Chapter 26 – Dante
“Fuck.”
I’m only just now reading what Jessica brought for us to read.
It’s her final committee report, in the form of a letter that has been stamped as hand delivered earlier today.
Dear Senator Santara,
Please accept this letter as my final report to the Senate Ethics Committee. After spending over a month in an undercover investigation of The Fun House and specifically its owners, Dante and Marino Rossi, I have found no evidence of any illegal or unethical activity. In fact I have found the Rossi brothers to be upstanding members of the community who are wrongly judged based on their chosen business, which, I may note, hires many employees.
I realize that this was not the intended result of this operation and that the Committee will not be pleased. Therefore I officially offer my resignation. I cannot be part of a witch hunt into fellow community members, no matter what it might do for my career.
Sincerely,
Jessica Mason
“Holy shit,” Marino says, shaking his head as he stares at the report. “She didn’t go through with it after all.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him, quickly heading off his train of thought because it’s clearly only going to places that are no good. “The fact is that she came here in the first place to rat on us, and she never informed us of that. We can’t continue on with someone that disloyal.”
“But she was clearly coming here to inform us of why she had originally come, and to tell us that she hadn’t gone through with it.”
“Marino, just stop giving her the benefit of the doubt.”
He slams his hands on the same desk on which we’d just had Jessica tied up. I can’t help but feel a little bad about that. Sure, she’d seemed into it. And I was glad we could have one last time together no matter how mad I’d been at her.
But now that I found out what she had really come here to tell us, I figure that such a harsh punishment wasn’t exactly necessary. I could have at least let her come.
“Do you ever forgive anyone?” Marino asks me, causing me to look up at him in confusion.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“Well, I just forgave you of some pretty heinous things,” I tell him. “With Samantha? When you called multiple times and begged me to forgive you?”
“That’s not the same,” I quickly say. “You’re not in love with Samantha anymore. It had happened in the past. Jessica ripped my fucking heart out.”
He looks at me differently now, as if calling me on a bet.
“I knew it,” he says. “You really do love her.”
“I did love her,” I correct him. “But yes.”
“You’ve never loved anyone before,” he says. “Except for me, of course. And you can’t find it in your heart to forgive her? Even after she quit her job for you?”
“That’s the least she should have done.”
Now I’m punching the desk in anger. Why is he being so irrational? He’s supposed to be the brains of the operation and he’s trying to convince me to stay hung up on someone who is clearly disloyal.
Or is this just my fucking brain’s way of trying to disentangle my heart from hers? From theirs?
“She never should have come here to try to fuck with us,” I tell him. “That can’t be undone. Never.”
“You’d do anything to avoid risk when it comes to love, wouldn’t you?” Marino says.
He gets his coat.
“Where are you going?” I ask him.
“You might not want to forgive her, but I’m obviously better at that than you are,” he says.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Why are you being such an ass?”
“I’m just not letting her get away,” he says. “You can do what you want. For once I’m making my own decision.”
Part of me is mad at him but part of me is proud of him. My “little brother,” the closest thing to family that I’ve ever had, has finally grown up. And he’s forcing me to do something that I know is good for me but that I just didn’t want to admit.
“Fine,” I tell him. “But I still have a club to run.”
“You do that,” he says, on his way out the door. “I have a relationship to save. Or at least two-thirds of it.”