“You’d tell me if any of my boys…”
For god’s sake. I turn on him, poking a finger into his chest. When the anger subsides, and the irrational, terrifying side of Milo recedes, he’s a needy, vulnerable boy whose parents abandoned him. Only I get to see this side of him, and it’s always after he’s been a jerk to me or done something deplorable I’ve witnessed—and I’ve witnessed a lot of his darkness.
“What would it matter to you if all your boys were fucking me? You pimped me out years ago when it suited you,” I sneer.
Grabbing my wrist, he pins my hand to his chest and grips the back of my neck with his other, dragging me closer to him, his breath warming my face with each exhale. “I’ve never let anyone take you that way, and I’ll kill any of my boys who even try to fucking touch you.” His tone is deep and fierce, like he really believes he’s kept my innocence safe. I was eleven when I first had to “help” pay our rent. “It’s just modeling, Willa. Only…you’ll be naked.”
I am a virgin in the technical term, my hymen is intact, but my innocence was stolen a long time ago.
“I’m growing up. You’re going to have to get used to that and give me some freedoms, Milo,” I plead.
“Why would I give you freedom? So you can leave me too?”
“I will never leave you,” I grate out.
I’m thrown to the bed, the door slamming behind him as he leaves. Just as I get up and make it to the door, the latch clicks into place from the other side. “Milo!” I scream, slamming my fist against the wood. “Milo! Let me out!”
Arghhh! Fuck you, Milo!
It’s almost twelve hours later when he finally unlocks the door. Dawn creeps over the horizon, the start of a new day. “Go eat,” he commands, nodding down the hall toward the kitchen.
I know my eyes are red and swollen, but he pretends not to notice. Not one of the other guys in the house pay me any attention as I pass them, probably because of the fear Milo will gut one of them next.
My eyes track the floor where Anton laid bleeding out. It’s as if it never happened. I pass the kitchen table, stacked with cash and Wesley’s girlfriend counting it.
Wesley is Milo’s number two and best friend—if you can call loyalty through fear friendship.
She tips her chin at me in acknowledgment, and I look at the clock above her head. It’s six a.m. The house isn’t usually this busy at this time. Pulling bread from the cupboard, I smear some peanut butter between two slices and slap them together, taking a desperate bite. Grabbing a glass of water to wash down the sandwich, I move toward the table, my eyes roaming over the cash. It’s a lot more than I’ve ever seen, and a knot turns in my stomach.
“Where did this come from?” I whisper.
Wesley appears beside me, shaking his head. “Maybe you should go back to your room, yeah? Before you cause more problems.”
His body stiffens when Milo enters the room, his eyes jumping between us. “What’s the verdict?” he asks, looking to Wesley.
“Twenty K short. We have a couple days, but we’ve exhausted our avenues. We could maybe do ten by the time the deal goes down, but…”
“Fuck,” Milo growls, picking up a glass from the table and launching it across the room. It splinters into a thousand pieces. Wesley’s girlfriend and I both cower from the shards spraying across the space between us.
“Everyone out. I need to think,” he orders. I take a step to leave, but his hand reaches out to clasp my arm. “Not you.”
The sandwich has turned solid in my gut. The air is toxic. Something big is going down, and having Milo this rattled means it’s bigger than him.
“Do you love me?” he asks, his brow furrowed, eyes haunted.
“Yes,” I tell him honestly. I do love him. He’s my brother. I just hate my life with him.
“You know everything I do is for us, right? To give us more than what we were left with from our cunt parents.”
“I know,” I croak. If our mother is dead, it’s unfair to label her in the same context as our father. He chose to leave us; she didn’t have a choice. Unless she took her own life. I wish I knew more about who she was. Am I like her? Do we look alike?
“We gotta keep climbing. Never look down. If we do, we fall. But it takes sacrifice, Willa. From both of us.”
I wrap my arms around his waist and burrow my head into his chest, giving him what I think he needs. “I know,” I whisper.
“We have to do bad things, things we don’t want to, but it’s so we can have a future where we don’t want for anything.”