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Three men grabbed her from behind. Where they had come from to this day she doesn't know. It was as if they had materialized out of the particles in the air. Shelly could smell the stink on their breath, a stink that would haunt her for years after therapy. They slammed her hard against the wall in the spotlight of a bare light bulb above the exit. She tried to scream but the music smothered her chaotic shouts for help. A hand with hairy knuckles went up her leather skirt tearing off the red panties that she wore. Her breasts were being brutally violated that would leave dark patches around the nipples as one of the drunks bit her ear drawing blood. They each took turns satisfying themselves between her legs laughing at her tears and profanity.

After about thirty five minutes the ordeal was over. Shelly was on the pavement with blood running down both of her legs. No one came to her rescue. She was alone.

The men were all strangers and she couldn't remember their faces; only their stinking breath. She filed a report with the police but it would amount to nothing.

When she skipped her time of the month in June she tried to assure herself that it was only brought on by stress. But the home pregnancy test would prove otherwise. Shelly didn't know what to do. What were her options? Abortion? But she couldn't. She couldn't prevent a life from being what it's meant to be. "Everything happens for a reason" her mother had always said. "There are no coincidences. Only fate." Pearls of wisdom. She had to go to her mother. Find out what she thinks of the situation.

Standing on the front porch her sister opened the door before she could knock.

"What are you doing here, Rita?"

But she didn't answer. She only looked at her with sadness in her eyes that Shelly had never seen before. Something was wrong. Rita walked down the steps into the rain holding something in her left hand. Something that looked like a gun.

Shelly turned to the opened door pushing it wide to walk in. Her mother was lying on the hardwood floor as an expanding pool of redness swelled around her torso.

"Mom?" Shelly whispered knowing there would be no reply.

Cole stood in front of Yablans' desk in his office on the second floor of his nightclub, Broken Dreams. His regular client sat behind his computer wearing a dark suit with potato chip crumbs on his blue tie. He was a heavyset man who had his first heart attack when he was thirty two. By the time he was forty he had had two more. He crushed the cherry of his cigarette into the skull ashtray next to the keyboard. Cole slipped his hands into the pockets of his black vest that he wore over the green button down shirt.  

"I want her dead. She killed her sister and stole the key." Yablans lit another cigarette with his Zippo lighter. "I want that key back and I want a bullet in that bitch's heart."

"What's the key for?"

"Lockbox at the airport. What's in it is my business. Your business is to use your talents to get back what belongs to me and to make sure that that fucking family has a group funeral. Do we understand each other?"

"Loud and clear."

"You'll get paid the usual. Debra's outside, she'll take care of the bill and anything else you might need." He pointed a fat finger to the door giving Cole the sign to leave.

In the early nineties Cole had served in the United States Army and was shipped to the Gulf. He had seen combat and the bloodshed that came with it. Near the end of the war he found himself lost somewhere in the desert behind enemy lines. He had been shot in his leg just above the knee with his squad nowhere to be seen. Sweating and hungry his only companion was the enemy sitting across from him in the trench.

They held their guns to each other for three hours before calling it truce. The soldier spoke perfect english and was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys. Speaking long into the evening they realized that in any other situation they could have been friends. He was Cole's enemy only because he was told so by his superiors, only because of the uniform on his back. Was it his fault that he was born in the country he was born in? Raised to believe what he believes in?

"Here." The soldier handed Cole a yellow handkerchief that he pulled out of his pocket. "You can stop the bleeding with this."

He took the rag putting pressure against the seeping wound. "Thanks."

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