Chapter One
Morena
Eight years ago
Iwas sitting at the big table when the waiter came.
The restaurant was the fancy kind Papa always bragged about.
Soft yellow lights. Thick white tablecloths that felt cold under my fingers.
Crystal glasses that made little rainbows when I tilted them.
Mama had made me wear my best dress, the blue one with the itchy lace collar, because it was a “special dinner for papa.”
Papa sat at the head of the table. My two older brothers sat on either side of him, both trying to look important. Mama sat next to me, her hand resting on my knee under the tablecloth. She kept smiling too wide, the way she did when she was nervous.
The waiter who came to our table was tall. He wore the same white gloves and black vest as the others, but something about him felt different. He didn’t look at the floor like the rest of the staff. He looked right at Papa when he spoke. “Wine?”
Papa barely glanced up. He lifted his glass the way he always did, like the world owed him things.
The waiter poured carefully. The red wine looked almost black in the low light.
Then he set the bottle down and stepped back, standing near another table like he was polishing a fork.
I watched him for a second longer than I should have. His white gloves looked too clean.
Papa kept talking to my brothers about “work”. I didn’t understand the words. I was more interested in the way the candlelight made the silverware sparkle. Mama squeezed my knee once, a quiet warning to sit up straight. Then Papa stopped talking.
It was sudden. One moment he was mid-sentence, the next his face changed. He touched his throat. His eyes went wide and confused, like someone had told him a joke he didn’t understand. “What in the fucking…”
His chair scraped hard against the floor as he stood. The wineglass tipped over. Red liquid soaked into the perfect white tablecloth, spreading fast. The tall waiter set down the fork he had been polishing.
“No need to shout,” he said. His voice was calm. Almost polite.
Papa looked at him then. Recognition hit his face at the same time his legs gave out.
He hit the floor hard. The sound made my stomach drop.
Mama’s hand clamped down on my leg so tightly it hurt.
Around us, men I hadn’t noticed before moved in.
They grabbed my brothers by the shoulders and forced them back into their chairs.
Other men stood behind Mama and me, close enough that I could feel them breathing.
Papa was on the floor, clawing at his throat. Strange wet sounds came out of him. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and dripped onto the polished hardwood. The tall man crouched beside him. He was still wearing the white gloves.
“Don’t worry,” he said softly. “It won’t take too long. But it will hurt. And your family will watch.”
Mama made a broken noise. One of the men behind us put a hand on her shoulder, keeping her in the chair.
I couldn’t look away from Papa. His eyes were huge and terrified.
He was looking right at me when another wave of pain hit him and his whole body arched.
The tall man pressed a gloved hand to Papa’s chest, holding him down.
“Were your sons in on it?” he asked. “Did you teach them to be traitors, just like you?”
Papa tried to speak. Only blood and choking sounds came out. Tears ran from the corners of his eyes into his hair.
“I’m going to need some names if you want me to spare your lovely daughter and wife,” the man continued, so calm. “You know why you’re here, don’t you?”
Papa’s gaze flicked to my brothers, then to Mama, then back to the man. His lips moved. I couldn’t hear the words, but the tall man could.
“My sons,” Papa finally managed, the words wet and broken. “My sons worked with me… please… spare my wife… my daughter…”
One of my brothers shouted something. A hand clamped over his mouth almost immediately.
The tall man stayed crouched over Papa for a long time, watching.
Sometimes he pressed harder on Papa’s chest. Sometimes he just waited.
Papa’s struggles got weaker. The blood on the floor spread in a dark, shiny pool.
His fingers scraped weakly against the wood, leaving faint marks.
I don’t remember when Papa stopped moving.
Only that the restaurant went very quiet except for Mama’s soft, continuous sobs and the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears.
The tall man stood up. He looked at Mama and me for the first time since he had started talking to Papa.
His eyes were dark and empty of anything soft.
“You and the girl live,” he said to Mama carelessly. “That is the only mercy you get.”
Then he turned away and spoke to his men in a low voice. They pulled my brothers out of their chairs. Mama tried to stand, but the man behind her held her down. I heard my brothers’ muffled voices for a few seconds in another room. Then those voices stopped too.
They never brought my brothers back.
When the tall man returned, his white gloves were no longer clean. He looked at Mama one last time.
“Remember,” he said. “Only mercy.”
Then he and his men left us there, in the quiet restaurant with the tipped-over wineglass and the dark stain on the floor where Papa had been.
Mama didn’t move for a long time. She just held my hand under the ruined tablecloth and stared at the place where Papa had died.
When she finally stood, her legs shook so badly she had to lean on the table.
She didn’t speak as she led me out the back door into the cold night air.
She didn’t speak on the long walk home either.
The only sound was the soft click of her heels and the distant noise of the city that had no idea what had just happened inside that restaurant.
I kept seeing the tall man’s face every time I closed my eyes.
And I understood, even at ten years old, that the mercy he had given us was not kindness. It was a different kind of sentence.
Four years after the restaurant, the apartment smelled like cheap perfume, old smoke, and the sweet chemical stink of whatever Mama was using that week.
I sat at the small kitchen table with my homework spread out in neat piles.
Calculus. History notes. An essay on the fall of the Roman Republic that was three days ahead of schedule.
School was the only place that made sense.
Numbers didn’t lie. Deadlines didn’t change their minds.
If I stayed quiet and scored high enough, the teachers left me alone. That was all I wanted.
Mama was on the couch with that man again.
His name was Dario. I never called him that out loud, I preferred to avoid him.
He was one of the men who paid Mama. Taller than Papa had been, thicker through the shoulders, with a gold chain that sat in the dark hair on his chest. He laughed too loudly and left bruises shaped like fingerprints on Mama’s arms. Sometimes on her throat.
She always wore long dark sleeves the next day and told me she was fine.
Tonight he had a small plastic baggie in one hand and a glass pipe in the other. Mama’s eyes were glassy. She leaned into him the man she was cold and he was the only source of heat left in the world.
I kept my pen moving across the page so I wouldn’t have to watch the exact moment the flame touched the pipe. Dario noticed me anyway.
“Your girl’s quiet,” he said, voice rough from smoke. “Pretty, though. Looks like you must’ve looked before life got to you.”
Mama gave a soft, empty laugh and didn’t answer.
She hadn’t really answered anything in months.
Most days she looked straight through me, like I was part of the furniture she kept meaning to throw away.
I finished the last calculus problem and closed the textbook with a quiet snap.
My grades were perfect. The guidance counselor kept talking about scholarships and colleges out of state.
I nodded at the right times and never told her I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
Girls like me didn’t get to leave. We just learned how to survive the backrooms we were trapped in.
Dario stood up after a while and stretched. The movement made the gun at the small of his back press against his shirt. He never bothered hiding it around us anymore.
“Got something to say to both of you,” he announced. Mama blinked slowly, halfway somewhere else. I stayed in my chair. Dario reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold band. It looked cheap under the yellow kitchen light. He held it out to Mama like he was offering her a cigarette.
“Marry me,” he said. “I’ll take care of you. Roof. Food. Product when you need it. You won’t have to work the street any more.”
For a second Mama just stared at the ring. Then her face crumpled. Tears spilled over and she made a sound that might have been a sob or a laugh. She nodded fast, too fast, and let him push the ring onto her finger.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Okay. Yes.”
She was smiling when she looked at me, but the smile didn’t reach anywhere near her eyes. It was the same expression she used to wear when Papa’s associates came over and she had to pour drinks and pretend everything was fine. Resignation dressed up as gratitude.
Dario turned his head and looked straight at me.
He walked over to the table slowly, like he had all the time in the world.
I forced myself not to lean back. He stopped right beside my chair and reached out.
His knuckles were scabbed. He brushed one thick finger down my cheek, light as a spider. My skin crawled so hard I felt sick.
“You’re the real prize in this arrangement, sweetheart,” he said, voice low enough that Mama probably couldn’t hear it over her own shaky breathing. “Pretty little thing. Smart. Quiet. I’ve got big plans for you once the paperwork’s done.”
He smiled then. It didn’t look friendly.