Brad filled the doorway, his enormous frame eclipsing any light that tried to filter in around him. He didn’t bother to glance at the bodies of my dead parents.
As if he already knew exactly what he’d find.
I raced toward the bedroom, my feet sliding across the floor before I slammed into the door. I knocked hurriedly, calling out to Cesca with all pretense of our secret knock forgotten. “Cesca!” I called, listening to her scramble on the other side. Brad was too out of shape to run, not willing to try, but even so, his footsteps echoed down the hall.
Like the slow rattle of my bones with every step that shook the house, I felt it in my soul. He got closer, close enough that my heart leapt into my throat when he was almost within grabbing distance.
Cesca threw the door open, and I stepped inside and threw all my weight against the door to force it closed. His hands slammed against the other side, fighting me as Cesca threw her tiny body into the door to help, and I turned the lock when we finally closed it against all reason.
“Out the window,” I whispered, grabbing her hand and guiding her to the window that led to the backyard. Brad’s fat fists beat against the door, rattling the knob as he shouted at me to open the fucking door. I knew without a doubt it was only a matter of time before he got it open.
Before he had his hands on me again, and this time there would be nothing to stop him from using Cesca the way he did me.
“I’m scared,” she whimpered, looking at the window as I pushed it open and climbed onto the ledge. Even on the first floor, the jump would be too much for her, so I lowered myself to the ground outside.
“I’ve got you. Come on,” I said, looking behind her in urgency. She hesitated, backing away from the window in fear and glancing toward the door. “Now, Cesca!” I ordered, taking a tone that I couldn’t ever recall using with her. Her eyes widened, but she finally listened. Climbing up onto the windowsill, she dropped into my arms just as the bedroom door caved in and Brad appeared.
His face was mottled with red, his forehead slick with sweat as I turned with Cesca in my arms and ran.
I ran until I couldn’t run anymore.
We couldn’t go to the police, not with the badge on Brad’s chest. That would be the first place he’d go to look for the kid he’d raped continuously, the kid who knew he’d murdered two people in cold blood, to keep his drugs and not have to pay my parents with them to have access to me. Whatever his reason, the lack of life in his brown eyes made me entirely certain the fate he had in store for Cesca and me wouldn’t be all that different from what he’d done to my mother.
It might even be worse.
Had he killed them while I lay there, sleeping through the agony of his abuse? Had he raped my mother after my father died? I shouldn’t have cared what happened to them.
Not after what they’d let him do to me.
We ended up closer to downtown, where most of the buildings were commercial and not houses where strangers lived. Eventually we found an empty alley, and I turned into the shadowed back of it and hid Cesca and myself behind the dumpster. She looked up at me with terror in her eyes, and I lifted her hand to wrap her fingers around the butterfly at her neck.
“Mom and Dad are dead,” I explained, and she tensed her brow as she tilted her head to the side. I knew she didn’t understand. Concepts like life and death were too unfamiliar to the girl who barely got to leave her bedroom.
“Home?” she asked.
I swallowed around the bile rising in my throat, looking around the alley that hid us from the monsters like Brad, who were just waiting to take advantage of our situation. The alley couldn’t be home forever, not with businesses opening up.
Eventually, they’d chase us out.
We’d find something better.
“You’re my home,” I said, running a hand over her hair and wishing I had just given her a shower before I went to clean. It might have been her last opportunity for a long time. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she nodded and tucked her head tight to my chest.
In a few minutes, I’d open the dumpster and see if I could find her something to eat. In a few minutes, I’d get up and start doing whatever I had to do to take care of her.
Cesca would be okay.
No matter what it took.
3
IRINA
Sixteen years ago
Mommy stood at the front door, holding her purse in her hand as if she needed an entire bag to carry what she’d need today.
All she really needed was Daddy’s credit card, and she’d have what she called a fulfilling day of stuffing her closet with more clothes that she’d never be able to wear. Every so often I went through, pulling out things with the tags still on them and taking them to my room.
If she didn’t notice they were missing within a week, I snuck them to the staff so they could donate them. Better they clothe a homeless person who had nothing than waste away in Mommy’s mess of a closet.
“Let’s go, Irina,” she said, not even bothering to glance back at me as Yiorgos opened the front door for her. He’d been my mother’s security for as long as I could remember, the one remnant of her life before she married my father.
A throwback to her life before Chicago.
“I don’t want to go shopping,” I argued, stomping my foot against the marble floor. Daddy was working in his office, plugging away at the numbers for the fundraiser he was organizing for the children’s center he funded. Fresh Start was his charitable contribution to the city that had taken a lawyer and made him the most respected judge in Chicago.
I wanted to be just like him when I grew up. Giving back to the people, not consuming material things like they didn’t cost more than most people had to feed their families.
I loved my mother. When she was home, when Daddy spent time with both of us and wasn’t working, she was loving.
She was warm. Like her fresh-baked cookies on a snowy day.
But when Daddy was busy, she was just...different.
Cold. Aloof. With something mean hiding behind the lines of her face, which she did everything in her power to hide. She did not want to be ignored, and she stripped away her affection to punish me when she felt that way. Especially when I chose Daddy.
I had only met her side of the family a few times, since they still lived in Philadelphia, but meeting my Uncle Eugene even once was enough to know why she was that way.
He wasn’t mean, not really. He was just empty. Like there wasn’t even a person remaining inside him.
“This is what girls like us do, Irina,” she said finally, turning around to give me a tight smile. It was the forced one that she did when she wanted me to know she wasn’t happy but was controlling her temper. I knew the day would come when she didn’t anymore. It always did.
She’d yell. She’d scream and lock herself in her bedroom, and then come out the next day like nothing had happened and she hadn’t drowned herself in Daddy’s favorite Scotch.
I didn’t want Mommy to be angry with me, but I looked back toward the office and wanted to go there. I wanted to help. I wanted to matter.
“Maybe I don’t want to be like you,” I muttered, pursing my lips and glaring at her. Her green eyes widened in shock, her eyelashes fluttering as her irritation rose.