Page 23 of The Gambler

The doc showed up half an hour later and took over. “She’s gonna need stitches.”

“Fuck, can we give her something to knock her out? She’s asleep now but I don’t want her to wake up with a needle in her skin, she’d freak the fuck out.” Alice had hated needles, was petrified of the shits.

“I don’t want to risk it since she’s been unconscious since this happened. Let’s just see how it goes.” He climbed on the bed beside her and held her while the other man cleaned the wound. The whole time he was praying that she didn’t wake up. He couldn’t bear the thought of her suffering anymore than she already had.

This is all my fault, why am I such a fuck up? I’ll protect you. Yeah, two days with you and she’s already been shot. Some protector you are, you can’t be fucking trusted. He beat himself up with every pierce of the needle into her precious skin. This shit ends today. I’ll level the whole fucking city until every last Bonata is in the ground. That thought sustained him and brought him back from the brink.

“I think she’ll be okay, it wasn’t as bad as it looked.” The doctor closed up his bag and prepared to leave.

“Stick around doc, you have to take a look at gramps and I need you here when she wakes up, she might need something.”

“I’ll have a look at your grandfather, but he called me away in the middle of…I’ll stick around.” The look Andros gave him didn’t bode well if he didn’t.

He stayed there with her wrapped in his arms, just staring at the wall, willing her to wake up. It was an hour later when he heard Vito’s voice downstairs and remembered the mother. He hated like hell to leave her, but he needed answers. He called Sue back up the stairs to watch over her while he took care of business.

She was sitting in the study, a little slip of a woman in her early fifties. He could see some of his flower in her, in the hair and the mouth, but that was it. His Jenna’s beauty came from somewhere else altogether he was sure. She looked up from the book she’d been reading when he walked in. Her eyes widened as she stood.

“Are you Andros?”

“Yes.”

“You’re hurt.” He looked down and noticed the blood that covered him for the first time.

“That’s your daughter’s blood. Your friend Bonata’s doing.”

“Jenna, where is she is she…

“She’s alive no thanks to you and your family. I need some answers and you’re going to give them to me, and trust me lady, the mood I’m in, you do not want to fuck with me. I have the need to shed blood and yours will do just as well as any other.” She backed away back to her seat.

“What is it that you want to know?”

“For starters what the fuck were the Bonatas using her for?”

“I don’t…

He drew his gun and pointed it at her. “I told you, don’t fuck with me.”

“It was nothing, she just helped them out a little with…stuff.”

“What kinda stuff?”

“I don’t know I swear. Look she was good with numbers and other things. She hears things that no one else does, and sees things I guess. It started when she was a teenager. The men made such a big deal out of it, all these things that I didn’t understand.

So when they made such a big deal and then Mr. Bonata came to me and asked me to let her help them with the business, I saw nothing wrong with it. I was so proud of her, finally there was something she was good at. And she seemed to enjoy it, I never would’ve agreed otherwise.”

“Do you know what kind of business she was helping them with?”

“I don’t know, computers or something like that. We got her one for Xmas when she was sixteen and she became a whole new person. When they told me how good she was, a genius they said. My daughter who’d been shunned all her life could do something these great men were amazed at. I was so proud of my girl.”

“They trained her to be a fucking criminal you ass.”

“No…they never said…I thought…”

“Were they paying her?”

“She…Jenna doesn’t understand money and stuff like that. Her father and I took a little something.”

“And what did she get out of it?” She took a minute to answer.