The Fine Print

"Did you read the fine print?" he asked with his heavy Southie accent, a true Bostonian and Black Irish besides. His dark hair was cut close in a Caesar style and razor faded on the side making his deep blue eyes all the more striking. His demeanor said he was every bit the enforcer – broad shouldered and solid but nowhere near as imposing as the bodyguard types that flanked him behind the pool table. The two of them were easily a head taller and had fifty pounds on the Southie. He eyed her hands and the shaking papers, but he was calm as the duck pond in Boston Common. Still something about the Southie telegraphed he was ready to dodge a swing and deliver a hook across a jaw. Not edgy. Just prepared.

"Why does it matter?" she questioned back pulling the papers tight to her chest to still the anxiety her hands betrayed.

"You're about to start a war between the Micks and the Guineas. Thought you might want to make sure you know what you're signing."

She looked down at the contract again. Ten pages. The fee for services clearly outlined. "Should I have my lawyer review this?" She picked now to be sarcastic when the tone would be least appreciated. Of course she'd read through the legalese a hundred times before this meeting and again when she walked into Fagan's bar.

The Southie shrugged. "Look dollface, it's your hit but that's a hefty price."

She glanced up into his cold, blue eyes that held actual concern. No one had given her demands a passing thought. She might as well have been asking for something as mundane as a glass of water or directions to the tollway. The Southie, however, wanted to be certain, to ensure she was certain that the sacrifice was not only desired but the consequences fully understood. She resented his apprehensions, the perceived misogyny. Nothing was written that hadn't been agreed upon before this meeting and that also included the imposing and boorish man in front of her.

"Did you read the contract?" she quizzed.

He cocked an eyebrow and feigned some injury. "You think just because I'm from south of Boston that I can't read? I went to college."

"You went to college?" She thought she knew everything about him.

"On a boxing scholarship." He certainly was ready for a fight that much she knew having seen his name a few times, heard it whispered in circles where shady bets on unsanctioned sports were made. She hadn't mistaken his stance – cool, collected, and always reading his foe. He searched her a few times now, watched her body language, her tone, her inflection. The only thing she'd given away was her nervousness and who wouldn't suffer a bit of anxiety upon entering a lion's den? One hasty move, one suspicious word and she could lose her life before the inked had dried on the paper. Any demeanor besides apprehension would be a problem. She didn't have to fake it. Her pulse would have been audible anywhere else.

"What did you study?"

"I wanted to be a lawyer." His New England accent was even more evident in the way he dropped the consonants from words. She'd lost that lazy dialect after a semester in boarding school. Girls from good homes simply didn't speak like they'd crawled out of the river.

"Why not?"

"Be a lawyer? This pays better, dollface. And I didn't have to waste four more years of my life learning how to break the law."

He kept calling her that name – dollface – the same way Joey Donnelly had. She couldn't quite decide if he meant to be demeaning or endearing. Her face was like a doll's with clear glassy eyes and smooth skin like Italian porcelain. Her own father had remarked how easy on the eyes she was. Maybe that made her almost too perfect to believe her story or the reason she stood in the back of a drop bar giving her life in exchange for a dark and twisted deed.