Chapter 3 Frank

• “Hey. Ma!” I can’t believe that my mom had to call me right at that moment. I already had her cornered. She was actually very fun to play with. One minute I was really pissed and the next minute I was over whatever it was that made me angry. I couldn’t help it, there was just something about her that was very amusing.
• “Masquerade Party? What masquerade party?” I was too distracted to even listen to what my ma was telling me.
• “Okay, I didn’t forget about it, I just had a lot on my mind ma.” I absolutely forgot about it. I knew there was going to be some form of celebration, but I really didn’t expect them to go all out. It was supposed to be the birthday celebration of one of my uncles on my dad’s side and we all had to be in attendance, or else all hell would break loose.
• Honestly, I don’t care if hell breaks loose or freezes over. Anything could happen to any of them, and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. I am only doing this because of my ma. She’s the only reason I can stand staying in the same room with my dad and his fake ass family.
• “Ma, I told them I would come, I just had a lot on my plate today. Okay, okay. I’ll find a way to get there. I know it’s at their place in Staten Island. Okay fine, I’ll be there.” My ma can be such a pest, but in a good way.
• “Stop stressing Ma and keep them from asking about me till I get there. Give them some random excuse till I come. Thanks, Ma. I love you too Ma. Bye!”
• This isn’t what I had in mind for today. Nothing went as planned. Now I have to add tolerating a group of shit ass people who will give me shit for my life decisions tonight. On top of that, I have to do it with a freaking smile on my face and act like I fucking miss them and care about them even though I don’t. They all know that I don’t care about any of them.
• I would usually avoid these gatherings and have my dad nag my ma about her bringing me up poorly. I usually tried to avoid my extended family and anything that made me come in contact with them.
• As funny as it sounds, I’m being forced to attend these gatherings now because my father holds my future over my head. I know it sounds funny. I come from money and own my bar. So how the hell does he have the power to hold my trust fund over my head?
• Well, it’s simple. I fucked up too much. So much so that the Feds got fed up with having my dad bail me out and they made me sign all my assets to my dad. He is only allowed to release them when my parole officer feels like I have done enough good deeds or something like that, or, if I ran a legitimate job for five years, without getting into any form of trouble during that time.
• I decided on the latter. There’s no telling how many years it’s going to take my parole officer to see that I am clean and have turned a new leaf, especially with the high possibility of my father exerting his influence over my parole officer. You got that right; my father believes that everyone has a price and he doesn’t hesitate to use that to his advantage.
• I’m two and a half years away from getting my life back. And this time, it’s going to be much better, because I realized how much of an asshole I was especially to the point of stressing my sweet ma. Who the hell am I kidding?! Once I get the feds off my back, it’s going to be payback time for people like my Maria Lucia my dad, and his unbearable brothers.
• I’ve always been the black sheep because, unlike my older brother, I’ve always known what kind of person our dad is. I can’t believe that my brother still kisses his ass at his age. Well, he’s always been weak.
• Overlooking the way he treated our poor mom. I really shouldn’t go down this train of thought. I have to fess up and get ready for today’s shit show. But before I do that, I have to ensure that everything at the bar is going smoothly.
• I proceed to call Antonio, my second-in-command and best friend. Antonio and I go way back to when we were still kids. We were both born into very wealthy families. We were both forced to live lives that weren’t really ours.
• Antonio unlike me was the only son and last born out of five children. Like me, Antonio’s looks let him geet away with anything, even thou he’s got a nasty personality. We both realized early on in life that we weren’t cut out for the lives our families created for us and we sought to create a life we love for ourselves.
• No one introduced the other to anything. I will say we were both discovered this shady path at the same time. It all started on the day Antonio and I started high school. We got so bored of what was happening in school that we snuck out towards the end of the school, during gym class.
• Having no destination in mind, Antonio told me about his uncle who was a biker and was into bike racing and that was because a motorcycle passed us. Antonio’s uncle had a garage which we went to and that was where our love for bikes came from.
• Not only did we end up falling in love with bikes, but we had the opportunity of meeting experienced racers of both bikes and cars alike. We also learned a lot from the smallest to the biggest things about the care of them and how to ride them.
• Antonio and I would often get involved in a lot of races, from bikes to sports cars and trucks. We were also into drift races. It was in the heat of this and my strong passion to go against my father that we got involved with gangs.
• I wasn’t one to listen, so I got into more trouble. We did mini raids, had street fights, and most of our racing competitions became a gang thing. It was always one gang against the other. We had fallouts with each other because of girls. Oh what fun and trouble we would get in.
• That was where I met her, with fierce brown eyes that had a thousand secrets hidden in them. With petite features from her head to the very last toenail on her legs. Her hair was the only thing other than her eyes that spoke to one’s soul, very voluminous and luscious.
• Well, her looks were just enough to draw you in and keep you wanting more. But she was like a rose, so pretty yet, when held close would pierce your skin till blood comes out. ‘Bella Rosa’, was her nickname. She was a lot more than a pretty face, took me some time to get close to her, but I didn’t know she was the devil’s spawn. She dragged me down deeper than I could imagine till I saw her for who she was, the Devil in stilettos!
• Why am I reminiscing about a past better left forgotten? That’s what I’m going to do. Leave it where it is, in the past.
• As soon as I was done checking on Antonio and I was satisfied with the progress report, I gave him instructions for the night as well as the mantel to handle all issues in my abscence. Now, I’m about to go and be Mama’s good boy for the night.
• I took an abrupt turn and headed in the direction of the harbor and at that instant, I went back to thinking about my encounter with the woman I bumped into earlier.
• I’ll be honest with myself; I was lost in thoughts and didn’t see where I was heading till we bumped into each other. I couldn’t help but be reminded of how shitty my day had been and not meaning to, I poured out all my anger on her. I didn’t even let her finish whatever it was she was saying.
• “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Yup, there it is, my pent-up rage from the shitty day I had, starting to rear its ugly head.. I couldn’t help the nasty laugh that came out next. It was a mixture of my frustration from all the shit I faced today and the shit to come tonight.
• I saw the look of shock pass her face as the next words came out of my mouth.
• “You really must be fucking blind or dumb to think that I will take that bullshit right now!” The look that crossed her face reminded me of Tiffany’s face whenever my dad calls her name.
• This is batshit crazy! I can’t stand it when a woman is close to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m intentionally rude to them. I don’t know who she offended today, but she must be unlucky to be at the receiving end of my anger. Then I saw her face change in a split second, it looked like she had what some would call a ‘resting bitch face’.
• “I really don’t know why you are pissed and swearing at me, I was just trying to apologize to you because I felt bad that I hit you. But looking at it, it goes both ways. You didn’t see me coming, neither did I see you coming. If you aren’t blind like you just rudely accused me, you should have seen me, so I guess we’re both blind then!” I thought she was going to back down or cower in fear, but instead, she tried to hit me back in her own way. Cute. I think.
• She reminded me of Tiffany a lot but there was just something about her that I just couldn’t shake off. And it didn’t like how I usually feel with Tiffany. This felt really different like I needed to protect her.
• But from what? She’s already a very feisty thing on her own. I am pretty much sure she could wreck a man if given a chance. Wreck a man. Crazy enough, that word was enough to bring back memories of all the shit I had gone through with Maria.
• I was reminded of why I couldn’t stand the opposite sex. I had this urge to act out of line and I did just that. I stepped on her hand as she bent to pick her stuff off the ground. It wasn’t hard enough to leave a bruise just a little bit of hurt to dwindle whatever it was I thought I felt.
• She isn’t Tiffany, just some random girl who might turn out to be worse than Maria. I am not about to fucking see her as anything more than that.
• “What the hell, get your foot off me, I’m not some fucking servant that you can treat like a rag. I’m going to have you sued if you don’t get off in the next ten seconds!” Oh, I felt her tugging under my foot. But I sure as hell wasn’t to give in to her little drama. So, I bent forward low enough to be on the same level with her ear and whispered slowly but loud enough to be heard clearly.
• “Try it, I dare you.”
• I watch her face go through all kinds of emotions, trying to process my statement I presume and the face I am beginning to get familiar with popped up, her bitch mood face. In what I guess was supposed to be a warning tone, she went on…
• “Get your foot off my hand or I’m going to scream rape and tear my clothes right this instant. Let’s see how you get out of that since you think you’re so high and mighty.”
• Oh, if this was supposed to be something I paid for like a movie or a show of some sort I knew I sure as hell was about to get my money’s worth. She really had no idea who I was or what I was capable of.
• I was about to give her an abrupt reply when the sound of Frank Sinatra’s ‘You Are The Sunshine of My Life’ came up. There is only one person whom that ringtone was assigned to and it’s no other person than my Ma.
• Immediately the sound came on and she burst into a fit of laughter. Yes, it’s definitely a funny sight seeing a man of my caliber having such a song as his ringtone, more or less knowing it. I wasn’t about to back down easily.
• “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I am certain I took her by surprise because she looked like she was trying to gather her thoughts.
• “Frank Dinero, I’ll be waiting for your lawsuit. Send it to ‘The Anchor Bar’ in the next three days at most. Anything later and I won’t take you seriously.” Then I left having the last say as I picked up my mom’s call to signify the end of our conversation.
• Approaching the harbor, I heard the sound of someone crying. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was looking for the location of the sound and that’s I saw them. Curled up in a corner and bawling their eyes out.
• I tried hard to figure out who the person was. But judging from the size, it was female. I just couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a woman. In that instant, had she heard my thoughts, she raised her head and turned in my direction.
• I recognized her instantly; it was little miss feisty from earlier. I wasn’t about to be caught staring, so I changed my expression and turned away. I couldn’t help but feel odd. It felt like something was drawing me to her to try to give her some kind of comfort and wipe her tears away.
• I really shouldn’t be getting myself involved with her or any other woman I don’t know. I don’t need the drama. So, I did the best thing I could do for myself in that situation. I turned and went down the pier, putting distance between me and her.
• At the end of the pier, I was approached by the guy in charge, and he started apologizing profusely for the lateness of our family’s boat. I was tempted to let it get to me and flare out. But I remembered in that instant that I had something more to deal with and could not afford to let any form of anger out tonight. So, I signaled for him to follow me down the pier.
• Like some kind of magic, we noticed that the boat was really close, so I decided to wait.
• Five minutes later, I was aboard the catamaran, and I quickly headed into the bathroom to have a shower and get ready for the night’s masquerade. A whole fifteen minutes later, I was done in the bathroom, about to head to the bed to get my clothes, and that’s when I heard, a loud piercing scream from the next room. With a towel around my waist, I rushed out to find the cause of the scream. Immediately I opened the door, I couldn’t help the shocked expression on my face when I saw who it was.
• She really was the last person I expected to see here.
• “What the fuck are you doing here?!”