Page 13 of Ensnared
Dimitri stood in front of Ricky and looked down at the kid with an unreadable expression. But Dominic knew. His boss was practically vibrating with impatient energy. He had spent the last hour watching the casino's camera footage as security escorted Eve to management and out of the building. Dimitri had listened and watched as she tearfully tried to explain herself to management that she was simply using the empty players club office as a break space, but there was no point. The order had been given and the manager terminated her despite the tears flowing down her pretty round cheeks.
On the outside, Dimitri seemed calm and detached. That was a goddamn lie. Underneath that cool exterior, the man was like a live wire, unpredictable and on edge.
Dimitri stared down at Ricky. "I've been informed you have yet to remember any details of the Armenian's bank account." Ricky began to reply, but Dimitri continued over him. "So, I spent this week providing you the motivation you clearly need."
Without pausing, Dimitri took the photos Andrey handed him and laid them on the table in front of Ricky one by one.
"This is your grandparents losing their house," Dimitri happily informed him.
The surveillance-style photo showed both Guliana and Arturo Barrameda standing outside looking worriedly as a mover hoisted their bed into a truck.
"And here is a photo of your lovely sister getting fired just a few hours ago." Dimitri placed the photo of the Elysium's employee entrance where Eve stood there crying.
As each photo hit the table, Ricky's eyes widened in growing horror with each flick of its laminated edges.
Dominic watched as Ricky's gaze shifted from the photos to Dimitri. They could all see the helpless rage in his eyes as his shoulders shook and his knuckles whitened where he gripped the arms of his chair. It was clear he wanted to lunge at Dimitri but fought to keep himself in check.
Dominic was glad for it. He would rather not have to hurt the kid again.
With tears shining in his eyes, Ricky snatched a piece of paper and a marker from the desk and wrote something on it. Reluctantly, he handed it to Andrey sitting next to him.
Andrey looked appreciatively at the paper and spoke to Dimitri in Russian.
"The name on the account and the name of the bank—good. But that's only a start."
Ricky jerked his head up and stared at Dimitri. "Wait! You said all I had to do was-"
"You don't think I did my research on you?" Dimitri went on. "I know you have a partial degree in information systems. I know you have an eidetic memory. I know at thirteen you would have gone to jail for distributing information online that aided in people hacking a series of very expensive slot machines nearly every casino in North America used if it hadn't been for your grandfather convincing the judge to give you a second chance. And most importantly, I know that your family means everything to you," he said with a sneer. "I know exactly who you are Ricky, and I know exactly how you think. And you're thinking you can still save them from the blowback of your fuck up with the Armenians. But you're wrong. I've been trying to tell you it's me you need to save them from."
Ricky shook his head in desperation. "Please, I-"
Dimitri pointed to the photo of Eve and gave him a pitying smile. "Her brother abandoned her. Her grandparents have left. The house she grew up in is gone. She lost her job, and her ex won't text her back. I wonder what else I can do to her. How much more can she take before she breaks."
Dominic caught the kid by the neck just as he launched from his chair. With his hand around his neck, he easily held the thrashing boy at bay.
Dimitri laughed darkly and tapped the picture of Eve. "I want their bank account number, in full. Or there won't be any pieces of your sister to come back to once I'm done with her."
Chapter 9
Eveclickedthesubmitbutton and let out a ragged sigh. That was the fifth job she applied for today. The fifth one that asked for her resume and then made her type in all the details of said resume including dates and past supervisor names all over again. It made her want to tear her hair out. What was the damn point of having her submit the resume if she was going to have to type it all in again anyway?
She was utterly exhausted.
Why was job searching so draining? Why did it feel so demoralizing to enter all of your details into a job you most likely wouldn't hear back from anyway? There was just something about going over your own resume again and again that wordlessly shouted—you're unworthy!
Double checking to see if there was anything else the application needed, Eve frowned at the sudden pop-up ad on her screen. All morning she had been getting the same black and gold spammy pop-up advertising for a cam-girl position. When did her browser settings change to let in porn ads? Annoyed, she closed the ad yet again.
Looking up from her laptop, Eve stared around the empty kitchen. The house felt like a desolate artifact from the seventies without her grandparents' stuff. The large fancy dining room table that Eve had never once seen without its fancy linen tablecloth was gone. The once-present set of paintings of the Mother Mary, accompanied by matching pictures of the angels Gabriel and Michael on either side, were gone, leaving behind perfect outlines on the wall where they hung for years. Even the pantry that had been filled to the brim with various sauces was all cleared out.
It was strange. Eve had always considered her grandparents minimalists of sorts. They preferred simple furniture and hardly any tchotchkes unlike some of the households of her friends she visited growing up. There was no garage filled with random stuff and no junk closets or drawers. So why did it surprise her when the moving company was able to pack all of their things in a day?
Hungry, she got up from her chair, the only chair left in the kitchen, and went to the fridge. She peered inside. There wasn't much left, just a few things here and there that were left for her to either eat or throw out. With no real options, she grabbed a can of sardines in tomato sauce and a pack of vermicelli noodles.
A few minutes later she was sitting down with her steaming bowl of noodles. Eve looked out through the glass patio doors as she spooned in a bite. Outside, it looked how it always did, that arid yellowish orange haze that covered the city from the sun's unforgiving glare. The grass in the back yard, while drought tolerant, looked dry and coarse. The low, decorative concrete fence that bordered the seventies-style house only made the backyard space feel even hotter under the scorching sun. Only tonight when the sun went down would the whole city take a sigh of relief and release the heat it held onto throughout the day.
She wished she could take that same sigh. But the anger and hurt were still trapped inside of her. Eve closed her eyes and the memories of the other night came flooding back. After her manager found her taking her break in the loyalty card office, he had her escorted to his office. She thought she would get a warning and maybe even a verbal scolding regarding security and procedures but it was so much worse. Everything seemed to just stop. Sound and movement, all of it stopped when her boss told her they were letting her go. It took her practically a minute to find her voice again, but nothing she said would sway the man. After she changed out of her uniform, they escorted her to the employee's entrance.
Even now, the memory of it brought back the familiar sting of humiliation. For two days she cried off and on. Between wiping away her tears and helping her grandparents pack with a fake smile plastered across her lips and running to her room to hide the pain, she was exhausted.
