Twisted Loyalties [GL Version]

CHAPTER FIVE

Sam

     I slept late the next day. I wouldn't have to work until three in the afternoon and needed to get some rest. When I walked into the kitchen, a box of donuts sat on the table and Dad was clutching a coffee cup.
     “Morning,” I said even though it was almost twelve o’clock. I poured some coffee for myself before I sank down on the chair across from him.
     “You got us breakfast,” I said in surprise and helped myself to a donut. I knew better than to expect pleasant surprises like that to occur on a daily basis.

     “I asked a neighbor for some money until I get paid tomorrow.” He was some sort of courier from what I’d gathered, and I wondered how he could keep the job considering that his breath always stunk of alcohol.

     “I could give you fifty dollars,” I said, pulling out the money from the waistband of my shorts. I’d learned to hide money close to my body. “Then you could pay him back and get us food for the next few days.”
He eyed the dollar note as if it was something dirty. “Where did you get it?”

     “I found a job,” I said with a smile.
He didn’t look happy. “And they paid you fifty dollars on your first day?”
He made it sound like I had been doing something forbidden, something dirty.

     “No, not yet. I will get paid today.” That’s what I hoped at least. I wasn’t sure how Roger handled things but since he didn’t ask for my social security number or any other relevant information, I assumed that he wouldn’t exactly follow a regular payment plan.

“Then where did you get that money?”
     He looked angry. What was the matter with him? He and Mom had definitely never asked many questions when it came to money. “Alex gave it to me.”

     He jumped from his seat. His chair toppled to the ground with a bang. I flinched. Distant memories rose up, of him fighting with my mother, of him raising his fist and she clawing at him in turn.
“You leant money from…her?”

     “What’s going on here?” I asked.
“You can’t go around lending money from people like her. We don’t need more attention from people like her.”
     “People like her,” I repeated. “What kind of people exactly?”

    He looked torn. I wasn’t sure who or what he was trying to protect, but it certainly wasn’t me. He had never been the protective dad. Never been the hero in every girl's story or the dad who called his daughter, his little princess.

     “I know she’s a cage fighter, Dad. I saw her fight, eventhough it's odd to see a woman fighting against those bulky men, okay? So please mind your own business.” Like you’ve done in the last five years.
“You did? Why?” Then something seemed to click in his mind and he closed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re working in Roger’s Arena.”
“I do.”

     He picked up the chair and straightened it before he sank down as if his legs were too weak to carry him. “You should have never come here. I shouldn’t have let you. You’re going to get us both in trouble. I really can’t use that kind of baggage right now.”

     I frowned down at my now almost cold coffee. “I’m a grown up. I can handle myself. I can’t be picky with the jobs I do. It’s not like I have much of a choice. And besides we need the money for food, since you spent the money I gave you last time on liquor, remember?”

     “Give her that money back today. Don’t use it for anything. And—”
     “Stay away from her?” I interrupted. It was too late for a protective Dad talk.

     “No,” he said quietly. “Be careful. I don’t need you to mess things up. It’s too late for me to tell you to stay away.”
I got the feeling that he meant it in a different way than I had. “I could stay away. It’s not like I’m bound to her, we even barely knew each other.”