Page 52 of Vengeance (Ruthless MC 4)
I glance at Vampire and Des-E, whose faces aren’t nearly as hard as they were when they first came in.
They already knew. Vengeance knew all along. My belly pitches. I feel exposed and confused.
I understand why they handcuffed me to the bed now. If not for the metal around my wrist, I’d run away from them—from this whole conversation.
“Okay, I’ll tell this part,” Hyena says into my horrified silence. “But you stop me if I say anything that isn’t true.”
I stare at him, suddenly understanding how something so simple as telling my story could be considered suitable punishment.
“Nestor told me you were twelve when his brother got together with your mother. That his brother Cosmo loved you like a daughter, and that you even started calling him baba—that’s what Greek kids call their dads,” Hyena says without a hint of his usual humor. “That true?”
So much has happened in my life. So much. But when he asks me that, a surge of anger like nothing I’ve ever known rises inside of me.
“Shut up,” I whisper. “Just shut up. You already know the story. So just shut up.”
Hyena moves closer. As close as he can get without touching me. I think he knows I’d scratch his eyes out with my one free hand if he tried.
“This is the punishment for running, baby. For hiding the existence of our kid from us. It’s got to come out. So, I’m going to keep going until we get past this part.”
Panic rises, threatening to shut down my mind. I can’t figure out how to escape this. I don’t have a plan.
And Hyena keeps going before I can come up with one. “So, Cosmo loved you like a daughter, and you loved him back. But his relationship with your mom wasn’t that easy. Lots of fights. Lots of making up. Plus, Cosmo already had a wife and two kids. According to Nestor, your mother wasn’t like other mafia mistresses, though. His brother refused to be done with her, even though she lied and cheated on him all the time. And when she got pregnant, he left his wife and kids and bought a house for all of you to live in together.”
All the memories I keep dammed up flood over me as Hyena talks. I’d been so excited to suddenly have a full family. A baba who lived with us and a sibling on the way. A little brother. So excited I booked and made Mom go to all her prenatal appointments at the neighborhood’s sliding-scale clinic.
I preened when Cosmo told me I was the reason his little boy was growing so well inside my mother’s belly. He called me his "daughter the doctor" before I even thought that was a possibility. And he acted so proud when I got into a couple of Ivy League East Coast colleges. But I turned down those acceptances and decided to go to Rydell and live at home instead.
I knew my mom was too chaotic to be left alone. She’d need me—my little brother would need me to raise him with stability and love that wasn’t predicated on how quiet and unbothersome he could be.
Hyena keeps going beside me. “The fighting stopped. For eight whole months, they made it work. But one day, Cosmo caught her cheating again. He came to the house just as her old boyfriend was coming out the front door….”
This part of the story’s almost over. I could just let him finish. But suddenly I’m talking. “That’s not true. I tried to tell him that she wasn’t cheating. Not this time. Her ex had started a woodworking business after he got out of jail, and my mom wanted a crib. She was like that. She didn’t know how to do anything for herself. It wouldn’t occur to her to go to Target or anything like that. Of course, she would call an old boyfriend and ask him to hook her up. She was such a user. Just a silly and helpless user….”
My breath catches, but I keep pushing. “If I had known, I would have stopped her. A crib was on my list of things to do, but I had finals and my after-school job. I got home, and her ex was there, dropping off the crib. She was so proud of herself—like a child for doing something on her own. I screamed at him that he had to go before Cosmo got home. But then it was too late. He was already there. And her ex ran out, making her look even more guilty. Cosmo started screaming about how he had given everything up for her. Everything. And I tried to tell him Mom didn’t cheat this time, but he wouldn’t listen to me. And then suddenly he pulled out a gun. And everything happened so fast. It couldn’t have been even ten minutes later, and everybody in the room was dead except me.”
