Epilogue
“Where’s the boy?” my father’s voice boomed through the house.
I popped my head up from where I was curled up under the table waiting for him to get home, and my mother immediately shook hers. She was trying to protect me again. I didn’t get why. It didn’t matter what he did to me. I wasn’t gonna feel it anyway.
That part just made him more mad. Which made him more violent. Which made him go harder with his fists or the belt or sometimes a hammer when he was hoping to do some real damage. Skin would bruise and bones would break, but none of it changed anything.
I never felt it, and he never got the satisfaction most other fathers got when they beat the shit out of their kids. He never got to see the fear in my eyes. And I was pretty certain that was the thing that bothered him the most. The fact I wasn’t afraid of him.
But she was. My mother was afraid for me. He didn’t hit her. But he didn’t need to. She seemed to feel everything I didn’t.
I glanced over to where her feet were bouncing in front of me. They bounced higher and faster the closer his footsteps got from the front door to the kitchen. He paused, and I knew he was looking around for me.
“Where is he?” he repeated. He wasn’t yelling anymore. He didn’t have to. It was the calm before the storm, all his energy stored up so he could use it on me later.
“Sit. Eat.” My mother pushed up from her chair and headed straight for where she had a pot of stew cooking on the stove. It was my aunt’s recipe and my father’s favorite.
I was assuming that was why we were having stew instead of leftovers tonight. She was trying to fill his belly so that he’d be too tired to chase after me. That only worked for a couple of hours, though. My father never forgot about a beating, and he never let me get away with anything neither.
“You hear what your son did today?” He dug his feet into the carpet. One boot crossed over the tile in warning. He wasn’t really asking her so my mother didn’t answer. “He stole from Yusuf’s shop.”
“Children steal, Sasha,” my mother replied calmly, her spoon clanking against the pot almost as though she were trying to hypnotize him. “They grow out of it.”
“They grow into it,” he grunted. “Thieving children turn into thieving men.”
“I’ll go over and apologize to Yusuf. But first, you should eat.” My mother set a bowl down on the table. I could hear it clank above me, and I watched my father’s shoes inch forward.
As soon as they did, I rolled out from my hiding spot and sprinted past him. He turned around and rushed after me. His arms swinging back and forth and trying to grab for my shirt whenever I lost momentum by having to dodge furniture.
I made it out the front door and several blocks over—past Yusuf’s shop and Ivan’s garage—before he finally caught up. He wrapped his fist around my shirt and twisted it until I had no choice but to spin around and face him. His chest heaving while I’d barely broken a sweat.
He wanted me to beg. To cry. To promise I wouldn’t do it again. I didn’t see the point when we both knew I would. I would just try harder not to be seen next time.
I sucked in a breath, because I was bored with this game and not because I was afraid of it, and my father shoved me down on my knees.
I was quicker but he was still a hell of a lot bigger than I was.
At least for now. And that probably bothered him too.
If he couldn’t beat me into submission when I was a quarter of his size, he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to do it when I was older.
His boot pressed down on my ass, forcing me flat.
My cheek digging into the concrete and my arms spread out at my sides.
I expected to hear his belt snap out next, feel the cool metal buckle nicking at my skin, then the warm blood trickling down after it.
Not pain. Just cool and warm. Wind and pressure.
Instead, I could hear him taking a few steps back before he was running up at me full speed. Followed by a crunching sound as all two-hundred-plus pounds of him bounced up and down on my spine. I laughed and he jumped higher. Over and over and over again.
Until neighbors were coming out to pull him away and I was left cackling to myself in the middle of someone’s sidewalk.
CASPER
Bellatrix peered up at me, forcing my hand out of where I was running it through her hair and onto her waist. She had nothing on but a sports bra and a pair of fuzzy purple socks, ?cause she insisted those were the only parts of her that got cold.
I think it had more to do with not wanting to bang her feet on whatever shit she left on the floor on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
At first, I thought being messy was just her way of trying to get to me. After almost a year of sleeping together, I realized it was just her way of existing.
She studied my face for a moment. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed tight like she was looking to determine the best point of entry or locate a weak spot.
“Is that what really happened to your back?” she finally asked after a long pause.
“Maybe it is.” I shrugged a shoulder and pushed her head down on my chest, her dark hair covering the outline of the rat tattoo that earned its spot there, just like I told her it would. “Maybe it isn’t.”
She didn’t press me further about what put me in that chair. Because at the end of the day, it didn’t matter. She knew I was the only one willing to help her find her sister. She also knew that I didn’t care about taking down anyone who got in our way.
Bellatrix and Vee had kissed and made up, but the old hag still wouldn’t spill where Alice was hiding.
She wouldn’t let on to where any of the women who climbed down the rabbit hole and disappeared in to the shadows were hiding.
Those secrets were going with her to the grave.
The real one, and not the empty caskets she’d been using as place markers over the years.
Some people might have thought it was fucked.
To be with someone because of what they were willing to do for you.
I thought it was practical. Honest. Romantic.
There were plenty of guys who claimed they were willing to die for their girl, plenty more who were willing to kill for her.
Me? I was willing to do both. And I’d already proved it.
THE END