I barked a nasty laugh. The idea of Jermaine Donnelly doing taxes was almost too absurd to imagine. “He might’ve prepared some bullshit soldier’s taxes, but he wasn’t an accountant,” I said, shaking my head.
She glared at me. “You’re in a pissy mood because you beat up some old guy and didn’t get what you wanted out of it, and now you’re going to make up lies about my dad to feel better. I think you’re sick and you’re a liar.”
I sneered at her. She was right, I was sick, but I was also telling the truth.
“I took pleasure in killing your father for the hundreds of girls that he’s trafficked into sex slavery over the years. You can plug up your ears and pretend like I’m not telling the truth, but I promise you, little Tara, your father was the deepest, darkest scum in this city, and the world’s better off without him.”
She stared at me with an angry defiance and I slammed the car into drive again. I took off, flying into traffic, and sped through the city. Some reckless, suicidal part of my brain wanted a cop to pull me over right then and there so the girl could get away and I’d end up rotting in prison for the rest of my life like I always imagined I would.
Instead, I made it back to the apartment. She got out and didn’t speak on our way back inside. She disappeared back into her room and slammed the door shut, and I left her alone. I poured a drink and stood out on the balcony, and by the time the sun set, I felt a little bit better, but Tara stayed in her room.
4
Tara
He was a liar.
I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe him.
My father wasn’t a nice man. I couldn’t dispute that. Growing up with him was hard, and weathering his moods was sometimes like running head-first into hurricane winds. He got violent a few times, but he never beat me, not exactly. He was abusive in other ways.
But he was an accountant. I saw him doing taxes every single year. He worked with lots of Irish guys, and although most of them were related to the Healy family in some way or another, that didn’t mean he trafficked women into slavery or whatever Ewan said.
My father was an asshole. He drank too much, and yelled when he was in a bad mood, and slapped me a couple times when I was a teenager and talked back, but I couldn’t connect the man I knew with the monster Ewan said he was.
I stayed locked in the room all night. I fell asleep at some point and woke up alone, staring at the ceiling. I tried to think about my life with my father, but he left during the day to work, and came back at night when he was finished. I never asked what he did for a living—I assumed he went to some office for accountants.
I hated my father. For years, I wanted to get out of there—but when I graduated high school, it became pretty clear that there was no way I’d go to college. He wouldn’t help pay for it, and tuition would put me a hundred thousand dollars into debt or more, with no guarantee I’d be able to pay it off. Instead, I got a job waitressing, and was saving up enough money to move out, and to hopefully figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
Until one day two men showed up, murdered my dad, and stole my life away.
And now Ewan wanted me to believe that my father was a monster.
This was insane. He was trying to gaslight me, and that only pissed me off even more.
I couldn’t run away. I knew that much from living with my father. The mafia guys were serious business, and a few times he told me stories about them, stories I assume he heard when he worked on their taxes, stories about them dismembering people that were disloyal to the family, stories about torture in elaborate and horribly painful ways, terrible and disgusting stories. I believed Ewan about one thing, and it was that the Valentino family would hunt me down and kill me if I tried to get away.
I was stuck in the same house as a liar.
I took a shower and went into the kitchen for coffee. Ewan was gone, and there was a note on the table. Help yourself to whatever you want. I’ll be back soon. E.
I read it then ripped it into shreds and threw it in the trash. I could’ve run away, but instead I made more coffee, scrambled some eggs, and ate sitting out on the patio.
He came home an hour later. I tried to ignore him, but it was hard when he sat on the couch and turned on the TV. I came back inside and leaned up against the sliding glass door, arms crossed over my chest. He glanced in my direction and tilted his chin up.