The silence stretches like a tight rubber band, tension increasing until the snap finally cracks through the air.
“What? What are you talking about, Cassandra?”
“I want you to leave Joe and let me take care of you instead.” I feel like a pathetic little girl once more, asking my mommy to spend more time with me.
“Honey, I can’t just leave Joe. He’s my husband.” Her tone makes me feel even more infantile, chiding me like a petulant kid.
“Joe abuses you, Mom. He hurts you in the same way he hurt me. I could take care of you ten times better and you know it!”
“Cassy, I’m proud of you for leaving, really, I am. But I can’t leave him. He’s all I have. All I know.”
You have me, too,I want to scream, but something about her steadfast tone stops me.
Her defense of him isn’t all that surprising. I’ve gotten used to her excuses for his behavior over the years. Whatdoessurprise me is the way she passively bats at the escape route I’ve been building her the past four years, like it’s little more than a bothersome fly.
I had assumed she stayed because she was logistically trapped, but…my throat constricts.
I guess I just thought she would choose me.
“I don’t want to talk about this again, okay? I’m not leaving my husband, and you need to focus on taking care of yourself. I’m not like you, Cass. I’m not brave. I don’t like change. I don’t even really like to leave my house, I?—”
The sickening yell of my stepfather suddenly cuts off her voice to get off the phone, and I listen in horror as her breaths shake in fear.
“I’ve got to go. Bye, Cassy.”
When the call cuts out, I release a vicious shout into the air, filled with dueling parts of anger and pain.
Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve meticulously planned over the past four years, has depended on the belief that my mom would choose me over him if I freed her from her financial cuffs. I never imagined she’d let his grasp engrave so deeply into her being.
Crumpling down onto the floor, I’m filled with this lost, hopeless feeling that seeps into every single one of my aspirations. Everything, my entire degree and all of those job opportunities, it’s all so fucking useless if my mom can’t grow a pair and actually leave the guy.
I hate Joe.
I hate my mom for choosing him over me.
And most of all, I hate myself for leaving my mother with him all those years ago. I had thought, foolishly, that going away for college could get me a head start. That I could make something of myself, havesomething to offer her. It was how I rationalized leaving her in that violent house in the first place.
I feel so weak, so fuckinguseless.
I claw my fingers into my sweater, rocking myself back and forth.
Curled in a fetal position, I recall Mikhail’s words all over again.I couldn’t have him hurt anyone else.
I want to be as strong as he is.
I want to be in control.
And that’s the thought that guides me out to my car. Door slamming shut, I rev the engine and pull onto the street.
Mikhail
My cards slide across the table just as I toss back the rest of my drink.
“All in,” I say against the lip of the glass, smirking at the men seated around my dining room table. My words inspire a collection of curses, my inner circle groaning as they reposition their cards in their clenched hands.
I haven’t hosted one of our weekly poker games in several months, thanks to all of the issues we’ve been having with the missing shipments, and I think we’re all grateful for the small semblance of normalcy.
“Damn, Mikhail. I hope you’re not trying to hustle us in your own house. Might come across as a bit selfish,” Andrei says with a laugh from the end of the table, slicing his cards one by one into different arrangements in his palm.
