“You’ll do the blood oath, but it doesn’t make you blood.” His words stabbed at the only thing I longed for. “You know the first rule of the family? Act as if you don’t know us. You walk out of here tonight with no one. We don’t pass in public and smile at each other. It’s a new way. Family isn’t family. It’s strangers. You’ll be on your own.”
“Mario will take care of me.”
“Or you’ll learn to take care of yourself. You better because Jimmy isn’t around for you anymore, and Mario has no use for you if you don’t have Jimmy to tattle on.”
“That’s not what I’m here for. That’s not—”
“You’re bait. Plain and simple.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to shake away the words. My frizzed-up waves whipped around my face, and he slammed his hand into the wall next to my head.
When I jumped, his laugh was menacing. “You don’t belong here. Find a friend or go back to foster care and leave this behind.”
I’d already left the things he mentioned behind. Nothing else was out there for me except this. “Foster care?” I shot back as anger boiled in my blood at him mentioning it. “Back to Marvin and earning him a little cash here and there? You took that home from me, remember?”
I didn’t say he saved me from it, that he risked his freedom to gain mine. I needed to thank him, not taunt him with it.
“I didn’t take anything from you! That man needed to die, Katie. He should have died a long time ago. You couldn’t have been the first one he did that to.”
“I know,” I murmured and looked down at the white tiles of the floor. “God, I know.”
He lifted my chin with a soft touch. “I’ll help you find somewhere to stay. Don’t mix yourself up with us. You’re not made for this world.”
To begin again and again with not a soul I knew and a preconception of what I would be felt near impossible to bear. I wasn’t just a foster kid; I wasn’t just an orphan. Mario had offered me a home, a purpose, and I was going to take it. “Jimmy was trafficking girls just like Marvin. You all knew because I helped figure it out. I’m going to continue to do it and I’m going to do whatever I have to. I’m made for whatever I need to be.”
His thick eyebrow lifted, mocking me. “Made to conquer us like Cleo?”
“Only if I have to. Women fight to survive. If we don’t, we die,” I said, the words suddenly rooting deep down into my being.
“There’s life beyond just surviving and dying.”
“You’d think that, right? When I wrote you after my dad died, I had hoped there would be. Only for a moment though. I still remember the blood, Rome.”
His lips pursed together as he listened to me, his touch still soft on my neckline.
“I tried to pool all my daddy’s blood in my hands and pour it back into his wrists before I applied pressure. Then I ran for the phone and screamed for the ambulance to come as fast as they could.”
I looked toward the ceiling and tried to hold back the pain. “I figured we could use a miracle, right? We’d never gotten one. If God could give other families one, surely we deserved one too. Maybe they could revive him, and we could tell the story to all the friends we didn’t have.”
The memories after they showed up didn’t get better. Social services dragged me away from the ambulance.
And foster care with Marvin and his wife followed suit. Marvin was sweet until the night came.
I did what I had to do.
I survived by choosing the boys I wanted to sleep with after too many nights spent with Marvin and the men who paid to sleep with me in my foster home bed. Boys at school were clumsy but nice. Jared and his father took me in most nights.
I did what I had to do.
I looked Rome dead in the eye. “I didn’t get a miracle, but I fought to survive. I guess I’m doing that again or else I’ll end up dead.”
He murmured, “You’re not dying, Katalina. You’re just getting started.” His eyes searched mine, consuming me, stripping me down. Somehow, I felt like he could see my fear, could see that maybe I wasn’t that strong, but he shook his head and repeated, “You’re just getting started.”
Then, before either of us could stop one another, our lips crashed together. I tasted him and lapped up every ounce of confidence he had in me. Deep down, I knew he was the only one who thought I was strong enough.
He ripped his lips from mine and winced as if in pain. “Stay away from me, Katalina. You know too much and yet not enough to stay away. You’ll ruin me or I’ll ruin you.”
He breezed past me, hot one second and cold as ice the next.