Broken Promises by Terri Reid

and felt her body relax. I’m such an idiot, she thought. Not only am I stronger than Gary Copper ever was, but I have a group of men who would never let him get near me again. What in the world am I worried about?
    She exhaled softly, smiled at the men hovering over her and then laughed out loud, releasing the rest of her tension. She stood up and looked around. The judge and the attorneys were not yet in the room. She didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize the case, but she needed to wipe the smirk from Copper’s face.
    Standing, she scooted past Bradley. He caught her hand and looked at her with a question in his eye. “Don’t worry,” she said, nodding with total assurance. “I’ve got this one covered.”
    Walking over to the deputies, she extended her hand. “Hi, I’m Mary O’Reilly,” she said.
    “Yeah, Ms. O’Reilly, we heard about you,” one of the large men said. “What can we do to help you?”
    She glanced beyond them to Gary, sitting smugly in his seat. “I just want to respond to his last comment,” she said. “That’s all. Is that alright?”
    “Well, ma’am, it’s fine with us,” he replied. “But you don’t need to put yourself out.”
    She smiled at him. “Oh, no, it’s something I really need to do.”
    She approached Gary and this time it was her turn to look him over, studying him like he was an insect on the floor. Then she placed her hands on the edge of the table and leaned towards him. “Perhaps you forgot how I kicked your ass the last time we met,” she said. “And that was when I was drugged and weak. If there is a next time for us to meet, it will be unforgettable, because I won’t be holding back and you won’t be intimidating anyone.”
    His eyes widened for a moment and then tightened as he glared at her. “Bitch,” he whispered angrily. “You don’t scare me.”
    “Then you are a very stupid man,” she stated unemotionally.
    She met his eyes for one more moment, she was resolute and unafraid. The she turned and walked away from him.

Chapter Eighteen
    Clarissa hurried down the tall black steps of the CTA bus and turned and waved to her mother through the window. The doors closed with a whoosh of compressed air and the bus pulled away from the curb next to Clarissa’s school, carrying her mother on to the restaurant where she worked. Even though the daily cost of a bus ride caused their budget to be even tighter, the two mile walk from the apartment building to the school was more than her mother could handle, especially when the weather was below freezing.
    Clarissa readjusted her backpack and waited for the light to turn green, so she could cross over to the front of the school. She had barely stepped off the curb when she was joined by a group of older boys from the school. She had seen one of the boys hanging around in front of her apartment building, talking with her babysitter, Mrs. Gunderson.
    “Hey, ain’t you Clarissa?” he asked, as the rest of the boys circled her. “I seen you talking with my auntie.”
    She nodded. “Yes, I’m Clarissa,” she replied.
    “You love your momma?” he asked, and the other boys laughed and slapped him on his back.
    She nodded and fear began to creep into her heart.
    The boy smiled, but the smile wasn’t in his eyes, it was a mean smile. “Well, that’s good, ‘cause you don’t want your momma to die, do you?”
    Shaking her head fervently, she tried not to cry. “I don’t want my mother to die,” she whispered.
    They stopped her on the other side of the street, before she was able to enter the tall iron fence of the school yard. “Then you just gotta do what you’re told,” he said. “You got money in your backpack?”
    She started to shake her head.
    “You lie to me, girl, and your momma dies.”
    She thought of the envelope with the crisp dollar bills her mother had carefully counted out that morning. The money to pay for the babysitter. She slowly nodded to the boy. “I have