“Or to owe anyone,” Capo said softly, but there was an undercurrent running through him that I felt from where I stood. It felt cold on my back.
He had figured out the reason why I hated accepting kindness without giving something in return. The foster jerk had told me that he had done me a favor, taking me in, and I owed him for his kindness. At first, I believed him, and would have done anything to make myself at home.Home.But when I realized what he expected of me, kindness never felt so dirty.
I was ashamed. Each night I knew he was getting closer and closer to doing something to me that could never be undone. Fingers were one thing, his nasty dick another. So I hid a knife in my bag, and when he tried, I told him that I’d scream and cut him if he did. Living on the streets was better than living in what felt like a cage. He had a wife and children, all sleeping in the rooms surrounding mine.
“Kindness,” I said. “I’ll never owe anyone for it, if it’s in my power.”
“Do you want to be intimate with me, Mariposa?”
“There are other factors at play here, Capo.” I repeated his words, only replacing his name with mine. “I ask that you give me time to come to your bed.”
“Concordata,” he said softly. And I knew from earlier conversations that meantagreedin Italian.
I stood at the window so long that when I turned, I found Capo sitting at the table alone, his eyes on me.
“The meeting over?” I asked, suddenly fearful that my confession might have turned him off. Was I used goods? I had never admitted that aloud, not even to Keely. I had just told her that the political jerk was mean to me, abusive almost, but never went into detail. I think she knew, but she didn’t press me, only told me that if I ever wanted to go to the police, she’d be there with me.
“No.” The rasp in his voice was strong. “Only taking a break.”
I nodded, turning around again.
“Sit down, Mariposa.”
Thinking that we were about to eat, or going to start soon again, I did as he said. It was easy to take direction from him. He really did have his shit together.
He rose from his chair, his imposing figure coming to stand before me, before he took a knee in front of me. He placed his hand on my knee. “You didn’t wear the new shoes I sent over,” he said.
The light hit his eyes, and I thought of the ocean, of depths I wanted to explore. There was no denying that there was something dark beyond the light, but in some odd way, I wanted to explore that, too. I wanted to know that what I’d done, out of fear, out of desperation, wasn’t as wicked as I felt it was—not screaming when the political ass touched me the first time. I wanted to know that other people had secrets that were hard to tell, too. I just hoped that I wasn’t the only one in history who would trade telling them for a chance to live.
“No.” I grinned a little. “You weren’t my officialcapothen.”
He returned the grin. Then he reached for my bag. When I flinched and grabbed for it, he took his time prying it from my hands. He opened it and took out the new shoes, like he knew I’d packed them. I had. Slowly, he reached down for one of the worn-down plastic flip-flops.
I went to pull back, but he held tight. “They’re so dirty,” I whispered.
“I’ve touched worse and worse has touched me.”
I let him have my feet, watching as he switched out my old shoes for the new ones. They felt so good on. I hadn’t had a pair of shoes that were mine alone since I was ten.
“Your bag,” he said. “It belonged to your mother.”
It took me a second. “My mother? You mean Jocelyn?”
“No,” he said. “Jocelyn Flores was the woman who took you in and loved you as her own. ‘Fucka me.’ That was something old man Gianelli, her father, used to say when he’d get irritated with the bugs in his garden eating his produce. Sicilians love their gardens.”
“You knew my—Jocelyn? Pops?” Pops was Jocelyn’s father, my adoptive grandfather. I hadn’t met Jocelyn’s husband, Julio Flores. He had died before they adopted me, but I got his last name.
He nodded. “I knew them well.”
“Pops died first,” I said, wanting to tell him. “Jocelyn died a year later.”
“Heart attack,” Capo said. “Cancer.”
“That’s right,” was all I could say. Their home was the only stable one that I’d ever known.
“You still go back to Staten Island to revisit the house.”
“I do.”
