2: Beatrice

Six weeks earlier...

I stared into the cold, dark eyes of the giant man sitting across from me and I felt my soul slowly leave my body. The dread that filled me knew no bounds. I was trapped and we both knew it.

My breath was shallow but I willed my body to stay calm. I'd like to think I succeeded but looking at the smirk on his face didn't instill much confidence.

There are moments in my life that I can recall vividly. They come back to mind as vividly as if I were still there, in the midst of the chaos swirling around me. I can feel the panic as I sit, waiting for time to tick by slowly, ushering me to the other side. The other side of what, I don't know, the chaos perhaps or perhaps the other side of my anxiety. I could handle anything if I could just get rid of the sinking, panicked feeling that overwhelmed my body in such circumstances.

I was in such a moment right now. I would remember this day forever. The room was spinning but over the years I had become adept at hiding my feelings. My face was stoic even as my stomach churned and my chest seized. My breath was shallow, it was my only tell but the man across from me could read me like a book, his eyes were knowing.

I was trapped.

Times like these made me ponder my life choices. I remember the day I first realized I wanted to be a lawyer. It wasn't a moment of clarity so much as a desire to fix things that are wrong in the world.

I wanted to save the world. I wanted to save my world, in particular, and to be even more precise, the people in my world. The people I loved.

I would do it single-handedly, a modern-day over-educated Robin Hood.

In true adolescent form, I believed I could.

I wanted to be the one that stood up for the weak, stared down the strong, evil patriarchy, and told them how things would be. In my daydreaming state, I could see myself in a blaze of glory as I stormed into the courtroom and said the magic words that released justice and restored peace. I would stand tall, my face bright from the adrenaline as I took on the world.

It started when I was ten.

My best friend, Leah, was homeless. She was homeless with her mother, Molly, and her younger brother, Trey. They were thrown onto the street with nowhere to go because Leah's father, Paul, had come home so drunk that he let his temper get the best of him once again. He hit Molly and knocked her out for a few hours. He pushed her against a wall with such force she passed out.

She hit her head on the edge of a picture frame and folded in a heap on the ground. Paul tripped over her sprawling body and fell with a crash to the ground. He lay on the ground next to her for hours, passed out from the liquor.

I wasn't there, and it would be years before I knew all of the details, but Molly finally woke around two am. She gathered her kids, packed them in a car with as much food, clothing, and money as she could find and she left. She left Paul behind on the hallway floor, the smell of cigarettes, liquor, urine, and the bar lingering in the house as she softly closed the door. She closed the door to both the house and her life.

Good riddance, really. Except, in hindsight, it really wasn't. She had made a lateral move, from one hell into the next. Dante said there were nine levels of hell as he descended through the fiery pits; she had descended to the next one. Only the brave survive. Molly wasn't brave.

Molly had a concussion, which was the best possible scenario, truth be told. She could have been killed if Paul had thrown her with his full force, but Paul was so drunk, that he couldn't aim right. He couldn't see his target in order to inflict the most pain. He could only push and hope for the best.

The morning after the incident Paul would wake with a pounding headache, oblivious to what had happened the night before. It would take him days to realize his family had left him.

As I said. Good riddance.

So, Leah was introduced to her first experience of being homeless. Her mother had nowhere to go. She was helpless. No job. No income. No family. No help. Nothing other than the clothes she had hastily packed in the car and the cash she could find in the house.

Leah was my best friend. I'm sure you're thinking what I think now. Why didn't she come to stay with me? The honest answer, the one I don't like to face, is that my parents thought Molly should be able to stand on her own two feet without help. Molly wasn't good enough for my parent's benevolence. Molly didn't work hard enough, she didn't try hard enough, and she didn't succeed enough to deserve a helping hand.

At the time, I thought it was a rule. You couldn't live with your best friend. You had to stay with your parent, and if your parent couldn't help, you had to go with the government.

It took Molly three years from the first hit to the one that prompted her to leave Paul. It only took the state five days to take Leah and Trey away from Molly. The government said she couldn't provide, and the truth was, she couldn't.

They probably never would have known about Molly's plight but some well-meaning mother at the park noticed that Molly had been sleeping in the car with two young kids. And so, one good-intentioned phone call later and Leah and Trey were being hauled out of the car by a police escort.

Molly was a victim of circumstance. She was a victim of a life of isolation, with no friends or family to call on, and no help.

Leah was sent to one home and Trey was sent to another. Her new foster parents didn't want a pre-adolescent boy from a violent home. They had daughters, after all, and Trey was a danger to them. Trey would turn out like his father, naturally, and they didn't want that kind of child around their babies. They wouldn't let him victimize their daughters.

Or so they said.

So, Leah went all alone to her new home. She was all alone in a house where she knew no one and, as we would find out later, she was a means to an end, another kid to stay temporarily so her foster parents could make some extra money.

They offered her no love, no help, and no escape from her horror.

I wanted to punch the social worker. Her name was Mindy and over the course of the four years that Mindy was Leah's contact, I came to despise everything about that kind, plump woman.

It wasn't her fault really, but I still wanted to punch her. She would bring Leah back to visit Molly and if I was lucky, I would see them at the park during supervised visits.

Then she would take Leah away. Molly would sit on a bench and cry. She would cry for hours and I would sit by her, not knowing what to do, but not wanting to leave her so helpless. She was my tie to Leah and Leah was as much my soulmate as any man ever would become. Leah meant more to me than even my family. Even then, I felt Molly's helplessness. I knew she needed someone to stand up for her.

Molly had a lawyer working with her to help her get her kids back but the lawyer was appointed by the state. He didn't work very hard for Molly. It wasn't his fault as much as it was the state's fault. The state overloaded him with cases and Molly was just another deadbeat mom with no job, no house, and no prospects. She was a perfect exhibition of how not to succeed in the system.

I knew then though that the lawyers had the power. They could sway judges. They could make things happen. I watched Law & Order, after all. That's the way it worked.

I was going to be a lawyer and I would get Leah back for Molly. Leah and Trey both. I would get them both back and we would all tell those stupid social workers to fuck off the next time they came around.

Or so I thought.

It was years later that I finally understood the truth.

I may have become a lawyer, but I had no power. I would never have power. I was at the mercy of the men who pulled my strings, just like every other woman in my life. Molly, Leah, Mindy, the judge, we were all at the mercy of the men who made the laws and the men who enforced the laws.

The laws didn't favor the weak. They didn't try to keep women safe. At least, not where I'm from. Where I'm from, the laws are meant to protect the rich and powerful, they protect the families that already have their shit in order.

That was the mantra. Get your shit in order, then we'll help you.

The laws were meant to shame women, to inflict the most hardship on the very people who were already disadvantaged by the system.

You can't feed your kids? You're not trying hard enough.

You have no place to live? You must be spending your money on drugs and alcohol.

They always had a degrading answer to explain why they wouldn't help, or rather why they 'morally couldn't'. Never mind women were struggling to make ends meet the world over, taking on the responsibility of life and family and jobs and children.

You would think that made society more sympathetic to the female cause.

It didn't.

And so I found myself at a crossroads of sorts. I guess it's safe to say it's not actually a crossroads. Not in the sense that I have a choice. I can choose to do the bidding of my client, the man sitting in front of me with evil in his eyes.

Or I can choose not to.

Only then, if I told this man to fuck off, I would find myself at the bottom of a lake with a concrete block tied to my leg.

Well, most likely.

I say that because I somehow found myself at the mercy of the mob, and the man sitting across from me, staring at me as if I were the biggest piece of bacon and he was a starved dog, was known as The Butcher.

And, he got that name honestly.

We sat in a room at the back of a bar. I frequented this bar before they became my client. I came here with friends and spent many nights drinking and forgetting all of my troubles at one of the tables just down the hall. The lights were dimmed as if seeing bright sunlight at noon would ruin the ambiance and mystery of the establishment. The sins of the guilty would be too stark in the brightness of day.

That was why they kept the bar in darkness.

The glow of the hall lights shone dimly through the back conference room where I sat with my client. Well, one of my many new clients. I acquired them in the last week and let me tell you, I was incredibly ungrateful for them. I wanted to give them back but no one else would take them from me.

There were no brave lawyers. At least, not in my firm.

So, here I found myself, staring at the man with three scars running across his face in a diagonal as if he had been caught by claws, maybe Freddie’s or maybe a werewolf’s. After my week, I was sure they must both exist. It was a surreal experience sitting so near someone that stared at death so frequently. It was as if he could touch the devil himself and come to tell the rest of us what lay on the other side. At least, on the side of hell.

There was a fire in his eyes and not a fire of love or passion or anything else good. It was a fire born of pure, unadulterated evil.

"What is it that you're looking for, exactly?"

I asked the question cautiously, aware that my demeanor was being watched. Law school had taught me to be stoic and here I sat, not a sign of emotion on my face. Any sign of weakness and they would pounce on me faster than a lion on a wounded gazelle.

I was the wounded gazelle. I was supposed to be the lion. I went to school to be the lion. Every dream I had as a little girl was of me as the lion. How did I become the damn gazelle?

"We need the dress to disappear,” he replied, his voice low and cajoling as if his tone of voice could convince me to break the law.

There were four men standing along the back wall, watching me closely. Another two were sitting at the table in front of me. There was no escape.

I steeled myself and spoke firmly. There was no backing down. I may be the gazelle but my wound wasn't gaping yet, I could still recover.

"I can't destroy evidence. They would know it was us. First, we would have to break into the evidence room in order to steal it, and then we would have to dispose of it without anyone knowing it was us. It's impossible."

"It's not impossible."

I took a deep breath and swallowed visibly. He was making me nervous. I knew they wanted me to do something illegal and I really didn't want to do it. I wanted to live more, though, than I wanted to appease my guilty conscience so I stalled. It was the only thing I could think of, which is saying something considering I was ivy league educated.

I was taught to think on my feet and I couldn't think of a single solution to this problem. I could only think of the woman on the news for the past week. She had been found in a lake just a week ago.

She had been a few years older than me, a lawyer, too. Rumor had it that she was working for the same mob that now sat across the table from me.

I don't know how I got on their radar, but here we are.

"The evidence is out of my control. It's already been logged and presented to the prosecutor, there's no way to get around it now."

"The results could be inconclusive."

"They weren't. The DNA very conclusively illustrates Mr. Trivisonno had sexual relations with the victim in her apartment around the same time she was projected to have died."

"DNA results can be misleading."

"These weren't."

"I suggest you find a way for this to go away, Miss Welsh, or we will find someone who can."

The implication was loud and clear. They would find someone to take my place. They would leave me to rot with their last counsel, at the bottom of the lake in western New York. When it comes to that, I hope they make it quick.

My eyebrow raised, the challenge on my face as I steeled my voice and spoke.

"It'll require a larger retainer and my fee is going up."

I said the words decisively despite my sweaty hands and my racing heart. If I was going to find my way to the bottom of the lake eventually, I may as well make it worth my while. Or, at least worth my sister's while. She would be set up for life.

The thought of drowning put me in a foul mood.

The man's lips smirked slightly as he nodded.

"We assumed as much."

I cursed the day I had taken their call and set up the meeting. I should have remembered the name then. I should have remembered that the Trivisonnos had been in the news recently for money laundering. One of the brothers had gone to jail for ten years. It was never a good idea to take a client that was obviously guilty of numerous crimes.

I needed the clients, and I was the eager, younger member of the firm, which meant I took whatever came. And this is what the tide brought in. The firm would never deny the Trivisonnos. There wasn't a single firm in the entire state of New York that would deny the Trivisonnos representation.

We may be sharks but lawyers are surprisingly self-preserving. We take the innocent and guilty alike.

"I'm charging two thousand an hour for this kind of work and I'll need a hundred thousand dollar retainer."

The problem with guilty clients is that they have nothing to lose. And now, I have everything to lose.

"Mr. Trivisonno will make a deposit tonight." The man nodded decisively as if the amount hadn't even phased him. I should have asked for more.

I stared at the man sitting in front of me, tracing his scars with my eyes, pondering my options. As I ran through the options in my head, all within the span of a few seconds, it was clear the path I would have to take. It was the only choice, I concluded as I decided that I knew what I had to do. It had been a full year since I had seen him and eleven months since I had talked to him but now was the time, if ever there was a time.

I had to call David. He owed me, after all.