My throat feels like it begins to close as I pull out ultrasound photos of Abel. “A few months after getting to Chicago, I realized I was pregnant.” I shrug, “I guess it took so long to realize because I was so…gone. I wasn’t eating and wasn’t sleeping. I thought my missed period was just stress until I started throwing up constantly in my second trimester.”
I pass Kortez the photos and he takes them with gentle precision, holding them at the corners so not to smudge the image. “But…it wasn’t easy. I fell into a deep depression while I was pregnant, and Lurie is who made sure I was eating enough, sleeping enough…taking my prenatal. By the time Abel was born, I was a shell of myself. All my time was spent in school, and I was overworking myself to keep from thinking too hard. I had two jobs at the time. One waitressing for a restaurant down the street from the shelter and the other…well, stripping.”
The looks on Kor and Atty’s faces are enough to have me choking out a laugh. Roman just sits back with a smile on his face, his eyes sliding down my body as if remembering when I danced for him at Larry’s.
Kor passes the photos to Atlas and Atlas passes the things he was holding over to Roman. “I couldn’t keepworking right after giving birth, though, so I spent too much time stuck in my head – reliving graduation night and thinking about Kortez lying in a ditch somewhere. It was too much.” I grab the next stack of papers from the box and pass them to Kor, my hands shaking as the hospital’s name shines in bold at the top. “I took a bottle of pain meds and tried to overdose. Lurie found me before it was too late and called an ambulance, but Child Protective Services was involved for a little while. They almost took Abel.”
I hear a crinkle and look over to see Kor shoving the stack of papers over to Atlas without even looking through them. Atlas, though, takes his time reading through every single one as I sit there and try to compose myself.
“It’s okay if you need to stop, Evie. You don’t have to do this all at once.” Wylder’s hand moves from my thigh to my back as he tries to soothe me. It works, a little, and I wipe away a single tear that managed to fall.
I shoot Wyld a grateful smile before continuing. “Almost losing Bel was a wake-up call, though, and I realized I couldn’t live like that forever. All those college classes I took in high school gave me a head start, and I was able to finish law school in seven years. I got my own apartment in my third year and that’s when I met Vivianne.”
Kor holds up his hand to stop me, “Who’s Vivianne?”
I smile, “She’s my best friend.”
I see Kor’s eyes harden but Roman jumps in to save me, his smile nearly contagious as he says, “Don’t worry, Tez, she’s cool. She’s got a boyfriendanda girlfriend.”
Roman winks and I see Atlas shake his head. “Shesounds interesting.”
“She is. When she said she wanted to come home to Denver, I followed. We were able to get jobs at Sawyer’s firm together and she found me this house. I still stripped occasionally at a place in town, but it wasn’t out of desperation anymore. I found I loved the power it gave me and the other girls needed the extra money.” I reach over and take Wylder’s hand, lacing our fingers together. “Wyld moved in a few months later and we hit it off almost immediately when he locked himself out and asked if Abel could squeeze through his bedroom window to unlock the front door.”
Wyld laughs and shakes his head, his eyes going to my son now kicking a soccer ball around outside. “Kid was a natural. He said it made him feel like a spy.”
I roll my eyes and place the still full shoebox on the coffee table in front of me. “So…yeah. I was rough for a while, but I made a life for myself.” I turn to face Kor. “I’m giving him everything we didn’t have as kids.”
Atlas clears his throat, bringing my attention over to him as he passes the hospital papers over to Roman. “I’m sorry,Reginetta.I tried to protect you from this – from my father. That’s why I…” He sighs as his eyes catch on the chain around my neck. “A wife is sacred in my family. He never would have touched you.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t me I was worried about. Your father did the one thing that could have broken me and it did.”
Roman throws the papers down on the coffee table, making all of us turn toward him as he crosses his arms across his chest. “So, what did you do about it?”
“What?”
He shrugs, his eyes taking in so much more than I want him to see right now. He knew I killed someone, I gave him that much when I took a drink with my eyesset on him, but he never said a word. Roman is a made man who can keep my secrets, but where does his loyalty lie?
“You wrote a promise in blood, Little Moth. That sort of thing marks your soul and if I’ve learned anything at all the last few weeks, it’s that you don’t give up when you set your mind to something. So, again, what did you do about it? How was my dear little moth going to get revenge against the man who took her happiness from her?”
He knows. He knows I want – need – my revenge. My vengeance. I can’t admit to it yet, though, because my plan is still in place. I just…tweaked it a little.
I shoot him a saccharine smile, “Kill them with kindness, Ro. Didn’t they teach you that in school?”
Roman stays quiet, his eyes cataloguing every breath I take, every twitch of my lips, until he finally gives me a small nod. “Fair enough, Little Moth, but you should know that won’t cut it with us. We need blood. Aldo’s blood.”
Atlas grunts his agreement, and I hear Kor mutter,“Basura cobarde.”
“You want to kill your father?”
Atlas lets out a shallow laugh and nods, “That’s an understatement.”
“Why?” The confusion is evident in my voice as I ask. I thought they would be against my plan to spill Aldo’s blood, but maybe they’ll be my partners. Maybe they won’t hate me after all.
“Because he’s a monster,Mi Corazón.Death would be a mercy he does not deserve.”
I look over to see Kor’s hands shaking and it hits me not for the first time that he’s covered in scars he didn’t have when he left me. “What did he do to you, Kor?”
His fists open and close as his breathing turns ragged beside me. “He introduced me to the dark, Evangeline. Not the dark you love and crave so much that allows the stars to shine so brightly, but the kind that breeds demons and suffocates you in pain so strong you believe you’re turning into a hell spawn yourself. The kind that turns you into a monster, a savage so bloodthirsty that you miss what you once were because even a broken misfit could reveal in the light every once in a while.”
