He didn’t hear the door creak. Antonia entered in a blue custodian’s smock, carrying a bucket and mop, making a point of rattling the bucket. Stan glanced over, saw what looked like an old cleaning woman, and lost interest immediately.
To men like him, service workers weren’t people. They were fixtures. “Hey, lady,” he barked, not bothering to cover himself. “Get out. Can’t you see I’m showering?”
Antonia shuffled closer, pretending to mop. “Just a second, son,” she mumbled in an old woman’s voice. “Need to get this spot.”
She moved in like a snake—three feet, then two, then one. Stan turned away again, lifting his face into the water. His thick neck, roped with muscle, was exposed. A perfect target.
Antonia straightened. In her hand, instead of a rag, was a syringe with a long needle. She struck fast. The needle went deep into the trapezius muscle, and she drove the plunger all the way down.
Stan roared and spun with shocking speed, fist already coming up for a killing blow. If he had landed it, he might have taken her head off. But the drug hit his overheated muscle and spread through his blood almost instantly.
His arm froze in midair. His legs buckled. The big man crashed onto the wet tile like a dropped wardrobe. He tried to get up, choking and drooling.
His eyes flooded with rage and confusion. “What did you—” he managed. Antonia stood over him, looking down, and pulled off the fake headscarf.
“All that strength and not much judgment, right, Stan?” she said in her normal voice. “You’re used to hitting people who can’t hit back. You’re used to being the one everybody fears.”
“Now look at you. Flat on the floor at the feet of an old woman. Where’d all that strength go, champ?”
She wasn’t about to drag him to the basement. He was too heavy. So she decided to operate right there in the shower room. Unsanitary conditions didn’t bother her. If anything, they would make his recovery harder.
She shut off the water. The room fell into a ringing silence broken only by the rough, wet breathing of the paralyzed giant. Antonia reached into the bucket and pulled out not a rag, but her wrapped instruments.
“You used that part of yourself like a weapon, Stan,” she said, cutting away his gym shorts with scissors. “You thought you had the right to put it wherever you pleased. Weapon confiscated.”
Stan Warren cried. For the first time in his life, the brute cried, fully understanding what was happening and unable to move even a finger. He saw the scalpel flash under the dim shower-room lights.
Antonia worked quickly and harshly. With Larry she had been careful, almost delicate. With Stan she was not. Her cuts were firm. Her stitches were rough and functional. She had no interest in leaving him neat.
“Hurts?” she asked, watching his eyelids twitch. “Sit with it, hero. The girl hurt too. Difference is, she screamed. You can’t even whimper.”
When she finished, she wrote in green antiseptic across his forehead: “FOR ELLIE.” It was a mistake—an emotional lapse. Until then she had left no message, no signature. But rage got the better of her…
