18. Tessa
18
TESSA
“ I ’ve never been more disappointed in you!” my mother shouted.
She was usually a quiet woman, preferring to not make waves in order to do the least amount of work possible. Her existence was one of complaints and misery as she wished for a different life of luxury that she’d never obtain on her low income.
“Running off like that! How dare you?”
“Oh.” I huffed and crossed my arms. “I imagine it’s been torture.”
She fumed, baring her teeth at the audacity I had to sass back. “It has, you ungrateful, spoiled, selfish, and good-for-nothing little bit?—”
“Excuse me?” Romeo strode forward, cutting between us. His bandaged arm was still supported in a sling, wrapped with numerous bandages.
I smiled at him, so glad that he was awake and moving so well. The doctors had told us that he’d recover well, that the through- and-through wound bled a lot but missed main blood vessels and bones. His muscles would need support to rebuild, but his prognosis was very optimistic.
I intended to help him through it every step of the way. I’d never be able to repay him for all I’d done, but I wanted to try.
Gazing at him with lovestruck eyes, I sighed and took in how strong and healthy he looked after being shot and bleeding out like that. After the fear of losing him, I was overjoyed to see him hale and hearty.
“Don’t speak to her like that,” he said, looking my mother up and down.
She bristled, not liking anyone to interfere when she was belittling me. Not even my dad could get a word in when she was on a roll. He just had to take his turn and yell at me after she was done.
Running into her here was inevitable. She was an LPN at this very hospital, and my luck ran out when I left Romeo’s room to let Dante have a few moments with his son.
“And who are you to tell me what to do?” she sassed back, clueless as to who he was.
I considered him from what she saw. The dark circles under his eyes from a long night of poor sleep. The redness on his cheek from falling to the floor. His clothes were clean and not bloody, at least. Franco brought a change of clothes for both of us since our clothing was so red.
Romeo looked tired and disheveled. Still handsome as ever, according to me, but tired and worn down.
She pushed past him to face me directly, oblivious of his lethal stare that he didn’t take off her for a single second.
“I’ve got every right to tell this brat how disappointed I am in her. Running off, quitting her job, stealing my husband’s car?—”
Oh! I stepped closer and got in her face. “I didn’t steal anything!”
“You didn’t bring his car home after work. That’s the same thing as stealing.”
“I didn’t bring his car home—” I stuttered and stopped short. Words failed to form, and I closed my mouth. A glance at Romeo showed that he’d lightened up his glare at my mom to frown at me, knowing exactly what happened that night.
I hadn’t stolen my dad’s car because I’d left it right where it was parked while I worked. And I hadn’t driven that car anywhere because I’d been reduced to a numb mess after being raped.
I couldn’t air that fact here. Telling my mom about what happened was something I didn’t want to ever share with her because in a backward, twisted way, she’d try to convince me that it was somehow my fault, that I wasn’t a victim but an idiot who'd encouraged those men to chase after me.
She gathered steam while I faltered. “You didn’t bring his car home. He had to go get it and be late?—”
“For a fucking fishing store?” I growled. “Tough shit.”
She lifted her hand to slap me but at the last second, noticed how much attention she was getting, arguing with me in a public place like this.
“You don’t come home. You don’t pay up?—”
“Pay up for what ?” a woman snapped.
My mom turned as Eva strode forward. Compared to my mom in her scrubs and dumpy, dated hairstyle, Romeo’s cousin looked like a princess, royal and gorgeous. Maybe she was high-maintenance with her perfect makeup, immaculate designer clothes, and flawless skin and hair, but that was her choice. And she rocked it.
“I asked you a question. Pay for what ?” Eva demanded.
“It’s none of your business. This is between me and my daughter.”
“Your daughter? Or your free labor?”
My mom gaped at her, stunned and furious. “What the fuck? How dare you speak to me like that.”
“It’s true,” I retorted. “It’s true. You and Dad treat me like free labor, making me pay rent to live with you since the day I turned sixteen. You never gave me a chance to save up to move out because you mooched off me and guilted me into giving you my money, all because Dad never wanted to work a day in his life.”
She lifted her hand to slap me again. I’d pushed her too far, throwing these truths in her face.
Romeo was quicker. Before she could lay a hand on me, he grabbed her wrist and stopped her midair. “Do. Not. Touch. Her.”
She wrestled and fought his grip. Wrenching her arm away, she stepped further from him and scowled. “Oh, so this is what you thought to do? Run off with a man like him?” Again, she dragged her judgmental glare up and down him, disdain clear in her eyes and wrath evident in her sneer.
“Answer me,” she demanded. “You thought you could run off with a man like this?”
I couldn’t stand the thought of her criticizing Romeo. He had no faults she could count. He had no flaws that could make him a horrible person. Not to me. “I didn’t run,” I said, hating that I was trying to deescalate the situation by focusing on my actions.
“It looks like you did.” She lowered her furious gaze to my hand that Romeo took. As if he felt the ire of her attention, he squeezed my fingers with a comforting pressure. To ground me, to remind me that I had him for support. The man just got out of surgery, and here he was, taking on my mother for me.
“It looks like you thought you could run off and follow along with a man like this one.” She narrowed her eyes at him, noticing the Constella men around us. “He’s a bad man, Tessa. This man isn’t right for you. I know it. I can tell just by looking at him. Him and his thugs. These criminals and lowlifes.”
“All right. That’s enough. We done here?” Franco drawled, losing his patience as he beckoned for the Constella soldiers to help us clear out in this hallway.
“No. Nothing is done here,” my mom snapped at him. She turned to me, reaching for my hand, but I smacked it away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“You’re throwing your life away. This is a mistake. Can’t you see? Running off with a stupid criminal? Look at him. He’s not a good man. Elliot is.”
I looked at the ceiling, so exasperated that I had zero patience for this.
“He’s a good, honest man,” she ranted.
“Yeah, right,” Romeo quipped.
“And you need to pay attention to building your relationship with him, Tessa. Elliot is your future. Not this bad man, these thugs who avoid the law.” She cringed, looking at Romeo, and made another grab for my hand.
“No.” I shoved her by the shoulder, glad when she staggered back. “I’m done with you and Dad.”
Romeo held my hand every step of the way as he led me down the hall, but my mom didn’t give up. She just had to have the last word.
“I’m telling your father that I saw you.”
I huffed. “I don’t give a fuck.” Seeing her was hard. Putting up with her enraged lecture was trickier yet. But with Romeo, even Eva at my side since she’d come to visit with Dante, who’d already left, I was stronger. I had my reasons to stand tall and not back down from my mom’s hatred and judgment. And to hear her tell me to go back to Elliot? I was steaming and fuming inside, bottling up all this wrath until I could let it out privately.
“This is wrong, Tessa. Wrong! After all we’ve done for you, you think you can just quit and walk away? That’s not how life works. Not like this.” She hurried after us, blocked by the Constella men who followed me and Romeo.
“You are a horrible waste of life if this is what you choose. Going with an awful man like him. He’s nothing but a thug! The kind of criminals Elliot helps to punish.”
“Can’t we walk faster?” I asked Romeo.
He frowned at me, then lifted his hand. Snapping his fingers and pointing, he gave a signal to the soldiers behind us.
They turned, reforming their positions as a group. Two men continued to exit with us, but others pivoted to prevent my mom from following us any further.
“You’re nothing, Tessa. You are not my daughter if you run off with that man! You hear me?”
I winced, grateful for Romeo’s comforting grip on my hand.
“Don’t even think about trying to come back home. Never. Don’t you dare plan on returning to us and thinking you have a place in our lives.”
I gritted my teeth at her fading shouts as the Constella soldiers kept her back. “The only place I had in your lives was to bring you as much money as possible.”
“Not anymore.” Romeo sighed as we reached the elevator. “You don’t need to worry about keeping a place in their lives at all.”
I nodded, hoping that could really be true forever.
Seeing Romeo in action and on the cusp of dying—or at least it seemed like that to me when he passed out and bled so fast—put things in perspective.
I’d latched on to him as a stepping stone away from the life I knew, but if I were to lose him, not only would my heart be shattered, but I’d also have no one else in my corner. No place else to go.
I hated feeling this untethered, like anything could strike out and pound me down into hopelessness and despair. For too long, I’d been waiting on something good to land in my path, something I could rely on for more than just a dream to entertain myself or a false illusion of security.
As we rode the elevator, Franco and the soldiers in the car with us, as well as a tired-looking tech in messy scrubs, I couldn’t look up. I felt Romeo’s gaze on me, and it tempted me to make eye contact in the mirrored walls of the elevator car, but I just couldn’t.
I felt so ashamed, so little and down, to face him. Only when we were in the backseat of a car did I turn to Romeo. Franco drove, but I was grateful for the privacy partition.
“I…”
“What?” He took my hand and kissed my knuckles.
I laughed, broken and humiliated. I don’t know what to do, where to go. “I’m sorry she said those things about you.”
His grunt of a laugh intrigued me, and I lifted my gaze to his. “What?”
He gazed at me, calmer but so serious. Like he’d tell his capo to turn this car around so he could teach my mother a lesson about making me feel worthless and stupid like this.
“I’m sorry she said you’re a bad man.”
Now he smiled, lighting up my world in a sick and silly way. “Tess. I am a bad man.”
“But she’s wrong. You’re also a good man, Romeo.” I hoped he heard the sincerity I couldn’t hide.
“You saw me,” he said, softly yet somberly. “You saw me kill that man.”
I swallowed, feeling nervous at having to talk about this. I already knew that he was a killer. He told me that he’d avenged me and killed my rapists. But seeing it was believing it, too.
“I did.” I steadied my breath, doing my best not to show any unease and prove to him that I wasn’t turned off or away from him. “And I know you killed that other man.”
“I tortured him,” he corrected. “I couldn’t kill him until I got answers from him, and I did. I need you to understand that.”
I rubbed my fingers over his knuckles, needing to move somehow. “I know, and I also respect that in some areas of life, like in your family, it comes down to the concept of kill or be killed .”
He nodded, almost seeming proud of my assessment. Then he put me on the spot. “Why do you insist on wanting to be with me, to be near me, when you know what I’m capable of?”
“Because I can’t imagine being anywhere else than with you.”
Because I know that I’m safest with you.
Because I get the impression that I calm you down and level out that darkness you can’t escape.
“Because I care.” I swallowed, my words failing me as I laid my soul bare for him. “Because I care about you, a lot , Romeo. And I don’t want to consider being separated from you.”
Not now. And not ever again.
He gazed at me for a long moment, seeming to search my face and find a reason I might hold him in such high esteem. Finally, he sighed and relaxed into his seat, prompting me to lean against him. “Then you will stay with me,” he stated, simple and matter of fact as he pushed a button to lower the partition. “Franco,” he said once the divider lowered. “Take us to my penthouse in the South End.”
Penthouse? He had so many places to stay while I had… none. Except this moment, with him, and I clung to it as I closed my eyes and let the ride lull me to doze off.