Hard.
The blow takes her off her feet. She collapses into the wet of the gutter, sobbing, her hair she did so carefully draped over her face, the dress she was so excited to wear soaked by the filthy water, and one of her heels fallen off her foot like Cinderella.
I am going to kill all of you.
There is nothing left to do. These men are not going to back down now. Not in front of me. But they’re not going to kill me either. I turn my back on them, on Mia, and walk away. There’s no reason for them to kill Mia, other than her being a witness to their crimes. I can only pray that they are not so cold-hearted as to murder her for that single reason.
I can only pray that she forgives me.
But I’m sure she won’t.
What I’ve done to her is unforgivable.
I knew it from the start. I am the devil, and I should have never brought her into my life.
Mia
Three weeks later…
I may be alive, but my heart is as dead as an autumn leaf buried beneath the cold ground as winter approaches.
For most women, what happened that night in the street would be traumatic enough for a lifetime. But it was nothing compared to the heartbreak I felt when I realized Anton really did not love me and really was not coming back for me.
Twenty-one days. And I’ve counted every single one of them.
Back in my old apartment with my mother and my brother, crammed into a one-bedroom studio, living the life I had hoped they would never have to live.
I had to beg for my job at Becky’s back. Jerry spent fifteen minutes laughing at me on the phone and told me the staff would be taking fifty percent of my tips for the first month. I had no choice but to agree. When I tried to get back into what I thought was our house, Anton’s and mine, the men at the gate simply waved me away.
My mother told me to pawn my engagement ring.
I threw it away.
After everything he did to me, I wasn’t about to allow him to help my life, even tangentially.
At first I allowed myself to hope that his speech about me being a whore, about not loving me, was just for my own sake. That he was doing it to save my life. That he was going to show up that night or the next night, or even the next night, with roses and an apology and a declaration of his love for me, and that everything would be fine.
But he never did show up.
And I was ca
st out like a leper. Taken out like the garbage.
After a week, I started hoping I’d wake up and realize the whole thing was just a dream. That I’d never met Anton, never quit Becky’s and never gone to Vegas to get married in an Elvis and Marilyn Monroe themed wedding.
But now I wake up every day with my mother and brother here, living with me without the money I’d said I would earn, all three of us struggling to get by in a cramped apartment, living no part of the American dream I had promised them.
“Do not think of him anymore,” my mom says to me as she comes into the kitchen. I’m sitting in the corner by the fridge where the garbage can usually is. It’s the one place I can find some privacy in this apartment. The one place I go when I need to cry.
“I-I’m not, Mom,” I lie, wiping my eyes.
“There are many men out there,” she says, rubbing my back.
“It’s not that, Mom, it’s just—I feel stupid. I fell for his bullshit, and now you and Mateo are here, and I didn’t make the money I was supposed to and—”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she says, kissing me on the top of the head. “We are both happy to be with you. Do not worry about money. Being together is the most important.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I sniffle. She picks up the trash bag that I was meaning to take out, and I wave my hands at her. “No, I’ll get it.”