"I understand that you need to talk to Galina, but Galina is not home" said Gloria already losing her patience with Dmitri on the phone. "If talking with me is so hard you should call the restaurant."
"It's not you Gloria, I'm just saying this is a delicate situation..." Dmitri answers.
"Okay, so tell me" Gloria could feel it wasn't something dumb just by Dmitri's tone of voice. This was serious. "Did Nicky do something again?"
"No, it's nothing with Nicky... Look, I have this girl here" He said.
"Dmitri I really don't want to know about the women in your lif..."
"Gloria would you please just listen? otherwise you won't be any help. So, there's this girl, she was caught stealing food in a supermarket."
"...and?"
"She's 10 years old, and homeless, you have to see this kid Gloria, she's so small and she needs help."
At that moment Gloria understood, that child needed them. Her heart stopped for a second with the thought of a little girl being obligated to steal food to survive. She needed to do something.
"Are you at the police station? I'm on my way."
"Gina go grate these onions now." Red said while she completed her final touches on her dishes. It was only 01pm and the restaurant was already full of people.
She took a minute to look at her phone and it had 3 missed calls from Dmitri, 3 from Gloria and 1 from Nicky. Mama bear decides to call Nicky, of course.
"Nicky, I don't have time so go straight to the point please." Red said in her normally aggressive tone of voice. She could hear her girls fighting on the phone, something was up.
"Mama, Flaca got detention." Nicky said between laughs. Flaca took the phone from Nicky desperately. "Mama, first of all Nicky is a bitch, she had no right of telling you before me."
"Watch your language, I agree she had no right, but DETENTION Flaca? AGAIN? What happened now?"
"Mama it was so unfair, I forgot to do that stupid poem Jones asked last class, and she's making me do it in detention!" Flaca whined while explaining.
"I asked you 5 times if you had finished this poem Marisol" Red said tiredly. "You know what? I don't have time for it, we'll talk about it at home young lady." She said and hung up the phone.
"She hung up on me and now I'm dead" Flaca looks at Nicky. "Are you happy now?"
"Yep" Nicky gives her a goofy smile.
"Enjoy your happiness while you can because I'm gonna KILL you after" Flaca says while she slaps Nicky with her backpack.
Arriving at the police station Gloria could see a little girl from a distance, she looked very small and had a black eye. How the fuck this kid got a black eye. She thought.
"I tried to speak with her but she seemed scared of me," said Dmitri. "Could you please try talking to her?"
She nodded. Looking at this kid was breaking Gloria's heart. She didn't understand how can a person treat a child like that. "Hey niña, may I ask your name?" Gloria said getting closer.
The kid didn't look so scared with Gloria. "My name is Patricia, but I don't like this name." She said in a quiet tone of voice. Gloria smiled and bent down so she could look Patricia through the eyes, "What about Tricia? Can I call you Tricia?"
Tricia smiled back at Gloria and nodded. "Yes, I like Tricia".
"Do you want to tell me what happened to you? Do you think we should take you home?" Gloria asked.
At that moment, Tricia started panicking. "NO, no please don't take me there" She said already in tears.
"Ok shhhh, hey look at me" Gloria hugged the little girl in na attempt to calm her. "shh... it's okay, you're safe now."
Dmitri entered the room after the crying noise to see what had happened. Gloria looked at Dmitri with tears in her own eyes. "let me take her today. I'm going to talk to Galina and our social worker. She can't come home and she certainly can't stay here."