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“Nate.” She takes a deep breath. “You have a boyfriend…and that boyfriend is Nate. Are you actually fucking kidding me,” she hisses. “How could you…just how?” I hear the desperation in her voice, and I don’t even know how to reply. How could I have known?
“I had no idea, Rose. I didn’t even know you and Jake had an older brother…how could I have?” I reply in a small voice.
She stays silent.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say. I don’t even know why.
“You couldn’t have known,” she sighs. After a short pause, she keeps going. “Where did you meet him? When?”
“A little more than two months ago. At Church.”
She breaks into a laugh. “Are you joking?”
I shake my head no and she slowly stops. “Fuck. What a motherfucker. He’s been here for two months and we didn’t know.”
“Why is he here? What does he want with you?”
She shrugs. “Probably wants to make my life hell. Clearly taking over new territory for Bianco. Fuck if I know. Either way, it’s not good news.”
“Wh-what if he kills you?”
She lets out a sharp laugh. “Trust me, if he wanted me dead. I’d be dead. No, he’s a psychopath, he loves torturing people too much to kill me.”
She goes silent again. My brain is overheating as I think over all the information I’ve just learned. The twins have a brother. My boyfriend Nathan is their brother and none of us knew about it. Except Nathan. Nathan and Sam.
I remember the text where Sam threatened Rose, he said he’d go to the police about her brother. I thought he meant Jake had done something. Jake warned me though, he said not to play detective with him, he said I didn’t have all the information.
That text was about Rose shooting her older brother. She thought he was going to send her to prison.
I think of Nathan’s dodgy money, of his scar with a rose tattooed on it. How did I not realize it was a bullet wound when I’ve got one myself? His is a lot cleaner than mine and when he mentioned an abusive father, I thought it had to do with that.
Everything makes sense, everything is linked together and somehow, I missed it, somehow, I still can’t believe it as if I heard something wrong or made up the conversation.
“Bianco, was he your foster dad before you moved to the Murrays?” I ask, cutting the heavy silence between Rose and me.
Rose just nods yes. Her eyes darken as she remembers. “Mine. Jake’s. Nate’s. He’s a smart man. He runs his mafia family with a firm hand. Surrounds himself with people he can trust and uses orphan kids to do his dirty work. Jake and I tried to leave so many times, but he’s got everyone in his pocket. And Nate…He wanted to stay and become part of his gang. So, we had to stay too.” She doesn’t say the rest, but I got that part.
“So, you shot him.” I almost formulate it as a question, when I know she did. It might be unbelievable to me, but it happened.
“Look, you don’t understand the situation we were in, okay? Nate became Mateo’s favorite and with that so did we. We were fucking kids.” She calms down before whispering, “We still are.” I almost don’t hear it.
“I’m not judging you, Rose. I-I’m shocked at what you’ve been through. That you even had access to a gun.”
“Mateo taught me how to shoot. Apparently, I had a good eye. Funny for someone nearsighted, isn’t it? Every single day I had to spend hours at his shooting range while he was there watching, judging, grading.” She huffs and her head falls on the oven door behind us. “When the Murrays tried to take us in, DCF insisted they had to take the three of us. It took me months to understand it wasn’t normal. Bianco had bribed them into offering a three-kid-deal because he knew Nate would refuse to leave him. He got in the way as usual. He wanted us to stay there, and we wanted nothing else than to get out. Things got heated up at our house. Nate was being violent, Bianco was taking his side. It’s not like I wanted to shoot my own brother. I was left with no choice. They would have never let us go. Bianco didn’t want a death associated with him, so he pretended Nate just left, ran away. Then they finally put us with the Murrays.”
“I’m so sorry–”
“It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.” Matter of fact. No feelings. She sounds so much like Jake right now.
I don’t reply, simply nodding my head. I don’t know what to say because I can’t imagine what it was like. She sighs and runs her hand over her face again.
She reaches into her pocket with her left arm and I can’t help but look at the X tattoo mixed with others on her forearm. For a second I’m hopeful she’s pulling out her phone. It quickly dies down when she grabs a pack of cigarettes.
She opens it with one hand, her skilled fingers pulling a cigarette slightly out of the package before she grabs it with her lips. She pulls a lighter out of that same packet and lights it. My mom would kill me if she knew someone was smoking in the house and the smell makes me feel sick, but I don’t say anything. It doesn’t matter right now.
She finishes her cigarette in silence and puts it out against the sole of her shoe before putting the bud back in the pack.
“Right,” she grunts while moving awkwardly. “Let’s get out of here.” She goes into her back pocket and takes out her phone.
