The frat pledge, looking defeated, turned and walked away, quickly reassuming his cocky persona to hit on the next girl that came by and caught his eye. Laughing a much needed laugh under my breath, I readjusted my bag over my shoulder and kept walking, leaving the campus library and heading toward my apartment. As I walked, I kept my eyes open for Vincent, hoping he'd gotten the message. After months of harassment which had left me frazzled and at the end of my wits, I'd taken out a restraining order against him the week prior. I hoped it would end the creepiness I'd been through for most of the past five months, even if my family thought otherwise. While Uncle Carlo wanted to send a message his way, I'd convinced him to let the legal authorities take care of my former sculpture teacher.
Uncle Carlo is old school Italian. Sicilian in fact, and yes, that means exactly what you think it means. Carlo was in the family business, the Mafia, and worked his way up the ladder to becoming the Godfather of the Seattle-Tacoma area for the past fifteen years. After taking over for his murdered brother, my father, he'd quickly consolidated power, crushing his opposition ruthlessly and enacting revenge for his fallen sibling. Bloodthirsty, and certainly not a man to be trifled with. That was Uncle Carlo
At the same time though, he was a kind and generous family man, who'd taken my mother and me into his house as soon as he could, caring for us like we were his own wife and daughter. Cancer had taken his wife when I was in sixth grade, so for most of my life, Uncle Carlo had been the male authority figure, and his sons had been practically like my brothers. He and Mom were in no way romantic, in fact, she filled an important role in his organization as one of his prime lieutenants.
Still, if anyone could talk Uncle Carlo out of a course of action, it was me, and he let me try it my way at first.
I went to the cops after Vincent started harassing me, getting a restraining order and having it delivered to the school as well, who removed me from the class next door to his in order to conduct an 'internal investigation.' That hadn't stopped his communication issues though, and I'd gotten tired of his constant text messages, e-mails, and phone calls. Unfortunately he knew my campus e-mail, and that was one address I couldn't get changed.
To say it was a bit disheartening was an understatement. You would think that a restraining order and evidence of sexual harassment would have done something more than just a change of classrooms and an 'internal investigation.'
I was wondering what to do about it all when I got back to my off campus apartment that I shared with Angela. Angela, never Angie, had been roomies with me for two years, after she'd passed Uncle Carlo's discreet but thorough background check. Short, alternatively perky and serious, and Asian, she was the total opposite of me as a math major. However, for some reason the two of us gelled, and for two years we'd been the best of roommates.
The first threads of worry started to work their way through me when I saw the open window to our apartment. Angela had terrible allergies, and insisted on keeping the windows of our apartment shut, even in the dead of summer. With ionic air filters and other anti-allergen devices running almost constantly, we racked up quite an electricity bill on a monthly basis, but thankfully Uncle Carlo had no problems with footing that cost, and the nearly sterile air did mean that when I painted at the apartment, I never had to worry about some stray cat hair or something screwing up a canvas. But for Angela to leave the window open was just not possible.
Hurrying to our door, I unlocked the deadbolt quickly, pushing the door open. “Angela? You home?”
Leaden, oppressive silence greeted my words, and I waved my hand in front of my face. The apartment was hot, and a sour, metallic smell was coming from Angela's bedroom. Setting my bag down, I walked carefully toward the room, calling out the whole time. “Angela? Hey, Anj? You here? You would have laughed your ass off — I ran into a pledge from Alpha Rho . . .”
The words dried up in my throat as I entered Angela's bedroom and saw the carnage in front of me. Angela, dressed in her normal early semester apartment wear of a tank top and a pair of Seahawks shorts, was lying face down on her bed, the back of her shirt ripped and torn, her shorts pulled down to expose her ass to the air. More important to me though was the spreading red pool underneath her, and the drip of the blood from her bed off of her out flung arm. The wall next to her was splattered, red raindrops against the eggshell white drywall.
I don't remember much of the next hour or so, everything was a bit of a haze. I must have screamed, or perhaps I'd maintained enough presence of mind to call 9-1-1. I do know that there were bright lights, and eventually a cop who led me into the living room, handing me tissue after tissue as I cried my eyes out. Later on, the same cop I think led me to an ambulance, but I wasn't sure why, except that they wanted me to go to the hospital.