I was thinking about my past. This was not at all unusual for me, given the events that happened in my life.
I was born to be a mobster – my father was the legendary Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzini, head of the Lucchelli crime family in New Jersey. I had made my way up the ranks, and at 23, when Dad was "retired" by some old enemies he had made, I took the helm. My training in martial arts and my M.B.A. from Princeton helped me handle the situation, and by the time I was 30, I was a millionaire several tens of times over. But I wasn’t happy.
I decided, at the age of 31, to hand over the reins to my top lieutenant. We agreed that I should retire gracefully, and one deal with the police later (sharing information on some of the lower-level people, then paying them $1 million per year to accept a 1-2 year sentence), I had a "new identity" and was in witness protection in California, knowing I’d never need it. (The "boys" knew a little time in prison looked good on their resume, and a million a year is good pay for sitting around doing nothing. Money heals all wounds…)
I was now Nick Baker, having left Joseph Provenzini back in the Garden State. With the $25 million I had in the bank, I didn’t need to work. I spent my time working on my martial arts skills, my shooting, and my cooking (a man has to eat, and I was a bachelor without a woman to do the kitchen tasks…)
I poured myself a final glass of orange juice and climbed into bed. I didn’t anticipate anything out of the ordinary happening that night. I had no idea what was about to happen.
At 2:30 a.m., I was awakened by a noise. I thought at first it might have been a creature of the wild: my house is a mile from the nearest neighbor, and set in a forested area. I sat up in bed and listened. This time I heard a distinctly human sound coming from the living room. A footstep of someone trying to be as quiet as possible.
I slipped out of bed, in just my sweatpants and a T-shirt, and took my gun off the nightstand. Slipping quietly down the stairs, a made my way into the living room. A shadowy figure was trying to remove my computer from the desk. Since the machine is bolted down, they weren’t having much luck. I aimed my gun at their head. Flipping on the light switch, I called out, "FREEZE!"
Startled, the person spun around to face me. "Don’t move," I warned, "or I’ll blow your head off. Now slowly put your hands in the air." They did as I instructed. Their face was masked, but their worn-out clothes revealed a startling fact: it was a woman. "Remove the mask," I instructed. The woman did so. She was quite young: I judged her to be between 18 and 25. She was wearing a ragged T-shirt that had clearly seen better days, jeans that were filled with holes and so worn I thought they would tear apart at the slightest touch, and very little else.
"Lie on the floor," I told her. I went over to my desk, removed a pair of handcuffs, and cuffed her hands behind her back. I seated her in a recliner and pulled up a chair in front of her, seating myself comfortably on it. The gun was still pointed at her as I did so. "Talk," I said. "Who are you and what are you doing?"
"My name," she said shakily, "is Lisa MacKenzie." I retrieved her purse from the floor and confirmed she was telling the truth. Her license revealed she was 21 and lived in the nearby college town of Humboldt. "OK, Lisa," I told her, "why would a college student at Humboldt State be robbing a house?" "I need the money," she said. "My brother borrowed $3,000 a month ago, and now with interest, if he doesn’t come up with 4 grand by Monday the men say they’ll break both his legs." Loan sharks, I thought to myself, are the same lousy, small, arrogant people here as in Jersey. I looked at my watch: 2:45 a.m. Friday morning.
I looked Lisa over appraisingly. Her short brown hair was military-style, very unfeminine, but the rest of her looked good. Her soft brown eyes had begun to tear up, but they were very pretty. Her body was soft and curvaceous, with luscious-looking breasts, nice wide hips, and strong legs. "You realize that I could have you busted for breaking and entering." I said.