The Mafia Kidnapped Me

(37) I'm Bull.

She looked at him with surprise, then disgust. Was he kidding her right now? "Oh great, I'm playing who wants to be a millionaire with my captor. The next question will be how much, my life?"

He sighed. "Pamela I am not Bull, and if you let me, I will explain everything."

"Oh okay, I'll let you explain, I mean, take a look," She raised her chained feet to his face. "I'm not leaving in a hurry."

He moved to the other end of the room and rested his back against the wall. "I used to be reckless when I was young, I don't know why. Maybe it was because I had no one to teach me how to behave," he laughed mirthlessly. "I mean, my parents divorced when I was fifteen, and so I automatically became a burden, a reminder of their failed marriage. I became an afterthought, a child that was shuffled from parent to parent as they willed."

"Look," Pamela spoke up when he paused, using that window of opportunity to air her views. " I am so sorry you had to go through that, but if you're trying to go through the back door of my heart to garner my sympathy, then you should probably try something else because it won't work."

"I am not lying, and no, I am not doing this to get your sympathy. It is the truth."

"Okay then let me guess, the emotional turmoil that occurred made you cold and heartless."

"It made me reckless. Made me turn to an addiction: gambling. All the money I got, I gambled away. I became a regular at casinos and I couldn't hold a job for more than a month. It affected me a lot. I dropped out of college and threatened my parents that I would commit suicide if they didn't give me my trust fund - if I had one. They managed to capture me and force me to rehab where I was clean for the rest of my twenties. On my thirtieth birthday, my father passed and willed some money to me.

"Money is a spirit, you know. Sometimes when you have it, it drugs you and draws you into the depths of your misfortune. Sometimes, it makes you better, depending on which you choose. Guess I decided to go back to my vomit."

"By vomit you mean casinos."

He gave a small nod. "My gambling addiction became twice as worse. It was as if I had been starved of water for days and stumbled upon a spring of fresh water. It was so bad that I started to gamble on credit, and pay back my debt when I had the money. The funny thing was, I had to pay whether I won or lost."

"Of course," she muttered, getting tired of the story.

"Eventually, I borrowed ten grands, wanted to double it and pay back but I lost. Naturally, I panicked and ran but the owner caught me and sent his boys to beat me up and gave me till the next day to pay up. I was scared so I took the coward's way out and went back to beg for my life but to my surprise, they told me that someone had paid my debt and wanted to see me."

"Bull." she scoffed. "So that's why you decided to work for him? Because he came to bail you out?

He looked straight into her eyes. "She."

"Bull is a woman?" she asked incredulously.

"No. She - she works for him."

Pamela looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Why are you telling me all these?"

"Because I want to prove to you that I'm not lying so that you can forgive me. That's the only way I can rest easy."

Her heart stopped for an instant. "What do you mean?" she asked quietly, dreading the reply. Yes, she hated Marcel, but wishing him dead was something else entirely, something she wasn't sure she wanted for him.

"It means -"

"It means - " another voice said from the doorway and their heads both snapped towards that direction. " - that Bull has ordered us to end the sweet Marce."