Did I look at Jimmy with love or pity?
Sympathy or hate? Could I feel both in that moment?
My body heaved at the thought of him on the floor, writhing in pain. Or maybe it was heaving up the idea that I would never have to share a bed with him again.
Would I have taken him to the hospital had I been given the chance? Or better yet, had it been me, would my boyfriend have driven me there?
The answer to that last one was a resounding no.
I needed to remember that, remember my place.
One flimsy door separated me from a roomful of men who would put a bullet through my head in an instant. And I stood in a hallway of cement walls and dim lighting with the man who had just stabbed my boyfriend numerous times. I was ready for fear to whip through me, make me shake in terror. Rome stood a whole head taller than me, and his shoulders were wider than I remembered. He was bigger, more muscular, more everything than I remembered. Tattoos wove over his neck and arms like they wanted to wrap him up in all their corrupt markings.
The reaction I had to him staring at me with a look of disgust wasn’t fear but irritation and maybe a little heat. That annoyed me even more.
I grabbed the metal rim of the trash can to steady myself and wiped the back of my other hand across my mouth.
“Couldn’t have waited until the bathroom to do all the dramatic vomiting?” he blurted out.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is it a bother to you?” I threw back, surprised I was quick enough to toss snark at him in my state. But I was more than ready. If I stomped his foot with a heel, would he be so unemotional then? “The person I was living with for the past year is dying on the floor out there.”
“Then, I guess we were a year late in killing him.” He grunted and pointed to a door with black chipped paint to our right.
“You can go now. I don’t need an escort to the bathroom.” I flipped my hair over my shoulder, ready to leave this whole incident behind, when he grabbed my arm and shoved me into the bathroom. He followed me in and turned to lock the door behind us.
When he spun back around to find me sputtering, about to scream, his hand flew to my mouth. I clawed at his forearm where tattoos wound up to his wrist. I couldn’t get him to budge an inch. When he took a step closer, I winced and covered my chest.
I’d been here before. I knew the drill. I hadn’t planned for it tonight, though. Rome never looked the type to take advantage of a woman, and by now I had a pretty good understanding of the men who did. I thought tonight would be different, that Mario was protecting me now, that maybe me moving toward being a part of the family meant my body wasn’t up for grabs.
I guess I’d have to fight off this man too.
His dark eyes flared with anger, and he suddenly looked ill himself. “I’m not here to hurt you, Katie. Jesus.” His grip on me loosened. “I could have done that in the hallway if I wanted to. I need you to answer questions without screaming, okay?”
I nodded, probably a bit vigorously, willing to do whatever it took to get him away as soon as possible.
“Listen.” He crouched so that our eyes were level with each other. “Remember, it’s just me. The boy in your room. You’re Cleopatra, okay?”
I squinted at him in question. I wore the necklace still, and his finger pulled at the chain. It fell from my sweater and glinted in the light.
“Remember you stood in a space full of men tonight and the night I met you. No one harmed you. You hold cards, huh? Don’t fear me. I’m not here to hurt you,” he repeated, but then he tilted his head as if thinking about it. “At least not yet.”
I studied Rome, his strong jaw, the way the back of his hand rubbed across my collarbone as if to soothe me. It was in a single moment, us standing there in that small bathroom, that I found everything I’d been missing since I lost my father.
Suddenly, I was hopeful in another individual.
I nodded, my body warming up after a year of being as cold as ice. He lifted his hand from my mouth like a man stepping back from a wild, beaten animal. He spread his fingers and waved them in front of me, showing me he wasn’t trying to pull anything over my head.
“Did you know about Sasha?” He got straight to the point.
My heart squeezed, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he thought I did or because I suddenly longed for someone to care for me as he did his lover.
“No.” I wiped my mouth and glanced into the tiny mirror. It was cracked, and a piece of it had fallen out, but I could still see that my hair had frizzed out. My makeup was smudged and my lip-gloss was nearly nonexistent. I turned the water on, cupped a splash of it to my mouth, and rinsed it out. Then, I splashed my face. “I only knew he went to see other women. I tracked his whereabouts sometimes. I knew he was trafficking women. Mario’s guy brought me a cell and let me know that I needed to cooperate with them.”
Rome pulled at his dark hair. “They shouldn’t have involved you.”
“I was sleeping with the enemy. Of course they involved me.”
“You’re a child, Katie.” He eyed me with disgust and disbelief.
“Am I now?” I shot back at him. “Aren’t you too? You can’t be much older than me.” I rubbed the mascara under my eyes and reached for a paper towel.
Of course, the metal dispenser was empty. Rome lifted the bottom of his shirt, and I saw a flash of his abs before he grabbed the back of my head and smeared his shirt all across my wet face to dry it.
“I’m old enough to know right and wrong. That man sleeping with you was wrong.”
“It was consensual.” I was muffled by his shirt. I hesitated and then mumbled, “Mostly.”
“Your age makes it not.” He paused too as he dropped his shirt back down and met my gaze again. “Entirely and completely.”
I rolled my lips between my teeth, my anger rising. He had no right to judge me or who I was with. “My sex life isn’t up for discussion. What other questions do you have? I don’t have much information on your fiancée.”
“Ex-fiancée,” he corrected and sighed before he leaned against the wall. “She was only in my life because she’d told me she was having my baby. I . . .” He looked down at his scuffed black boots. “We were never compatible, but I’d have taken care of my baby. She didn’t deserve—”
I cut him off. I didn’t know much, but I knew enough to understand his guilt, the weight of a death on your hands. No one needed to bear that. “She was sleeping with Jimmy. I know that. She had been for a long time, Rome.” I took a breath and stepped toward him. “Jimmy whispered in the middle of the night, but I listened. He argued about that baby, Rome. And I know you probably don’t want to hear this now, but she told him he was the father too.”
He nodded slowly, keeping his face angled toward the ground. His feet moved back and forth, and when my hand acted on its own accord to touch his shoulder, he flinched.
I kept it there.
Whatever burden he felt could have been mine too. I wanted to carry the weight along with him.
Then he shrugged me off. When he looked up, those chocolate eyes had turned off whatever emotion he’d felt. The connection we had was gone.
“So, you know something more about it all, then. Did you know she was with me?”
I stepped back, but the room felt smaller, more dangerous and suddenly congested with this darkened soul of a man. “I didn’t know anything.”
“But you just said you did. You knew she was sleeping with him. What else?”
“I only shared that with you so that you didn’t—”
“Do you think you belong here with us?” He stalked forward as I cowered back. “Do you think any of us care about you here?”
“Mario does,” I stuttered. The door thunked when my back hit it, leaving me nowhere to go as his chest met mine. “Mario is going to take care of me. He said I’m in. Blood oath and all.”
“You’ll do the blood oath, but it doesn’t make you blood.” His words stabbed at the only thing I longed for. “You know the first rule of the family? Act as if you don’t know us. You walk out of here tonight with no one. We don’t pass in public and smile at each other. It’s a new way. Family isn’t family. It’s strangers. You’ll be on your own.”
“Mario will take care of me.”
“Or you’ll learn to take care of yourself. You better because Jimmy isn’t around for you anymore, and Mario has no use for you if you don’t have Jimmy to tattle on.”
“That’s not what I’m here for. That’s not—”
“You’re bait. Plain and simple.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to shake away the words. My frizzed-up waves whipped around my face, and he slammed his hand into the wall next to my head.
When I jumped, his laugh was menacing. “You don’t belong here. Find a friend or go back to foster care and leave this behind.”
I’d already left the things he mentioned behind. Nothing else was out there for me except this. “Foster care?” I shot back as anger boiled in my blood at him mentioning it. “Back to Marvin and earning him a little cash here and there? You took that home from me, remember?”
I didn’t say he saved me from it, that he risked his freedom to gain mine. I needed to thank him, not taunt him with it.
“I didn’t take anything from you! That man needed to die, Katie. He should have died a long time ago. You couldn’t have been the first one he did that to.”
“I know,” I murmured and looked down at the white tiles of the floor. “God, I know.”
He lifted my chin with a soft touch. “I’ll help you find somewhere to stay. Don’t mix yourself up with us. You’re not made for this world.”
To begin again and again with not a soul I knew and a preconception of what I would be felt near impossible to bear. I wasn’t just a foster kid; I wasn’t just an orphan. Mario had offered me a home, a purpose, and I was going to take it. “Jimmy was trafficking girls just like Marvin. You all knew because I helped figure it out. I’m going to continue to do it and I’m going to do whatever I have to. I’m made for whatever I need to be.”
His thick eyebrow lifted, mocking me. “Made to conquer us like Cleo?”
“Only if I have to. Women fight to survive. If we don’t, we die,” I said, the words suddenly rooting deep down into my being.
“There’s life beyond just surviving and dying.”
“You’d think that, right? When I wrote you after my dad died, I had hoped there would be. Only for a moment though. I still remember the blood, Rome.”
His lips pursed together as he listened to me, his touch still soft on my neckline.
“I tried to pool all my daddy’s blood in my hands and pour it back into his wrists before I applied pressure. Then I ran for the phone and screamed for the ambulance to come as fast as they could.”
I looked toward the ceiling and tried to hold back the pain. “I figured we could use a miracle, right? We’d never gotten one. If God could give other families one, surely we deserved one too. Maybe they could revive him, and we could tell the story to all the friends we didn’t have.”
The memories after they showed up didn’t get better. Social services dragged me away from the ambulance.
And foster care with Marvin and his wife followed suit. Marvin was sweet until the night came.
I did what I had to do.
I survived by choosing the boys I wanted to sleep with after too many nights spent with Marvin and the men who paid to sleep with me in my foster home bed. Boys at school were clumsy but nice. Jared and his father took me in most nights.
I did what I had to do.
I looked Rome dead in the eye. “I didn’t get a miracle, but I fought to survive. I guess I’m doing that again or else I’ll end up dead.”
He murmured, “You’re not dying, Katalina. You’re just getting started.” His eyes searched mine, consuming me, stripping me down. Somehow, I felt like he could see my fear, could see that maybe I wasn’t that strong, but he shook his head and repeated, “You’re just getting started.”
Then, before either of us could stop one another, our lips crashed together. I tasted him and lapped up every ounce of confidence he had in me. Deep down, I knew he was the only one who thought I was strong enough.
He ripped his lips from mine and winced as if in pain. “Stay away from me, Katalina. You know too much and yet not enough to stay away. You’ll ruin me or I’ll ruin you.”
He breezed past me, hot one second and cold as ice the next.
Still, his belief that I could survive cemented a bond between us. I couldn’t shake how unsteady I felt after our kiss, how I suddenly felt tied to him. I became a part of him, and he became a part of me that night, whether he wanted to or not.
It should have been the last time I saw him or interacted with him. I didn’t need a person to give me hope and then wrench it away a second later when the world had already done that again and again.
That night, the Armanelli Family told me the rules. Just like Rome said, we weren’t supposed to get in each other’s way—we were to distance ourselves from the family. I should have stayed far, far away from him for that very reason.
Yet we mixed ourselves up in each other like a toxic drink, one that was bound to kill us if we kept tasting it.
