The money, drugs, and temptation - my life on the bad side

Falling downhill to a bed of thorns...

Bitter-sweet. I think that is the only way to describe how my life is running right now - sweet for the family I have, and bitterly horrible for the depth which I have fallen into with Andrew.

It is summer now, the girls have finished school for the year - Trina doing so with honours - and the house is feeling like a home. The babies spend all of their time outside in the backyard where I know they are safe now that it has been renovated, and we bought them a small pool which they adore. Cocoa spends much time back there with me working in the large vegetable garden we planted while Trina watches - gardening isn't her thing. They have all taken up affectionately calling me duck, as in mother duck because of the close eye I keep on all of them and the panic attack which ensues if I do not find them quickly. 

So while my family is doing fine, me... not so much. Andrews calls are becoming more frequent, and he even insists that I wear a pager for when he needs me urgently and immediately. I don't know how much longer I can stand Cocoa's knowing looks, Trina's confusion or the babies hurt when it beeps and I suddenly have to run out to work. What kind of pharmisist needs a pager? I don't think Trina is bright enough to know what's happening, but Cocoa definately is suspicious. She watches me like a hawk over her babies, though allows me the space to continue keeping it secret. It's hurting her, I know it is, that I won't tell her, but I still think it's for the best - the less they know about the depth I am in with the world we vowed against so many months ago, the less they will want to jump in to help me. 

And there is no way I will ever let my girls get involved with Andrew - though he has told me many times I am special to him, and HAVE been treated better than some of his other workers, he hits when he is angry, which is often, and has many times tried to get me into bed with him. When I tell him no he hits me harder where the bruises are covered by clothing.

Besides his violent tendencies I would never let the girls take a step near his house because of the dirty illegality of the work which is taken care of behind those doors. Not to mention the outright and very frightening threats he has made directly towards all of my girls.

Not three weeks after I started with him I went over for work on Saturday night - going to his office to ask him very bitterly what my duties were that night - they usually consist of sorting and/or weighing the crop and packaging it, some deliveries and various other illegal activities - I found him face to face with a large older man wearing a Mafia suit and shouting loudly in another language. Andrew answered with the same vigour in the same language before switching to English:

"You asshole, we agreed two young girls and six million! Do you know how many times I nearly got shot making those deliveries? And now you're trying to sell me three M short and a chick who looks like she's had three babies? I can't make use of her! What the hell am I going to do?" he was very expressive with his hands, and I briefly wondered whether behind his dark complexion he might be part Italian.

The man standing opposite him looked cool as a winter night as he laid down a briefcase on the desk.

"Shit happens. Business is business, kid." he said with a heavy accent... perhaps Sweedish.

Andrew suddenly gained control of his composure again. "You're right, Sir. So sorry. Of course, business is business."

And before the man had a chance to tip his hat at Andrew, my boss had raised his gun and shot the old man between the eyes. 

"Business is business." he whispered. 

As if he had known of my being there the whole time he beckoned me over. So very foolishly I did so, staring at the dead man on the floor in front of me in a state of shock. The only people I had ever seen dead had been my mother and my father, though my father was fairly unrecognizable after the truck had done it's job to him, but I had never see anyone DIE. Just... be there one second and gone the next, without mercy in the eyes of the man opposite him.