Glass whirls on me, jabs a finger in my face. “God damn it, Duncan, is this your fault? Did you make my daughter run away?”
“No,” I say. “Get your fucking finger out of my face.”
His finger lingers there for a moment longer, but then he snaps it back and steps away. We’re in the living room at his house – I’ve never called it ‘home’ – and perhaps he is remembering the time he tried to shout at Dee, and I got in his way, put a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll talk to me with respect, boy,” he says, starting to shake. “I made you. Without me, you’d just be some rat on the street, some fucking lowlife addicted to meth. Don’t you forget that!”
I lick my lips, ball my fists, but control myself. “Are you sure she’s run away?”
“Her bank account has been emptied, and her belongings from her room packed. She also stole about thirty-thousand in cash from my office safe.”
“How do you know she packed her belongings? You went through her stuff?”
“When you have a child of your own, you’ll understand,” Glass spits at me. “Where the fuck did she go?”
“She can’t go where she wants?”
“Not without my permission!” he barks, huffing, turning around and starting to pace up and down the room. “How do you think it’s going to look? What about my reputation? Johnny Marino doesn’t even know where his own daughter is.”
“She’s an adult,” I tell him. “She can do what she likes.” I say it because I’m indignant on her behalf, but deep inside it rips me apart that she left.
That she left me.
“That fucking girl stole what’s mine!” Glass roars, slamming his fist down on the dining table. He drains his glass of brandy and with shaking hands pours another.
I don’t know what he means by that… stole what’s mine. Is he talking about the money? No… thirty-grand is nothing to him. This is more… personal.
“Did she say anything to you,” I ask him. Glass’ behavior is unsettling, and alarm sirens are wailing inside my mind. There’s something else going on. It’s time I fucking found out.
“No.” he says.
I know he’s lying right then and there. “I saw you pull her aside just before the fight.”
“Oh, that was nothing, just a talk.”
I raise an eyebrow. “About what, Glass?”
“None of your God damn business is what.”
We stew in silence for a moment. I can hear Frank outside in the corridor shifting his feet.
“Did I ever tell you the story of why they call me ‘Glass’?”
I meet his eyes. He’s told me a thousand times. He wants to tell it again.
“Yeah, you have.”
“I was going to be one of the best,” he says, ignoring me. He mimes a one-two jab-cross, ducks left then right. “I had the best technique, was quick as a fucking gazelle. But I could hit like a fucking charging rhino, let me tell you.”
I put my hands on my hips, pace up and down the room. I’m ignoring what he’s saying, I know the story back-to-front.
My mind is on Dee. Where would she go? Why would she leave? I’m certain her father has something to do with it, but I don’t know what.
I need to get him talking.
“I was going to go into the pros. Back then, boxing was all mob-controlled, not regulated like how it is now. You needed to get in with the big boys, you know what I mean? I started out as a scout for Accardo’s outfit. Him, Giancarno, all them boys ran everything here. This was back in the sixties, you wouldn’t know. They fixed the fucking election results for Cook County! I mean, these were big time gangsters. One day, he watches me get into a fist fight, and I just destroyed this guy. I was sixteen at the time, no older then when I found you.”
Glass points a finger at me, and his gold watch slides up his wrist. “Remember when I found you? Plucked you off the street, gave you a life?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Accardo said I had what it took to be a boxer. He had some men train me, and I was going to be one of the best. By the time I was eighteen I was getting ready to enter the pros, to do my first real gig when—” His voice trails off.
“When you broke your leg,” I say.
“Kicking a fucking football,” he says with a sigh. “Toe hit turf, and the shock fractured my tibia. After that, it was just one injury after another. Tore my ACL when I was nineteen, Achilles when I was twenty-one. Ripped my shoulder out three months later, then broke my left femur clean in half on a fucking skiing holiday. Skiing, Duncan! Fucking skiing.
“I was so broken up that by the time I was twenty-four, I could no longer fight. I never put a string of wins together long enough to get me any notice. Accardo left me by the wayside, turned his attention to better, younger men in his stable, ones who could fight, ones who could earn him money. That’s why they call me ‘Glass’. Like I’m made of glass, you know?”
“I get it,” I say.
He sighs again. This is his torture. This is all he cares about. “Fuck!” he spits, slapping the table.
I regard him, think to myself why now, of all times? Why did Dee choose now? I only needed just a few more fights, a bit more money, some wise investments, and we’d be living the life.
We’d have gone away together.
I’d have taken her anywhere she wanted to go.
But she left first. She left without me.
I ball my fist, dig my nails into my palm.
“So what could I do?” Glass shrugs, smacks his lips. “I went into business. I became a businessman. And… and I met Dee’s mother. Boxing… boxing became boring after Tyson was done. The underground scene dried up, too.”
But that coincided with the emergence of MMA, mixed martial arts, what I fight.
No… what I fought.
“I’m done fighting for you,” I say after a moment. Just like that, there’s a switch that’s been flicked in my mind. “I’m not getting in that cage for you anymore.”
Glass turns hard eyes on me. “You think so, huh?”
“I know so. I’m done, Glass. Finished. I’ve made you millions of dollars over the past two years. You got your money’s worth out of me.”
“You didn’t fair too poorly yourself,” he fires back.
“I fought for it. Spilled blood for it. Broke bones for it. I earned my share.”
“I control you,” Glass hisses, leaning forward. His tongue slithers out of his mouth. “I control your bank account, I control your life!”
“It’s over,” I tell him.
I’ve made up my mind. I’m done.
I’m finding Dee. I’m finding out just what the fuck is going on.
He’s about to shout something back at me, but he stops himself, peers at me. “This is about Deidre, isn’t it?”
“No,” I lie. “I’m just done.”
“Are you and her up to something? Are you running away together?”
I shake my head. I wish.
“You better not be fucking lying to me, Duncan, you ungrateful little shit. Because if you are I will hunt you down and I will kill you. And I’ll fucking hunt her down, too! Are you the father?”
There’s a pause. I blink. The father.
“What?”
“God damn it, Duncan, if you knocked up my fucking daughter I swear I’ll—”
I lose it. I throw my chair backward. It thuds loud on the carpet. I rush around the table, faster than Glass can get to his feet, and then I rip him from his chair, pin him against the wall with my elbow against his windpipe.
“Get out!” I shout at Frank now frozen in the doorway. “Or I swear I’ll crush his neck.”
Frank reaches for his gun, but Glass yells hoarsely, “Don’t fucking shoot him you idiot fuck, you’ll hit me, too!”
Frank lowers his weapon, and I turn to look Glass in the eyes.
“What father?”
He doesn’t reply.
“What fucking father, Glass?” I roar, picking him up and slamming him against the bookcase. “Is Deidre pregnant?”
“Yes, you little shit,” Glass hisses.
I widen my eyes. “Dee is pregnant?”
“Yes!”
“Why did you say she took what’s yours? Did she steal something from you? Apart from the money?”
“My grandchild!” The words bubble out of his mouth. “Nobody leaves my family. Nobody takes my family away!”
I shake my head at him. He wants Deidre’s kid? He wants… my kid.
“You were never the son I wanted, Duncan,” he spits at me. “You were never obedient enough.”
I throw him against the bookcase again in disgust, step back panting, hands on my hips.
That baby is my baby.
He wants to take my baby.
Why didn’t Dee tell me she had missed her period? Was pregnant? Why the fuck hadn’t I paid attention? I was too focused on preparing for the fighting… too…
Fuck!
“You’re the father, aren’t you,” Glass says, pointing at me.
“No,” I lie.
“Then why do you care so much?”
“Dee was my best friend,” I say. This time, it’s no lie. “But she never told me.”
“Women don’t tell men these things,” Glass says, shaking his head. “She didn’t tell me, either.”
I furrow my brow, cast an angry stare at him. “Then how did you find out?”
He doesn’t answer me. Instead he says, “I’m going to get my grandchild back. And my daughter. I’ll expect you to help me. She seemed to trust you.”
Obviously not enough, I think.
“I won’t help you, Glass,” I tell him.
“I should have left you in that alley you rat fuck. You take my money, take my hospitality, and now you turn on me? Fucking typical.”
“You got your return on your investment.”
I catch the eye-contact between Glass and Frank, and whirl around, strike Frank in the side of the head with the back of my fist. He goes down, drops his gun. I pick it up and unload it then place it on the coffee table, scatter the bullets across the carpet.
“Don’t send your boys after me,” I tell Glass.
Frank groans on the ground, gets up. “Damn it, Duncan! Why’d you have to hit me so hard?”
I put my hand on Frank’s shoulder, press on him. “I like you, Frank,” I say. “But don’t make me put you out.”
Wisely, he sinks back down.
“You just signed your death warrant, Duncan,” Glass spits impotently. “You’re done for.”
I look at the gun again, then back at him. “You want to threaten me now?”
“Fuck you.”
I pick up the gun, point it at him, pull the trigger. An empty click, but he winces, and his whole body jolts.
My heart is racing.
“Next time it’ll be loaded. Don’t fucking come after me.”
“Where will you go?” he calls to my back as I make my way out of the house. “You can’t escape me! You hear me, you fucking shit! You can’t escape Johnny fucking Marino!”
I ignore him, take the Volvo and gun it down the driveway.
I knew there would be a day when Glass and I would face up against one another… I knew it would be over Dee, too.
But I never knew it would be like this. Dee, pregnant with my child, all alone.
She took our baby, kept it a secret, disappeared. Now she’s got her crazy father after her, and he has the resources to track her down.
I’ve got to get to her first. I’ve got to keep her safe. I’ve got to protect my family.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll also find out why she did this to me.
I tighten my grip around the steering wheel, grit my teeth together.
Why did you take my baby, Dee?
Why didn’t you tell me?