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For one night, I decided to stop being so good and try being like everyone else around me.
The Healy bastards all got away with it. My dad, his brothers, Uncle Colm, cousins and second cousins and whatever. They did drugs, they drank, they slept around, they got in fights, and most of the time it was fine, they got away with it.
I decided to say forget it and let down my walls, and now I might be pregnant.
All because of that guy, Matteo.
I still didn’t know who the hell he was.
That night was a blur. I only went because I was curious. I wasn’t supposed to go—blood family wasn’t invited to those kinds of parties for obvious reasons. But I grew up hearing about the legendary Healy parties for the rank and file members, nights full of sin and drugs and sex and flesh, and I wanted to see what it was like.
I wanted to let my guard down a little bit, for once in my boring life.
Well, I succeeded at least. I let my guard down. I had the best sex of my life, without a doubt. I fucked Matteo over and over, did things with him that I never thought I’d do with anyone, and reveled in the pleasure he gave me.
Then in the morning we parted ways and didn’t exchange numbers.
One night, that was all.
I thought I got it out of my system. I went home to my dad’s house, slept all day, then went to work the next morning. I kept out of trouble again. I went back to my old, boring life.
Except my old, boring life was now completely blown up.
My phone’s timer chimed. I jumped, almost screamed. I covered my mouth then leapt for the test.
Two lines.
I was pregnant.
I dropped the test and it clattered into the sink. I covered my mouth as a sob escaped my lips.
Pregnant. I was pregnant. Knocked up by that stranger Matteo, the guy I didn’t know, couldn’t reach even if I wanted to.
Some random Healy family goon.
And I couldn’t tell a soul. My father would murder me—literally, he’d kill me. My uncles would be worse. Uncle Colm would drown me in the Schuylkill and rip my picture from the family photo albums. No niece of the Healy family was supposed to get pregnant without being married first.
My life was over.
I took another test, just to be sure, and it confirmed it. I left the bathroom feeling dizzy and clammy and scared as all hell.
Dad sat in the living room watching TV. He wore a white tank top and a pair of cargo shorts with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other. My dad was a prominent member of the Healy crime family, brother of Colm himself, though he didn’t take an active leadership position. He stayed in the background and ran a crew, happy to reap in the rewards and profits without taking the massive risk of sitting atop the mountain itself.
I locked my bedroom door. Not that it would stop my dad if he got pissed, but it might slow him down. I paced around the tiny space and stared down at my bed and seriously considered climbing in, pulling the covers up over my head, and staying there for the rest of my life. Maybe I could have the baby under there and raise it away from society, hidden in a pillow and blanket fort where nobody could ever bother me.
Wishful thinking. I was a Healy girl, and that meant the family expected certain things for me. At the most basic, I was supposed to show my face from time to time.
I grabbed my phone and texted Nessa. She was another Healy girl, though not by blood. Her dad joined the family a long time ago and we were practically raised as sisters. I need to talk, really important, I typed. Meet me right now?
Nessa got back almost immediately. I knew she would—that girl had her phone glued to her face. She always talked about starting a TikTok and getting popular or something like that, and I kept having to remind her that we’re a bunch of Philly girls raised in the middle of a violent gang, there was no way in hell her dad or her cousins would ever let her get anywhere near a popular TikTok account, but a girl could dream, I guess.
Meet at the swings, she said.
Leaving right now. I shoved my phone in my pocket, yanked a sweatshirt over my head, then put the pregnancy tests in the pouch as an afterthought. My dad didn’t even look up when I walked past him and out the front door, slamming it with a loud bang.
Philly was my home and the only place I ever knew. We lived on a quiet block in West Philly, not too far from UPenn. Lots of college kids were in the area, but they were nerdy Ivy League brats, so they tended to keep to themselves—and those that didn’t got told what the score was by the local Healy guys, and that usually shut them up. I walked along the block and nodded to a few people I knew, a couple Healy boys sitting on a stoop, a cousin and some distant aunt. I was related to all these people somehow, whether by blood or by circumstance, and my dad never got tired of reminding me about it.
