“So the wrong people knew he was good with numbers and they used him, but I don’t understand what ended up getting him…” Henry pauses. The tears finally make their way to the surface, and my vision gets blurry. I blink to let them roll down my face. It’s not worth the effort to hide any emotions. Not with him.
This is me.
This is my truth.
And likely, Henry will be the only person to ever hear it anyway.
“I think he mouthed off to the wrong person.” I let out a laugh, then exhale heavily. “But it’s not really clear. I could have walked in at the wrong time and escalated everything.”
Henry glides his fingers up and down my leg in a soothing motion, encouraging me to keep going or just to remind me that he’s here with me.
“My cousin, who owned the bar that I was working at the night I met you, wasn’t really my cousin either. The loud Italians in our slice of the Bronx meant we were all related somehow. Nobody ever questioned it. He was an asshole, but he loved my father, and made sure I stayed out of the way most of the time. Those were the nights I’d end up doing shifts for him. In all reality, working that night kept me alive. And staying out with you.” I shake my head and look up at the purple and pink painted sky, trying to keep the stream of tears from falling so quickly. “I should have gone home with you. If I had, maybe I would have never been there.”
Henry leans forward and grabs my face, placing a gentle kiss on my lips. He leans back to look at me and wipes his thumbs under my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“I came home, and I knew something wasn’t right. The front door was open and though my pops was an early riser, there was no way he was up and out the door at that hour. I should have done so much differently. I walked into the kitchen, and he was getting beat up.” I release a sob as the image of my father in that condition floods my mind. “I reacted. I grabbed a knife out of the butcher block and slammed it into the shoulder of the guy closest to me, and then went barreling at the other one.” Sometimes I forget I did that. I smirk at knowing I left that fucker with a steak knife wedged into his muscle.
“I didn’t account for whoever else could have been there. I put up a fight, but it wasn’t enough. After a good showing, they had enough, and I caught a punch to the back of the head. It knocked me down, and too many kicks to my body and head forced me to black out. I have no idea how long I was out for. It could have been minutes, hours, but when I woke up, I was face down. Barely able to open one eye. I couldn’t—” I take a shaky breath, tears streaming down my face and neck. “I couldn’t move. I watched my pops bleed out less than ten feet away from me.” I haven’t thought about any of this for a long time. I stopped having to talk about it in WITSEC therapy sessions years ago.
“Cops showed up sometime after that. It wasn’t until I was at the hospital two days later, and conscious enough, to understand what happened.”
Henry shifts closer, threading his fingers with mine. He looks stoic, even a little angry. I’m afraid to tell him the rest, to be honest. It’s not easy to say, and I can’t imagine what it would feel like to hear from someone you care about.
“They didn’t stop with my father. There were more than six people dead. My cousin, two uncles, the young couple that lived in the duplex next door. And my pops. Seven, if you counted me, which they did. Organized crime meant I wasn’t going to be safe if I was reported as a single survivor. And that’s what it was, organized. It never even made it far enough for me to testify. Most of the evidence didn’t hold up in court, which meant plea deals and people out of prison too soon. There wasn’t much left of my life after that night, so I stayed in witness protection. I’m not considered a high-profile, so I was able to pick where I wanted off a short list.”
I finally look back up, connecting with green eyes and that pinch of blue that feel more like home than any place I’ve ever been. Even Strutt’s Peak. I clear my throat, remembering that I want to get this all out.
“How long?” he interrupts.
I search his face, not understanding what he’s asking.
“How long were you in the hospital?”
“Five days before they transferred me to their rehab facility. Then another six weeks until I was able to walk out of there on my own,” I say quietly.
He shakes his head and wipes at the corner of his eye. “What did they do to you?”
“Enough of a beating that it must have destroyed my father before they killed him. That’s the part that hurts the most. Knowing he watched this hurricane of pain storm over me before he died. There’s nothing that man did in his life that deserved that kind of cruelty. I’m still angry, even after years of therapy.” I wipe the wet warmth from my cheeks. A reminder that no matter the emotion I tie to this part of my life, it’ll always include pain.
Trying to brush away the anger, I continue. “I was unconscious for the majority of it. I woke up with most of my ribs broken. A surgery to fix the hole one of them punctured into my lung. A shattered pelvis, a hefty amount of internal bleeding, a broken leg, and dislocated shoulder. My face wasn’t pretty for a while, but all of it healed. I should have died that day too, but I didn’t. That fact isn’t lost on me.”
I blow out a breath, maybe one that I’ve been holding longer than I thought. I try to center myself from the heaviness of this conversation. The weight of what it means to tell him all of it. He leans forward, pressing his forehead to my chest. I listen to him breathe in and out. And then feel like I need to reassure him that I’m okay.
“I have a good life. A small life. That’s nothing to be sad about.”
“If I knew,” he says breathlessly, as if the words I just spoke caused him to run fast and far, needing air.
He pulls back and holds my face in his hands. Looking around my face, meeting my eyes last. The intimacy of it makes me feel uncomfortable, but not enough to pull away. I school myself to keep looking, because I want to. It’s a moment that’s important and I’m mature enough to stay in it.
“If I knew any of this, and then knew that piece of shit you recognized had anything to do with it, I would have killed him. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, either.”
“Then we’re both lucky he’s already dead.” I smile. He doesn't smile. He’s not taking any of this lightly.
“Are there more? Are the others still alive?”
I wish I could tell him what he wants to hear, but I can’t.
“I don’t know. Honestly, if they were dead, I know I wouldn’t be in witness protection any longer. But the truth is that they’re part of something bigger. Something that, no matter how many die, or are behind bars, will never be safe for me. I know too much. I’m a loose end if they ever found out I wasn’t actually dead.”