A Kiss Stolen

“Come back!” He shook her lifeless body mercilessly. “Come back and leave properly, you selfish little bitch. Come the feck back. Whitney Vaughan come the feck back, right now!”

He swore that he would never forgive her. Then I stood there staring at him blankly as he began to shatter everything around. I was afraid for my father. I was afraid he was going to hurt himself. I was afraid he had gone mad. He was banging his head against a wall and his hands were bleeding from breaking the glass cabinet where my mother stored all her precious red crystal. He had broken every single piece. Every time he broke one he called her to come back and stop him. The inhabitants of the other caravans had started to gather around our door. They did not come in. They knew better, but I could see their shadows outside the curtains.

“Da—“ I began, but he rushed at me and struck such a blow across my face I was flung halfway across the caravan. I crashed against the toilet door. Never in my life had I felt such a pain and for the longest of time I couldn’t even move. All I could do was feel, the deadly pain of what I was sure was a broken jaw, and its reverberation through my entire body. I was shaking as I tried to breathe, tears beginning to well up in my eyes.

“It’s you. It’s your fault. You killed her. If not for you none of this would have happened,” he roared, his face purple with uncontrollable rage.

Outside, someone began to knock on the door.

“Fuck off,” my father bellowed, whirling around like a dervish. Truly he had gone insane with grief. He grabbed a kitchen knife and began to wield it, slashing the empty air, screaming. Telling the people gathered outside that he would kill them if they entered.

Gypsies never call the police. They hate us and we refuse to give our faith or respect to them. So we would never willingly give them a foothold into our lives. No matter what our troubles, we solve them ourselves.

The men outside began to try to reason with my father, but the more they tried, the angrier and more out of control he became. Then, one of the oldest women in our community, a frightening hag, was called. She screeched out to my da that my mother was outside the door and calling to him. My father stopped in his tracks and ran out of the door. The men outside pounced on him and sat on him. It took six men to hold him down. When he would not calm down they punched his lights out.

When my father came around a few hours later he was a different person. He asked for my mother, but when one of the men told him she was gone, he gazed up at me. Stubble shadowed his cheeks and jaw, and his eyes were sunken and blank. He looked utterly haggard. It was an astounding contrast from the man he had been a few hours ago.

“Da,” I called, but he shook his head and sat up slowly.

He looked around him. “Where is she?”

“She is on the bed,” I whispered.

He got up and went to the bedroom and closed the door. For twenty minutes he stayed inside. We could hear him muttering and shuffling around. Then he came out and closed the door behind him. Without even looking at me, he went out of the door and walked towards his truck.

I ran behind him. “Da, where are you going?”

“Never mind that. You take care of your ma,” he said opening the car door. He hopped into the driver’s seat and closed the door.

“Da,” I called.

He turned his face and looked down at me. It was like I was a stranger. I knew then I was dead to him. He blamed me for what happened. If I hadn’t insisted on marrying Liliana none of this would have happened. I never saw him alive again.

When I went back into the bedroom, I saw that he had dressed my mother in her favorite blue dress. He had combed her hair and put a tiara in it and tried to put lipstick on her lips, but it was all smudged. I wiped the lipstick away and carefully reapplied it. Her skin was warm, but there was something frighteningly still about her. It made the hairs on my neck stand. I kissed her cheeks. I could smell the faint whiff of mayonnaise from her hair.

It did not seem real. This was just a nightmare. She couldn’t be dead. How could she be dead when she was so alive an hour ago? I lay down next to her and listened carefully, but I could not hear her heart beating. It was always so steady. She said she wanted to see my grandchildren. I closed my eyes and held her still hand. My chest felt as if someone was sitting on it.

“Ma,” I called as if she would magically come alive if I called her.

She didn’t come alive. A few hours later, the flashing blue lights of police cars came onto our site. My father had given himself up at the police station. They took me into the care system. The hellish care system for orphans and vulnerable children.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Brand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpQFFLBMEPI

The moment I arrive back at the house, I dash through the front door, and up the stairs. I unlock the door of Liliana’s room and throw it open. She is standing by the bed, her feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent, and her face wary and watching.

My heart races as I casually take a seat on one of the armchairs. I pop my feet on the coffee table and smile. “You can sit back down,” I drawl. “I know you think I am a self-absorbed jerk, but I have a present for you.”

She says nothing, her head is slightly cocked and watches me suspiciously.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like presents? Don’t you want to know what I got for you?”

She frowns. “What is it?”

Taking my legs off the table, I reach into my jacket and retrieve the ziplock bag. Holding it up in the air, I let it drop down on the table.

At first her eyes narrow in incomprehension, not quite sure of what she is seeing, but when it registers, all the blood drains away from her face. She stares at it as if it were a serpent. “What is it?” she asks as if she cannot believe what she is seeing.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I apologize, “perhaps you need a closer look.”

I throw the transparent bag to her and she catches it with both hands. I swear that I can almost feel her heart jump the moment she recognizes what is inside the bag. I lean back again into the chair as she sinks to her knees, unable to hold herself upright any longer. She opens the bag, takes out Jake’s lion head ring, and looks at it in disbelief.

Which is weird, because my intention was to bring the ring attached to Jake Eden’s middle finger, but as I crouched next to his unconscious body I had hesitated. I looked at him, bloodied and breathing shallowly from the crash, and even then, he was something special. He was that thing that caused men to speak of him as if he was a god or a demon. Even a ruthless killer like him was willing to sacrifice his own life for love. I had no love in my life, but I was entranced by the idea. Love was indeed the most powerful force that exists.

If I took him down this way I would always know I was not better than him. That I had not fought him fair and square. I had done the cowardly thing. I was no coward. I bent down and pulled his ring off and brought it to his daughter as my bargaining chip.

Trembling with fear, and full of disbelief, Liliana looks up at me. Her eyes are completely devastated. “You bastard,” she swears. “You’re … y-you’re insane.”

I accept the endearment wholeheartedly, but a strange discomfort I can’t shake off takes hold of my insides. I did not expect such grief from her. It is only his ring. Not his finger. I only wanted to show her I could get to her father and to force her to obey me.

“What have you done to my father?” she demands in a whisper. “This is the ring my mother gave him on their first wedding anniversary, and I have never seen him without it. He would never have given it to you. How did you get it?”

I watch her, the pain in her eyes.

“What did you do to him?”

I sit up suddenly angry with myself. Why am I letting her make me feel bad? What about the years I fel

t like shit? “I crashed my car into his Urus and it somersaulted into the air, multiple times before finally landing in the woods.”

Her jaw drops. “What?”

“For the most part he is going to be fine, one would think so anyway, since he seemed to have hardly any injuries, but he should count himself very lucky. I was going to cut his middle finger off so he won’t be able to fuck the world up any more.” I lean back into the chair. “Damn, my personality is gold, how can I be so entertaining?”

Liliana charges me suddenly. I see her flying at me and it is quite amusing. It takes less than a medium grip around her arms to break her attack.

“Woah!” I say cheerfully. “You’re getting feisty too quickly. I’m not finished with my report.”

I push her away, watching as she staggers backwards and falls on her delectable ass.

“I don’t know why you are so upset. Surely, this was a long time coming,” I ask. “You might not know the details, but you must have suspected the real businesses he ran behind the scenes. The ones that fueled all your father’s other companies. No doubt he tried to keep it from you, his little princess, but it would be very disappointing if you were that easily fooled.”

She raises her chin. “You’re wrong about my father. Yes, circumstances forced him to spend his youth on the wrong side of the law, but he gave it up when he met my mother.”

“Awww … that was his big excuse. Circumstances. Well, I had ‘circumstances’ too, but I’m not going to hide behind that bullshit. I’m a bastard because I want to be one. It’s far more fun.”