Chapter 7
ZARINA
Ihave no option but to follow as Rita pulls me down the hall.
I expect a tour, ducking into multiple rooms and maybe meeting a few of the youths, but instead, she leads me into her office near the front door.
There’s a desk, but it’s shoved against the wall and the majority of the space is taken up with various seat options.
There’s a bean bag in one corner, two oversize chairs, one orange and one violet, and a small green couch that looks like it could swallow whoever decides to sit on it.
Nothing matches, and yet each piece goes with the others.
“Feel free to sit.” Rita waves at the seating options as she beelines for the bookshelves lining the wall. She crouches down to the bottom shelf as I sink onto the purple chair. The fabric is soft, the arms threadbare, the cushions comfy.
Rita grabs a large book off the shelf and settles into the orange chair beside me. “I thought you’d enjoy this.”
“What is it?”
She opens it to reveal a photo album with plastic sleeves for pictures, and beside each one is a caption. She rests it over the arms of our chairs, close enough for us to kiss elbows, and turns the pages until she finds what she was looking for.
A page filled with pictures of Tamayo.
My mouth hangs open, and I angle the album toward me.
Each photo has its own caption remarking her name, her age, and a quick description.
Andrea Tamayo, 14, first day. Andrea Tamayo, 14, bookworm.
Andrea Tamayo, 14, hide and seek champion.
In each one, she’s a skinny, knock-kneed teen with long hair and swooping bangs.
Her clothes are bright and happy, but her face is a bit sullen, as if she didn’t get to choose her wardrobe for herself.
I can see her adult self in the slope of her nose, in the shape of her eyes, but her cheeks are bigger and her frame smaller.
I stare at the photos, pieces of Tamayo’s history, her childhood, filed away to remember whenever the album is cracked open. With each image, I realize I know so little about her and how she got to today. My world is full of criminals, but very few of them chose this life. Myself included.
What made Tamayo choose? What brought Tamayo here, to the Alphabet House? How did Andrea Tamayo become Tamayo?
And then I turn the page.
Andrea Tamayo, 17, first steps after surgery.
She’s more grown in this photo, her hair cut in a temple fade and her face more angular with the loss of baby fat.
And she’s covered in healing bruises. Cuts and stitches.
A pair of crutches under her armpits, her leg wrapped in a brace that runs from ankle to hip.
“What happened?” I ask.
“You don’t know?” Rita frowns.
I shake my head.
“She’s always playing things a little too close to the chest.” She traces a finger down Tamayo’s figure in the photo, stopping on her left knee. “She was mugged, her knee shattered. Took almost a year for her to get back on her feet—in more ways than one.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m surprised she never told you.”
I’m not. But I can’t say that. I can’t tell Rita that there’s no way Tamayo would willingly divulge her weaknesses to me because our engagement is shit coated in bronze and sold as gold.
Not when, after all is said and done, we’ll go back to being something closer to rivals than fake lovers.
And that’s if we don’t lose everything in the interim.
Or die. The memory of Marcus’s hands around my throat, the bruises he left behind (currently hidden, under the collar of my turtleneck) pulse with a deep ache.
I swallow hard, trying to clear the feeling. “You said it best, she plays things close to the chest.”
Rita hums noncommittally.
I turn away from the photo to study the others. They catalog her healing, show her with other youths, in a recreation room that looks different than the one I spied through the door down the hall. And then I pause again—Andrea Tamayo, 17, and Darius Taylor, 17, front steps.
They sit side-by-side with their elbows on their knees, both wearing shorts and mean-mugging the camera.
Tamayo’s no longer a bruised peach, a compression brace around her knee and all her cuts healed over into pink scars.
Darius is skinnier than he is now, his arms more gangly.
But they’re together, immortalized as moody teens who thought they were so hard.
I grin. “I didn’t know Darius was here, too.”
Rita chuckles, looking over my shoulder at the photo. “Ah, he didn’t board. He was an after-school youth.”
“When did he start coming?” I ask.
“When Tamayo came back.”
I frown, turning the pages back and forth. Tamayo’s pictures start at age fourteen, and then there’s nothing until seventeen, when she shows up injured and recovering. “Why was there a gap? Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“She never told you?” I ask.
“No. I was her emergency contact. When the hospital called me that night…” Rita stares at the album, but her gaze is unfocused, as if she’s reliving the memory.
“She almost died. She wouldn’t tell me the whole story, but I got a few details out of her.
A gang of guys cornered her in an alley and… they didn’t even take anything.”
“That’s horrific.” I wrap an arm around her shoulders and rub her back, the action soothing myself, too.
The thought of Tamayo cornered, beaten, and alone makes an urge for violence burn through my muscles.
I have no idea who attacked her, but I would like to press my knife into their skin and watch fear blow their pupils wide.
“Zarina, I know you’re a smart woman. That you can take care of yourself.” Rita leans back in her chair, my hand falling from her retreating back to the photo album between us. She stares at the pictures, fingers rubbing her bottom lip.
I hum and wait for her to find the words.
“I also know that Tamayo’s business is…” She struggles, looking around the room like the polite way to say this is hidden among the cushions.
“Her business isn’t on the level,” I finish for her.
“So you know.”
“I do.” I close the album and set it on the low coffee table in front of us. I want to have this conversation without distractions. “Neither is mine.”
Rita watches me, waiting.
“I really like you, Rita. I love this place, what you’re doing here for these kids, what you’ve done for past kids.
” Tamayo’s name hangs in the air, unspoken between us.
“I hope that mine and Tamayo’s business doesn’t drive a wedge between you and her, or stop us from making our own connection. But I understand, too, if it does.”
Rita clasps her hands in her lap, her thumb stroking the bones beneath her skin from left to right and back again as she considers me.
When I suggested that we visit Alphabet House earlier, it was half out of guilt.
Last night, Marcus might have attempted kidnapping, but I’m the one who fired a gun in a room full of people.
Including her. I’m the one who threatened war.
Rita isn’t a part of our world, even if she stands on the fringes. These kids are her charges, this place their last home before they’re forced onto the streets, and our presence could jeopardize that. Or worse, put them all in danger simply because Tamayo cares about them. And I do, too.
I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted distance.
“Last night scared me,” Rita admits.
I nod, saddened. “I understand.”
“I don’t want to know the details.” She waves her hand and closes her eyes, like she’s trying to block the knowledge from her sight.
“It’s best if you don’t.”
She snorts. “But I want to know, honestly, if we’re ever… threatened.”
“Tamayo and I will do everything in our power to keep you and these kids safe. I promise.”
“You’re not a god, Zarina. You can’t keep that promise.”
“Not a god yet.” I wink at her, trying to ease the discomfort of this conversation.
Rita cracks an amused smile, but it falls seconds after it forms. “I can’t watch her fight for her life like that again.” She grabs my hand in hers and clutches it so tight, the tendons rub together. Her voice is desperate. “Please keep her safe. Please.”
I study her face, the shadow of a fear long-held and often realized in her brown eyes. This promise is harder to make. Because I won’t be around in two months’ time to keep it. And more, my quest to bring my family back from the brink of extinction could directly result in Tamayo’s pain.
It already has.
She didn’t tell me, but I know her business is suffering. I know the Accardis have been hitting her where they can, vandalizing properties, harassing her family. I know they can do worse. And they will.
Soon, I won’t be the only one with bruises.
But Rita doesn’t want to know that, and it wouldn’t help if she did. Tamayo made her choice, struck this deal with me, and these are the consequences. I wish I could shield her and her family from this, but not more than I wish to find a way to save my own family from themselves.
So I wrap a hand around Rita’s with a comforting squeeze, school my face into something calm and caring, and promise her that I will do everything I can to keep her worst fears from happening.
Her shoulders sag with relief, and she dabs at the corners of her eyes.
I try not to let the guilt swirling in my gut climb up my throat.
Because I lied.