I blink back the tears. My chest is ripped open and my heart is torn to shreds. Mira’s words are like claws tearing into my flesh and I can barely breathe looking at her right now. She’s a wreck, a beaten down, bruised and lacerated mess, and she’s so scared she’s willing to tell me off and make me leave just so they don’t hurt her again.
“It’s Zita, isn’t it?” I say and Mira shakes her head, but I keep going. “She’s doing this to hurt me. She’s beating you to get to me.”
“Fuck you, Siena. You think maybe for once not everything’s about you?”
“This is.” Tears roll down my cheeks, heavy and fat. I did this to Mira. Maxim and I. I fucked my friend over and now I don’t know what to do because she’s stuck here. “Let me help. Tell me what to do. Please, Mira.”
She looks up and meets my eyes. I’m crying, but her expression is cold and dead, her eyes lifeless and flat. She looks like a girl that’s been through hell and back, and all her emotions were sucked out of her a long, long time ago. I knew the girls were hard, but this is another level. It’s like the Mira I knew and loved is dead, and her zombie form took her place.
“You can leave,” she says quietly but forcefully. “Walk away and never come back. They’ll forget I ever knew you eventually. So just fuck off, Siena.”
She turns and this time I don’t stop her. She marches out the door and disappears.
Back to her room. Back to her clients. She’ll have the worst guys today—the ones that don’t mind a girl looking all beaten and abused. If I know Zita, Mira will get those guys for a long, long while, and her bruises will never fully go away.
I hurry away from there. I can’t stand to stay another second, not near that grungy kitchen with the dishes piled in the sink and the makeshift curtains tacked to the walls with skinny finishing nails. I slip out the back and run to the car. I pull my knees to my chest and lock the doors and cry so hard I think I’m going to throw up. I did this, I fucked up, and now Mira’s paying the price. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to scream, but all I can do is sob into my knees.
The doors unlock. Maxim slips in and puts a hand on my back.
“How bad?” he asks as if he expected something like this.
I look up and he wipes a tear from my eye. “Bad. Real bad.”
He nods slowly. “Tell me what happened.”
I give him everything. I don’t think I could hold back even if I wanted to. As I talk, his face gets darker and darker, like a storm cloud rolling across a bright sky.
“It’s my fault,” I say and my voice is hoarse from talking and crying. “Zita told me this would happen and now it’s happening.”
“This isn’t your fault, Siena. If anything, it’s mine. But even that’s a stretch.”
I shake my head. I refuse to listen. I want to get out of this car, but there’s nowhere else for me to go. I can’t return to The Velvet Rope and I can’t go home. I’m stuck here, with this man, while my friends get beaten and abused because of me.
“Sometimes I wish you’d left me there,” I say, staring at him viciously. I’m lashing out and I know it. He doesn’t deserve my anger, but I can’t help it. He’s a big, bad bratva asshole, so he can take a little abuse. God knows I’ve taken my fair share. “Sometimes I wish you’d let me to get fucked.”
His jaw tenses. He nods slowly. “Yeah? What else?”
“You’re an asshole. You’re self-centered. Your whole woe-is-me-I’m-adopted thing is bullshit. You think you have it hard, but you have a good family, you have money, you have purpose. You have everything, and you deserve nothing. I’m a worthless piece of trash, and somehow you’ve managed to make my life even harder, and I hate you for it.”
He watches me and his face slowly deflates as I talk. It’s like he’s letting his emotions drain from him and it reminds me so much of Mira. It only pisses me off even more, and when I finally stop, my tears are rolling again and I’m breathing hard. I wish I hadn’t said anything at all, but now that it’s out in the open, I don’t think I can take it back.
“Feel better?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No, I don’t.”
“You done?”
“Yeah. I’m done.”
He leans toward me and his hand flips out. He grabs my hair roughly and pulls me close to him. I stare in shock as he looks into my eyes with an ice-cold killer’s stare.