Her stare is full of so much hope, it's literally impossible to say no. I flick a glance at Cage, finding a dark and almost taunting expression. He wants me to answer, which only sends my heart rate escalating to dangerous levels.
He's obviously not feeling inclined to give me an out, and I'm unsure if it's because he's enjoying watching me struggle or because he actually wants me to come.
Either way, he's a dick.
“Y-yeah, of course. I don't have plans.”
“Great!” she bellows a second time and, once again, scares the same young girl, who has since wandered closer. She jumps, drops a box as a result, and scurries to pick it up, her cheeks now bright red.
Then, the frazzled customer tosses Winifred a bewildered glance, frantically tucking flyaway blonde strands behind her ear, and hurries off before she suffers from a heart attack at an age far too young.
“Cage would love to come pick you up,” she volunteers, not even bothering to check with him first. She turns to him. “Bring her over at six. And pick us up some of that good shit I like.”
My brows jump.
Cage rolls his eyes. “She's referring to wine,” he clarifies dryly.
Winifred refocuses on me. “And, for the love of God, wear something comfortable. We'll be sitting on a couch drinking and trash-talking my wonderful son, so please don't feel the need to impress me with a silly dress. I guarantee the ones in my closet are sexier anyway,” she directs. She goes to turn away but then pivots back around. “Oh, and don't let him talk ya out of using condoms. Raising kids is so 1950s. Here, if he's anything like his father, then these should work.”
I laugh when she snatches the size small condoms from the shelf and chucks them into my cart without a backward glance, then bids me farewell.
Cage's face morphs from shock to being visibly offended. “Oh, she's got jokes.”
Winifred's answering cackle can be heard across several aisles, and I'm almost positive that wherever the young blonde woman is in the store, it managed to scare her again.
Cage
Nine Years Ago
2013
“I want to return this piece-of-shit TV,” the old woman snaps, her gray-and-blonde hair frazzled as she slams the receipt down on the counter.
“What was wrong with it?” my employee, Silas, asks, keeping his tone kind despite the woman's bad attitude since she first stormed in. She's short, clearly a smoker, and has her chest puffed like she's tough shit. Her bones are twigs, but whatever gets her out of bed, I guess.
“It wouldn't turn on!” she exclaims, slamming wrinkled hands on the counter. “What kind of idiot sells a TV that don't turn on?”
Silas's eye twitches, and I snicker beneath my breath.
“I kept pressing the damn clicker, and nothin'!”
“Did you make sure it was plugged in? ”
The woman looks at Silas like he speaks an alien language, which seems only to enrage her further.
“Plugged into what?” she yells, her voice rising. “You know what, it don't matter. Give me my money back, you piece of shit.” She tosses her receipt at Silas's chest.
It's almost impossible to contain my smile, considering I know the exact question about to come out of his mouth.
“Sure, ma'am. Where's the TV?”
Again, she stares at him like she doesn't understand.
“At my house! You think a little old lady like me can carry that in here myself? You people can't go pick it up?”
Silas is now the one staring, completely dumbfounded. I drop my head to hide my quiet laugh.
“Uh, no, ma'am. If you want to return an item, then you need to bring it in. We don't go to people's houses to retrieve it.”
The lady's mouth flops for a moment, and then she proceeds to go off on a tangent. The words ‘you people’ and ‘pieces of shit’are said so much, I'm ready to send her to an early grave and inscribe the words on her goddamn tombstone.
Eventually, I step in and send her off on her merry way, promising a return when she brings back the actual fucking TV. She didn't argue much. Most don't when they crack their necks simply to look up at me.
Which makes my job a fuck of a lot easier considering my regular customers aren't wanting to buy TVs. And while I've worked with quite a few grandmas, they certainly weren't harmless.
“Why are felons so much easier to deal with?” Silas grumbles, casting a dirty look at the door the old woman just exited out of.
I raise a brow. “Why do you think I created this business? ”
Silas cocks his own brow mockingly. “Because you're a smart motherfucker who learned how to do something ninety-nine percent of the population can't do?”
“Ninety-nine percent is a bit of a stretch,” I respond dryly.
But it's not far off.
I was twelve years old when my older sister, Olivia, paid some asshole for a fake ID. I remember her being so excited, her blue eyes sparkling as she talked about getting into her first bar.
She was sixteen years old and deep in her rebellious phase.
That weekend, Olivia got dressed up with her best friend, Kelly, and they snuck out after our mom went to bed. That was the last time I saw her, and I remember vividly calling her an idiot before she climbed out of her window and ran off into the night.
The story of what happened afterward was told through the mouth of her killer during his trial.
According to Officer James Gill, he was called to the club Olivia and Kelly tried getting into. The bouncer took one look and could see their IDs were poorly made. So, to teach them a lesson, he called the police.
Officer Gill arrived at the club ten minutes later and herded them into the back seat of his cruiser. Except, he never took them to the station.
Instead, he drove them to his house that was settled by the mountains on the outskirts of town. There, he proceeded to rape and torture them for two days until he ultimately shot them both in the back of the head.
For two years, we didn’t know what happened to them. Until Officer Gill kidnapped another girl, and unlike my sister and her friend, she escaped and lived to tell the police force what an evil man they had working for them.
After that, they searched his house and found Olivia, Kelly, and seven other girls buried on his property.
All I could think was that if my sister and her friend had never gotten shitty IDs, James Gill would’ve never entered their lives. Would’ve never put them in the back of his car and senselessly murdered them.
In my fourteen-year-old stupid-ass brain, I thought I was avenging my sister by learning how to make legitimate fake IDs for young women. It didn’t take long before I realized I was only allowing them to enter an environment full of equally evil men. They weren’t any safer and had my sister gotten in the bar that night, there’s no guarantee a different man wouldn’t have committed the same atrocious deed.
So, for a while, I had a skill that I didn’t know how to utilize.
Until one day, a kid a few years older, David, came to me and asked if I could do more than just make him a new ID. He wanted a new life.
His dad was a general in the Marine Corps and highly abusive. David felt his life was in danger every time he went home and was convinced that if he just simply ran away, his father would find him. I guess his old man had threatened as much.
It took me two weeks to figure out how to get him a new social security card and birth certificate. I even managed to get him a job on a fishing boat.
It sparked a passion I didn't know I had. Turns out, making people disappear would be how I'd save them.
I turned eighteen and started my own business, Black Portal, an electronic store that sells TVs. But that was only my front. I sold my actual services by word of mouth in the beginning. Eventually, I got Legion's attention from one of my clients who knew him, and he liked what I could do and sent more clients my way. He helps bring me business; in return, I help him with favors.