“Police wanted to know if she got her car serviced here. Wanted to know if either she, or her cute four-year-old kid, had ever met you.”

I don’t say a word.

“How ya doin, Aidan?” Vito barks abruptly.

“Good,” I whisper.

“Been attending your meetings, sticking with your program?”

“Yes.”

“Drinking? Even a sip? Tell me the truth, meat, ’cause I’ll know if you’re lying. This is my town. All of Southie is my business. You hurt anyone in my town, you hurt me.”

“I’m clean.”

“Really? Police don’t think so.”

I wring my hands. I don’t want to. The gesture shames me. Here I am, twenty-three years old and reduced to hunch-shouldered groveling in front of a man who can take me out with one swat of his platter-sized hand. He sits. I stand. He wields the power. I pray for pity.

At that moment, I hate my life. Then I hate Rachel, because if she hadn’t been so pretty, so ripe, so there, maybe this never would’ve happened. Maybe I could’ve found myself in love with one of those slutty cheerleaders on the football field, or even the slightly buck-toothed girl who worked in the local deli. I don’t know. Someone more appropriate. Someone polite society would’ve thought was okay for a nineteen-year-old boy to fuck. And then I wouldn’t be in this mess. Instead, I would’ve gotten a chance to become a real man.

“I didn’t do it,” I hear myself say.

Vito just grunts, stares at me with his beady little eyes. His arrogance finally pisses me off. I’ve passed half a dozen lie detector tests with no one being the wiser. Like hell I’m gonna break for some thick-necked grease monkey.

I meet his gaze. I hold steady. And I can tell he can tell I’m angry, but that mostly it amuses him, and that sets me off all over again. My hands fist at my sides and I think for a second if something doesn’t give soon, I’m gonna plant my fist into his face. Or maybe not his face. Maybe the wall. Except maybe not the wall. Maybe the glass window. That will shatter my hand, and wake me up with a symphony of broken bones and sliced-up flesh. And that’s what I need: a good wake-up call to get me out of this nightmare.

Vito squints his eyes at me, then grunts and tears out the check.

“Final week’s pay,” he announces. “Take it. You’re done.”

I keep my hands fisted at my sides.

“I didn’t do it,” I say again.

Vito merely shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. You work here, the woman had her car serviced here. This is a business, meat, not a freakshow I don’t have time for the morning wash of your dirty laundry.”