Chapter twenty six: Broken glass
The minute Margo stepped foot across the threshold of her irretrievable apartment's doorway was the exact moment a gun was raised to her head and before she could respond, her body had been slammed against the door, only causing her to bang the back of her head against the wood and with the impact and lack of capability to respond with her natural instincts, she gasped aloud and slipped down to the ground.
"Oh my God, Margo! I'm so sorry! I thought you were that guy!"
Margo allowed herself to be collected in the arms of her brother. Ordinarily, she would've pushed him away and insisted on saving herself, only this time she enjoyed his company and the safety they correlated. When she sat down on the sofa, Matthew quickly joined her and pulled her into his arms, to which she wrapped her arms over his shoulders and held him tight, afraid to let go.
"What guy? Pope?" She asked, trying hard to hide the contentment of pain on her face.
"Who's that?"
"The guy that came to get me."
Shaking his head, Matthew frowned. "No, but it doesn't matter. You need to tell me everything."
With a raised brow, she let it go and assumed he would be able to handle the situation like the grown man she'd raised him to be. And after a heavy sigh, she told him everything, and the absolute truth about the mission and the ugly deception she'd fooled him into believing about her. He soon learned that his sister wasn't just secluded from the world because of bad experiences. She was the bad reason why people lurked in the shadows, afraid of becoming known to the alleged gang warrior who'd cut a smile to anyone who ever so looked at her the wrong way.
It began with the past and how she met the men, which led to the conversation of William and how being in love made her fear weakness, and as a result, she fled for six years and within that time, she'd gotten herself involved with a mafia mobster who led her into the lifestyle of crime and deviance. And how when she got out, he promised to follow her to the ends of the earth. Of course, she didn't believe any harm would come her way but Matthew wasn't convinced.
And when the conversation came up about Ben, it was obvious she was disorientated, torn between the two brothers. Matthew had a lot to say about the danger his sister had caused but when push comes to shove, he'd always have her back, even if it meant eliminating the two men who could turn on her just as quickly as she left them.
Surprisingly, the million dollar conversation didn't particularly make Matthew beam with joy. At first, he was wary to believe such news. They'd suffered with poverty all their life and the thought of accepting dirty money made him scared because even though now, it was legally theirs, he knew Lorea's men would attempt to find each piece of paper and as a memorial to their leader, they'd decapitate Margo and her friends to show him justice.
He was in even more disbelief when his sister told him that she jumped out of a helicopter in order to save both the money and her friend's lives. If she hadn't kicked the net from beneath the copter, the cash would have been shred to insignificant pieces and the vessel would probably have obliterated along with those inside.
Then, just like the story that followed after, she told him how she got sick in the jungle, which led to the harrowing walk along the edge of a cliff with mules to carry their luggage and even after the ending of an innocent animal that plummeted to its death, they continued on through to the mountains to where her friend, Tom, died in a shootout in order to save her.
The conversation pretty much came to a halt after that. With the intense burning sensation that radiated all over her body from both pain spilling from the back of her head but mostly within her chest, she stopped talking, terrified to break down in front of yet another person who hadn't seen the weak side of her. At least at the end of it all, she was able to hold her bloody hands up in surrender and label herself as a survivor, even though she wish she hadn't. Not only had she gotten Redfly killed, she'd distorted the brotherly bond between the two men she'd grown to adore so effortlessly and truculently.
With the early hours of the morning rolling around, Margo had finished filling her brother in on every little detail to which she owed him after almost a decade of secrecy. She lifted the legality papers and filed them away safely in a storage box in the kitchen and when she exited the small area, she wore a tired smile. She'd just been through hell but none of it mattered anymore. She'd returned home in one piece, just like Pope had promised.
"The rent's due tomorrow." For once, Matthew didn't sound stressed. "We should get the hell out of here before the landlord comes."
Sighing, Margo ran her fingers through her hair. "It's not that simple, Matty. I'm not supposed to have this money and when we move to some fancy ass house, they'll hate me forever."
"Then say I got it all." Matthew's quick response was suspicious. "Tell them I run an underground scheme and I make big bucks."
"Yeah, and you've hit the jackpot as soon as I've came home." She rolled her eyes.
Shaking his head. "Wait, hear me out. We can just say that I've been saving up for awhile and a relative in Ireland died. The rich one from Belfast and we got half of their shit because they didn't have kids."
"Okay." Margo barely nodded.
"Great." Matthew beamed and pulled his sister into another hug, one of gratitude and longing. "I've missed ya, Margie. It's good to have ya home."
Margo, with her much shorter frame, barely managed to pat his back. "It's good to be back."
"Okay, well, I'm going to go to sleep. I haven't had much since you left."
With one last hug, Matthew looked at Margo for longer than he should have. He was afraid she was going to leave again but with this cash, she didn't need to, and so when he convinced himself she'd be fine, he exited the small area to go to his bedroom.
Blowing hot air through her teeth, Margo's bare feet thudded along the rotten tiles of the floor and when she looked down, she smirked, knowing she'd never have to see such grime within one space again. Then, when her fingers pulled open the fridge to reveal the two bottle of wine she'd left amongst a few microwavable meals, she hesitantly paused and wondered if it was safe to indulged at this hour with her increasingly worrying symptoms but when it came to it, she shrugged her shoulders and grabbed the bottles by their necks and trailed herself to her room.
She was immediately embraced with a harsh cold that made bumps rise along her skin. With the mattress a foot away, it lay lonely on the floor with just a thin blanket to keep it company. The rotting smell of the dampened ceiling made her scrunch her nose up in disgust and she quickly moved over to the candle to light it.
With a single cigarette on the desk beside the cherry scented wax, she set alight to the end and watched it burn momentarily before putting it to her mouth and fixating on how good the nicotine rested on her tongue. With the stick hanging between her teeth and the bottles in each hand, she sat down on the rough, freezing mattress and let the moonlight hit the back of her neck through the broken glass of her window. She couldn't wait to be out of here and inform their misogynistic prick of a landlord of their fortune. His misery would bring her great joy.
After her daily dose of compound chemicals, she put the cigarette out by squashing it against the end of the mattress and from there, she drowned her demons in the red liquid that would eventually leave both her mind and liver in ruins.
There are other ways to clear the brain, to let the bad memories trickle down like a shower head and lick at her exposed feet and pile up until they reached her calves, leaving nothing but burning thoughts on the things she could've done better or the things she didn't do at all. She wished she had taken the more addiction-free way out before the booze poisoned everything that was so very wonderful about her. She couldn't see what everyone else saw but to herself, she was nothing but a burden.
With her rosy cheeks, she got used to the burning sensation that wrapped itself round her throat and suffocated her, pricking at her eyes like barbed wire. She deserved a pain she hadn't experienced - something more hurtful to distract herself from the wounds within; a payback of sorts to bring justice to the fatherless daughters of Tom. It was her fault that he was dead and she realised what this feeling was.
She was beyond remorseful and after taking another swig, she burst out crying, remembering how when she couldn't get up from her paralysed position on the mountain, she violently tried to shake Tom into awakening but he'd never open his eyes again. The last thing he ever did was sacrifice himself for his friend so in a way, she was glad that she could tell his girls that their dad died a hero. She was so sad to the point where she felt numb, and in other ways, she felt dead. Perhaps that's the price you pay when you take away someone else's.
The harsh scent that arose in the room made her feel nauseous and she clambered to her feet with wretches. The minute she stood up, her whole body swayed back as though she'd been swept under the surface of the river in the jungle, and with that comparative, she was right back in Brazil.
With the intense thumping in her ears and the bile that was ready to spit from the pits of her stomach, the glasses in her hand had dropped, shattering into millions of little pieces around her ankles, piercing her skin at a thousand miles per hour but she couldn't feel it. All she could feel was her body letting go, and it did, right out onto the floor with a thud, on top of the wine and the broken glass.