Chapter Seven
“Ms. McDowell? We’ve arrived,” Jake announced from the driver’s seat.
“Can you, like, not call me that? Yasmin,” she corrected.
Jake inclined his head. “Yasmin then. I’ll be out here waiting.”
She got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk facing for a few moments the apartment she’d shared with Larry. Dread filled her belly. Why did she come here? Because she’d been worried about him? No, that wasn’t it. She breathed in and out and entered the building. Yasmin went inside the elevator, and in moments, stood in front of her old unit.
Yasmin still had her key. She took it out from her purse, halted, and pressed her ear to the door. The TV, at max volume, didn’t surprise her.
“Fuck that!” Larry’s drunken shout didn’t either. He didn’t even notice when she opened the door. Yasmin stood by the doorway, not putting another foot in. She glimpsed him, slouched in his favorite armchair, beer in one hand. More empty bottles lay scattered on the dirty carpeting. Looking at the peeling wallpaper, the second-hand furniture, felt worse than being in Carver’s apartment.
This place had never been home. Neither was the apartment she rented back at the city she tried to put roots in. In both places, she worked her ass off, at two jobs to support herself, then her sad excuse of a father, too, so that she had little time for herself. Larry barked out a few more drunken ramblings as his favorite football team scored another goal. He didn’t even notice her standing there. No surprise. When she’d lived here, she felt invisible most of the time unless he hollered at her to get more beer.
Carver had asked her a question about happiness, and she couldn’t look him in the eye and give him a straight answer. No, she hadn’t been happy in a long time.
“Sweetheart? That you?” Larry’s voice took her aback.
He hadn’t called her that, not since her mother’s death. Larry even grabbed the remote to turn the TV off. He never did that either. Most of the time, he kept the TV on, as if he wanted to drown out any other noise. Despite her misgivings, she shut the door behind her and entered the living room. For a moment, hope flared in her heart. Maybe she was seeing the side of him that he’d buried along with her mother. Perhaps he could be the man she remembered in her childhood before her mother died—except this could be a ruse, too. This wasn’t the first time he tried milking sympathy from her.
Hardening her heart, Yasmin entered his line of sight but didn’t elect to sit down. She nearly stepped on more bottles. She pushed them aside with her foot with a grimace and finally looked at her old man, at the stranger she no longer recognized.
“What do you want, Larry?”
Her words sounded harsher than she intended, but she couldn’t keep the anger from seeping out. Yasmin crossed her arms.
“You have every right to be pissed off at me,” he began.
“Pissed? You were ready to sell me out to a scumbag like Anatoli to pay off your debts.” She practically shouted out the words, but she didn’t care. It felt like the weight in her chest lessened a little. Yasmin anticipated some form of backlash from him, his usual slur of abusive words, but she never expected him to flinch.
“Oh God,” he whispered, burying his face into his hands.
“Jesus. Are those tears? Give me a break.”
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t what? You wanted me to come with you for a reason, didn’t you?”
He sobbed harder now. “I—I did. I heard Anatoli liked curvy women and you—”
“Then that’s all I wanted to hear from you. I can’t believe I wasted so many years, trying to keep my promise to Mom, but I can’t do it anymore, Dad. Better get that ass off that chair and find a job so you can start paying off what you owe to Anatoli and don’t bother contacting me again.”
“Yasmin, please. If you can talk to Carver—”
Not wanting to hear anymore, she turned her heel and slammed the door on her way out. It hurt, she realizing, clutching at her chest on her way down the elevator. Yasmin had stuck around Larry, desperately hoping he’d change and prove her wrong, but she couldn’t be around him any longer. Larry was toxic, and it was about time she finally cut him off from her life.
Yasmin had no parents. They’d both died when her mom lost her battle to cancer, taking her real father with her. As she emerged from the building, she thought she’d feel shitty for leaving things like that, but she didn’t. It felt like a final resolution. Jake saw her and finished his smoke, opening the car door for her.
He didn’t say anything as he got behind the wheel. By confronting her father for the last time, Yasmin had slammed that chapter of her life close. Maybe the next part, she could write with Carver.
****
“These shipments will arrive in four weeks…” Benny was saying, but Carver barely processed his words.
He glanced at his phone and opened the text update from Jake. When Jake informed him Yasmin wanted to get out of the apartment, it stirred up all of his protective feelings. Carver had been tempted to order Jake to keep her inside his place, but she wasn’t a secret he wanted to hide or a fragile bird whose wings he wanted to clip so he could keep her forever.
So, despite his misgivings, he let it be. Carver trusted Jake, an ex-Marine who’d been loyal to him and his organization for years, but he’d been tempted to send out a small army to watch his woman. Carver knew his enemies would start circling like sharks who scented blood in the water once they found out he finally cared about someone. He didn’t see her as his weak link though, because he’d built an entire empire from the dirt to make sure she’d get taken care of. Yasmin would be untouchable, because she was his.
“Boss?” Benny prodded.
He waved at Benny to continue. Carver didn’t miss the looks that passed between Sal and Rio, two of his most trusted who were more like brothers to him and who’d been with him since the start of his ascension to become the most wanted and powerful man of the city. No doubt they’d heard the rumors, so he let Benny finish his projections for the next month and dismissed him.
“Carver, what’s this we hear about you keeping some curvy beauty at your place?” Sal asked, lighting a smoke.
At least Sal didn’t make the error of calling her a bitch, or other worse names. He intended to let everyone know, starting right now, just how important Yasmin was to him. If anyone dared touch her, or so much as looked at her wrong, they were dead. Carver didn’t care how possessive that made him appear, but when it came to her, nothing was off the table.
“I heard you went a little nuts around Anatoli,” Rio pointed out.
“Anatoli has a big fucking mouth,” he said calmly.
Rio scratched his head. “It’s just, nothing like this ever happened before, you know?”
“Yasmin is special to me, because she’s my woman, and she’s going to continue my legacy by carrying my children.”
Sal coughed and nearly choked on his smoke. “Fuck, you’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Completely. So, if I find out someone in my inner circle’s disrespecting her, or giving her a hard time, I’ll skin them personally and stuff their balls down their throat.”
“Jesus Christ, Carver. When you talk like that—hell. You’re serious about this chick, aren’t you?”
Carver cracked his knuckles. “Now that that meeting’s over, get back to work. I’m taking the day off.”
If his announcement about Yasmin didn’t shock them, this one did.
“You’ve never done that either,” Sal mumbled. “But don’t worry, we’ll spread the word. We want what’s best for you, too, and if this woman could do that, then good.”