“He was what he had to be to get power.”
“How can you say that? You shared meals with him, you stood beside him for years, you—”
“I was his weapon and I was his downfall. The last was for you.”
“Not for me!” I pounded a fist into my thigh. “Stop saying it was for me when I said no.”
He stared at me for long seconds, reading every part of me. He peeled back every layer he could, took me in for maybe the last time alone, and then he cleared his throat before he said, “I had to wonder for days if you were dead. Dead, Katalina. The muse to my monster was gone and she asked for time like I could quiet the beast. I went fucking insane. Mario did that to us. He pushed us all too far. I can’t cage anything that pushes the family to that point.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged, trying to rid myself of the emotion I felt at his words. I wanted to scream at him that I needed to go, that it wasn’t his fight. I had to learn about my family alone, make my decisions without the Armanellis making them for me. I’d been their pawn long enough. “Maybe we’re all a victim to the tradition of these families. We have to be more than that though. We’re all broken and we need—”
“We need you!” His voice cracked through the air like a whip.
“You need the old me and that’s not me anymore!” The words flew fast and furiously from my mouth. “I won’t be bait anymore. I won’t walk through this life without a cause or let the cause pass me by. I’m not the victim; I’m the fucking savior now.”
My body shook and I felt my skin dampening from the memory that was flying through my thoughts.
* * *
The odor hit me first.His stale breath panting into my lungs like an oversized walrus, trying to perform an act he hadn’t in a long time. My eyes shot open, because the smell was different. Marvin would brush his teeth like he thought I cared. The past few nights, he’d told me to kiss him and asked if I enjoyed it.
When someone takes everything from you, you don’t feel anything anymore. When every single hope is gone, you don’t contemplate what feels good or what feels bad. I only knew I wouldn’t lie. So I told him the truth. I didn’t know what joy was anymore.
He laughed in my face, his minty breath mixed with cigarette smoke filling the air as he said he would reintroduce me. I lay there and let him have me.
No tears fell.
Tonight, though, was different. This was a man I didn’t know, one whose sweat slid over my naked body. The rolls of him slapped against me as he floundered to get ready for whatever he’d paid to do with me.
He whispered how much he liked my mouth, that it was all he paid for but that he might sneak a few fingers in me to get me off too.
Did I fake it to make the time go faster? Try to find pleasure where I knew I would live out the rest of my life?
My mind recoiled at the idea. It was the first one it had actually responded to in a long time. I wasn’t a willing participant. This wasn’t something I could ever enjoy.
Revulsion hurled through my body as I lost more of myself that night to that man. I cried as he took what he wanted. Tears streamed down my face when I realized not that I was being raped, but that I’d had more to lose in the first place. I’d thought every part of me was gone already. Would it happen with every man that came here? Would I be stripped of more and could I handle it?
I remembered the words Rome in the dark of the night had said to me. “You’ll survive. Because if you don’t, you’ll die.”
I repeated them over and over in my head.
The stench of him lingered when he got off me and left the room. It grew sour with shame, weakness, and self-loathing.
People cope with rape and abuse in different ways. My only way was to accept it. I didn’t have a shower to wash the stench away. If I got up and did that, Marvin would most likely come to ask if I needed help. I didn’t get up to write to Rome again either. I’d written to him once about Marvin but I wouldn’t again. Not like this.
I’d already lost everything.
I’d lost myself.
And I vowed that if I ever got the chance to get that control back again, I would take it viciously, without remorse.
8
Rome
My hand shot out to wipe one lone tear that escaped her glassy eyes. They looked far off and I needed her to come back to me. “Hey, you’ve never been a victim, Katalina.”
“I have.” She cleared her throat, blinked away her fog, and wiped at both her eyes before shutting them tight. She was probably trying to push away all the complications I was thinking about. “I have, Rome. And I won’t be again. I want to change what’s been done. I want to make waves in the bratva, do good instead of bad.”