hw

ng. Schwartz was frowning as he looked at the phone , trying to make sense of the messages that were landing on his phone. His m

d called, his raspy voice punc

i was

*

ph

eted corridors of the gentlemen'

I thought rudely. Like it was Th

ical b

ere men came to vent

fights. It was said that he took pleasure out of beating his opponents to a pulp in the ring. The man was taciturn and was known to be dangerous. In the week that I had been here, I had seen him just once

en it. It was just one of the tales that the girls car

urge to look back. I knew that Paul Worthing

andedly destroyed my sister and

was comin

*

et up a long while ago but the Casino and the underground Fight Club were recent additions. One of the

mma, poor little Paddy and I. And of course, my sister Sondra when she deigned to turn up in . Being a lowly serving girl, I

had no

*

trotted along, desperate to put as much

*

t always be

family. He would often lift tiny Mamma in his arms and we would giggle, Sondra and I, watching them. Mam

e unfairness of life had hit us squarely when he was killed in a stray shooting at the local Mom and Pop store. He had been home on vacation and had rushed out at night to get us some ic

been fourteen at the time; So

e. I had inherited our mother's Italian genes, short, rounded and buxom with my hai

re quite a few debts that had to be cleared. . The house we had grown up in had

and smoking, sex and rape happened often and

d against us, against the world at large. Against Mamma and me for no reason, that p

we could not have dreamt of buying. Once I had entered the kitchen at the fag end of an argument between my mother and So

nd smoke. Naturally enoug

ed. When she tried to reason with Sondra, it had soon deteriorated into ugly arguments. Luck

*

the girls at the new

single-handedly. Single c*ntedly, actually,' she had trilled and everyone

utching my satchel to my