Page 14 of Watch Her Bleed
“Why would you think we don’t care?” Enzo asks, baiting me.
“Really?” I ask, looking over at him. “None of you have ever cared what I did unless you thought it somehow made you all look bad. You have never once given a shit about me medically, so why now?”
“Aurora Nicole. You lose the attitude right now,” Mom scolds me. I hear her, but I don’t respond because I am drowning in a sudden wave of fear with Enzo staring at me. Kaia pats my thigh and it breaks me out of my frozen state. I look over at her and I have tears welling up.
“Do you want to go?” she asks.
“This is a family issue,” Dad says to Kaia. “Stay out of it.”
“Family?” Kaia laughs. “You’re fucking kidding, right? You think you are her family?”
“Kaia,” I say quietly and shake my head when she looks at me. She doesn’t like that I’m shutting her down, but she stops talking.
“Let’s eat,” Mom says.
“Check your blood sugar,” Kaia says to me, grabbing my meter from my bag that is sitting between us.
“How has your blood sugar been?” Mom asks.
“Same as always. It crashes every day,” I say.
“It hasn’t today,” Kaia says. “I wonder if it's stress-related?”
“What could you possibly have to be stressed about?” Dad laughs.
“You’d already know if you paid attention to your daughter more,” Kaia says curtly as she pricks my finger.
“Ow! You sadist,” I frown at her and she giggles.
“It must be so stressful sitting around all day doing shit,” Enzo chuckles. Kaia looks at me as if asking permission to say it. I nod and she looks at Enzo as he waits on the meter to read my glucose.
“If you three paid attention to her outside of figuring out a way to hurt her more, you’d know that she’s been working more than twelve hours a day, six days a week, for two years,” Kaia says with an acidic tone.
“Doing what?” Dad laughs. “Laying on your back?”
“You sick son of a…”
“Kaia,” I say again, cutting her off before she cusses Dad.
“I’m losing my patience, Rora,” she says.
“I’m a server at Vita Divina. The Russo Group owns them. Frankie invited me to an interview to work for Matt, so I did.”
“You won’t come to work for me, but you’ll go work for tips?” Enzo asks, laughing again. Something in the way he laughs enrages me.
“My customers don’t hurt me. You do,” I say, raising my voice. I can’t stop the flood of tears from escaping me. I refuse to cry in front of the people who make it their mission to hurt me. I abruptly stand and walk around the table to get away from everyone but Dad stands to cut me off. “Get out of my way.”
“You don’t get to come into my home and accuse your brother of shit and then run away,” Dad says. When he grabs my arms I panic and shove him out of my way so I can run to the bathroom. I should get out of this house, but Kaia is still in the dining room. I know someone is following me but I shut and lock the door before I can see who it is.
My breathing is coming in short bursts. I’ve lost my goddamn mind yelling at Enzo and then pushing Dad. It doesn’t matter if Kaia is here. One or both of them will lock me in a room. I would much rather get the shit kicked out of me by Dad than Enzo rape me. When he’s angry, he makes me bleed. He puts me in as much pain as he can without doing severe damage.
It’s been more than ten minutes and no one has tried to beat the door down. I can hear Kaia screaming at them though. I unlock the door with a plan of getting her and leaving before she stabs someone. Right as I am passing the guest room, I see the door is open when it wasn’t before. I try to run past the doorway, knowing what’s about to happen. Enzo grabs me by the hair and pulls me into the room. He shuts and locks the door behind us and I back away from him. There is nowhere to go in here. I see that look in his eye and this time I refuse to let him have his way with me. I’m tired of being afraid to get hurt. He’s going to hurt me anyway.
“You have some fucking nerve, Aurora,” he says.
“Fuck you, Enzo,” I say tearfully. “You’re my big brother. You’re not supposed to be my fucking rapist. Family should protect each other.”
“Is that right?” he asks with a smirk. Before I can respond or dodge him, he grabs me by the throat and pushes me back onto the bed.
