Chapter Nine
Adriana
It’s a disturbing thing to see a smile on Ricky’s face and feel one on my own at the same time.
To be sharing a smile, a laugh, a moment with the man who killed my sister.
But as much as I want to fight it, I can’t.
Because right now, killing Ricky isn’t at the forefront of my mind.
That thought sits behind the fact that he saved my life, that his smile has this charming way of lighting up his eyes and dancing past all my defenses, and that I really, really want a shower and some clean clothes.
And as I step into the locker room, I can’t help but laugh and smile as my eyes take in a small room filled with a couple wooden benches, a bin with some fresh, fluffy towels and a few fluffy robes inside it, some lockers with wooden doors carved with names in both English and Mandarin, and a single showerhead sticking out from the wall above a section of tiled floor and a single drain and… oh, fuck.
A single open shower.
“God fucking damn it,” I say. My cheeks are burning.
I want this shower. No, I fucking need this shower, need it as much as I need to breathe, or as much as I need to eat something, I realize, as my stomach rumbles and it hits me it’s been hours and hours since I’ve eaten something, and in the meantime, I’ve killed someone, nearly died several times, and been thrown into a dumpster; a burrito would be perfect right now.
“My thoughts exactly,” he says. “I’ll go tell that old lady we need a second room.”
My eyes go wide, and I reach out and take hold of him before I realize what I’m doing. “You can’t do that.”
“What? Why not?”
“Do you have any idea who she is? No, of course you don’t. Let’s just say she’s not someone you want to insult by throwing her hospitality back in her face.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
“We’ll make do.”
“Fine. How?”
As if it could actually change anything and somehow make the utterly exposed, open-air shower somehow not completely exposed, I look around the room, chewing my lip. Shockingly, it does nothing.
“I’ll go first. You stare at the wall until I tell you otherwise.”
“Fucking genius solution.”
“Fuck you.” My eyes go back to the showerhead. My nose twitches as a reminder that I can’t cling to any idea of dignity while I smell like I’ve been wallowing in the dumpster behind a strip club. “Turn around.”
“What if I say no?”
There’s a twinge in his voice, a momentary hint that maybe he isn’t just teasing me and being a complete asshole. Like maybe he wants to see me shower.
And there’s a part of me — just a twinge, a lie, nothing more — that says maybe I wouldn’t be so opposed to that.
If he weren’t my sister’s killer.
“Turn the fuck around. I’m going to shower,” I say, and he hesitates again. Maybe he’s trying to be an asshole, maybe he wants a peek, but I definitely don’t want to deal with any of his bullshit right now. “If you don’t, I won’t kill you after this.”
He turns.
Back to me, eyes glued to the wall, hands behind his back like he’s a soldier at polite ease or something approaching a gentleman, instead of what he really is — a killer surrounded by a cloud of murderous stench, like some Peanuts character after a detour through the John Wick universe.
Whatever it is, it’s a victory.
First, I take my shirt off. Slowly, eyes on him, half expecting him to turn around, but he doesn’t.
Then go my pants, my underwear, and I cover myself as best I can with my hands while I turn around and turn on the water. A furtive look over my shoulder still reveals him staring at the wall like a decent human being.
Yeah, right.
I force myself to shut my eyes, but that doesn’t help.
Because the second I close my eyes, I see him on the back of my eyelids.
I see that smile, I imagine what might happen if he were to turn around, if he were to walk to me, if he were to put his arms around me — how I might struggle a little, at first, how I might curse him and tell him to fuck off or threaten to kill him ever harder than I already want to kill him — and how my struggling would stop, how I’d give in to that smile, to those burning, sorrowful eyes, how those lips would meet mine, how I’d moan, how I’d…
Fuck, I can’t be thinking this.
I turn to the shower to cold. It gets really cold. “Fuck.”
“You okay?” He says.
I look over my shoulder. He’s still staring at the wall. “Shut up. I’m fine.”
The cold water is doing nothing. There’s still heat inside me, still thoughts about how maybe, even though every time I check, he is watching me, thinking, wanting… me. And how maybe I want that, too.
Want it despite knowing that fucking the man who killed my sister would be one of the most wrong, fucked-up things I could ever do.
The last vestiges of soap rinse off my body and disappear down the drain, leaving me feeling both blissfully clean and indelibly dirty. I turn off the water, grab a towel and then a robe, and wrap myself in both, wanting as much of a barrier between me and him as I can manage.
“Your turn, asshole,” I say.
It isn’t hard for me to keep my eyes on the wall while Ricky DeMarco showers behind me. Every impulse to turn around is burned to ashes by the inferno of hatred and disgust that rages inside me.
There’s a squeak as he turns off the water.
“I didn’t want things to turn out like this, you know,” he says, his voice coming amidst the rustle of the plush cotton towel as he dries himself.
“Didn’t want to end up in a mahjong club, showering off the remains of dumpster debris after hiding from the Russian mob? Who could even imagine wanting this?”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” He pauses. “Bringing up that mob and the fucking dumpster, what the fuck are you so scared of? This is your sister we’re talking about. We both loved her. We both wanted more for her than what she got.”
His voice shakes, burns, and mine is absent.
After a long silence, he continues. “I loved her so fucking much. The second I met her, I knew there was something about her that would change my life in unforgettable, unimaginable ways. Even living how I was, how she was, we were both deep in that fucking shit, doing things to ourselves that people aren’t fucking meant to do, and yet she still fucking shone like a star in the darkest part of the sky. ”
“Then why’d you do it?” I whisper.
“I hate myself in ways you can’t imagine for what happened to Vanessa.
There are people out there that call themselves my friends, my brothers — and they are, but I don’t think I deserve to call them that, with all that I’ve done — and they tell me I should forgive myself for what happened to her.
That I should move on. But they don’t have to live with the fact that they loved her, that they knew what she could do and who she could be if things had just been different, if they hadn’t snuffed that life out.
” His voice breaks, and that sound pulls my eyes to him despite every effort of my burning heart, and I see him, halfway wrapped in a towel, hunched over in pain, his muscular, tattooed body tense with the agony of his sorrow.
“Every moment, it seems like I see her face or hear her voice. I still feel her in my arms, the weight of her lifeless body… And even when I’m trying to kill myself, or wanting you to kill me, there’s a part of me that thinks that a fate like that is better than I deserve. ”
He sobs. He shakes. I speak. “It is.”
“It is.”
Silence and understanding settle between us. It’s a little less hateful, a little more pitying. At least this monster feels regret. At least he knows that what he did — taking my incredible little sister out of the world — was a horrible crime.
“What was she like at the end?”
A pause.
I press. “Ricky, don’t hold this back from me.
Do you know how hard I looked for her? How much I hurt for so long because I couldn’t find my little sister?
How many times I worried she was dead and that I’d never get to say goodbye?
Well, you took my chance to say goodbye from me, so the least you can do is tell me what she was like before she died. ”
He stands naked except for that towel, and nods. My eyes don’t leave his. I see in them scenes play out that I wish I had witnessed — memories of my little sister.
“She was working so hard to get clean. She’d tried before, we both did, and everyone fucking says that — ‘oh, they were trying so hard’ — but this time, it was different.
She was as strong as she had ever been. She had help, people supporting her; she’d walked out on me, and she was doing everything she needed to do to get her life straight.
She was even helping me get my life together.
I was clean, too, because of her. I think that was the first time in as long as I can remember that I actually felt hope. And I owe it all to Vanessa.”
“What went wrong?”
“I did.”
I look into his eyes, look at him as I would a criminal — which is what he fucking is — and it takes me only a second to see through the lies.
“That’s a bullshit answer, and you know it.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but then shuts it because he knows it’s futile. Good. At least he’s fucking smart enough to know I won’t buy his bullshit.
“What do you want to know?”
“What do I want to know? I want to know everything. All those years I lost, I’ll get none of that time with her back. But most of all, I want to know the truth. If she was getting clean, if you were getting clean, then I want you to tell me the truth about why my sister died of an overdose.”
Another heavy silence. A war plays out deep within the irises of his troubled eyes, and I wait.
“I’ll tell you the truth about how your sister died. But when I do, when this is over, I want you to promise that you’ll fulfill what you set out to do.”
“You mean?”
“Yes, I want you to keep your word. I want you to kill me.”
“Fine. I promised I’d kill my sister’s killer, so, yeah, I’ll keep my word.”
He nods, satisfied, and opens his mouth. But no words come out. Instead, he cocks his head to the side, listening.
Then I hear it too. Shouting.
Followed by the unmistakable crack of a gunshot.