CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Age Fourteen
At first, the boy came every week.
Then, every other day.
Finally, he started coming every night.
She knew he wasn’t supposed to be there because he smelled like the subway: diesel, brake dust, takeout, and sweat.
He introduced himself as Achilles. Wrote his name in Russian on a piece of paper, which she tucked under her pillow as if he were a wish.
She told him her name was Tierney. He didn’t need to write that down. Every fiber of her was etched into his memory like a bone-deep scar.
He brought her gifts. Italian pastries and CDs he’d burned with his favorite songs. Satin scrunchies for her delicate red hair, and two thick pocket-size books—the Oxford Russian-English Dictionary, one for him and one for her.
They leafed through the dictionary and pointed at words they wanted to say to each other. Getting to know one another was like peeling an apple slowly, paring the skin in one whole thread.
Slow. Careful. Oddly rewarding.
The raw anticipation of finding out what the other was going to say, the careful flip of the pages, the somersaults their hearts did in their chests made them forget the world outside of Tierney’s bedroom.
A world where he was a stone-cold killer and she was the odd, broken girl her father and older brother were too cautious to approach.
One day, she pointed at a sequence of words.
“I am so sorry I still can’t speak English.”
He frowned at her, shaking his head and flipping through the dictionary to find his own words.
“I’ll wait forever to hear your voice.”
They grinned at each other, and she felt herself blushing all the way down to her little toes. He, too, felt like something inside him moved and shifted, rearranging itself in a way that made it less hard to breathe.
Their knees touched as they sat crisscross, and suddenly, he wanted to kiss her. Kiss kiss. Not those quiet pecks on the temple he gave her before he slipped away into the night when they said goodbye.
He had a dream, and it was a silly one, but he couldn’t help it.
He dreamed that this girl would make him coffee every morning.
His mother made his father coffee every morning.
And though there was no love lost between his parents, every morning was a quiet moment, of intimacy and camaraderie, when Chiara placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of Vello, and he nodded solemnly, accepting the gesture, as though it was a shake of hands, a hug, a statement that whatever this was, they were in it together.
They were almost fifteen, but he worried Tierney wasn’t ready for that yet. All kinds of rumors flew around about what they did to her in the work camp where the Bratva kept the twins. Achilles made sure to punch whoever spread them, but they still gnawed at the corners of his mind.
Plus, he didn’t know how to kiss. How to kill—yes. How to kiss—no. Even if he knew, what if all she wanted was friendship?
He pointed at more words, pushing down the foreign, all-consuming urge in him to touch her.
“I can’t wait to hear all your amazing thoughts.”
She put a hand on his knee, and a shot of pure pleasure zinged from his leg straight to his penis.
The latter grew and stiffened in his pants, and he was fucked, fucked, fucked because there was no way he could keep his hands to himself for long, but he wasn’t going to lose his only real friend, even if he had to chop off his own cock.
“I can’t wait to share them.”
A few months later, he crawled through her window, bruised and bloodied.
His lip was split, his eye was swollen, and there was a gash along the entire right side of his face.
His hands trembled so hard he couldn’t gain control over them.
She didn’t ask any questions. Just ran a warm, wet cloth over the injuries on his face, standing between his legs as he sat on her bathroom counter.
She did it again and again until the blood tired of spilling.
Achilles whimpered each time the fabric kissed an open wound.
He didn’t normally allow himself such blatant displays of vulnerability, but he knew, deep inside, that she didn’t think less of him for hurting.
Just like he didn’t think less of her when those nightmares made her thrash and scream in her sleep.
“I did a terrible thing tonight,” he croaked.
She shook her head violently. “I no care.”
“I do terrible things every night,” he corrected himself.
She gave him a sympathetic look.
“I ate a human heart, still beating, as I stared the man I killed in the face. All to impress my father.”
The initiation.
Her stomach dropped.
“I…I feel like…” he began to say, then retched all over her. Threw up his dinner on both their clothes. He stared at her in horror. She stared back, calm and collected. She stroked his head. He whimpered in disbelief. “I’m—I’m sorry.”
“Shh. You okay, Achilles.”
If he needed to vomit on her to cleanse himself, she’d gladly let it happen.
Hell, if he needed to kill her to quiet the demons dancing inside him, she’d be a willing victim.
She’d do anything for him.
Even let him go if it meant he’d have a better life without her.
“Chelovek.” Tierney kissed the split skin under his eye, gently brushing his hairline with her thumb.
A fissure of pleasure rocked him from head to toe, pressure settling at the base of his spine.
She was physically coated with his vomit, and she’d never looked so beautiful because she didn’t even care.
“What does it mean?” he croaked. It had only been a few months since they’d met, but her grasp on English got better each day.
Tierney stepped from between his legs and brought the dictionary to him, leafing through the pages before stubbing a finger on the translation.
Human.
She called him human.
No one ever did.
Everyone thought he was a monster. His family. His schoolmates. The Camorra. He’d become one out of necessity, but he lived for those stolen interludes, the pockets of normalcy with Tierney, when he was just a teenage boy.
“Y—you think I’m human?”
She put a hand on his cheek. Kissed his forehead. He blushed.
“My dad… He says my ruthlessness is good. That I’ll be the next don because of that. I’ll be the most important man in the underworld.” He was desperate to impress her.
Dunking the pink cloth into the bucket of warm water, she squeezed it and brought it to his wound again. He grabbed her wrist. She froze, her huge green eyes taking over her whole face.
“Promise you’ll always be mine,” he demanded, his voice void of the softness that came so easily to him whenever they were together. “I can’t survive this life without you.”
She nodded. She didn’t understand exactly what he asked. But she wanted to give it to him.
Because he seemed like the only person in the world who understood what she was going through.
“Mine.” He plastered his forehead to hers, heaving, breathing her in. “Only ever mine.”
Several months later, Achilles brought over a book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
“It’s a funny book, so you’ll want to keep reading,” he explained as he took his usual place next to her in her bed. She’d been having trouble with reading and writing, and he wanted to help her without making it obvious that he was doing so.
They still hadn’t kissed, but in his fantasies, they did much more than that.
Even as Tierney’s grip on English became better, even as she grew out of the childish frills and graduated to Golden Goose sneakers and cashmere cropped tops and designer leggings, he still had no doubt she was his.
Tierney was loyal to him. She loved him fiercely, possessively, her eyes glistening with the same lethal high he felt when they were together.
“I bring popcorn.” She elbowed him, grinning.
“Bring some Coke, too. Oh, fuck, and something sweet. Chocolate, maybe.”
Her smile was so big it almost split her face.
“Why are you so happy?” He laughed. It was addictive. Laughing. Smiling. Being casual.
“Because I understood every word you said.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She beamed.
“Well, let’s see if you understand this…” He licked his lips. “One day you’re going to be the mother of my children, Tierney.”
Her smile collapsed, and she scurried to the kitchen, but he thought he saw her blushing.
Maybe she wasn’t ready…? Of course she wasn’t. She wasn’t even sixteen, for fuck’s sake!
Nice going, stronzo. You’ll scare her off at this rate.
She returned with a bowl of popcorn with Reese’s mini peanut-butter cups and Hershey’s Kisses tossed in.
They melted over the popcorn, making it stick into gooey clusters.
He read the book to her out loud. Some jokes and words he had to explain.
Most, she understood. She enjoyed the dry humor, like he thought she would.
They blew through that series so fast, they barely slept that week.
When they finished the last book, he asked her who her favorite character in the series was.
“Ford Prefect,” she said without missing a beat. “He is cool, like to party, and know how to survive. I want to be like him.”
He couldn’t imagine Tierney Callaghan wanting to be anyone else. She was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So unique, so brave, the mere thought of her brought him to his knees.
“You’re better,” he blurted.
She gave him a heavy-lashed, meaningful glare. The kind his brother Luca told him to watch out for when he wanted to kiss a girl.
Then he remembered he’d rather die than lose her.
And for the first time in his murderous, psychotic, fucked-up life, he got cold feet.