41. Luna
41
LUNA
I ’m glad I haven’t eaten anything, because if I had, I would have hurled everything right then and there. As it stands, bile rises up my throat until I’m almost choking on it, then settles there like a nasty vapor waiting to be let out.
So many things they’re telling me make sense right now. But that thing… that thing about my father killing my mother. That episode that he tried so hard to repress, telling me I imagined the whole thing, turns out it’s true. He did kill my mother. There’s no two ways about it.
Everything that comes after that horrifies me. My mother was having an affair; had been for years and years. With my biological father. That’s when my father found out that I wasn’t his daughter. That’s when he turned on me. And killed my mother, depriving me of her. Then he killed my father. I don’t stop to ask his name. It’s too much. And there’s only so much I can take.
I start to hyperventilate, until Attila orders me to lean forward and walks me through breathing exercises. My shallow breaths even out and I raise my head, my eyes moist with tears. I don’t want to go through this again. I can’t go through this again. I urge him on — I want to know everything, and I want to know it now. Because I never want to go through this pain again.
“Castillo came up in the ranks by picking off competition one by one. He also staged elaborate armed robberies; banks, hotels, wealthy clients. That’s how he came into contact with Caleph’s parents. It was a home invasion that took their lives. I met Caleph right after his parents passed; he and Dante had been family friends for years, but it was only then that the three of us became close.”
“What about your wife?” Luna asks, looking up at Cesar. She looks sick to the stomach.
“My wife was at an ATM while the bank was being robbed. She had no idea. As she walked away from the machine, she was accosted by your uncle and gunned down. It was caught on the cameras. She died instantly.”
I’m horrified, my body shivering with an overwhelming pain as I think of all the lives my father has destroyed. I try to hold back the liquid pooling in my eyes, but it starts to slide down my cheeks as I digest the information I’m given. The images in my mind of the suffering these men have had to endure. I thought the worst possible thing my father could do to hurt me was to kill my mother and sell me off. Turns out, there’s more than a dozen other ways that my father could run a knife through my heart.
“You’re not like him,” I whisper, my eyes flitting from TJ to Attila. I remember them following me around, then saving my life. More than once. Tracking me down, then saving me again from an uncertain future. At any point in time, they could have killed me, got their vengeance and stuck it to my father. But they didn’t.
“We’re nothing like him,” Attila growls, his dark blue eyes turning midnight.
I know they’re nothing like my father. And yet… they’re killers. Just like my father. They are morally gray at best, with dubious intentions. They are part of this life that takes men and turns them into beasts.
“You didn’t stand a chance with him, Luna,” Attila tells me. “Your father had already pre-determined your destiny.”
* * *
I curl up on the sofa and lift a blanket to my chest. I’m fully dressed but I may as well be naked for all the chaos going on in my head. Everyone in this house knows more about me than I know about myself. That’s all I can keep thinking as the tears continue to come, well after I’m exhausted and I think I have nothing left to give.
I wonder what they think of me. What they think of me being Coyin’s daughter. His daughter for all intents and purposes. I lived under his roof from birth, and well into adulthood. He’s the only father I’ve ever known, even if he was a tyrant.
“I need to ask you something,” Attila says, coming to sit beside me. He lifts my legs and places them in his lap, soothing me with a hand on my feet. Telling me in that one touch, without words, that he’s here and everything’s going to be okay. He pulls the blanket to cover my feet and I look up at him, waiting. He could ask me anything and I would give him the world. The same way he gave me back my life. My freedom. He saved me from death and destruction, and I don’t know that there’d ever be any way that I could repay him.
“So ask,” I prompt him.
“Your brothers,” he starts, and almost involuntarily, I suck in a harsh breath. The mention of my brothers does painful things to my heart. “Did you see them when you were with your father? Do you know where they are?”
I shake my head. It’s unlike my brothers to not come and see me or ask about me. I know that I left them without a word and never looked back, but they’re nothing like my father. I can’t imagine that alone would be enough to keep them away from me.
“He shut me down every time I mentioned them. I never saw them. Why do you ask?”
“No one’s seen them in months. Is this usual practicein your family? I know it took us years to track down your father because he stayed under the radar. But what about your brothers?”
“My brothers were very outspoken about my father’s…” I pause, press my eyes together painfully, then backtrack. “ His practice. They didn’t always see eye to eye.”
“So they’ve broken from your father?”
“I wouldn’t say that. They were still very much loyal to him. But I’ve been away for three years. I don’t know what’s happened in that time.”
“Do you have any idea where they might be?”
“No idea. But I know someone who might.”