LOVE IN AISLE 5

CHAPTER 4: THE RUSSOS GIRL IN RED

The woman in red didn't walk in. She arrived.

Sophia Russo wore red like blood was her favorite color. Long red dress, slit up to her thigh. Red lips. Red nails like claws. Hair black and perfect. Diamonds on her neck that probably cost more than Eunice's entire street in Brooklyn. And behind her, a fat old man in a suit, sweating, with a judge's eyes — cold and paid for.

Eunice froze on Eric's lap.

Eric's arms locked around her waist. Stone. She felt his heart under her back, beating too fast, too angry. His hand slid to his gun under his jacket. She felt it.

"Vincent, darling," Sophia said again, smiling at Vincent like he was her father already. Her voice was beautiful and cruel, like honey with glass. "You didn't tell me dinner was fancy. You didn't tell me your son's... hobby would be on the menu."

Leo laughed. He stood up so fast his chair scraped. "Sophia! Jesus. You look like a sin. Come here."

Leo kissed her cheek. Marco kissed her hand. Vincent actually smiled. A real smile that made him look younger and more evil.

"My Sophia," Vincent said. "Come. Sit. You are right on time."

Sophia's eyes finally landed on Eunice. On the girl in the cheap black dress sitting on Eric's lap, shaking, clutching Eric's arms like a child. Sophia looked her up and down. Slow. Like Vincent did, but worse. Because Vincent looked like he wanted to own her. Sophia looked like she wanted to erase her.

"Oh," Sophia said. Soft. Dangerous. "So this is Aisle Five."

Eunice's breath stopped. How did she know that name?

Sophia walked closer. Click. Click. Her heels on the dark wood. She stopped right in front of Eric's chair. Right in front of Eunice's knees.

"You are smaller in person," Sophia said to Eunice, still smiling. "On camera, Eric makes you look... taller. He watches you on his phone, you know? In meetings. At dinners. My father saw him watching you during our engagement dinner last month. He was watching you count crates instead of listening to my father offer him a judge. Isn't that romantic?"

Eunice looked up at Eric, shocked.

Eric didn't look at Sophia. He looked at Eunice. His gray eyes were furious, but not at her. At them. At all of them for looking at her.

"Don't talk to her," Eric said to Sophia, voice low, flat, the boss voice that made even Leo go quiet. "Don't look at her. Don't say her name. You don't get to say Aisle Five. That's mine."

Sophia laughed. Loud, pretty. "Yours? Eric Moretti, you have never said mine in four years of our families planning our wedding. Four years, Eric. My father bought you a judge. I bought you a white dress that costs more than her life. And you bring this... warehouse girl to sit on your lap in your father's house? In my chair?"

"It was promised to me!" Sophia snapped. The pretty broke. The cruel came out. "Vincent promised me! Your father promised me you would be mine! Because you need me! You need my father's piers! You need my father's judge! What does she give you? She packs crates! She smells like cardboard!"

"She smells like clean," Eric said. And he buried his face in Eunice's hair right there, in front of everyone, inhaling her like he was starving. "She smells like clean soap and Aisle Five, peace. You smell like every cigar and every lie in this house."

Eunice made a small sound. She tried to get off his lap. "Eric, please, I want to go".

"No," Eric whispered in her ear, arms tightening. "No. You sit. You said you are not everybody. So you don't run. You sit with me. If you get up now, they win. They will say you are weak. You are not weak, Eunice. You are the girl who counted to one thousand three hundred in a mafia house and told my father he should thank you. So you sit."

Vincent was watching all of it. His old eyes moving from Sophia to Eunice to Eric. Calculating. Like he was watching two stocks and deciding which to buy.

Sophia's father, the judge, finally spoke. "Vincent, this is disrespectful. You told us your son was ready to merge families. My daughter left a charity gala for this. If your son wants to play with warehouse trash, fine. But he will not get my court. He will not get my piers. The Russians will get it."

"Trash?" Eric stood up. So fast Eunice almost fell, but he held her, lifting her with him. He stood her behind him, his body in front of hers. Shielding her. One hand on his gun now, openly. "Say trash again. Say it one more time about my girl and I will show you how trash gets taken out in Aisle Five."

Dead silence. Marco stepped forward, hand on his own gun. Leo stepped back.

Vincent slammed his hand on the table. Once. Loud. The plates shook.

"ENOUGH!"

Vincent stood. He looked at Sophia, soft now. "Sophia, my daughter, you are family. You will always be family. Your father the judge is family. Go to the sitting room. Drink wine. Let me talk to my son alone."

Sophia's red lips tightened. She looked at Eunice, eyes full of hate now. Because she had loved Eric for four years and he never looked at her like he looked at a packer.

"You will regret this, Eric, "You think she is medicine? She is poison. Girls like her always leave. When she sees what you really do, when she sees your hands with blood, she will run. And you will come crawling to me in red.

"I have never crawled to you," Eric said. "And I never will."

Sophia turned, red dress swishing, and walked out, her judge father behind her. The door to the sitting room closed hard.

It was just the Morettis now. And Eunice.

Vincent sat back down. He looked Old. For the first time, he looked like a father, not a boss.

"Eric, sit," "Both of you. Sit."

Eric pulled out his chair again. He pulled Eunice back onto his lap. She was crying again, silent. He wiped her face with his palm, not caring who saw.

"Father, if you try to force me to marry her, I will leave," Eric said, quiet, but every word a bullet. "I will leave this house. I will leave the docks. I will take Aisle Five and I will make it clean and I will live in it with her. I swear on Mom's grave."

Vincent closed his eyes when Eric said Mom.

Leo looked away.

Marco stared at the floor.

"Your mother," Vincent said, voice broken "Your mother also wore a cheap black dress when I met her. She also counted things. She counted my pills. She counted my sins. She also sat on my lap in this house when my father said she was trash. And I told my father I would leave. Just like you. Do you know that?"

Eric's breath caught. Eunice felt his chest stop.

"I left for three days," Vincent continued. "I took your mother to a small apartment in Queens. We had nothing. No money. Just her counting. I slept for the first time in ten years. Just like you. Then my father sent men. They killed her brother to bring us back. They said Morettis don't live in Queens. Morettis own New York. So I came back. And I brought her back. And she died here. In this house. Because I brought her back."

He opened his eyes. Old man crying without tears.

"So I will not make you marry Russo girl," Vincent said to Eric. "Because I know what it is to love a girl who counts. But Eric, listen to me as your father, not your boss. If you keep her, you must make her strong. Stronger than Sophia. Stronger than guns. Marco tried to scare her today. Leo laughed. Sophia will try to ruin her. The Russians will try to use her. So you must teach her to not cry in this house. You must teach her to look them in the eye and say I'm not everybody. You did that tonight. Good. Now do it every night."

Eunice was sobbing openly now, not from fear, but from Vincent's story. From his mother's story. She understood now why Eric was so broken and so obsessed with clean.

Eric held her tighter. He looked at his father, eyes red too.

"I will make her strong," Eric whispered. "I will make her so strong no one touches her. I will put Aisle Five in her name. I will put everything in her name. So if they want to hurt me, they have to go through her chair."

Vincent nodded. He stood, walked to Eunice, and for the first time, he didn't look at her like meat or trash. He looked at her like a daughter.

"Girl, "What is your full name again?"

"Eunice Cole,"

"Eunice Cole," Vincent repeated. "From now on, in this house, you sit in my son's chair. You eat at my table. No one calls you trash. If Leo calls you trash, you slap him. If Marco scares you, you tell me and I will break his knee. Like my son said he would break mine. Do you understand?"

She nodded

"Say it," Vincent said, echoing Eric. "Say I'm not everybody."

"I'm not everybody," Eunice said, louder now, voice breaking but strong. "I'm Eunice Cole. I keep Aisle Five perfect."

Vincent actually smiled. Small, real.

"Good. Now go. Eric, take her upstairs to your old room. She is shaking. And Eric..."

Eric stood, holding Eunice up, her legs weak.

"Father?"

"Don't do anything stupid in my house tonight. I have cameras too. And I don't want to hear it."

Eunice turned red, so red it burned through tears. Eric laughed, first time tonight, real laugh, boy laugh.

"I won't, Father. Tonight I just want her to sleep. Like she makes me sleep."

He picked her up. Bridal style. She gasped, arms around his neck, face buried in his chest, hiding from Leo and Marco and Vincent and the whole mafia house that had just claimed her.

He carried her up the dark wooden stairs, past paintings of angry Moretti men, past guns on walls, to a door at the end. His old room. Big. Dark. Clean. One big bed.

He laid her on the bed, took off her shoes, his hands shaking.

"Eric, looking up at him, eyes swollen, black dress riding up, so small on his big bed. "I was so scared. I thought Sophia was going to kill me with her nails."

He knelt. At the side of the bed. He took her hands, kissed her knuckles, one by one.

"She will never touch you," he said, voice low, obsessed, in love, possessive, broken. "No one will ever touch you again. You are in my chair now. You are in my bed now. You are in my house now. You are mine, Eunice Cole. My Aisle Five. My medicine. My future with light in it. Say you are mine."

She looked at him, this mafia boss on his knees for a packer, and she cried and laughed and said it, because she wanted it, because she was no longer scared of loving a killer who knelt.

"I am yours, Eric. I am yours."

Outside the door, downstairs, Sophia Russo threw her wine glass at the fireplace and screamed so loud the men with guns outside flinched, because she knew in that moment she had lost Eric Moretti forever to a girl who counted crates and said I'm not everybody.

And the judge father made a phone call in Italian that said, "If we can't have the Moretti boy, we burn his Aisle Five down. With the girl inside."