The Marvelous Ethan Cole

The smell of old wood and cooking oil never really leaves a place like Pakora's.

It soaks into the walls over the years, into the curtains, into the ceiling. Seventeen picture frames lined those walls, one after the other, each one holding a face that looked a little like the next. Grandfathers in stiff collars. Great-grandmothers in Sunday best.

 Generation after generation of the same family, staring down at the same tables, the same chairs, the same little restaurant that had fed this neighborhood longer than most people could remember.

Tonight, those faces watched something they had never watched before.

Ethan Cole was already on the ground.

His right hand sat at the wrong angle, bent back in a way that made the stomach drop just looking at it. Blood ran freely down the side of his face, sliding off his jaw and hitting the floor in slow, quiet drops. His shirt was torn across the back. His breathing came in short, broken pulls, like each one cost him something he didn't have left to spend.

Six men stood around him, they weren't in any hurry.

The one at the front, the one who gave the orders here, stood with his hands loose at his sides. He was a wide man, thick through the shoulders, with a gold ring on his right hand that had already done most of its work for the night. He looked down at Ethan the way a person looks at something they've already decided to throw away.

“You know what your problem is?” he said, almost like he was being helpful. He tilted his head slightly. “You don't know your place.”

One of the others laughed.

At that moment Ethan tried to push himself up with his good hand. His arm shook under his own weight and he dropped back down, his cheek hitting the floor hard. He tasted blood already. Fresh blood now mixed with what was already drying on his lips.

“Mr. Hargrove told you,” the man continued, slowly circling him. 

“He called you personally. How many times was it?” He glanced at one of the others.

“Four times,” someone said.

“Four times.” He stopped circling. “Four phone calls. Four times that man picked up his phone and gave you a chance to walk away from his her, he even offered you money, but yet you decided to prove stubborn And now—” he crouched down, getting close to Ethan's face, “—you kept showing up. You kept calling her. You kept thinking you had some kind of right.”

Ethan's jaw tightened.

“I rejected and stayed, because I love her,” he said.

His voice was low. Rough around the edges from everything that had already happened to him tonight. But it was steady.

The man looked at him for a long moment, then he stood back up and started laughing. Not a small laugh. The kind that fills a room.

“He loves her.” He turned to the others, spreading his hands. 

“You hear that? This man, in this little grease shack, with his broken hand and his bloody face—” he gestured broadly at the restaurant around them, “—this man loves Victoria Hargrove, and he still has the audacity to utter such nonsense.”

The others joined in.

“Who do you think you are?” one of them said, shaking his head. "

“You run a family restaurant. Your grandfather ran a family restaurant. His grandfather ran a family restaurant.” He pointed up at the frames on the wall, all seventeen of them. 

“A whole family tree of nobodies, and you thought what? That you were going to be the one to change that?”

“You brought this on yourself,” the lead man said, his laughter fading now. His voice went flat. 

“Every single thing that is about to happen to you, you caused. You had a way out. He handed it to you four times. You threw it on the floor every time.” He looked down at Ethan. 

“So don't you dare look at me like I'm the bad guy.”

At that moment Ethan pressed his good hand to the floor, not trying to get up this time. Just trying to stay present. Trying to breathe.

“Please.” The word came out thin. He hated the sound of it. 

“I'll go. I swear to God, I'll go. I won't contact her again. I won't—just let me go and all of this. Please.”

“Please,” one of the men mimicked in a high voice.

“It's too late for that,” the lead man said.

“I'm begging you.”  Ethan's voice cracked slightly. 

“It was just love. That's all it was. I'm sorry. I am so sorry. Please, I'll disappear from the family and her life and never to step foot anymore around them anymore. You'll never hear my name again, I promise you—”

“You deserve to die.”

The words landed quietly. No anger behind them. That was the part that made them feel so heavy.

“You're a street rat,” another one said, stepping closer. 

“You manage a joke of a restaurant and you had the nerve to touch her hand. To call yourself her man. To sit across from her at a dinner table.” He shook his head slowly. “You deserve worse than death.”

Ethan's eyes were wet now. He couldn't stop it. The pain in his hand had moved past the point of being a sharp thing and had become everything, his whole body wrapped around it, his mind barely able to hold a full thought.

“You know what I keep thinking about?” the lead man said, almost conversationally. He reached down and picked up the dagger that one of his men had set on the nearest table. He turned it over once in his hand. 

“He called you four times. Four times.” He moved around behind Ethan.

Ethan heard the footsteps stop behind him.

“One.”

The first stab was not deep. It was slow and deliberate, just enough to break the skin across his upper back, and Ethan screamed. A real scream, not something he could hold back or swallow, it tore out of him and bounced off the walls and up through the ceiling.

“Two.”

He screamed again. His body tried to pull away and had nowhere to go.

“Three.”

He was crying now. Fully, openly crying, the kind that shakes the whole chest, tears running sideways down his face because he was on the floor and couldn't wipe them away.

“Four.”

“Five.”

By the time it was done, Ethan was barely making sound anymore. Just shaking. His back burned in five separate lines and the blood had soaked through his shirt and was spreading wide across the fabric.