5. — unsafe people. #2
Frankie shrugged this time. “Do your worst. It’s not like I can run away and hide right now.”
Nearer to the door, Carina stopped and turned to face the bed once more.
“To be fair, I don’t typically kick people while they’re down.
It’s not nearly as good of a look as walking over them to get what I want, anyway.
I’ll get back to you on that one. Let’s say you owe me.
How about a little perspective instead?”
A dangerous game. Carina’s brand of perspective could be just as traumatic as her abuse. Frankie didn’t reply, waiting for the worst to come.
Carina never disappointed.
“You know, you’re lucky. You have the kind of father all little girls should.
He’d move heaven and hell for you. Buy you the moon, if you wanted.
You’re the first person he asks for when he’s been away.
You’ll never want for a thing as long as he’s alive.
And he loves you the way a father should love his daughter.
You’ve never known anything else about men, fathers, except for the one you have, and you’re so fucking lucky for it.
It’s almost sickening, but you don’t realize it.
Girls with fathers like yours don’t act the way you do.
They don’t do the kinds of things that we both know you do.
I know you do it, because I do it, too, even if it’s not quite the same.
And sometimes we do it because it’s the only way they’ll notice, finally look, and really see us, right? ”
Frankie’s molars crunched to keep equally hurtful words locked inside her chest that burned to rush out. Even if they would be true.
Carina steamed on ahead, unbothered. “You’re going to have to get over your vices quickly, sweetheart.
The tantrums. That co-dependency with Daddy and Sissy.
It’s not a good look on a young woman, because that’s how everyone else is going to start seeing you soon.
A young woman, not a seventeen-year-old child.
And if you’re the kind of woman that they think can’t make a decision for herself or doesn’t have a voice, they’re going to treat you accordingly. ”
“Who will?”
“If you haven’t figured it out yet, you will soon enough. Learned helplessness and ignorance won’t be the two things that get you through our life, Francesca. It’ll only make you an easy target. It’s time to grow up. Trust me.”
Then, she pointed between herself and Frankie.
“That’s perspective, and you’re going to need to get yours in line.
Soon. Before someone else shows you what they think your perspective should look like and don’t give you a choice but to accept it.
Get some sleep. The bruising will be better for it.
And don’t worry, I won’t be at the estate when you or your father gets back. No stress.”
Carina didn’t say goodbye before turning on her heel and exiting the room. An exchange outside quieted Frankie’s now racing thoughts in an instant.
“Jesus Christ, you again?”
“Believe me, I wish I didn’t have to see you either, sis.”
Carina made a gagging sound. “Ugh, move.”
Not five seconds later, a solemn Nico darkened the doorway.
The shadows in the room kept her from finding his eyes while he stared down at the floor.
A full-face helmet with a blacked-out visor hung from his two fingers, and his black jeans with the knees blown out melded into the leather jacket he’d recently started wearing despite the late May warmth.
She noticed him coming and going with her father or Larkin sometimes but today had been the first time they spoke since her father’s office.
“Hey,” he said.
She nodded at the helmet. “What’s that?”
He lifted it high. “I guess your dad had my car and Ducati shipped in from Miami and kept them somewhere. He had a couple of guys go get my Mustang out of storage today, too. He let me take the Ducati for a rip. I was in the driveway wiping it down when the call came into the house about the accident. I’ve been hiding in a bathroom stall waiting for the crew to head out. ”
“Why?”
Nico’s cheek moved with his grinding teeth. “I said I’d go straight back to the estate. Not somewhere else, you know?”
Frankie grinned a little. “I think they’d make an exception today if you didn’t follow all the rules, considering...”
“Maybe. You okay?”
“I will be,” she returned, “when I see my dad.”
“Larkin’s got two guys staying behind, so you’ll be okay.”
“Should I be scared?”
Nico cleared his throat, but his response came back fast. “No. I would wager a fortune that what happened today, will never happen again. Whatever it was.”
She didn’t ask why. The look in his eyes told her everything.
The same dark, distant stare had shaded her father’s expression when he’d first regained consciousness as EMTs loaded him into the back of a waiting ambulance.
He’d looked for her first, and as if remembering it all the moment he laid eyes on her, Salvatore’s head fell back to the gurney.
A silent, all-consuming rage was the last thing she saw before they closed the doors.
“Sleep tight, okay?” Nico said, his voice rougher.
She wet her lips, blinking away the sudden wetness in her eyeline. “Yeah, thanks.”
“You played great today at practice, by the way. I didn’t get a chance to say so before I headed out. The Ducati distracted me.”
“It’s a good distraction.”
He nodded in agreement. “Never seen a girl your size knock somebody ten feet back like that before. I’m impressed. I’d watch again.”
Her laugh shook the bed, and for the first time, she felt a twinge of pain in her eyebrow. “You should. I’ve got games coming up. To be fair, she tripped me first.”
He smirked wickedly. “You didn’t forget what I told you, right?”
She didn’t even have to think about it. Their two-minute conversation at the end of her practice had been the only thought in her mind on the drive home until the accident when something else took its place.
“I didn’t forget, Nico.”
“It’s true, even if you laughed. They’re all jealous.”
She rolled her eyes.
“No, I’m serious. You’re just caught up in how you feel like you’re constantly on the outside. You don’t realize you’re the bubble they’re all walking around, wishing they were inside.”
Picking at her nails, she asked, “You think?”
“I know. Every single one of them. I’m telling you.
They don’t know what to make of you because they only hear things, and they make of it what they want.
You’re not filling in the blanks. They feel better making you feel worse for a moment.
You’re not an outsider to them in the way it makes you feel.
You come from people that they know they will never be.
No matter how much money they have. They still couldn’t be like us. ”
“You mean because of the mafia. I don’t even understand all that.”
“You don’t understand? It doesn’t matter, Frankie.
They know enough for it to matter to them.
Don’t you get it? People like us, we weren’t meant to fit in with people like them.
We have our own kind of people. It’s taking you a while to find yours, that’s all.
And on top of it, you’re fucking beautiful, and they see it. ”
Her cheeks heated at the flippant comment.
“You make them look like shit every time you walk onto the soccer field. You don’t even try, you’re just focusing in. I bet you barely show up to class and pass, huh?”
She bit the edge of her lip. “You want me to brag?”
He shook his head. “No need. I could tell. They can tell, too. Stop letting people you could destroy if you cried to the right people make you feel bad about yourself. They don’t matter.
They’re not supposed to be your friends.
That’s the point. You’re so much better than they will ever be, anyway. ”
“Snobby.”
Nico rolled his shoulders, unbothered. “Because it’s true? Who cares? People don’t like the truth. In twenty years, that won’t change. And neither will they. You, though? You’re still gonna be like a fucking legend to these people. Untouchable.”
I made you untouchable.
He had perspective, she realized.
Like Carina.
Frankie took it all in. Clearly, she needed some.
···
Nearing one-thirty in the morning, Frankie had the ICU unit scouted to the thirty-minute rounds the three nurses in navy scrubs had to make until she found her dad.
Waiting until the rounding nurse left his room to make her move, Frankie bolted from behind a blanket warmer and sprinted under the number plaque on the door.
She had at least thirty minutes before anyone would be back.
The nurse doing the rounds only shone a red flashlight into her room, and Frankie bet how she left her pillows and extra blankets looked real enough.
They hadn’t come looking for her yet.
Salvatore, asleep, didn’t hear his daughter’s approach until she had walked around his bed to sit in the chair at the other side. His bandaged chest lifted higher, and then his voice made her realize she’d woken him up.
“You’re not supposed to be in here, baby.”
Frankie sniffled, absolutely refusing to look up. She couldn’t even sleep not knowing how he looked, if he could talk to her—would they lie to her for a while if he had died just to spare her a few hours of a grief she couldn’t survive?
“Does it hurt?” she asked, finally peering through wet lashes to survey the damage to her dad.
All in all, she thought the bandages on his right hand and arm looked the worst. The cuts on his face had been cleaned well, but the bruise on his right temple was dark and bad.
They hadn’t taken out his IV. “It looks like it hurts.”
“Drugs,” he rasped. “Really, really good drugs that I shouldn’t have accepted.”
That made her laugh.
He almost joined in, but the grimace replaced his grin, and he grunted with clenched eyes shut tight.
“Sorry,” Frankie whispered.
His brown eyes opened fast, nailing into hers. He told her once that she looked so much like her mother, it sometimes haunted him. But her eyes? All him.