Twisted Loyalties (The Camorra Chronicles 1)

Chapter Ten

There had been many sleepless nights because of the noise coming from my mother’s room. Either because she was at it with a john or because she was having a drug-induced crying-fit. But now the noise in my head kept me awake.

Fabiano’s blue eyes flashed before my inner eye. Cold and calculating. Attentive and alert. Seldom anything else. Except for when we’d kissed. There had been a warmer emotion in them. Perhaps only desire or lust, but I wanted to think something else as well.

I pressed my palms against my face. Stop it.

I needed to stop seeing something in him. I needed to stop wanting his touch when the same hands did horrible things to others, things I couldn’t even imagine, things I didn’t even want to know.

There was a sick fascination I couldn’t deny nor suppress. The mafia had always been something out of movies, something mysterious to me. I knew this was real life, not a Hollywood movie with a good ending. Mobsters in real life weren’t misunderstood antiheroes. They were the bad guys, the ones you didn’t want to encounter.

Bad. It was such a difficult term. What was bad?

I was trying to sugarcoat this. It was something I had a lot of practice doing. I twisted and turned, then eventually sat up on my mattress and reached for my backpack in the dark.

I shoved my hand in and found the knife. I yanked it out, then pressed the button that made the blade shoot out with a soft click. The steel of the blade gleamed in the dim moonlight streaming in through the dust-covered windows. I’d never used it, not really. I’d pointed it at someone once. The same guy I’d stolen it from. He’d been one of my mother’s johns. The worse kind. The kind that liked to beat and insult women like my mother, the kind that enjoyed making them feel even more like crap than they already did. Who liked to barter over the price after the deed was done and often paid close to nothing. If my mother hadn’t been desperate, she probably wouldn’t have had him more than once, not after he’d barely paid her anything for sucking his disgusting dick and do other disgusting things.

I’d been locked in my room when I heard them argue, and despite my mother’s warnings to keep my room locked at all times when she had clients, the fight had drawn me out.

I’d found his trousers on the couch. And I’d decided to check them for money. Instead I’d found the knife. I’d hidden it behind my back when he and mother had stormed out of her bedroom. Mother had been half naked, and he, too, had only worn socks and underpants.

“You’re not worth thirty bucks.”

“You asshole, I let you come in my mouth without a condom.”

“As if your dirty mouth is worth anything.”

He stopped when he spotted me. A sick grin curled his lips. “For her I’d pay thirty.”

I’d been fifteen back then.

He had taken a step in my direction. My mother’s eyes had darted from me to him. They had been hazy and unfocused. She needed crystal.

I jerked the knife forward, and released the blade.

“That little shit stole my knife,” he snarled.

“Don’t move. Or I’ll stab you.”

I’d wanted to, and I probably would have without remorse, if my mother hadn’t started pummeling him with her fists, shrieking. “Get out! Get out, you sick fuck! Get away from us!”

He had left without his pants, muttering curses, and leaving us with sixty bucks and a knife.

I moved the knife from side to side, considering it in the moonlight. I knew I was capable of using it if need be. I wasn’t as innocent as Fabiano perhaps thought I was. I knew there were people out there who deserved to die. I slid the blade back in, then shoved it under my pillow. Fabiano beckoned to a side of me I didn’t like, a side that had thrived under the harsh years of growing up with a whore as a mother and a gambling addict as a father. Perhaps that was why Fabiano’s closeness scared me.

Perhaps I worried he’d bring out my dark parts. I was my parents’ daughter after all, and they both weren’t good people. I’d always made sure to try twice as hard to be nice, not to suspect the worst in people. I’d learned to smile even when it was hard.

I wasn’t sure where this was going between Fabiano and me. But fighting it was something that cost too much energy and head space, both of which I needed if I wanted to build a new life. If I kept my focus on working and perhaps finding a new job, I’d be gone from Vegas in a couple of months. Fabiano would be a thing of the past then.