I laughed, unable to help myself. “You’re tough, aren’t you?”
“Always had to be.”
“All right, I’ll tell you my story, but it’s not so bad. Not compared to some of the other guys.”
She tilted her head and bit her pizza. “Go ahead then.”
I took a breath and looked at the bottom of my whiskey glass. I swirled it, sipped it, and for a second had the intense memory of my mother drinking whiskey from a pint glass, cheap stuff that smelled like mouthwash, her eyes glassy and staring far away, standing in the kitchen in her nightdress looking frail and broken and inhuman.
“Mom was a drunk. Dad died when I was a baby, and mom tried to replace him with a rotating cast of heroin addicts, alcoholics, and straight-up abusive motherfuckers. I learned how to take care of myself at a young age.”
She tilted her chin up. “Must’ve been hard.”
“It was until she died. I was thirteen when I found her. Choked on her puke in the bathtub.” I looked away, sipped my drink, and accepted the irony of telling this story while pouring whiskey down my throat. “I convinced one of her lowlife exes to claim me as his own to keep me out of the foster care system, and I kept living in the house. He bought the place and took rent from me, and in retrospect, I think he felt sorry for me—because he only charged enough to cover the mortgage and add a little on top. I worked three jobs, went to school, and started selling weed out of my living room.”
“That’s one hell of a childhood.”
“It’s my sob story. I met Hedeon later on and here we are.”
She nodded at me. “You like Hedeon.”
“We all do.” I met her gaze and let my eyes drift down to her pretty lips. “He has the kind of personality that draws you in to it. Makes you feel like you’re more than just some lowlife kid selling drugs and barely staying one step ahead of the law. He convinced a lot of us that we could be stronger together, and he sort of took over the leadership role, I think because nobody else wanted it, or maybe that was his goal the whole time.”
“It’s hard to imagine you taking orders from anyone.”
I laughed and finished my drink. I put the glass down then walked to the table and sat across from her. “Never was my strong suit.”
“So why him then?”
I gestured, unable to explain. I didn’t think she could understand, not really—not without being a part of it and seeing the way Hedeon could speak, his gentle tone, his knowing smile, the way he made you feel like he truly heard you and only you. It felt stupid sometimes, like he had a magic about him, but I could never put it into words.
“Some of the guys, he saved their lives—literally, saved their lives from something. Not with me though.”
“So why then?” She leaned closer, her pizza forgotten. “I want to understand.”
I shook my head. “He gave me a place where I belonged.” I felt stupid saying it, but that was the truth. Without Hedeon, I would’ve ended up in the system somehow, in juvie or jail or some halfway house or dead.
She watched me carefully then chewed on her lip the way she did when she was thinking about something. She leaned back and turned away, showing me her gorgeous profile, her small, upturned nose, her full lips, her small pale ear showing beneath her thick dark hair.
“I know what you mean, I think, except I never got that.”
“Yeah?” I tilted my head. “Tell me about it.”
“My father wanted a son but he got me instead. My mom miscarried a couple times after me, and I think they stopped trying after that. She used to tell me that, you know—that she miscarried, and I was the lucky baby, I was her miracle from God.” She looked at me, head tilted, face deadpan. “I never felt lucky. I felt crushed.”
“By your father?”
“By the organization, but yeah, by him too. He wanted a boy to take over the family business, but since he got me, he got angry. He never hit me, but he wasn’t kind, either, and I think my mother protected me in a lot of ways, shielded me from the worst of it—or at least she took on some of the abuse for me.”
“That must’ve been rough.” I tried to picture what it would feel like to watch one parent hurt another, but all I could see was my mother wasting away, and the men that took advantage of whatever she had left to give.
“That wasn’t the worst part.” Her hands tightened into fists. The pizza sat on her plate, cold and forgotten. “His little underlings were worse. A bunch of fucking douchebags that thought they could say whatever they wanted to be just because I was a girl, and my father never bothered to stop them—why would he, when they were right, I was a useless woman?”