Anteros quickly threw on his pants—jeans, fucking jeans. He’d arrived in a tank, a leather jacket, and jeans. It was as mouthwatering as it was baffling. After giving me his shirt, he only had a leather jacket. When he zipped it, leaving only a little slice of tanned muscle showing, I stared like a dope.
We kissed at the door, he went left, I went right. I decided to leave the phone at the church as the tank and pajama bottoms left little to the imagination and I didn’t want to risk my luck twice. I hoped to return and grab it as soon as I could. I walked as slowly as possible back to the club, watching my feet hit the pavement and counting each step. I couldn’t postpone the inevitable, though, and when I got back, the club was the same. Dark. Glittery. Filled with ugly people with beautiful faces.
Lucia was at the bottom of the stairs and if I wanted to change my shirt I would have to go past her. She would see the tank top, the blood. I rubbed my chest, felt the sting of the brand, and then looked at the two goons guarding the basement.
I thought about Papa, and how he was most likely not my papa. I wondered if I had a different name. I wondered if that different name would make me a different person. A person who had a place in the world.
I wasn’t sure what to say to make them let me go down, but upon seeing me, they stepped aside. Nonplussed, I looked over my shoulder as I descended, sure they were going to change their minds. Not only did they not come after me, they left.
They glanced down at me, then at each other, and then walked away from their post. I should have realized what that meant, should have recognized the sourness in my stomach for the omen it was, but instead, I kept my head down as I walked to Papa, not wanting to look at the velvet curtains.
The air got ten times heavier when I got to his cell.
“The kitchen needs work and that’s the only reason I took that money,” he mumbled. “It’s the only reason.” My eyebrows furrowed, but I said nothing. Even if most of it was nonsense, the past month had been the most Papa had ever talked to me since I was a child. I could remember the moments like picking falling stars out of the night sky. There was the time he read me a book, but not a children’s book. It had no pictures and I remember struggling to understand. The big words had sounded odd and scary to my child brain, but mostly I’d been excited for him to read it to me at all.
As I grew up, Papa paid less and less attention to me. He only took breaks from watching games on TV to yell at me, usually belligerently. It was so fucked up that I was savoring the way our relationship was now, locked in the dungeon my maybe-grandmother-maybe-not had put him in.
“Frankie,” he called out.
“Papa? Do you recognize me?” I couldn’t help the hope in my voice, but it immediately drained when Papa’s response was more gibberish. Again I wondered if I was crazy for hanging on to him for answers—but at the same time, his nonsensical mutterings contained more truth than any of Lucia’s calculated and elegant explanations.
“Francesca, there’s so much I want to tell you,” Papa said, but this time I said nothing in response, knowing he wasn’t speaking to me. His features were gaunt, hollow, his eyes black, the pupils entirely dilated. His chest was cavernous, each breath taking tremendous effort. He was so different than the paunchy red face I remembered. He hadn’t even gotten up when I came into view. I wondered if he could get up. My heart ached, but anger had long since choked me.
Why did it have to be this way? I wanted so badly to just have a father-daughter relationship. To be loved.
Papa took a deep breath and said, “I don’t have much time left. Frankie I’m not, I’m not—” A cough seized him, and he broke off, sputtering and clutching his chest. When he spoke again, it was more gibberish.
My feet made shuffling noises against the stone floor as I listened to him mumble. I contemplated going back upstairs—doing anything other than this—but I hadn’t learned anything about myself. I clung to the weak thread of Papa’s enlightenment.
“Frankie…” I looked up, and it was like the fog had cleared in his eyes. Hope bloomed in my chest despite the fact that my brain warned me to keep my expectations low.
“Papa?” I hedged.
“Frankie, I’m not…” He took a deep breath and I held mine while I waited for him to finish his thought. “I’m not your father, Frankie.”
It was like someone hit my chest with a hammer. It shouldn’t have hurt. It shouldn’t have. I’d known it was coming. I was here for a reason. People called me princess. Still, there had been this niggle of doubt in my mind, a weak shred that said I might still be me.
I hoped I might not be lying when I said I was Frankie Notte.
Then he tore through the last string, leaving me alone. Fatherless. Someone I didn’t recognize. Branded and bleeding with no way to stop the flow. Officially in the dark.
“Frankie, did you hear me?” His weak, raspy voice drifted through the silence. I swallowed a lump, trying not to cry.
“Then who is?” I demanded at last. Was Mom even my real mother?
“Don’t trust Lucia,” he rasped. “You can’t trust her. She’s not who she says she is.” I wanted to scream. I wished people would just say what they really meant. I already knew I couldn’t trust Lucia, that didn’t help me decipher the Tokyo metro that had become my bloodline.
“Who is my real dad?” I asked. “Who is my mom?” Just as Papa prepared to speak, a shadow grew on the wall, darkening the little yellow light we had. I spun around to see who it was, but I already knew. There was only one person who’d come down. Seconds later the click-clacking of Lucia’s heels sounded as she made her way around the curve of the hallway.
“Frankie, you need to know about your mother.” Papa’s—or not Papa, fuck—voice was high and hurried as Lucia appeared in the mouth of the hallway, wearing an ivory skirt suit and a tight smile. One hand rested lightly on her forearm, the other—holy shit. My eyes widened at the item in Lucia’s other hand.
A gun.
My heart hammered in my chest painfully. Something was wrong here. Something was going to go wrong. Lucia walked past me, paying me no mind.
“What are you doing?” I tried to ask just as my father spoke.
“Frankie your mother—” Lucia fired the gun, silencing him.