I pull up the hood of my jacket, grab my phone out my pocket to call in the incident and walk the other way back to my home in Brooklyn. With every step, regret etches its way into my mind.
That’s the thing about regret. That fucker doesn’t show up until the wrong decision has been made, and there’s no option but to live with the consequences of those actions.
The key screeches in the old lock as it clicks over, opening up the door to my house, or rather Marino headquarters. I freeze at the sound. My heart races as I wait for heavy footsteps belonging to a pissed off Lucio, but relief settles over me when nothing but the dull sounds of the television in the living room to my left, fall upon my ears. Exhaling the breath I was holding, I shut the door behind me and tip toe past.
The outline of Valentina Marino’s head poking above the top of the couch fills my dead heart with warmth. The woman who took me in without question or any hesitation nearly a year ago. I’d begun to hate her. She knew what her husband and brother had done to me on the night my sister left. Or rather, the night Lindsey begged me to leave with her without telling me everything she should have. Because, bless her beautiful soul, she didn’t want to tarnish the rose-colored glasses I wore when it came to this fucked up family. I was blind, stupid, and so very naïve. All Lindsey ever tried to do was protect me and when I pushed her away that day, I left her with no choice but to watch me find out for myself the kind of evil that lives within these walls. Valentina knew what happened to me and I thought she didn’t care. More so, after Lucio was ordered to take me again. To use me for his pleasure. To prove his place among the Mafia hierarchy. But after I started coming home with broken bones and bloodied skin, Valentina would care for me and do everything she could to take the pain away. But it wasn’t enough. It never would be.
She couldn’t give me the one thing I wanted more than anything—to wipe my memory and forget. Forget the searing pain of Lucio’s violent hand and the tortured eyes he gave me with every thrust because he hated it too. With every new bruise came a spark of anger.
One day I snapped, blaming her for everything. She stood in front of me in the bathroom while I held my battered body up against the wall in the shower under the spray, trying to wash away the marks on my body imprinted there by her son. She just stood there, silently taking my verbal beat down. She never spoke. She didn’t have to. I said treacherous things we both knew were the truth, and her actions afterward spoke louder than anything she could have voiced. She walked forward, washcloth in hand and wrapped her arms around my shaking body. She held me while I cried in pain. She soothed me while I wept for what my life had become. And when the tears slowed and she stood me back up, she stared at me blankly. Nothing crossed her face. No empathy. Absolutely nothing.
She’s dead inside too.
Just like I’m becoming.
Years in this house, among her place in this family, had broken her down. Blood bounded her to them and forced her this fate. I didn’t want that for me. I didn’t want to look in Valentina’s cold dead eyes and see myself in thirty years. Which is why after the Christmas from hell with my sister and Oliver, I tried to end it. This family had broken me. The agony had become a violent struggle, permanent and bruising. My soul had been crushed, along with it my dreams. They were lost, just like I am. I hadn’t told Lindsey what they’d done to me after she left. But every time I’d seen her since she’d felt it. She hurt seeing me coming down from a high. We never spoke of it and I always tried to hide it. But she knew when I was high and when I was sober, which isn’t all that often. So when I showed up at her loft for Christmas, high as a fucking kite, it was all it took for her faith