He took the offered glass of water from Marcus. But before Marcus could turn and leave, Mia's gaze fell upon him, her eyes burning a hole right through him. He had seen that stare fall upon others and he immediately felt a knot in the pit of his stomach, unsure of what would happen next.
"Why didn't you help him down the stairs?" she asked him, her eyes staying focused on him like lasers.
"I?I didn't know he wanted my help," Marcus replied weakly.
"You should not wait for him to ask. If the nurse is not here, you help him. Understand?"
"Ye.. yes? ma'am. Understood," he replied, unsure whether he was dismissed and should leave the room, or if he should be still.
"Go!" Mia commanded as she pointed out of the room. Marcus retreated hastily into the foyer.
"Don't be too hard on him, Mia," Nick encouraged her. "After all, if it wasn't for him, I'd still be on the floor."
"Not good enough," Mia replied. In Mia's line of work, it was handy to have a doctor on the payroll to patch up any employees who had been recently injured. This frequently happened while rendering some of the more dangerous services required in their business. She scrolled through the contacts in her phone, selecting one and hitting the call icon. In two rings, a doctor answered personally on the other end. Mia did not bother with introductions. "Come to the house; Nick has fallen down. His leg is injured. Hurry." She disconnected the call.
The doctor arrived and, after a thorough examination, concluded that Nick had only sprained his ankle in the fall. He suggested that Nick use crutches until the leg healed up a bit, and that he have someone assist him when he went up or down the stairs. He told Nick that he would come back by in a few days to check up on him and see how the healing process was going. Mia fired the nurse that afternoon and selected a different company. She began a routine of calling Marcus each morning to confirm that the nurse had arrived before she headed to the house herself.
Nick lost all of his hair and so much weight during the chemotherapy that he had Mia buy him a new wardrobe of clothes that fit him more snugly. He said that he refused to look like a scarecrow wearing his old clothes that were now far too big. Eventually, the chemotherapy ended and his hair began to grow back. The side effects of the drugs began to disappear and his sprained ankle healed up so that he no longer needed crutches. Finally, the day came when the doctors declared Nick to be cancer-free.
One day afterward, Mia was heading home after the last business errand of the day when Nick called her on her cell phone.
"Yes," she said.
"Mia, can you come by the house, I have one more thing I need you to take care of before you go home."
"O.k., I'll be right there," she replied.
She pulled up to the house and went up the steps, entering the security code to let herself into the house. She'd started to head upstairs to Nick's office when she saw Nick come out of the den.
"Thanks for coming back," he said.
Mia was still not used to Nick saying 'thank you'. Before his illness, he would ask people to do things and expect it to be done, but rarely did he ever say thank you. While he'd been sick and had needed people to do so many things for him, he had begun to say 'thank you' far more frequently. The illness had definitely changed him.
"Would you come into the dining room, please?" Nick said.
Mia dutifully followed him into the dining room, where she saw the table set for two. Nick walked over to one of the chairs and pulled it out for her.
"I have some business to discuss with you and I haven't eaten yet; would you mind if we had dinner while we talk?"
"O.k.," Mia responded as she sat down at the table. It was a bit awkward as Nick pushed in the chair for her - something he had never done before.
Nick opened the door to the kitchen and told the chef that they were ready to eat - another oddity, as Nick usually only had a chef when company was coming over. The chef brought out the food and set it on the table. They began eating in silence. After a few minutes, Nick stopped eating and took a sizable drink from his wine glass. Mia could tell that he was nervous - and Nick was never nervous. She was immediately on edge. She wondered if the cancer had returned.
"Mia," Nick began, "this recent illness brought about many changes in my life. I had to rely on many other people to help me in ways I've never had to have help before. You were chief among those helpers, and I wanted to think of an appropriate way to say thank you." He slid a black box across the table before continuing. "Thank you."
Mia looked down at the box, stunned. Nick had never given her so much as a birthday card before. Their relationship had always been solely professional. He paid her well and treated her with respect, but the business line had never been crossed. She slowly reached forth her hand and took the box.
"Thank you," she said, almost as a question.
"Well, go ahead and open it," Nick prodded.
Mia timidly opened the box to reveal a ruby and diamond choker necklace. She stared at it, speechless for several seconds before looking up at Nick with a confused expression on her face.
"Put it on," Nick encouraged her.
Mia picked up the necklace and held it up. It was beautiful. She just stared at it.
"Here, let me help you," Nick said. Nick stood up and came around behind her chair, and took the necklace from her hands. He put it around her neck and secured the clasp for her.
"Why don't you stand up and take a look at it in the mirror?"
Mia stood up and turned around to the large mirror hanging on the wall behind them. The necklace looked even more beautiful around her neck, she thought to herself.
"Do you like it?" Nick asked as he stood beside her and watched her in the mirror.
"Yes," Mia said as she reached her hand up and ran it along the stones, "I like it very much."
"Good," Nick replied, satisfied. "Shall we finish our dinner?" he said as he pulled out her chair for her once more.
They finished eating dinner and Nick did most of the talking. Mia had never been one for chatting, but she liked listening to Nick as he talked about his recovery and how he planned to start keeping a better eye on his health. He paused here and there to ask her questions, to which her replies were predictably short and to the point, but he didn't seem to mind. In fact, he seemed positively giddy - like a schoolboy just let out on summer break. She wondered what was happening. It was confusing to her, but she liked this new side of Nick.
Nick saw Mia to the door and out to the car after they had finished their dessert. He said goodnight to her - something he also had never done before, and went back into the house. Mia drove home thinking about the evening. At one point, she glanced into the rearview mirror to check the traffic behind her and caught a glimpse of her own face. She was smiling. It was something she had not expected to see. Mia did not smile very often. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she had smiled at all.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mia Chen had come to the United States with her immigrant parents. She was an only child whose parents had desperately wanted a boy. Her father opened up a martial arts school in New York City. He pushed Mia to learn the trade just as hard as if she were the son he'd always wanted but never had. He was cruel to her and would hit her if she failed to meet his expectations. Her mother would do nothing to stop him. So Mia determined at an early age that she would not fail to meet those high expectations.
By the time Mia was fifteen, she was able to beat anyone in their studio in the school fighting competitions. She won regional competition trophies and even went to a state-wide championship competition when she was eighteen. She caught the flu the day before the state competition, but her father forced her to compete anyway. She lost. He was irate, berating her and shouting at her all the way home. Once they were home, he hit her in the stomach and she threw up. He was good at hitting her just hard enough so as not to break any bones
or cause any lasting physical damage, but the bruises and psychological damage were bad enough. That night, Mia made up her mind to run away.
After she ran away, she began picking up odd jobs where she could. She got a job teaching martial arts at another studio, but her father found out about it and came to take her home. He almost caught her, but she saw his car pull up and ran away through Central Park before he could catch her. After that, she stopped teaching martial arts, afraid he would track her down again.
She saw an advertisement on a local college bulletin board. The ad stated that one of the sororities was looking for a security guard for an upcoming party. When she showed up in front of the sorority house and met the head of the sorority for her interview, the girl almost laughed when she saw this thin Chinese girl was applying for the position.
"I'm sorry, miss," her interviewer began, "but I'm not sure you're?big enough for this job."
Mia looked around and saw a male college student about to enter the sorority house to visit his girlfriend. He was six-foot three and built like a tank. Mia ran up to him.
"Excuse me," she said, "can you help me one moment?"
He looked a bit surprised.
"I need you to come over here," Mia motioned to where her interviewer was seated behind a table with a smirk on her face. The man reluctantly came over to where Mia was motioning, not sure what he was getting into.
"Is this man big enough?" Mia asked the lady.
"Well, yes, he is, but he isn't applying for the job; you are," the lady contended.
Mia ignored her and turned to the man. "Stand here," she said as she positioned him several feet in front of the table at which her interviewer was seated. She held up a twenty dollar bill so that he could see it and placed it on the table, positioning herself between him and the money. It was the last twenty dollars she had to her name.
"If you can pick up the money, you can have it," she said.
The student chuckled, walking forward and reaching his hand out as if he was going to move her aside and pick up the money. Mia grabbed his wrist and twisted it while applying upward pressure with her other hand to the underside of his elbow, putting him in a submission hold that easily deflected him away from the table.
"Try again," she said to him as she released him.
The big student flexed his shoulders up and down, this time stepping forward and attempting to put Mia in a bear hug to move her away from the table. Before he could step close enough, Mia stuck two fingers towards the base of his neck between the clavicle bones, pressing downward into the epiglottis. The move stopped him dead in his tracks and he reflexively moved his hands towards his throat, at which point Mia grabbed his wrist and put him in a submission hold again.
The big guy backed off, dazed, and beginning to get a bit upset that this little Chinese girl had stopped him twice. A small crowd was beginning to gather around the table and Mia could see from the look in his eye that he was thinking about taking a real swing at her. She looked him straight in the eyes without flinching.
"Thank you for your help. You can go now," she said.
Something about the look in her eyes made the man decide that twenty dollars wasn't worth the effort, and that his pride would be better off if he didn't try again.
"You're welcome," he said stiffly as he turned and walked away.
Mia heard clapping noises from behind her as the interviewer and a few other sorority members applauded her demonstration.
"I underestimated you, my dear," the interviewer responded. "You are hired."
The party was a typical sorority affair. Lots of girls, lots of guys, lots of booze. Mia's job was to hang around the main floor of the sorority house and serve as a bouncer if anyone tried to start a fight or make a big scene.
Mia had never been to such a party before. She had never even had a drink of alcohol. She wasn't quite sure what to expect, so she brought along a few tools of the trade. A telescoping police baton was clipped to her belt, and a knife was strapped to her calf, just under her jeans.
The night was proceeding without incident until an obviously drunken fraternity brother started making unwelcome advances towards his date.
"Stop it! Let me go!" the girl protested.
"Come on," the man slurred, "let's go upstairs where we can be alone," he said as he began dragging her towards the stairs by her wrist. The girl resisted futilely, outweighed by about a hundred pounds. Mia quickly positioned herself on the stairs in front of the advancing man and confronted him.
"Let her go," she said as she put up her hand towards the man in a stopping gesture.
The man looked up and laughed as he attempted to walk into and over Mia. Before he could touch her, Mia thrust her knee up into his solar plexus, grabbed his left hand while stepping behind him, placed her foot in the crook of his leg, and applied pressure to force him down onto the stairs. He was then left gagging for air, face-down on the stairs with his arm behind his back. Mia had her knee in his back so that he wasn't able to get up. During the brief melee, he had released the girl he had been dragging up the stairs.
Mia turned to the girl. "Are you o.k.?" she asked.
The girl looked stunned and was rubbing her wrist. "Yes," she replied, "thank you."
Mia turned her attention back to the man on the ground. "I'm going to let you go and you will leave the party now. Yes?"
"Yes," came the man's strained reply.
Mia released his wrist and took her knee off of his back while quickly moving up the steps and turning to face the man. The man stood up, rubbed his wrist for a moment, and then lunged at Mia without warning, throwing a punch at her face. Mia dropped down into a sitting position on the stairs and delivered a swift side-kick to the man's groin. As the man dropped to his knees cursing, she leaned forward while still in a sitting position and delivered a forearm strike to the side of the man's face, which was now level with hers due to his position on the stairs below. His head slammed into the side of the substantial bannister and he crumpled to the ground. Mia had already stood back up and was prepared to continue the assault, only to find that it was unnecessary, as her attacker wasn't moving.
"Bravo," came a voice from the main floor below. Mia looked down to see a well-dressed male student leaning against the archway leading into the next room.
"I don't think he will be bothering anyone else tonight, except perhaps for the ER doctor," the man continued.
Mia eyed him warily as she walked down the stairs. The man pulled a business card out of his pocket and extended it in her direction.
"How would like to come work for me?"
Mia took the card and read it:
Gaming Entertainment Enterprises
Nicky B.
555-724-9845
"What kind of job is it?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing you can't handle," he replied with a sly smile.
From that day forward, she became Nick Bartonovich's personal bodyguard and enforcer. It was good money and she liked the work. The job gave her frequent opportunities to take out her frustrations against her father on numerous unfortunate surrogates. Nick was amiable, and talkative - the exact opposite of Mia and Mia's father. It was easy to know what Nick wanted because he told her, and he always smiled when she delivered. It was a perfect match.
Now, as she entered her studio apartment, she stared into the mirror hanging on the wall, admiring the expensive necklace that Nick had just given her. She wondered for the first time in their relationship what it was, exactly, that Nick wanted. The possibility that he might be interested in her as a woman and not just a business associate caused her heart to beat faster. Many women her age had already married and had children, but Mia had such mistrust for men that she had never been comfortable progressing beyond a few dates with any potential suitor. Nick, however, was a man she trusted completely. She could envision a future with him. She noticed as she looked into the mirror t
hat her cheeks were turning slightly red. She had never had this feeling before and it was confusing - but she liked it.
Chapter Thirty
J.T. got off the plane in Nassau and took a cab to the British Colonial Hilton, where he would be staying. He was nervous. He hadn't met any of his former victims face to face since the trial, and then only a select few had been brought into court to tell their stories for the jury. Back then, he'd felt no pity for them and no shame. Since that time, he had learned to stop objectifying his victims and begun to see them as real people, even to empathize with them. As that process had taken place, he'd begun to feel ashamed about what he had done. Over time, he'd worked through the shame and accepted responsibility for his own actions. Eventually, he developed a desire to make things right, or barring that possibility, to at least own up to what he had done and apologize to their faces.
He checked in to his room and deposited his suitcase on the bed, unpacking his clothes and hanging them in the closet. The sight of the suit brought back memories of the old days. Except for the ordeal at the Cayman Islands bank, he hadn't worn a suit in almost eight years. It felt as if he was staring at a relic from the distant past.
Once he finished unpacking, he grabbed the book he had been reading, Compelled to Control: Recovering Intimacy in Broken Relationships by J. Keith Miller, and headed down to the hotel restaurant for something to eat. The food in the restaurant was more than adequate. The wine he ordered was good, and he lingered at the table after his meal, drinking another glass of wine and reading more from his book. As he read, he came across a passage that hit home:
?the shift from being in charge of all outcomes to one of doing our best and turning the outcome over to God puts many of us into a spiritual life, a life controlled by the reality and power of God's Spirit instead of our own manipulations and controlling behaviors.
He thought about how his life had changed this past eight years. He had gone from being a corporate big-wig who thought he had it all under control - who felt the need to have it all under control - to an ex-con who was trying to make amends for the wrongs he had done, and to let go of the perception that he was by any means in control of anything other than his own actions. He was nervous about the meetings he had scheduled for tomorrow, but he knew in the final analysis, he wasn't responsible for what the other people did with his attempts to make amends. He was only responsible for what he did personally.