Chapter 7 - The Price of Fifty Dollars
The neon sign of *The Rusty Anchor* flickered weakly through the pre-dawn fog of Chicago’s South Side, buzzing like an angry hornet.
Inside the dive bar, the air was thick with the stench of stale draft beer, fried grease, and old defeat. It was five in the morning. The only patrons left were three hardcore alcoholics slumped over their glasses at the end of the bar, and my brother Tyler, who sat at a sticky booth in the back, counting a small pile of wrinkled ten-dollar bills.
Across from him sat my father, snoring softly with his forehead resting on the formica table, an empty bottle of cheap rye whiskey clutched in his dead-weight hand.
The front door chimed as Vincent pushed it open.
The two of us stepped out of the rain and into the amber gloom. Vincent wore his long black tailored wool overcoat, his silver-streaked hair damp from the mist, his jaw set in stone. He didn't look like a customer; he looked like an executioner who had accidentally walked into a preschool.
I walked half a step behind him, dressed in an oversized black trench coat Vincent had procured from a boutique lock-box, my chin held high, the digital relay humming softly in my left ear.
Tyler looked up from his money, annoyance flaring across his bloated, red face. "We’re closed, pal. Get the hell out before I call the—"
The words died in his throat.
His bloodshot eyes traveled from the expensive cut of Vincent’s coat, to the broad shoulders, to the cold, predatory gray eyes, and finally settled on me.
Tyler’s jaw dropped. The cigarette dangling from his lower lip fell onto his lap, burning a hole through his grease-stained jeans. He scrambled to brush it off, his face turning the color of curdled milk.
"E... Elena?" Tyler stammered, his voice rising an octave. "What... what are you doing here? Who is this guy?"
My father stirred at the noise. He lifted his head slowly, his eyes bleary, a line of dried drool running from the corner of his mouth.
"Tyler, shut the hell up..." my father mumbled, rubbing his swollen eyes. "Tell the bartender another round..."
Then he saw Vincent.
My father had spent forty years crawling around the fringes of the Chicago mob, placing illegal bets on horses, running small-time numbers, and borrowing money from men with broken noses. He knew the faces of the bosses. Every small-time degenerate in the city kept Don Moretti’s face burned into their memory the way sailors memorized the shape of a reef.
My father’s breath hitched. He tried to stand, but his knees buckled instantly, his thighs slamming into the underside of the table, sending the empty rye bottle crashing to the floor.
"D... Don Moretti," my father choked out, his hands flying up in a pathetic, defensive surrender. "Sir! Mr. Moretti! We... we didn't expect you. The paperwork... the lawyer said the debt was settled! We signed everything! She’s yours!"
Vincent didn't say a word.
He didn't shout. He didn't pull a gun.
He simply walked to the booth with slow, deliberate steps. Every step he took echoed in the empty bar like the tolling of an iron bell. The bartender, an old man with three teeth and a dirty rag, took one look at Vincent’s profile, quietly dropped his rag, walked into the back storage closet, and locked the door from the inside.
Vincent reached the booth. He looked down at Tyler.
"Out," Vincent said.
The word wasn't loud, but the sheer, abyssal weight behind it made Tyler scramble out of the vinyl booth on his hands and knees, whimpering like a kicked dog, backing away until his spine hit the cigarette vending machine against the wall.
Vincent slid into the booth opposite my father. He unbuttoned his overcoat, resting his massive forearms on the sticky table.
My father was trembling so violently the ice in the half-melted glasses was rattling. "Mr. Moretti... please. Whatever she did... if she was disrespectful... you can take her back! You can do whatever you want to her! Just don't hurt me! I gave her to you! Fifty dollars! That’s all I asked for!"
Vincent tilted his head. He tapped the small, flesh-colored earpiece in his right ear, as if listening to an invisible choir.
"Fifty dollars," Vincent repeated softly, the baritone vibrating through the wood of the booth.
He reached into his breast pocket.
He pulled out a crisp, brand-new fifty-dollar bill and laid it perfectly flat on the center of the table.
My father stared at the bill, his eyes darting frantically between Andrew Jackson’s face and Vincent’s dead-eyed gaze. "I... I don't understand, sir..."
"You sold me a queen," Vincent said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "A woman who took a bullet for me. A woman who pulled iron from my skull while your son hid behind a bottle. You thought she was worth fifty dollars."
Vincent leaned forward, his gray eyes pinning my father to the seat like an insect on a display board.
"Eat it."
The room went dead silent.
My father blinked, a nervous, pathetic chuckle escaping his dry lips. "Sir? Ha... haha... you’re joking, right?"
Vincent didn't blink. He reached out with his left hand, caught my father by the back of his greasy hair, and slammed his face down into the formica table with the force of a hydraulic press.
*CRACK!*
My father shrieked as his nose shattered, blood spraying across the laminate, pooling around the edges of the fifty-dollar bill.
"Eat it," Vincent whispered into his ear. "Every thread. Every drop of ink. Swallow it, Marcus. Or my wife will tell me which of your fingers to break first."
My father was weeping, sobbing snot and blood, his hands clawing at the table. He reached out with trembling, bloody fingers, picked up the saturated fifty-dollar bill, shoved it into his mouth, and began frantically chewing the cotton-linen paper, gagging as the ink and his own blood choked his throat.
Beside the vending machine, Tyler let out a strangled whimper and bolted for the front door.
I didn't even look at Vincent.
I took two steps, grabbed an empty, heavy beer pitcher from the adjacent table, and hurled it with pinpoint, vicious precision across the room.
The thick glass struck Tyler square in the back of his knee.
His leg buckled with a sickening snap. Tyler tumbled forward, his chin hitting the concrete entryway, screaming in agony as he clutched his shattered patella.
I walked over to my brother.
I stood over him, looking down at the boy who had spent ten years calling me worthless, the boy who had stolen my mother’s jewelry while she was vomiting from chemotherapy, the boy who had laughed when my father traded me for five ten-dollar bills.
Tyler looked up at me, tears streaming down his face, clutching his ruined leg. "Elena... Elena, please... I’m your brother! We’re blood! Tell him! Tell him to stop!"
I knelt down beside him. I reached out, took the dirty pocketknife he always carried from his belt loop, opened the rusted blade, and cleanly cut the silver chain from around his neck—the chain that held my mother’s silver wedding band, which he had stolen the day she died.
I slipped the ring onto my own finger.
"You’re not my brother, Tyler," I whispered, the words calm, clear, and utterly devoid of pity. "You’re just a debt that’s finally been paid."
I stood up and looked back at the booth.
My father was on his knees, retching, having swallowed the last shred of the bill, clutching his ruined face in the puddle of beer and blood.
Vincent rose from the booth. He adjusted his cuffs, smoothed the lapels of his coat, and walked over to where I stood. He looked down at Tyler, then at my father, his expression completely blank.
"If I ever see either of you within the city limits of Chicago again," Vincent said, his voice echoing through the quiet bar, "I won't send men. I will come myself. And I will make you eat the next fifty dollars one coin at a time."
Vincent took my hand.
His fingers closed over mine, warm, protective, and unshakeable.
May you like
We walked out of the bar into the gray dawn of Chicago, leaving my past broken and bleeding in the puddle behind us.
***
