Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
“Make sure you do a good job this time, puttana,” Giuseppe spits at me as he exits the kitchen. “I’m tired of that burned shit you keep fixing every night.”
The metal door slams behind him, the sound rattling through the cheap cabinets and the rusted stove like a warning shot.
The air smells like old grease and something sour—milk gone bad or meat left too long in the heat.
My stomach twists, half from hunger, half from the constant threat of messing up again.
Keeping my eyes cast down to the floor, I mutter a weak yes, sir to appease him as I scuttle past his hulking frame, careful not to brush against him. Even that could earn me a hit.
Clean. Get hit. Maybe get to eat. Sleep. Then rinse and repeat.
That is my life for the last few days.
I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the man I once called father, but Lina is around. Too much, in my opinion. Always watching. Always listening. Like she owns the air I breathe.
For example, here she is, sitting at the wobbly square piece of wood they think they can call a table, scrolling through her tablet like it is just another day. Like there isn’t blood under her nails and rot in her soul.
Her legs are crossed, heel bouncing lazily, the faint click-click of it against the floor grating on my nerves. She doesn’t belong here. Not in this grime. Not in this decay. And yet somehow, she makes it worse just by existing in it.
“Come sit down, Bailey,” she commands haughtily. Bitch doesn’t even look up from her screen.
“I’m supposed to be—”
“Did I ask you what you are supposed to be doing?” she snarls at me, her gaze snapping up, sharp and venomous.
The room goes still. Even the hum of the broken refrigerator seems to quiet under the weight of her attention.
“No,” I whisper as I take a seat on the rickety stool across from her. It wobbles under me, one leg shorter than the others, forcing me to brace my toes against the floor to keep from tipping. It puts me at a height disadvantage, but I figure that is the point whenever she has me sit here.
To make me feel small.
Insignificant.
Owned.
“You remind me so much of your mother.” She tilts her head to study me, eyes softening for a moment as if she is lost in thought. Or a memory.
It almost looks real.
Almost.
Then it is gone. Snuffed out like a candle, replaced by the cold-hearted bitch I have come to realize lurks beneath the surface. Our entire friendship has been nothing but fake. Just like everything else in my life.
“It is almost sad you never got to know your real mother. The only memories you have are probably of that junkie whore who whisked you away in the middle of the massacre. Otherwise, you would be dead. Just like her.”
Her words settle over me like ash, suffocating. My fingers curl into my thighs, nails biting through the thin fabric of the dress they’ve forced me into.
“Does Eriksen know what you do?” I ask her, forcing my voice to stay steady. “Does he know who you really are?”
“Of course not,” she sneers, like the idea itself is laughable. “Why do you think your mother and her little whore of a motorcycle club had to die? She recognized me. It took her a few years, but she managed to uncoil who I am.”
Then she laughs.
A dark, scraping cackle that echoes off the cracked tile and makes my skin crawl. Like the evil queen from Snow White—only worse, because this one is real.
I would like nothing more than to shove an apple up her ass right now.
“Here’s the thing, little pathetic Bailey.” She smirks, leaning forward slightly, elbows resting on her knees. “I wanted to kill you. So did Sarah. God, that woman hated your mother after she ruined her job prospects after college.”
Jesus, this woman is high on something. Or maybe she’s just that fucking unhinged.
“I think you have the wrong—”
“I’m talking,” she roars, her hand whipping across my face.
The crack echoes.
My head snaps to the side, pain blooming sharp and hot across my cheek. For a second, all I hear is ringing.
That careful facade she always has around me shatters completely.
I grit my teeth against the pain, tasting copper where my teeth cut into my lip. After three days, I’ve grown used to expecting blows. My body flinches before my brain even catches up.
Pain is nothing new. I have been on the receiving end of it for as long as I can remember. Not because I did anything wrong, but because Crowe wanted to keep my biological father in line.
Fixing herself, she leans back in the chair, smoothing invisible wrinkles from her clothes like she didn’t just hit me.
“Where was I? Oh, yes.” She smiles thinly. “Your mother ruined my chances at happiness. You see, I was promised to him. We were supposed to be married. He was my chance to get out of the hell I was born into.”
Her fingers tap against the tablet, a restless, agitated rhythm.
“But no. Instead, he met your mother. My old college bestie. Worked out a better deal with my father, and I was right back to where I started.”
There is something feral in her eyes now. Something cracked and bleeding through the surface.
“Sarah wanted to just let you rot right next to your mother in your own little grave for everything she did to her,” she continues, voice almost dreamy. “But I thought of a better idea.”
There it is.
The Cheshire grin that never bodes well for me. The one that promises pain. The one that promises something worse than death.
It is the same grin Sarah used to give me before locking me in the cellar without food for days at a time.
“I convinced her to have you work in the brothel instead. Crowe can still control your father while I implement my plans for expansion, and you get to earn us some good money.”
Her gaze drags over me, slow and assessing, like she is already calculating my worth.
“God knows how many of your father’s enemies out there will be willing to pay top dollar to fuck his long-lost daughter.”
My stomach lurches violently.
“Plus,” she adds with a shrug, “I doubt you will last all that long anyway.”
“Fuck you,” I hiss as I stand, the stool scraping loudly behind me. “You put me in one of those rooms, and your clients will come out with their dicks stapled to their foreheads.”
The words come out sharp, reckless.
Stupid.
Lina laughs like this is fun for her. Maybe it is. There is no mistaking that the woman clearly belongs in a mental institution, with the word psychopath tattooed on her broad, Botoxed forehead.
“If you do anything more than lie down and spread your legs like the whore you are,” she says, voice dropping into something cold and lethal, “I will make sure every single one of the Kavanaughs winds up with a bullet in their heads.”
The words hit harder than the slap.
“They are the ones who put me here,” I scoff, forcing the lie past the tightness in my throat. “Do you honestly think I care what happens to them?”
There is that grin again.
Knowing.
Cruel.
“Oh,” she says, standing slowly, deliberately, like she has all the time in the world. She steps closer, the click of her heels measured, predatory.
She hands me the tablet she is scrolling on.
“I think you do.”
The screen lights up my face, harsh and unforgiving.
And I… God, I wish I could say she was wrong.