RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,141

rape kit, and my mother was buried without ceremony in the back of a Jewish cemetery, even though she was Catholic, in a country that had never felt like a home to her. I wasn't allowed to attend the funeral, and my father sure as hell didn't go.

I do my best not to remember any of this. Remembering only makes things more difficult. But Wren's sitting next to me, holding my gaze with steady green eyes, and he has questions. I resent that he's dredging this up. Most of all, I hate that this whole time, the guy I'm insanely attracted to has known this horrible, dirty, dark, evil secret about me that no one in the world should know.

“I thought the army police had that report destroyed,” I say. “They made sure to have all record of it expunged from the Tel Aviv police force's database. I know that for sure.”

Wren nods, picking at his fingernails; he attacks the very last chip of black nail polish that he's been wearing since the first night I met him, finally taking care of it once and for all. “They kept a copy on their own system,” he says.

“I see.”

“I can't believe they sent you back there to live with that piece of shit,” he says.

“Well. I was fourteen. And they'd decided he did nothing wrong, so where else were they going to send me?”

“What about your grandparents? Your mom's parents? Couldn't they have taken you?”

This is so futile. What good is trying to retroactively figure out a better alternative now, three years after the fact? It's all long done and dusted. “My grandfather was already dead. My grandmother had Alzheimer's. She never really understood that my mom had died. I went back to live with my father and that was all there was to it.”

“It's just so...” He flares his nostrils, his hands curling into fists. He looks like he wants to hit something really fucking hard. “Did he ever touch you again?” he growls.

“No! No, god. No. It was only that once. He never did it again. I think he was high on something when...the day that happened.”

“I've had bad trips before, and I've never raped anyone, Little E. I've never fucking killed anyone. And even if that were the case, he would have come down the next morning. What possible reason could he have had for keeping you in that fucking box for five days?”

Going back into those memories means going back into that box, and I just...I can't fucking do that. Slowly, I get up and move to the window. The sun's shining brightly outside, and everything is so green. The spring-like day contrasts so starkly with the grey, oppressive cloud that's descended over me that none of what I see on the other side of the glass feels real. “I don't know. We never spoke about it after that day. I knew that I'd wind up dead if I brought it up, and my father seemed content to pretend like nothing had even happened, so I just did what I needed to survive. He started training me into the ground after that. Every single day, he put me through the most brutal training. I couldn’t understand it at first. But then I began to see the self-loathing in his eyes. He wanted me to be able to protect myself. From him. I think he always worried that…that he might do it again.”

I suck in a gasping breath, but it doesn’t help. I still feel dizzy, like I’m going to throw up. “Escaping Tel Aviv, being sent here to New Hampshire? I pretended to myself like it was an inconvenience and I resented being dragged away from my friends, but honestly...it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It might not be the healthiest coping mechanism in the world, but I want to forget that time of my life. All of it. Every single last day. So, please...I don't want to talk about it anymore. I can't. It won't help, and—”

His arms wrap around me from behind. He holds me tightly, nestling his face into the crook of my neck. “Shhh. Shhh, it's okay. It's okay. I'm sorry. Shhh, please don't cry.”

I hadn't even realized that I was crying, but I am—desperate sobs punctuated with hiccuping gasps that echo around the hotel room. I used to lock myself in the bathroom at school during my lunch break and cry like this from time to time. I