Damascus Ch 02

Chapter 2 Belinda stands strong

The corridor down which I was crawling led to the back of the Grand Ballroom. When the door shut behind us Vincenzo told me I could stand. I did so gratefully. It took me a moment to get my bearings, and then I looked around.

We were in a cavernous room. At first it reminded me of the floor of an auto show my father had snuck my brothers and me into before opening time once, at a big convention center downtown. Then I thought it was more like one of those huge, cheap Chinese buffet restaurants, the kind my family would go to before my mother died. A mix of both, I decided.

There was a traditional bar counter (two drink maximum, I would find out), and restaurant-like tables and chairs. The smell of fried chicken wings lingered. But there were also podiums scattered throughout, as well as what looked like exercise equipment, and Japanese screens, and ropes hanging from the ceiling and walls in haphazard locations. Here and there workmen were puttering around.

I realized that Vincenzo was watching me as I looked around, his head tilted, a slight smile on his face. "Sorry, sir," I muttered. He led me on a zigzag path through the jumble. As we neared what I later learned was the front, customer entrance to the ballroom, a man came in carrying a large box. Vincenzo stopped him with a gesture, and the man put the box on the floor and opened it. At first I thought it was full of snakes, but in fact it was full of whips, made of dark, twisted leather.

Vincenzo picked one up with a nod toward the workman and snapped it, making me jump. "These are fine quality," the deliveryman said to him, a trifle obsequiously.

"Hmm," Vincenzo grunted. "All snap and no strength, these."

"Oh, no, Mr. Dragna," the delivery man protested. "Let me demonstrate for you." He picked up a whip and turned meaningfully towards me. I involuntarily stepped back, behind Vincenzo, as if he would protect me.

In fact, Vincenzo raised his hand menacingly towards the delivery man. "Try it on her and you'll regret it," he said. "This one is undamaged goods."

The man immediately dropped the whip, and it fell to the floor with a dull thud. "Sorry, I really am," he babbled. "I didn't know."

Vincenzo gave him his quarter smile. "No harm done," he said. "These whips are fine for our floor models. Excite the men, keep the girls fresh. That's why I ordered them." He picked up the whip from the floor, caressed it for a moment, tossed it back in the box, and strode out the door. I had to trot to catch up, humiliated at the look the delivery man gave me.

The foyer was like the concierge area of a hotel, with a long desk with room for at least five clerks behind it. There were cubbies for keys. Vincenzo gave a nod to the lone man behind the desk, who was paging through a three-ring binder. Vincenzo led me behind the desk and into an office.

Two windows looked out onto a small courtyard. There were benches and a couple of picnic tables in it, but no people. A big and ponderous desk was in front of us, facing the room, with stacks of papers in neat piles and a computer with a shooting star screensaver. The desk had a model sandbox on it, about a foot square, with real sand, and miniature shovels, pails, and rakes. Someone had raked the sand into neat rows. The wall on the far side behind the desk contained three bookshelves, divided by the windows. Most of the shelves were filled with labeled binders, but my eyes were too blurry from crying to read them.

To my left was a living room-like area, with a sofa and two armchairs. They were, I noticed, covered with cloth, not leather.

It was the walls on that side of the room that surprised me the most. I had somehow expected whips, or at least swords, to be ceremoniously hung there. But instead, the walls were decorated with lovely photographs--a beam of light through a single leaf; a rock on a mountain that, with its crags and bushes, looked so like a human head it could have been carved; a huge wave lusciously about to break.

Vincenzo watched me take in the room with his quarter smile and then gestured to one of the armchairs. I sat awkwardly, jumping when my hand brushed my own naked thigh. I did not know what to do with my arms.

"Relax," he said in a voice that was soft and kind. My eyes filled with tears again, and stung with a sharp throbbing. I rubbed them with both hands. While I did this, Vincenzo had sat on the footstool of my armchair. With a gentleness utterly belied by everything he had said and done to me until now, he took my hands from my face and held them in his until I looked at him, still crying.

"You don't have to do this," he said. "Everything I said before still goes. We'll protect you and you won't have to pay us back, ever."

At first I could not figure out what he was talking about. But then I remembered, he had made the same offer earlier, before I signed the contract. "And my father?" I said hoarsely.

Vincenzo's voice was deep and strong. "Your father doesn't deserve you. He doesn't deserve this. He's not worth it."

I didn't say anything. I knew that, for me, there was no choice.

Vincenzo was still holding my hands. He watched me for a minute. "You know what I'm saying is true, don't you?" he asked.

I nodded.

"But you'll give up everything for him?"

Suddenly it was important to me to explain to him. I tried to keep my voice low and even. "When my mother died, I promised her I would take care of him, and my brothers," I said.

Vincenzo looked at me appraisingly. "She didn't mean this," he said.

I had no reply. My mind was made up.

Vincenzo said, "By tomorrow it will be too late to ever go back."

"It was too late when I signed the contract," I said.

Vincenzo rolled his eyes at that, a gesture I already knew was completely uncharacteristic for him. "You can always break the contract," he said, "and we'll go after your father. But if you stay, tonight you'll be broken in, and nothing will ever undo that."

"Then let's get it over with," I said.

Vincenzo gave a double take when I said this, and then a snort of laughter. And then he looked sad. "I hope you keep your spunk," he said softly, more to himself than to me. Nobody had ever accused me of having anything remotely related to spunk before.

"Did you eat today?" Vincenzo asked, with his soul piercing look again. I nodded. I had had the same breakfast bar I ate every morning.

Vincenzo said, in the soft gentle voice that belied his words, "When I ask you a yes or no question you will answer 'Yes, sir' or 'No, sir.'"

When he said this I felt a "ping" in my clitoris, the same tingling feeling I had first known when I was a little girl watching some teenage boys force a girl their age to sit in a mud puddle while she struggled. After that, I sometimes felt it when I watched a cruel scene on tv, like a hanging in a western. But I had never connected the feeling with my own life. "Yes, sir," I said, and Vincenzo raised one eyebrow slightly as if he had noticed the breathiness in my voice.