“Most?”
“The anesthesia wore off before they were done.” That had been some of the worst pain, physically, she had ever endured. Made worse by the horrendous confusion, disorientation, and immediate sense of fear. She’d felt like she had woken up in Hell.
Santino locked his jaw, his nostrils flaring. He tugged her flush to him and pressed a hard kiss to her forehead. “Tell me the rest, beautiful. How did you get to that point to start with? And why are you so afraid to talk about it?”
Reiko let her eyes close and breathed in his scent. She did her best to consciously focus on the exciting newness of him and not the trauma he was asking about.
That didn’t stop the whispers. The remembered glares and barely disguised disgust. The sound of so many accusations.
Please don’t let him be another.
“You probably know this,” she finally said, “but my brother, Hiroto, is eight years younger than me.”
Santino hummed his acknowledgment as he dragged a hand up and down her spine in a soothing motion.
“It wasn’t until he was born that I finally realized exactly how unwanted I was.” The words scraped from her and she curled her arms around him as best she could. “My father had always been angry that his first-born was a girl, so once he finally got his son, I was pushed even more aside than I had been. Instead of being the disappointment, I became nothing. I wasn’t considered last. I simply wasn’t considered at all.”
Years of memories flashed through her mind in a blur as she spoke the hard truth.
Learning her toys and ‘extra’ clothes had been tossed to make room for her baby brother, who was big enough to need his own room and so was being given hers. Which meant the in-the-way little girl the Matsunagas didn’t want, but couldn’t get rid of without losing face, was relegated to the coat closet.
She had to make do with old, worn-down everything while Hiroto was gifted new at every turn.
She was to hide away when visitors came. She was to keep the house clean, her grades up, and herself tidy. She was never to speak or be heard unless there was an emergency.
When Hiroto turned five, and she thirteen, she was assigned as his nanny and protector moving forward.Until someone came along for her, had been her mother’s words. Reiko had been old enough to understand she was being treated unfairly. Old enough to understand the feelings of pain and longing in her heart.
Not old enough to realize it wasn’t her fault, or that her parents were guilty of something terrible.
She shoved it all down as far as she could. She needed to speak it, not walk through it. But summarizing that neglect—that abuse—made it impossible not to relive to a degree. It was almost a relief when she got to the punchline. “It wasn’t until Hiroto started joining in on the abuse that I decided I couldn’t take it anymore,” she confessed. “He was six. He was just a spoiled brat mimicking his father. But all I had ever wanted was for my family to be kind to me. To show me warmth and comfort. Watching them give those things to Hiroto, knowing theycouldand that they didn’t deem me worthy of them, pushed me too far.”
Santino was nearly crushing her, the hand that had been rubbing her back long settled at the nape of her neck beneathher loosened bun. He turned his head just enough to press a comforting kiss to her temple. “Baby, are you saying—”
She knew what he was thinking. It was the accusation everyone lobbied at her. As an adult, she even understood. But they were all wrong, and she couldn’t stand the thought of hearing the words from him. That was why her tone sharpened just a bit when she cut him off. “No. My family—everyone—will tell you that I tried to kill myself. But it’s not true.” She pushed herself up until she could see his eyes again.
The pain reflected back at her sucked the anger from her chest and pulled another round of tears free. She gasped. “I never wanted to die.”
His expression morphed like she was looking in a mirror, and she wasn’t sure if the echo of pain was better or worse.
“I was just a stupid, desperate teenager,” she said, forcing herself to keep pushing the words out. “And I thought … if my parents were so upset about having a daughter, if my great sin was being female, then I would make myself not a female anymore.”
The sadness gave way to dawning understanding and mounting horror in Santino’s eyes.
Reiko licked her lips and kept talking, watching as that horror melted in an oddly comforting way to seething rage. “I thought, if I wasn’t female anymore, they might care. At least enough to give me a bed, good clothes, maybe a warm meal. So, one day while they were working and Hiroto was parked in front of the television, I took a knife from the kitchen and climbed into the bathtub. I was thinking that would contain the blood. I was thinking I’d learned pain, because my father would strike me sometimes, and not eating or hydrating enough had consequences, and cramps were unpleasant. So, I could handle some more.” Her voice was shaking as she pressed on but she couldn’t let herself stop, even as Santino sat them upright, hisgrip like iron and his jaw jumping with pressure from how tightly she could see him clenching his teeth.
“I took the knife,” she said, her arms tightening around him with the opportunity his movement had provided, “and I tried—in my inadequately educated way—to cut out my ovaries. Because I thought that was what I needed to do.”
“Fuck,” Santino bit out, the word snapping at the air as if it had ripped from him. He crushed her against him. “Fuck!” The hand at her neck wedged into her hair until he was cradling her head.
Reiko curled her arms around his neck and squeezed her eyes shut. “It never even occurred to me Icouldhave died,” she said, her voice choked. It seemed impossible, in hindsight. But that was where she’d been back then. That desperate, that broken, that stupid. “I didn’t want to die. Everyone … everyone accuses me of attempting suicide, but I didn’t. I just wanted—”
He pressed a hard kiss to her shoulder and somehow her words faded. “I believe you, beautiful. I believe you.” His voice was thicker than she’d heard it before, coarse with restrained and agitated emotion of his own. “I’m going to fucking kill that scum-sucking bastard for putting you through that. But I believe you, Reiko.” He dragged in a breath and his lips moved to her neck. “Fuck.”
His words rolled like crashing waves through her mind and her body went limp in his arms. The tension, the fear, the anxiety, the ever-present upset she always experienced when she thought back to those days—all of it poured from her eyes in a flood of tears she had no control over. All because of three words.
He believed her.
Chapter eight
