Just like I’d do anything for Erica.26EricaAfter Gavin disappeared, I decided not to visit my mom, and instead went out for a walk.
I didn’t have a destination in mind. My mind spun in quick circles trying to figure out what happened up there in Dr. Martin’s office, and what it meant for Gavin’s career. He wasn’t going to get that promotion anymore, that much was obvious—but I got the feeling Dr. Martin would hold it against Gavin for a long time to come.
I never wanted this. He said I was a good person, but it was obvious that wasn’t true. From the start, we got involved because he thought I could help him get a promotion, and he could help shelter me from the mafia, and yet everything was so much more complicated. I wanted to scream and shout and bury my head in the sand out of shame and rage, but even that would be selfish.
We’d come too far, and now I was stuck.
Except stuck wasn’t the right word. I still wanted to be here, even after all this. Maybe running would be better for him, but I wasn’t going anywhere—because I was too selfish to run away.
I wanted to be with him. I wanted to be near him, to let him kiss me, to be his wife. Even if our marriage was fake, and based entirely on a lie that wasn’t even panning out, I still wanted to be around him.
It drove me crazy with self-loathing. I stormed along the crowded Philly streets, passed shops buzzing with people, ignored homeless men calling out for change, slipped between a pack of young kids in school uniforms laughing at each other, dodged among men and women carrying briefcases and wearing business suits, and with each new person I wondered what their life was like, if they were involved with the mafia, if they had a deadbeat father or sibling that dragged them down into the mud.
My life wasn’t supposed to go this way. I wanted more for myself, I used to have ambitions and dreams, but over the years those slowly disappeared as my father leeched away the future. I was left with my mother, with paying bills, happy to be a waitress, content to sit alone on the couch with her night after night.
I was a loser. I had nothing, no prospects, and it wasn’t until right now, right here in the streets thinking about Gavin and everything he’s done for me, it wasn’t until this moment that I realized just how passive I’d become.
I wasn’t going to be passive anymore.
We were going to beat this thing, and when it was over, I’d do whatever I could to save my mom and to pay Gavin back for everything. I don’t know how I could ever repay him, but if it meant I’d stay his fake wife and pretend to be in a happy, loving, committed marriage, then I’d do that for as long as I had to.
I wasn’t going to let him fail because of me.
Streets turned into alleys, and I slowed and stopped in the shade of a small tree, its skinny trunk slightly bent over a line of cars parked against the curb. I touched its bark and wondered how old it was, or if maybe this city stunted everything.
Then I heard his voice and my blood ran cold.
“Erica,” he said, and I looked over my shoulder.
Cosimo stood at the edge of a stoop, smiling at me. His dark eyes were wicked, and his teeth looked like crooked fangs. I turned then stumbled backwards away from him.
“What do you want?”
“We should talk.” He stepped forward, and I stepped back, our bodies locked in a little dance, and I looked around with wild eyes.
We were alone on a small, quiet street. This sort of thing probably never happened around here, at least the people that lived in the nice houses with their large windows and clean, well-kept front doors couldn’t imagine a life in which the mafia wanted to hurt them.
“There’s nothing to say. Gavin’s going to pay off your bosses and we’re finished with you.”
“He didn’t tell you about our little conversation?” He chuckled, came closer, and I kept moving backwards, heart racing. I wondered if anyone would bother coming to the door if I screamed.
I doubted it. People didn’t scream in this part of town. They weren’t used to cheap girls like me with cheap lives.
“He told me that your bosses took our offer. We’re through with you.”
He grinned, showing me all his teeth, like a hungry shark. “Like I told him after he talked to Dante, you might be done with me, but I’m not done with you.”
“What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you leave me alone?”
“That’s a good question.” He made a face and stroked his chin. “I suppose it goes back to my mother. She never said ‘I love you’ enough to me as a child, and my father beat the shit out of me with his belt whenever I talked back, and not the nice part of the belt. No, I have scars from the buckle all down my back, and more than a few from the cigarettes he’d put out on my thighs.”