“Who? The owner?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, seeing as I walked in on him trying to assault you, yeah, I’d say he was a slimebag.”
“No. I mean even before then. He was always trying to look down your shirt or up your skirt, always ‘accidentally’ brushing your boob with his arm. He was an asshole,” she said, moving behind the counter. “Oh, I like the view from here,” she declared, resting her arms wide on the counter from behind her little raised platform area. “I feel superior to both of you,” she added, smirking. “This place is a dump, though.”
“Yeah, well, the owner gambled every penny he ever made away, so that’s not surprising,” Brio said, running his hand over a particularly hideous sculpture of a frog.
“No,” I said, making him turn back with raised brows. “If you put that in your house somewhere, it is going to give me nightmares,” I told him.
“Why is it always the dickheads who get ahead in life?” Alara asked, making us both turn back to her.
“Is that a generalize statement, or…” I asked.
“Generalized, sure. But also specified. Like this place. That sexist, rapey, creepy, gambling dude got to have a business all to himself.”
“You can have a business,” I told her, frowning a bit at the defeatist tone she had.
“You can have this business,” Brio said at almost the same time.
“What? Really?” Alara asked, brightening.
“What? No!” I said, shaking my head.
“No?” Brio asked, brows drawing together.
“No. She’s going to go to college. I have it all worked out,” I insisted.
“I want it,” Alara said, looking at Brio.
“No. Absolutely not. You’re going to college, not owning a pawnshop.”
“Way to sound really elitist, Ez,” Alara said, brows drawing together.
“I’m not being elitist. I just want what is best for you.”
“By your standard.”
“You could have so much more than a pawnshop.”
“But I don’t want that. I just want something to call my own. Something I can work on and build. That isn’t in insurmountable debt to the freaking Turkish version of the mafia.”
“Well, you would be kicking up payment to the actual mafia,” Brio reminded her.
“Yeah, well, that’s different. And you can send that sexy Cesare guy to be the bagman.”
“Bagman?” I repeated.
“It’s someone who collects the debt to the mafia. Kind of like what Brio does, actually,” Alara informed me.
“When did you become a mafia expert?”
“Oh, since I got Ant wasted on beer and his pain medicine and got him to answer all my questions,” Alara said.
“Like your style, kid,” Brio said, giving her a brotherly smirk.
“Don’t encourage her,” I grumbled.
“Look, you don’t get to dictate what is a good life for me, Ez,” Alara said. “Build your own life. Go to college if you want. Make babies and start an herb garden on your kitchen counter. Do whatever you want. But take a step back and let me do what I want,” Alara said, shrugging, then moving out from behind the counter. “You’ll let me know how to go about owning the store, okay?” she asked, but it was more of a demand, as she moved past Brio, then toward the back of the store.
“On the one hand, I really love that she speaks her mind and is so confident,” I said when we were alone.
“And on the other, you kind of want to slap her a little?” Brio asked, smirking.
“I feel like a bitch for saying it, but yes.”
“She’s young. She’s figuring it out. Let her. If she falls, you can help her back up. But maybe she won’t. Maybe she genuinely just wants a simple life, like…”
“Like our parents had before the Polats ruined it,” I said, nodding, understanding.
“Exactly,” Brio said, moving in close to wrap his arms around my waist. “For what it’s worth, I think she’d make a badass pawnshop owner.”
He would turn out to be right about that.
Brio - 6 weeks
I still felt a kind of shock when I walked into the apartment, feeling like I accidentally opened the wrong door.
Ezmeray never spent the night at the apartment she’d shared with Eren again after the whole kidnapping thing.
For the first few nights, she had splurged to get her mom and sister and herself a big suite at a fancy hotel where they could all reunite and decompress, get to know one another again.
Then, her mother had insisted on going back to her old apartment, vehemently refusing Ezzy’s suggestion that she moved to a nicer, safer place.
Her ma wanted to stay where she had the strongest memories of her husband.
And, in the end, everyone understood that.
What she did agree to, though, was letting me lean on the landlord and super to get them to make the changes they’d been promising for years.
And she didn’t turn it down when she came home to find new furniture outfitting the space, or new security measures on the doors and windows.