#santity

I approached the bank, clutching the file folder in my hand. Its contents were papers from the court offices, acknowledging the fact that I was recently divorced from my venomous, mooch of an ex-husband. I needed them only to remove him from accessing my bank account, so he couldn’t pay for one of his little sluts’ new pair of tits.

An exasperated sigh escaped my lips as I reminisced on the last four, horrific years. John and I had met at my work and fell in love instantly. Fresh out of high school, I had just become an intern at a local newspaper’s office and hoped to have a solid job as a journalist at the company by the end of the year. John worked in the mail room when we first started dating. I should’ve seen the signs then- no real drive to amount to anything, no goals, flirting around with any girl that looked his general direction. Soon, we were married, he began bouncing from job to job, while I moved up from being an intern to a secretary to working on a small editorial section. John definitely had way more free time than I did, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to keep up with his three other girlfriends.

The railing was cold against the brisk winter air as I brushed my fingers along it to walk up the steps. Perhaps if I had been paying attention to the signs that John was no good for me, I would’ve never said yes to marrying him in Vegas, I would’ve never allowed him to cheat on me, then use me as a meal ticket.

I pushed passed the revolving doors to my bank, the tile hard beneath my heels.

Perhaps if I paid attention at all, I would’ve heard the men behind me carrying guns and bags.

“Everyone, freeze!” A deep voice boomed from behind me.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

“On the ground! Now!” He shouted again.

Lowering myself to my knees, I watched as everyone tried their best not to panic. Fantastic. I thought to myself, what a day to have to go to the bank.

“Cell phones! Give them up!” A different voice shouted.

From the sound of their footsteps, there was about three or four of them. I felt cool metal press against the side of my head as one of the men held out a basket for me to drop my phone in. I did so, without hesitation.

“Ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the inconvenience but we have a job to do, everyone does as we ask and no one gets hurt.” A hand touched the back of my head, stroking my hair. I didn’t want to look up to see the eyes of my capture, too terrified to move. “Don’t,” he continued, “and I’ll pick you off one by one and make an example of you. Everyone understand?”

There was no response.  

The robber growled, “I asked you a question.” Click. “Do you understand?” And suddenly there was a defining sound of bullets being shot into the air above me. I covered my ears and screamed as glass from the lights fell around my body. I could hear other screams from the hostages too.

“Good.” The man said. “Boys, get to work.”

Three black, clothed figures walked around me carrying dangerous looking weapons. One appeared to be a woman, short but held herself as if she was ready to pounce on anyone that got out of line. Then two more men, one larger than the other. All of them wearing ski masks, all of them moving quickly to finish whatever job they needed to do.

“Did I scare you sweetheart?”

It was the man who had been giving the orders earlier, he knelt to level himself with my face.

I shook my head ‘no’ but couldn’t hide the fact that the rest of me was terrified.

“You got a nasty cut on your cheek, darlin’. Lemme take a look-see.” His gloved hand gently took my chin and he observed the cut on my face. It was stinging from where the glass had sliced my skin open. I could feel blood dripping onto my hand.

“Say, sweetheart. You look familiar…” his blue eyes squinted over my features. “Wish I could say where I knew your pretty face from.”

I didn’t like the way he was touching me or trying to be nice to me. Not at all. So, I did what any rational thinking girl would do when faced with a possibly dangerous man that made her uncomfortable; I bit him.

Just in the right spot too. My teeth clenched down over the exposed skin on his wrist. The masked man screamed as I broke the skin, tasting blood in my mouth.

“Fucking, bitch!” He screamed.

I spit his blood onto the floor, “Don’t touch me!” My voice shouted back at him.

“Oh, I’m going to do much more than that, you little cunt!” His hand struck my face, causing my head to reel.

“E!” One of the men interrupted him. “Stop!” He walked over to us, putting his body in between our fight.

“You heard the boss, Wolfe, if anyone gives us trouble-”

“Yeah but do you recognize her?”

They both stared down at me for a few heart beats while I glared at them, head aching all the while.

“It’s her!” The man called ‘E’ gasped.

“Yeah, we need to go, NOW!” Wolfe pleaded.

“He’s going to want to know,” E scratched the top of his mask. “He’s going to kill me for touching her.”

“Who’s ‘he’?” I spoke up finally, “Why do you guys look so scared suddenly?”

E crouched down again, “He is our boss. And He isn’t to be messed with. We’ll let him know we ran into you.”

“Come on boys, let’s go!” Wolfe called out for the other two who came around the corner with two full duffle bags.

I watched the four men go, but not before E turned around to address everyone in the bank. “Goodnight ladies and gents. Thank you for letting us steal from you, hope you’ve had a pleasant experience and have a wonderful day!”

----

I had never felt so happy to take a shower in my life. After spending all afternoon and most of the evening at the police station, being forced to run through the robbery repeatedly was maddening. The detective had asked me over and over again why the group of robbers had been talking to me, because, of course, the other witnesses swore that they saw us having a “long chat”.

The water poured over my skin and I played through everything that I had heard from the men working the case. Detective Rollins and his two partners Ambrose and Reigns had been looking into these men for some time. They seemed to think they were part of a crime organization and the four criminals were just henchmen.

“Sanity,” Detective Rollins had told me, “that’s what they call themselves. We’re not sure who exactly they’re working for, but we know it’s for one of the big bosses in town.”

“Big bosses?”

Detective Ambrose nodded, “There’s quite the underground network going on in our city. Most of the bosses have gotten away with keeping they’re identities as secrets, the rest of them are closely monitored by yours truly.” His smile was wolfish as he stared down at me.

“We just need anything you might be able to remember to identify these men,” Detective Reigns pushed his way in between Ambrose and I. “Features, names, anything.”

I pursed my lips together, trying to remember. “The shorter man was called ‘E’ but he did call one of the other guys ‘Wolf’ I think. There was a girl there, but I didn’t catch her name, nor did she speak to me. Then there was a larger man, he was terrifying.”

Rollins nodded, “Wolf, huh?”

“Does that mean something?” I asked.

“It might. Please, ma’am, just sit tight. We’ll have you out of here short amount of time.”

They walked off and they thought I was earshot. I bit my lip and listened the best I could to the quiet muttering on the other side.

“You think it’s him?” Reigns asked.

“He supposedly left town, Seth. We haven’t seen or heard from him in over a year.” Ambrose muttered.

Seth was quiet, I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head as the other men talked through everything.

Reigns’ voice sounded strained, “Is it worth checking into?”

“The thug we picked up the other day was muttering something about a return of the king,” Rollins mused. “He’s not part of the family, Ro, but have you heard any whispers.”

“Not from our family.” He said. “My father seems to think Joe is dead.”

Joe.

Such a popular name but something told me I needed to look into it. Getting out of the shower, I wrapped a towel around me and took one last deep intake of the steam that filled the bathroom before opening the door. I opened my laptop up to load up google.

Hours later, I was still at square one. All I knew was the name Joe as a previous mob boss in the city. There were plenty of articles written about crimes attached to his name. But there was no last name, no history on the man. It’s like he came from nothing and then disappeared when he was being investigated.

The last few articles prior to his disappearance kept referencing a turf war between his people and another mob who was ran by someone who was referred to as “The Demon Head”. There was nothing on this “Demon” either.

Fed up and exhausted I slammed my laptop shut and forced a nightshirt over my head only to slide under the covers to my bed. People on Facebook were sending me messages all day after seeing my face on tv earlier in the day at the bank robbery. I scrolled through them and read a few, until I passed out, phone in hand and my bedside lamp still on.

---

I sipped on my coffee as I sat inside my haven called the Java Spot. I had brought my laptop, hoping to be able to do more research on this ‘Joe’ but hadn’t gotten very far. Instead, I decided to respond to my facebook messages. Luckily, my boss had called me this morning and practically begged me to stay home for a few days. Michael promised I’d get paid time off that wouldn’t affect my vacation hours that I had been saving for a rainy day.

Most of the messages read the same; ‘Hope you’re doing okay!’, ‘Saw you on TV!’, ‘Thoughts and prayers’. Blah, blah, blah. Most of them seemed half-hearted or impassive. Hell, even my ex-husband messaged me asking if I was okay. I don’t think I’ve ever hit the ‘delete’ button so fast.

I pinched the bridge of my nose together, begging for a sign, for a lead, for anything pointing me in the direction I needed to go to find this man.

“Well, well, well,” I deep, soothing voice resounded through my ears. I looked up to see a familiar face with dark eyes in front of me. “(Y/N)(Y/L/N), it’s been a while.”

“Joel?” I smiled, jaw nearly on the floor. I damn near jumped out of my chair to wrap my arms around his neck and hug him. “Oh my God! It’s been 4 years since we graduated, and I thought you’d left town! It’s so good to see you.”

“Believe me, darling, the pleasure is all mine,” he pulled back to meet my eyes. His expression was soft, intimate, like we were the only two people in that coffee shop; maybe in the world.

Nuufolau Joel Seanoa, I hadn’t seen him since my high school graduation. He always went by Joel, unless you were family. Joel was the all state wrestling champ, salutatorian, and my ex-boyfriend. Our relationship was strange but comfortable. Seanoa managed to keep me from meeting his family for our whole three-year relationship, yet, my parents loved him. I never got over how supportive of me he was when I was working on the school paper and he was always the greatest listener and the way he touched me…

I cleared my throat, taking a step back from his embrace. “Sorry, I- uh…”

“Is this seat taken?” He asked interrupting me holding a hand out to the empty chair in front of me. He was wearing a black business suit with a paisley silver tie. He looked like he was heading into a very big meeting that would make him a lot of money.

“No, please! Sit!”

He glanced at my screen just before I shut it, “light reading?”

“Urm, you could say that. I was doing research for an article I’m writing.” It was only a small fib. Besides, who knows if I could actually write a story about this one day.

“How have you been, (Y/N)? I haven’t seen you since-“

“We broke up?” I asked with more spite in my voice than I intended.

Joel pretended not to notice but simply smiled, “Yes, well I was going to say, ‘Since we graduated’.”

I swallowed a bit, feeling guilty, “I- I didn’t mean…”

He held his hand up, “Please, (Y/n), I deserve it. There were… sensitive matters that I didn’t want to involve you in and it was incredibly selfish of me. Especially since you’re growing up even more beautiful than I could’ve even imagined.”

“Sensitive matters?”

Joel’s face never wavered, he held the same smirk on his face. “Yes, and I’m sorry I left you.” His dark brown eyes traced along my figure and his tongue flicked out against his lips, “Very sorry,” he muttered.

A shiver ran down my spine. A sudden desire to cover every inch of exposed skin came over me.

“You’re a journalist now?” He asked, breaking the silence. “I remember how much you loved being apart of the school newspaper when we were in high school. You wrote quite a few amazing works back then, I’ll bet you’re practically Louis Lane now.”

“God, I miss that stuffy journalism room in high school. Now I’m in an office and it’s crowded and full of people that constantly judge you. My boss, Michael Cole, he’s awesome though.”

Joel chuckled, “I remember how fond you were of that room.” His eyes met mine again, this time full of mischief. “We used to sneak off to that supply closet a few times a day.”

I bit my lip and blushed. Joel and I dated all through high school, up until the day after we graduated. We were inseparable, always next to each other. He was on the varsity wrestling team and I came to every match. When I was writing, he’d sit there patiently and watch as I worked, or proof read for me.

“You’re blushing an awful lot, beautiful,” He noted.

“It just feels like ages since then. We were quite naughty sneaking around the school and making out. Just a couple of horny teenagers.”

“You never let me get passed second base,” his smile was teasing.

“I was a prude back then.”

I got a raised eyebrow in response, “So not anymore?”

A nervous giggle slipped out, I bit my lip again to force the rest of it back.

“Don’t bite your lip,” he tilted his head. “I’d rather do that for you.”

This time I laughed, a full laugh. “That’s a sorry excuse for a pick-up line.”

“It was only plan A.” I felt his knee bump mine under the table.

I bumped it back, “So what, pray tell, is plan B?”

“To kidnap you.”

Gulp

There was silence between us that was tense. His hand reached out and brushed mine, “I do have to say, there is an ulterior motive behind me coming to see you.” Another pause, “I saw the news yesterday.”

I sighed, “Just please don’t say you’re sorry, or that you feel bad for me.”

His eyebrows knitted together, “I wouldn’t do that.”

My eyes rolled, “and why is that?”

“Because, someone who has been through so much doesn’t want sympathy, they want answers, they want justice. If I knew who this Eric fellow was that cut you… So reckless.” He squeezed my hand in attempt to comfort.

My heart slammed into my chest, “Eric?” Something flashed in front of his eyes, his smile grew. “I never gave a name to anyone but the cops, and it wasn’t Eric. Who’s Eric?” My head was screaming at me into a horrific realization. “E? Is E Eric?”

“Boss!” Another familiar voice interrupted us. A man charged in, mostly bald and thickly bearded. Our gazes met, and I froze. Blue eyes; the same ones from yesterday. He shook his head and turned his attention back to Joel. “Joe, we need to go. Now!”

I turned back to the man in front of me, “Joe? Joel, these are your… employees?”

He stood and adjusted his tie, “Darling, it’s time we have a talk.”

Panic slammed into my chest, my first reaction was to scream.

Joel- JOE held his hand up, “Don’t scream. We need to talk, but we have to go somewhere safe.”

My lips parted, I sucked in air.

“Do. Not. Scream.” He commanded, irises fading to black. My mouth snapped shut. “Now, I will escort you outside, we’ll get into my car, and we are going to go have a talk. This is Mr. Young, he will not hurt you, will you Eric?” He turned a glare to the man.

Eric quickly shook his head, “No sir, she’s in safe hands.”

“And if I don’t?” I asked Joe.

His face was emotionless. “Then I suppose I’ll have to drag you out of this coffee shop, kicking and screaming.”

“Thought you didn’t want to make a scene?” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“No, but I’m sure I can find a way to... persuade these wonderful people to refrain from calling the cops.”

“You’d pay them off?” I spat the question, “Not all of these people would take your money. There are good people in the world, Joe!”

His hands slammed down on the table, “As a journalist, you should know better than that. You should also know there are other ways to ensure silence from these folks.”

I felt the air catch my chest. My eyes darted around the room. How many of these people were good, honest people? Would Joe really hurt them or their families? A feeling of dread choked my heart, I would be to blame. My attention snapped back to Joe.

“Fine.”

“Come with me,” he said, placing his hand at the small of my back, guiding me towards the door. “I don’t want to make anymore of a scene, it’s time you know the truth.”

We walked out to the car, an all black Buick, Joe’s hand still lightly pressed against my blouse. I could feel his warmth, it prickled my flesh sending shivers through me. It was a confusing mix of emotions; comfort in an old friend’s touch and fear of the gangster looming over me.

—

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