Sometimes, he’d blow his entire paycheck on a single hand. Those nights, I’d go to sleep without dinner. We don’t talk about those nights anymore.
“There has to be some way out of this,” I say, shaking my head. “Maybe if we talk to someone at the station …”
“I’m not talking to any fucking cops,” he grunts. “Some of those bastards are in Morozov’s pockets. Going to them is like going to Matvei himself.”
“Then maybe you can look into the loan shark that gave you the money? I doubt he has a license. I was actually just reading about this in my textbook, and—”
“I’m not going against that whole fucking organization, Vic,” he growls. “You see what they did to me over fifteen grand? Imagine if we get one of those bastards locked up for working without a license. They might come after you, and I’ll be damned if they do that because of something I did.”
Something in his tone doesn’t ring true to me. It’s not that I don’t believe what he’s saying; I do. I only have to take one look at his busted-up face to know that whoever did this means business. But—and my dad loves me very much, I know that, which is why this is hard to say—he’s not exactly a white knight. He’s not going to take a brutal beating out of some speculative fear that maybe these psychos will come after me if he doesn’t cough up the cash he owes.
I frown. “What do they have over you, Dad?”
“What?” He meets my eye for a fraction of a second, then glances at the television in the corner of the room. He’s suddenly very preoccupied with the sitcom playing.
Shit. I was right. Oh, Daddy, what have you done?
“There’s something more to the story. You’re not telling me something. Did you steal from them?”
“I told you! I don’t want to involve you.” He still won’t look at me.
“Bullshit. Don’t lie to me again, Dad, or I’m done helping you pay every month.”
Fear flashes in his eyes, and he finally looks at me again. “They have a… a video of me.”
Uh-oh. “What kind of video?”
“It’s… it’s ugly.”
I grab his hand and lean forward, thrusting my face in his. “If you don’t start talking, I’m walking out of here now. I mean it. What kind of video?” His eyes flit around, desperate to avoid my glare. But I don’t let him off the hook. “Dad!”
He swallows hard. “I… I met a woman. She, uh, well, she offered me some of her, I suppose, her time. For some money. I didn’t think anything of it.”
I try to hold back the wave of nausea that comes with imagining my father with a prostitute. That’s literally the very last thing I ever want to picture. “Okay, and…?”
“We were smoking weed, drinking, hanging out. She started shooting up. We had fun. But she started acting weird as shit, like it was a bad trip, and then she passed out. I went to sleep. When I woke up a few hours later, she was still lying in that same exact spot. I tried to wake her up, but she was gone. I called one of Morozov’s contacts for help, and they said they’d take care of it for me. But those bastards had that hotel room bugged. They had a camera in there. Saw everything. And now they’re holding the video over my head.”
My jaw drops. It takes me a minute to remind myself that this is reality. Not a horrible nightmare. Just cold, hard reality.
Turns out life can always get worse.
I try not to reach across the bed and slap some sense into him. I can’t even begin to fathom how stupid he is for getting himself involved in this.
“Goddammit,” I mutter, putting my head in my hands.
This is why I don’t see my dad often. As much as I love him, he’s never made a good decision in his life. Everything in me says that I need to wash my hands clean of him. I have to move on and let his problems be his problems.
But I can’t. I still love the idiot, even when I’m constantly cleaning up behind him. That’s probably why Mom didn’t seem so sad when she found out her cancer was terminal. For the first time in ten years, she was getting a break. Permanent vacation.
Jeez. That’s morbid.
“I know, baby,” Dad says. He offers a hand, and I reluctantly take it. When he begins