“C’mon, Luke, let me get back to work. Please?” Willow begs.
“You want to keep working here, Willow?” He snarls at her.
“Please, let me get back to work.”
“Be a good kitty, Willow.” He grins at her, his smile oily and yellow.
“I can’t work the late shift, Luke. Let Maria have it.”
“Only person I’m going to let have it is you, Willow.” Luke lunges for her and grabs at her arm, his nails leaving angry red welts scratched into her skin.
Willow screams, terrified by what might happen to her if she doesn’t get out of the office and the building. Without thinking, she brings her knee up, driving it hard into Luke’s nuts. He grunts and she swings her knee again, bringing him to the floor. He’s doubled over and groaning, his face red and his breathing hard, hands clutching at his crotch, when Willow runs out of the office and across the club to the staff door. When she grabs her bag, she turns to see Luke hanging onto the doorframe, still bent over and huffing.
“Don’t come back, bitch,” he wheezes at her, “you don’t fucking work here anymore.”
Running across the empty back parking lot, Willow clutches her bag to her chest and glances over her shoulder to make sure Luke isn’t following. She heads to the nearest bus stop, too nervous to sit on the bench. Her heart is thudding triple time in her chest and she can hear the blood rushing in her ears.
“Come on, come on, come on”, she wills the bus. She glances down the block at the club and wonders if she should just walk home. Finally, she sees the city bus rumbling down the street. She’s just dropped into the seat when a tiny red sports car blasts out of the club parking lot and fishtails toward the bus. She holds her breath as the car shoots past the bus, Luke hunched behind the wheel, one finger waving at her, his face purple with rage. She slides down into the seat and hugs her bag to her chest.
When Willow finally trudges up the stairs to her apartment, the sky is already beginning to lighten to an orange glow. Opening her door, she realizes she can’t face Frank or Liam just yet. She’s still shaken from her encounter with Luke and the crushing knowledge that’s she out of a job. They’ll have to move. Again.
Throwing herself onto her bed, Willow stifles a sob into her pillow. She feels like such a failure. She can’t provide for her son properly and she doesn’t know how long she can protect him from his father. Her world is crushing down on her and she doesn’t know what to do anymore. Maybe she should let Frank’s dad take him At least then he would have the kind of financial stability she couldn’t provide for him. But the thought of her
sweet little baby growing up in a world of drugs, hookers, illegal gambling, and murder is too much for Willow. Her sobs come harder until her pillow is soaked through with her tears and she finally drops off into a deep sleep haunted with dreams of men like Luke and Carlo.
Chapter Twelve
Willow
She wakes up in the middle of the night. When she steps into the living room she sees Liam asleep and she doesn’t want to wake him.
So many missed calls on her phone. It’s bugging her as she heads to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
“Pathetic!” she whispers to herself as she notices that there are no drinks. The only thing that she can afford to drink is water, even after the owner had warned her about drinking from the tap. She doesn’t care as she pulls down he tap and let’s it run for a little while and then glances over to make sure that Liam is still sleeping.
She can’t afford credit for her phone. She hadn’t realized it was her grandma calling her because she hadn’t heard her phone at work. It was in her pocket and after the long day that she had the only phone calls she was going to be expecting were to do with bills. Yet, she looked at her phone and worries that the only reason her grandma’s calling is because something’s wrong. She holds the glass in one hand and her phone in the other.
It’s early, but she knows that her grandma always wakes up at five-thirty. It’s a habit formed when she was a teacher. Willow hesitates before calling her, not because of the time, but because she’s worried about the little credit that she has left on her phone. Curiosity gets the better of her as she calls her grandma back.
“Nan, it’s me, Willow.”
“Hello dear, let me call you back. I’m just heading to the bathroom.”
“Okay.”
Willow hangs up the phone, relieved that her grandma is planning on calling her back and saving her credit.
She sips her water and then after the foul taste, she decides that she may need to start buying bottled water after all. She hopes she won’t be sick from just tasting it. Almost as soon as she slips between the covers again to await the call back from her grandma, her phone rings.
She quickly picks it up in fear that she’ll wake not Frank, but Liam. She doesn’t know if she can face him today.
“Nan?”
“Sorry, did I wake you?”
She shakes her head. “No, I was worried that I woke you up. I didn’t know if you were still getting up early in the morning.”
Her grandma chuckles, “You know me too well, dear.”