Chapter Five #2
“At home I had to be good, or Mother would…fall off the wagon—alcohol, bets we couldn’t afford, both.
” Erjon showing up to make demands and threats, speaking of his looming plans that even then Ari didn’t have to know the details of to know they were bad.
“But at school, I could not rein in my anger. I got in fights. I was a bully. Angry, violent.”
“Desperate,” Zervou said.
For a moment, she could only stare at him. It was an apt word. Too apt of a word. She didn’t like him having any words to describe what she’d felt—uncontrollable and confusing to her young mind. She didn’t like now having that word in her head. It was better, easier to think of it as anger.
She swallowed down the strange swell of emotion, shoved it away where all the unwanted ones went, and went on with her story.
“A kind teacher who saw…something in me, I suppose, introduced me to a youth program at the boxing gym. It was only boys, but she did some fast talking to get me in. She must have paid for it, something I also didn’t realize until later.”
“Survival doesn’t always allow us to realize everything going on around us.”
Because his easy understanding or vindication or whatever this was felt like a stab to the gut, she went on the offensive. Her tone was cutting, disbelieving. “You have experienced survival?”
His mouth curved, but it was not anything so soft as a smile. It was a parry, if anything. “Life was not easy after my father was murdered. My mother would take no help.”
“Ironic. My mother would have taken help, but my father ensured no one offered it.” Her own countermove, because did he think he had somehow suffered when at least there had been help?
He said nothing to that, just watched her with intense dark eyes, like if he kept watching her long enough he would know all her secrets, upend all her foundations.
She would fight tooth and nail for that to never happen, which she supposed was why she ended up being more honest than she usually was. Without secrets, he could not upend her.
“I excelled in the boxing ring,” she continued.
“I beat all the boys, easily. I had all that anger inside me, and with instruction I could hone it. I liked the feeling of…turning it into a weapon. Controlling this thing inside me. It felt powerful. To choose how to land a blow. To accept my own. It felt like a tool I could use against him.”
“Erjon?”
“Yes. He took an interest in my progress, but this was nearing the time when he disappeared. Before he left, he came to see me. He told me that when he was able to return, I would take my rightful place in his world. He did not come out and say it, but I believe he wanted to sell me off to one of his brainless crime lord bosses. Perhaps he already had.” Ari lifted a shoulder.
“But his disappearance was the one stroke of luck I have been given in my life, I suppose. For the first two years, I dreaded his return. But that seemed to give this…specter all the power, and when I turned eighteen and realized I was an adult, in charge, so to speak, I decided I would not dread it. I would prepare for it. He would not ruin me without a fight.”
“You wanted him to come.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “There came a point when I did not want to wait. To let him choose the timing. I could not do anything to find him, but I hoped with enough success in the boxing ring I might draw him out. He wouldn’t be able to resist putting me in my place.
And when that occurred, instead of him coming through with whatever threats, I would end him. ”
Zervou raised one elegant brow. “End?”
“He ruined my mother’s life. Everything she does is to cope with what he did to her. Everything I do is to keep her safe. Whatever ways I can end him, I will. It is the only reason I am here with you.”
Zervou smiled at this, and she turned her attention to the slice of dark chocolate mousse cake on her plate. She ate instead of deal with the effects of that smile.
“We are not so different, Ariadne,” he said, his voice seeming…deeper, and far more dangerous. “I daresay we are quite alike.”
The thought was insulting enough she looked back up at him.
She eyed him, trying not to let bitterness win.
But it was hard. He was sitting there in his fancy suit, and she was wearing clothes he’d bought.
He had a plan to ensure her father rotted in jail forever that he could endlessly work toward and fund, while she had to work herself to the bone every day balancing keeping her mother safe and just hoping her notoriety in Corfu might draw Erjon out.
Whatever similarities they had, they were not the same.
He had been allowed some sort of luck or fruition or what have you to allow his hard work to turn into riches, beyond most people’s wildest dreams. She was still scrabbling.
She could not blame him for this. The world was set up to reward men and punish women. That was all she’d ever seen. If it had been the other way around, she certainly would have accepted the world’s rewards.
Still, she could not swallow down the bitterness enough to agree with him. So she ignored his statement and finished her dessert.
They walked out of the restaurant, her hand in his, their fingers entwined. A strange intimacy with a man she barely knew.
Except it was acting. A role she was playing. Not so different from how she moved through the world usually—with a layer, a mask of armor. This was just a different kind. Instead of toughness, she had to appear…connected to someone.
Admittedly, she was struggling to know what that looked like enough to act it out.
But Zervou seemed to know. He led her outside and to his limousine. He opened the back door for her, but before he let her go to slide into the seat, he lifted her hand to his mouth.
He brushed his lips across her knuckles, the contact featherlight but somehow like an arrow. Sharp and piercing through the very center of her. A kind of yearning she associated with being hungry…pain and want intertwining with frustration of needs not met.
Her gaze flicked to his. That smug smile on his face.
He understood he was having an effect on her, physically at least. Which was infuriating in a way she didn’t know what to do about. How did you fight someone like this?
You are a fighter, Ari. You will figure it out.
You have to.