19. Gio
GIO
W hen I was young, I had the idea that karma fixed all the problems of the world.
It might take a little while, but eventually it would come for the bad people in the end.
Then days went by, months, years, and every so often, I would come home to my mom quieter than usual and new bruises on her face or arms.
Nothing ever happened to him. Karma never showed up.
If I wanted karma to come, then I had to be the one to bring it to the party. Once I realized that, all of my other beliefs disappeared. The only thing that remained was a soul-deep hatred for my father.
I hear her crying as soon as I step into the front door.
The sound is soft, as if she’s muffling her sobs to keep him from hearing her.
The scent of rich, too thick cigar smoke lingers in the air.
If I hadn’t already seen his shitty fucking car in the drive, I would’ve known he was home based on that smell alone.
The second the front door clicks shut, her quiet sobs cut off and the telltale sniffling starts up.
I stand in front of the door and close my eyes, picturing her around the corner of the living room in the kitchen, blotting her eyes and mopping up her face.
I take several slow, purposefully heavy footsteps towards the opening.
I make sure to step on the creakiest floorboards so she can listen to my approach and I don’t startle her when I step across the thin barrier between rooms onto the vinyl tile.
“Mama?”
With her back turned to me, she stirs something on the stove.
A big pot rests there and there’s a congealed collection of what looks like soup.
I might believe she’s so focused on it that she doesn’t hear my call, save for the fact that there’s no steam rising from the pot and the stovetop light isn’t illuminated to warn anyone that it’s on and warm.
“Mama?” I try again. My chest feels heavy as I shift closer to her. “Are you okay?”
Mama sniffs and waves her hand back at me without turning around. “Oh, yes, of course, mijo ,” she says. “Dinner will be ready soon. Are you hungry?”
She seems to realize the stove isn’t on and quickly leans forward, jerking the burner dial on.
The red light pops up, but her shoulders don’t relax.
I sigh and close the distance between us until my hands settle on her arms. The second I touch her, she goes still.
Her hand stops moving the useless wooden spoon sitting in the pot.
Gently, I turn her to face me and when I see the swollen black bruise surrounding her left eye, I bite back a foul curse. “ Mama .”
“I’m fine.” Her hand comes out and grips mine as if to keep me close to her.
“You’re not fine,” I argue. I pull away from her and stride over to the refrigerator. It should say something about this fucking family that I’m all too familiar with where to find the ice packs and the act of wrapping them in a thin dish towel so as not to hurt her face further.
When I return to her and set the cold cloth against her face, she flinches. “This is unacceptable, Mama,” I tell her, my voice low and cold. “He should never have hit you.”
“H-he didn’t,” she tries to lie, but I already know the truth. She takes the ice pack and holds it to her face. “I-I tripped. You know how clumsy I can be, mijo .”
The attempt she makes at a smile makes me want to put my fist through the drywall—or my father’s face.
I look down at her, at the fragile bones of her wrist and fingers as she holds the ice pack against her bruised flesh, and all I can see is all of the times this has happened before.
It’s not right. It’s not. Fucking. Right.
The scent of cigar smoke strengthens in the air a split second before the sound of the floorboards in the hall creak to let me know the bastard has entered the room. “You’re finally home?”
My father’s gruff, annoyed tone grates along my nerves.
Mama’s hand latches on to my arm as if she can stop me from swinging on the piece of shit.
It takes all of my self-control not to throw her off me and stomp him out of existence.
Plans. We have fucking plans. The guys and I have plotted and schemed and done everything that fucker has asked us over the last three years, and we didn’t do it just for me to blow it all up now.
I pivot to face him. Without waiting for me to answer him and not even bothering to glance at Mama, my father blows another puff of cigar smoke into the air as he ambles across the kitchen and drops down onto one of the four chairs aligned with the table.
Dressed in a stained off-white tank top that stretches taut over his bulging belly and a pair of dirty jeans, he reaches for the paper folded neatly in the center of the Formica top.
“Took ya long ’nough,” he snaps, opening the paper.
“ Por favor, mijo .” Mama’s pleading expression is followed by that hissed whisper because she doesn’t want him to know what I’m thinking.
I don’t have the heart to tell her he already does. We’ve done this stupid song and dance before, Darrio and I.
“When’s dinner gonna be done, Camila?” Dad barks, making her jump and whirl back to face the stove.
“Almost done, mi amor ,” she says quickly with a note of false brightness.
I stand there, both hands clenched into fists at my sides as I stare at the man sitting at that cheap, chipped table.
I picture all manner of horrendous things that would get me not only arrested, but likely committed to an insane asylum.
I imagine what it would feel like to pin this man down and slowly flay him alive—starting at his toes, dragging the sharpest blade up and down his sides until I have an entire, almost perfectly preserved skin suit.
I’m no saint, but I’ve never held this level of animosity towards anyone.
I wouldn’t even consider this were it not for the years of abuse.
Not towards me, no. I don’t give a fuck what this man says or does to me, but for my mama?
The woman who loves him, practically worships the ground he walks on?
“What?” Darrio looks up from the paper and glares at me, his lips pursed around the cigar that hangs from his lips. He reaches up and carefully removes it, grasping it between his thick fingers. “You got somethin’ to say to me, boy? ”
I used to hate it when he called me that. Boy. As if I’m lesser than because, in his eyes, I’m not yet a man. He’ll know, though, that no number of words can save him. No condescension, no hateful ridicule—nothing will save him when the devil comes calling.
“No, sir.” It steals something inside of me to form the words and speak them aloud when what I really want to do is shove my fist so far down his throat that I can grasp his balls and rip them straight up and out.
Regardless, I don’t say them for him. I say them for her.
For my mama, for Juliet, and for my boys.
The hands on his paper tightens as if he’d expected a different answer. The smile I give him is one lacking any amusement. His eyes narrow.
“Hmmm.” He hums in the back of his throat before slowly turning back to the paper in his hand.
Mama doesn’t have to ask me to set the table.
The act is already ingrained within me. Twenty minutes later, once Mama’s soup has warmed and she’s reheated a few tamales in the oven from a batch she mass froze a few months before, the three of us sit around the table in an odd mockery of a normal family.
Mama with her bruised eye. My father with his half-finished cigar hanging over the edge of a cheap ashtray.
And me, feeling more distant from it all than ever before.
I spoon up some of the soup, knowing it’s going to sit like deadweight in my stomach for hours after this meal when he speaks again. My hand stops.
“When is that Donovan whore going to stop staying with Pierce and Medicci?”
Mama’s eyes widen as she looks across the table at me. My expression must not be as neutral as I’d hoped it’d be. I lower my spoon back into the bowl before me, the scent of spices and hot sauce drifting away as I do.
“Juliet is not a whore.” The words are quiet, but no less strong for their low volume. I stare back at my father and silently dare him to reject me.
He snorts and ignores the warning. “All women like that are whores, son. She’s a rich princess looking for a sugar daddy now that her family’s as destitute as the rest of us.”
My jaw begins to ache with how hard I’m grinding my teeth. My father doesn’t seem to realize—or rather, he doesn’t give a fuck if he’s pissing me off. He never has.
“Please, mi amor . That kind of language at the dinner table is?—”
Darrio slams his fist down on the tabletop, making Mama’s words cut off as she yelps and flinches away from him. “Don’t tell me what to do in my own goddamn home, woman,” he barks.
Mama crosses her chest and dips her head. “I-I’m sorry, mi amor. ”
Mi amor. Mi amor. Mi amor. There’s nothing worth loving about this piece of shit. My anger seethes deep inside, rioting and demanding to be freed.
Darrio points at me. “I want the truth, boy,” he growls. “When will she be gone?”
“You’ll have to talk to Nolan about that.” I’m proud of the way my voice comes out. Even. Almost devoid of all emotion.
My father scoffs. “Why?” he demands. “Does Nolan command you?”
“You’re the one who put him in charge,” I reply.
“Which you never fought, did you?” He leans forward. “Because you’re weak.”
Mama all but disappears into the back of her chair, more tears filling her eyes. I ignore her in favor of staring back at the man that I know I will one day kill with my own two hands.
“You think I’m weak?”
“I know you are,” he says. “That whore has no business being near Vargas business. I’m disappointed in you lot—I thought Nolan was better than that. Letting some pussy control him. You’re the same, choosing pussy over family?—”
I’m out of my chair and around the table before I even realize I’ve moved. Mama’s shriek of surprise echoes throughout the kitchen as I jerk my father up, a fist in the front of his white tank.
“ Don’t talk about her like that. ”
A cold, calculated smile spreads across my father’s face and I realize my mistake. Motherfucker. I see the backhand coming and I don’t stop it. I don’t even try to dodge it. I take it as my punishment because I let my anger get the best of me.
When my father’s fist connects with my face, blood fills my mouth and my head snaps to the side. Then it’s my shirt in his hands.
“You fucked her, didn’t you?” He backs me up against the nearest wall.
“Tell me. Are the three of you passing that little bitch around? Is she putting out for a roof over her head?” His smile is more than amused, it’s fucking ecstatic.
He doesn’t even give me an opportunity to answer him. He throws his head back and laughs.
“Of course she is!” he bellows. “God, I bet her old man would love to see his precious little princess now. On her back fucking my son and two of my dealers and enforcers for nothing more than some food in her belly and a bed to sleep in.”
Sickness churns in my gut. “You don’t know anything,” I spit back at him.
“No?” He raises a brow at me and then removes his hand from my shirt, stepping back. The side of my face that he’d hit is sore and I can taste nothing but rust on my tongue. Darrio shakes his head. “I think I know all I need to, boy.”
He shuffles back to the table and retakes his seat. Mama stares at me from her place, eyes wide and begging me to pretend like none of this ever happened, but I can’t. I’m not like her. I can’t accept a punch and act like it’s love.
I bow my head until my chin touches the skin above my collarbone. “What you know is nothing,” I say quietly.
Darrio grunts and turns his head, glaring at me. I see his dark look from my periphery, but I don’t return it. Let him think I’m too weak to look him in the eye. He’ll regret it when I have my hands wrapped around his throat as I watch the light leave his eyes one day.
“A woman like that will bring you nothing but disappointment, son,” he says coldly.
“She might be a pretty little thing and you might enjoy the fuck, but soon enough she’ll move on to someone better.
She’ll do it again and again until that pussy of hers is all used up and there ain’t nothing left to her but sagging tits and a desire for everything she’s lost.”
An ache blossoms behind my rib cage, spanning outward. Each inhalation strengthens it, making it grow heavier and more painful.
“She’s not like that.”
He doesn’t believe me, but that’s all right. He doesn’t have to.
I know the truth. Lex and Nolan do too. All I need is them. Them and her.
Someday, we won’t need to use him anymore and when that day comes… I look up and meet my father’s stare as he lifts his spoon to his mouth and sips on the chunky broth. All of his sins will come back to haunt him.