Page 24 of Revenge on the Mafia

“Whatever. He just gives me the creeps.”

“What’s creepy about him?” She gave me a sly grin. “Is it the muscled torso he’s obviously hiding behind all that clothing?”

“Just the way he watches me.” All the time.

Isidora threw the pillow on the floor. “He watches you? He looks at me like I’m a piece of his furniture. No…” she corrected herself. “More like a cobweb Magda missed.”

All my doubts sent a shiver down my spine. I felt like he was watching me. The static in my hair, the heat on my skin… I wasn’t always brave enough to look. But sometimes when I did, I found his stare on me. From across the room, standing on top of the staircase. One time, I’d rushed across the room to stop the music, and when I’d turned, he’d been standing in the doorway. A flicker of emotion had passed through his eyes. Almost as if he understood why I couldn’t bear to hear it. Other times when I looked, there was no one around.

“I don’t mean watching me. I just feel like…” He knows me. Better than I do myself. “He sees everything.”

She looked at me with pity in her eyes. “You know what I think?”

I’m being paranoid? Turning into my mother?

“You need to get laid.”

I didn’t see that coming. In spite of myself, a smile tugged at my lips.

She walked back to the next room. The girl might be right. I do need to get laid. I missed sex. It wasn’t that I’d had a lot of it in my life, but Dios mío, I could enjoy it when I did. When all the things I loved had been yanked away from me… music, friends, Joel, although he took himself out of my life… the only thing left behind was sex. The release of dopamine the only way to fill the hollowness in my chest, even though afterward, it became worse. The dark pit, deeper. Bottomless. The loneliness never-ending.

Maybe that was why I thought so much about him. Niccolò Martello. If he’d not been a fucking murderer… if he’d not taken Papá away from me… Isidora yelled that she was going downstairs, and I answered something back automatically. I imagined I would have found him hot. What was there not to like? The tattoo that teased below the cuff of his shirt. The poker face that left a girl wondering if he sustained it when he fucked.

“Damn it, that’s enough!”

Exasperated with myself, I put on my headphones and plugged in the vacuum with enough force to rattle the outlet.

I just wanted to move on. I couldn’t because there was nothing left. Papá was gone, and with him, Mamá. She was alive physically. Sometimes I watched her breathe to see if her chest moved up and down. But she wasn’t the Mamá I knew anymore. And Mara was… just Mara. Ten years younger and naïve. She didn’t remember much, and her life, compared to mine, was a path of pink roses. She had her education, her friends, her life. She didn’t understand what it had been like to see Papá bleed out. To have a boyfriend disappear from your life when you were at your weakest. She didn’t have to make life-altering decisions at eighteen. Work with the responsibility of three mouths to feed. I couldn’t blame her. I didn’t. I was the one who had shielded the truth from her. But sometimes, despite myself, I resented her. I wanted to be carefree like her. Have someone who understood me, like the boy she was dating. I was just me. Alone. Lost. Stuck. Angrily, I brushed my face. Why is it fucking wet?

I slid under the bed, vacuum tube in hand. Instantly, I was reminded of how I had crouched under his desk. Touching my hair, I tried to recall how it had felt. It had almost felt like… I crawled out from under the bed and my ass hit something hard.

“¿Qué demonios?”

I whipped back and Papá’s killer stared down at me. I didn’t hesitate. I clutched the tube and took a full swing. The sharp crack resounded as it slammed into his forehead.

A strangled gasp escaped me. He didn’t utter a single sound. He stood as solid as a brick, his forehead coloring red the only evidence I’d whacked him. Then a thin drip of blood threaded down his forehead.

¡Joder!

The tube crashed to the floor. My panicked gaze found his shoes. Crimson still gave me nightmares. If I had to witness it again, I’d lose my sanity.

My breathing heaved. Panic cartwheeled in my chest. He still hadn’t moved. I was done for.

“You scared me,” I choked out.

The silence was like a held breath. But he must have believed me because his dry tone wafted over my head after some time. “Not half as much as you do.” His feet moved away, and the door shut behind him.

“Eres un cabrón… y te odio por lo que hiciste.”

NICO

“Eres un cabrón… y te odio por lo que hiciste.”

I’d never heard more deserving words before.

“You’re a bastard... and I hate you for what you did.”

ANNA