and ankle boots that belonged in theMisérables. However, the kid was actually really nicely dressed; it was almost like she was putting his needs before hers. I shook my head as I set both documents on the wobbly table in the middle of the room.Don’t let her fool you.

“Two contracts?” she asked, coming to stand beside me.

I pointed to the five-page one. “This is the one we'd discussed before. The number is blank. Just put an amount - anything.”

She rolled her eyes. “And the other one?”

“It’s the deal we made.” It was quite a significant sized contract and quite one-sided too. I basically had no obligation other than to make good on my promise of giving her a monthly alimony of $5,000 and provide her with a fully paid two-bedroom apartment in the Old City.

Her obligations were never-ending and as she read quietly, I detailed her face, looking for any sign of deception. Her dark hair was in a high ponytail, her face bare of any make-up. She looked so young; she didn’t look a day over eighteen despite being twenty-seven. She was thin and pale, but she didn’t seem to be the shell of a human Eddie had become over the years. It had taken me years to realize that my brother was an addict. He’d started taking drugs when he was sixteen, or so he had said, but at that time I’d been too busy to notice. I'd been trying to hide our father’s ineptitude in controlling our empire, been forced to handle it all myself from the shadows. I’d only been twenty then, fresh out of Harvard and handling more than I could. I hadn’t kept a close enough eye on my siblings, and I couldn’t help but think I’d failed my brother. Then our father had passed and I'd officially become the bearer of all obligations. Eddie had slipped through my scrutiny until he'd come home from Dartmouth at the end of his first year, the shadow of the young man he’d been. I’d sent him to a detox center that summer and he'd sworn up and down that he was fixed. That was the first time I had believed one of his lies.

I took a look around Opal's room again. It was tiny, probably smaller than my closet with furniture so mismatched and banged up that I didn't think anybody would use any of it by choice. Even Timothy’s bed was an ugly faded foldable plastic horror held up by duct tape. The place they lived in, located in the worst area of town, was a liability in my nephew's life. And so was she. I needed to get rid of them both.

Opal looked up from the page she was reading. “No paid promiscuity? Really?”

I shrugged. “You will be staying in my family home, not a brothel. I don't need that dirt on my family name.”

“I just -” She sighed. Shaking her head, she resumed her reading.

She signed it and gave it back to me. “I’d like a notarized copy of this please.”

I smiled. “Someone knows big words. You don’t trust me.”

She snorted. “Not even a little.”

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