"Sure."
"If that kid card fails, the woman card might get you even further. You're just Lorenzo's type."
"I'm not going to whore myself out to live," I shot back, voice raising.
"Just saying, sweetheart. You got options."
"Are you going to tell Lorenzo?"
"Not if you don't make me."
"How would I make you?"
"Don't know yet."
"That's not exactly helpful."
"Tough shit, kid," he said, smirking, smile just big enough to make his dimple peak through. "Don't like the uncertainty, I recommend not getting yourself involved with the family," he told me.
"I didn't get myself involved in anything. My father did."
"Little tip, babe," he said, giving me a hard look. "Stop being a victim in your own life."
Before I could snap at him that I wasn't a victim, that he didn't know what he was talking about, that Lorenzo and this family were who had turned me into a victim of kidnapping and imprisonment, Lorenzo was moving back into the main space, gaze flicking between the two of us, little vertical lines forming between his brows, making it clear my surprise and uncertainty and indignation must have been clear on my face.
And I maybe took that out on Lorenzo.
I tried to remind myself as I paced my room that it wasn't exactly misplaced, though, since I wouldn't have been put in this position if Lorenzo hadn't taken me, that I wouldn't have been annoyed with Gio, and snapped at Lorenzo. That I wouldn't be having some grandiose existential crisis as Gio's words kept playing across my mind no matter how many times I tried to fight them.
Maybe I had been so pissed because there was a sliver of truth in his words.
I had chosen this life. I had chosen to stand beside my father through all of his screw-ups. And when I was younger, of course, I had no choice. My mother was gone. My father was all I had in the world. And his immediate financial security impacted my life as well. If he didn't keep the bakery running, we would lose it. And the house. And any form of safety I had known.
But as I got older, after I was of-age, especially, staying and dealing with the constant stress, being shit on by a man who didn't appreciate all the work I was putting in to keep his family business running, to keep his head above water, did sort of make me a part of my own victimhood, didn't it?
I chose to go there every day, to be scolded, to have my decisions constantly undermined. I took on the stress that he created.
Those were all conscious decisions I made.
So, yes, I had been a victim in some respects.
And I had made myself that.
The family business was important to me. I had spent so much of my childhood there in that little bakery, learning my fractions as I stood on a stool beside my grandmother who explained it to me with measuring spoons and cups. I was taught patience watching each attempt at chocolate soufflé either burn or refuse to rise before I finally got it right. I learned about community in the connections made with repeat customers. I found pride in working with my hands, in keeping the morale up in the shop even in the worst of times.
And my grandfather wanted me to keep it in the family.
I felt like there wasn't a choice.
But there was.
Even if it was a bitter pill to swallow to admit that I had chosen my own miseries in life. Yes, even up to and including parts of this kidnapping. After all, had I moved across the country when there had been an urge to do so the day I turned eighteen, no one in the New York mafia would have been able to find and kidnap me to use against my father in the first place.
Though the actual kidnapping and imprisonment? I refused to own that. It wasn't my fault that these men thought women could be used as pawns in a power struggle or monetary negotiations.
That said, as the days were going on, I was starting to worry that maybe there would be no terms agreed to. What then? If my father didn't—couldn't—pay?
He would be killed, surely.
I was under no delusions about these men. As kind as Lorenzo had been to me, as a whole, he was absolutely capable of murdering my father in cold blood.
But if he was killed, what would happen to me? Would they let me go, only to strap me with the same shitty deal they had given my father? Always wanting more? Never letting me breathe easy?
Or would they cut their losses, make an example of me as well to anyone else who had daughters that could be used against their fathers?
I wasn't sure.
And, quite frankly, neither option sounded like something I wanted.