[Tantalism] 🕶️ Jobs

[tanuno]

[Tantalism] Gangster Girl Gabriella's Story 299-302

"Right," I say, sounding like me. Olivia straightens. Miriam makes a sound that might be a laugh, might be a sob, lands somewhere between the two. "The document," I say. "They didn't get it." "No." "Warren?" "Cooperating. Enthusiastically." A pause. "He's quite frightened of me. But he lies. If he just told the truth, I’d be less likely to hurt him." I look at my hands again. And realise that the first thing we need to do is visit fucking Warren.	I’m in the cell with him. And Miriam and Olivia who seems to terrify him by simply existing. I let the silence fill the room. He says nothing. I shrug my shoulders at him. “Speak.” Eventually he stammers “Who’s she?” Olivia looks up from sending a text that, I’m guessing, isn’t to her mum. “I’m here to protect ma’am from the people who have been harassing her,” says Olivia firmly. Pointedly. Her phone dings, and she smiles. “Just organising a back-hoe,” she says apologetically. I love this woman.
His eyes dart from my rigid posture to Miriam, unblinking. A fine tremor runs through his shoulders. He swallows, throat working soundlessly. “You’re a bit wee to be going to prison, Mr Warren,” Olivia chides, “I’d take some lessons in self-defence if you get the chance.” I stifle a giggle. Gangsters aren’t supposed to giggle. Warren’s mouth opens and closes like a landed fish. His hands are shaking so badly he has to clasp them together in his lap. The old Warren would have stammered an apology by now, would have tried to explain. This Warren just sits there, diminished, his expensive hoodie damp with sweat. “The document,” I say. “The one where you signed away your rights to Igor’s empire. What happened to that commitment?” “I don’t—” “Warren.” Olivia theatrically pulls her gun. Screws on a silencer. “You tortured Miriam to force me to hand it over. Your people. The ones you hired to kidnap me.” His face goes grey. “I didn’t hire anyone to—” “Then who did?” Olivia asks from the door. Her voice is pleasant, like she’s asking about the weather. Warren’s eyes flick to her, then back to me. Something shifts in his expression—not guilt exactly, but a kind of sick recognition. “The captains,” he says. “Dragan and Marko. And Franjo. They said if I could get the document back, destroy it, they’d support my claim. There was never any kidnapping…” “Your claim.” I taste the words, bitter as bile. “To an empire you walked away from. That you signed away.” “I was coerced—” “By who? The fucking Sugar Plum Fairy?” Olivia coughs to cover what might be a laugh. Warren’s jaw works. “You don’t understand what it’s like. Having that name, being Igor’s son, and having nothing to show for it. While you—” He stops himself. “Well you weren’t coerced by any of us. I was quite happy to go halves. And you signed it and now it’s in a bank safe deposit box.” “You were happy with half?” Warren’s voice cracks on the last word. “Half of what should have been entirely mine?” “We’ve had this conversation.” I lean back in my chair, watching him unravel. The Warren I married would never have said something like that. He barely wanted his trust fund, let alone a criminal empire. “When did you grow a spine, Warren? Was it before or after you put a bullet past my head?” “That wasn’t—I didn’t—”	“Yeah, you did.” Miriam slides a photograph across the table. It stops an inch from his trembling fingers. Olivia leans in, her voice dropping to a blade’s edge. “See, lad? Unluckily for you, the pathetic little creep who stalked her had cameras planted all over the place. We have the whole thing. Hours of it. Every flinch. Every order. All culminating with you picking up the gun and firing it.” She lets that hang in the air, thick as smoke. “All he wanted was some film of a pretty girl to toss off too. But he ended up with something that’ll see him getting out of jail before you do,” she finishes, not smiling. “He’s telling us every detail. For a chance to see the sun again.” Warren’s eyes go wild, darting between us like a trapped animal. “You don’t understand—I was protecting myself! They would have killed me if I didn’t—” “Didn’t what?” I lean forward. “Didn’t try to murder your ex-wife?” “I wasn’t trying to kill you!” His voice cracks, rises an octave. “It was just—I was supposed to miss, supposed to scare you into—” The crack of Olivia’s palm against his cheek is so sudden, so sharp, that even I flinch. Warren’s head snaps to the side, a bright red handprint blooming across his pale skin. He gasps, hand flying to his face, eyes wide with shock.

 

[tanuno]

[Tantalism] Gangster Girl Gabriella's Story 303-306

“Don’t lie to me, boy,” Olivia says, her voice deadly quiet. “I’ve interrogated men who’d eat you for breakfast, and every last one of them had the same tell when they lied. That little twitch in your left eye. Just like now.” Warren’s breathing comes in short, panicked bursts. A thin line of blood appears at the corner of his mouth where his teeth caught his lip. He looks at me, desperate, pleading, but I give him nothing. My face is stone. “The truth,” I say. “All of it. Or Olivia starts getting creative.” Olivia flexes her fingers. The gesture is casual, almost absent-minded, but Warren watches it like she’s loading a weapon. “They said...” He swallows, adam’s apple bobbing. “Dragan said if you were gone, really gone, not just scared off, then everything would be clean. No disputes. No challenges. Just me inheriting what was rightfully mine.” I nod. “Except the only reason you missed was because I sat down suddenly.” “You can’t make this stuff up,” added Olivia from the doorway. His silence is answer enough. “Maybe you should have hired the pervert who did manage to kidnap me. He did a better job than you did.”	Olivia’s phone buzzes. She glances at it. “We’ve gotta go.” Warren lurches forward in his chair. “Gabriella, please. You know what they’ll do to me in there. I’m Igor Andropov’s son. Every wannabe hard man will want a piece of me just to say they did it.” He’s right. He won’t last a week. Part of me—the part that remembers him bringing me coffee in bed, fumbling with my bra clasp, crying at Swan Lake—feels something twist. The other part remembers Miriam covered in bruises with a broken arm. “You had choices,” I say. “You made them.” “I can still be useful to you.” Desperation makes his voice high, thin. “The captains trust me. I can—” “The captains think you’re weak. That’s why they picked you.” He opens his mouth to speak. I cut him off. “You. Useful.” I let the word sit between us like something rotting. “You weren’t useful when I offered you half. You weren’t useful when you signed the document in return for a lazy ten million. You weren’t useful when you changed your mind and decided to shoot instead.” I take Miriam’s gun, not pointing it, just holding it. “You know what you are, Warren? You’re a liability. To me, to the captains, to everyone who made the mistake of thinking you’d ever be anything other than what you are.” Olivia shifts her weight at the door. I can hear policemen clomping down the hall. I return the gun to her and stand up. “Here’s what I think, Warren. I think you go to prison. I think the captains who told you to do this disappear, because that’s what captains do when things go sideways; they vanish and leave some idiot like you holding the bag. And I think every man in that building who ever wanted to prove something to your father lines up to take a piece of you. And I think—” I lean forward, close enough to see the broken capillaries in his eyes, “—I think that’s not my problem.” “Gabriella—” “No. We’re done talking.” We troop out. The door clangs shut behind us.
“Great work everyone,” I say quietly. “You too ma’am.” We’re walking slowly so Miriam can keep up. “Belfast…two things. Who did you kill” “I’ve forgotten his name. Big fat bastard, hence the back hoe.” “Franjo. That’ll make Mila happy.” “Doubt anything’ll make that little girl happy,” says Miriam. “She’s gonna be trouble.” “And your second thing?” Olivia interrupts. “Stop calling me ma’am, for fuck’s sake.”	The next morning, two of us board the boat to the island with our few bags. Olivia stays behind on the dock. By afternoon, she’s vetted a group of women—some wary, some fierce-eyed—and brought them over. We watch from the porch as Olivia runs them through drills on the beach: blocking, striking, disarming. Mila and I join them the next day. My first punch lands weak and off-center; Mila’s is all anger, no form. We come back each morning, sweating through our shirts in the salt air. Weeks pass. Miriam’s sling comes off. She starts joining us, slowly at first, then drilling hard—learning how to use her recovered strength.

 

[tanuno]

[Tantalism] Gangster Girl Gabriella's Story 307, 308 & 309

Not everyone approves. We catch the looks from some of the men—crossed arms, turned backs, muttered remarks under their breath. Mila is already causing trouble, creating false rumours. She hates me with a venom no one understands. After a few weeks I decide that if I’m going to be hated, I might as well give her a real reason. I don’t follow through with my threat of handing her to the guards, many of whom are now women. Instead we have her auctioned to the highest bidder at one of the strip clubs. A small Russian consortium won her and we never saw her again. The money went to a homeless shelter. Aren’t we lovely?

I call everyone into the great hall. I stand before them, my voice low and carrying. "I am the new Igor." A few men at the back let out choked, nervous laughs. Miriam's pen scratches against her clipboard. She does not look up as she lists their names. I give them the choice: kneel or leave. Those who choose to go will be paid well, but they must be on the last boat off this island before sundown and never look back. Only one chooses—the old gardener, his hands still caked with soil, his eyes seeking any horizon but this one. He’s 80 and we applaud him for his service. The sniggerers are not so fortunate. They are dragged forward first. Olivia and a few of the women take them into the side chamber. A few come back out, in shock. A couple are never seen again.

I remind the rest about Franjo. About Dragan. About Marco. How they loved to whisper about the good old days.

The walls on this island have always been hungry. Some traditions do not die; they simply wait for new hands to wield them.

THE END​

 

[tanuno]

[Tantalism] Angel 1-3

The boat is wooden, built for fishing generations ago, its planks weeping seawater through ancient caulking. Under the stretched blue tarps, bodies are pressed together. The canvas offers a thin strip of shade but traps the heat, turning the air thick and heavy with the smell of salt, diesel, and unwashed skin. A single plastic jug of water makes its way hand to hand, each person taking only a mouthful. They have paid everything. It has bought them this: seven hundred miles of open ocean toward a coast where lights sometimes glimmer just before the patrol boats find them and turn them back.

ngel lets the water touch her lips and stops there. It’s the first sip since they left that godforsaken country. Civil unrest, gangs fighting in the open, earthquakes. No money, no tourists, no work. Only hunger and grief and gunfire somewhere not too far off.

She tells her mother to give the baby, her nephew, a second share. Angel's share. There is a bully - Pierre - on the boat who watches Angel the way no man should watch a woman, and he shouts when he sees what he thinks is an extra ration going to a child.

 

[tanuno]

[Tantalism] Angel 4-6

On day five, with the Florida coastline in sight, a storm that has been brewing finally hits. The cyclone arrives like the fist of Methuselah. The wind strikes first—a wall of air that lifts the tarpaulins away like tissue paper. The boat lurches sideways, and Angel grabs her mother’s arm as spray explodes over the gunwale, salt water filling her mouth and nose. The sky turns the colour of a bruise, purple-black, and the waves rise higher than the mast.

A man stands, screaming something lost in the howl of wind. His thick body sways as the boat pitches. Angel sees his mouth working, his eyes wild and white-rimmed. The deck tilts at an impossible angle. Water rushes across the planks, and his feet slip out from under him. His arms windmill once before the next wave sweeps over the side and takes him. One moment he is there, the next—nothing but churning foam where he stood.

Then comes the impact. The boat slams into something solid—sand, rocks; she cannot tell. The ancient planks split with a crack that cuts through even the storm’s roar. Water pours through the rupture. Bodies tumble forward. Angel’s shoulder strikes something hard, and stars burst across her vision. They are in shallows. She can feel sand beneath her feet when the waves pull back. The boat lists to one side, its broken hull grinding against the beach with each surge. Rain drives sideways, stinging like needles against her skin. Her father pulls them up out of the wreckage. His hands find them in the chaos—first her mother, then Angel with the baby. They stumble through knee-deep water that tries to suck them back with each retreating wave. Others from the boat struggle around them, dark shapes in the gray fury of the storm. As the day dawns, Angel lies on the sand.

The sun is a pale smear behind thinning clouds, offering no warmth yet. The storm has abated a little, leaving behind only the occasional gust that sends stinging sand skittering across their skin. Between these slashes of wind, there is a heavy, bruised peace. Angel's father’s voice is hoarse as he urges them up, pointing toward a line of dunes where beach grass whips back and forth. “We cannot stay here,” he says. “Find shelter.” Beach grass whips against Angel’s legs as they climb higher onto the shore. Her father leads them to a concrete structure—some kind of public restroom—and they press against its lee side, the wind slightly less brutal there. The baby wails, a thin sound swallowed by the storm.