Chapter 5
Angerwasalivingthing. It writhed and festered. It breathed and grew. It strangled all rationality.
It had been building up inside me since they cremated Noah in what they called a pauper’s funeral. I didn’t get to see him one last time. There was no funeral to give a speech at or to drop flowers on his grave. I didn’t even get to keep an urn with his ashes. There was no justice for his death. It was like everyone was trying to make him disappear.
One day, Noah was with me. The next, he was stolen away, and the social workers were forcing me to leave almost everything that reminded me of him and my parents behind. Our house—my parents’ house—went up for sale within the month after his death to pay for back taxes, insurance, mortgage, and Noah’s loans. Noah had worked himself to the bone for us to keep it, but within months, it was gone too.
My anger was my lifeline, but it was also my poison. It ruined everything it touched, like my first foster home placement. There were such things as lovely people who chose to foster kids out of the goodness of their hearts. My first foster parents were exactly that, but I couldn’t see it back then. They weren’t good enough because they weren’t my parents. They weren’tNoah. They weren’t going to help me with my vengeance. They didn’t understand me. I was broken, crushed, and six feet under, trying to find a way to dig myself back up to the surface.
My anger had me lashing out at them and everyone else. One month of mood swings and arguing, plus six fights at my new school, and they were done with me. They sent me back. I hadn’t made it easy, but I hated them for how easily they gave up. That was the first black mark on my record.
The second mark came three weeks after that. I barely touched foot in my newest foster home before I was throwing fits over my new foster brother’s bullying and sexual innuendos. Granted, it was tiresome and gross, but looking back, I should have just put up with it—it wasn’t that bad. All my fighting earned me was the boot a second time, with a problem child warning on my record.
That was how I ended up under the oh-so-tender loving care of Charlie and Marlene Hayes.
It didn’t take me more than two hours to realize how good I had it in my previous two foster homes. By that point, though, my social worker was deaf to my complaints. I was the girl who cried wolf. Now I had to live with the consequences.
The only silver lining was my younger foster siblings. Being with Lou and Boyan—hugging them, taking care of them—was like having a little bit of a family again. Without them, four months in the Hayes house was enough to make anyone combust. I did things in that house I had never done before. I starved. I stole. I hid in fear, took beatings, and manipulated people. I suffered in someone else’s place. I became a protector. But always, I kept my desire for revenge close to my heart.
Whether Renzo Iannelli pulled the trigger that killed my brother, I’d never know, but I didn’t believe the news reports. The police closed the case. Some up-and-coming drug dealer supposedly took the fall. I didn’t buy it one bit. He was there. His blood at the scene provedit, as did the gunpowder residue they found on him. Whatever bullcrap anyone said to save him from jail was just more lies. He was the reason my brother was dead. He was the reason I lived in this godforsaken house.
Renzo Iannelli. God, I even hated the way his name rolled off the tongue. So smooth and fake.
I looked up everything there was to know about him at the public library. CEO of a real estate company and known as a vulture capitalist. Charity donor of one to two million dollars per year. His net worth made my eyes pop out of my head. Listed as one of the most eligible bachelors and supposedly charming despite all his brooding gala pictures. You’d think he was a saint. What a joke.
He wasn’t a saint—no matter what any of my research showed, he wasn’t. He couldn’t be, not with a father like Elio Iannelli—deceased and suspected of murder, racketeering, tax evasion, obstruction of justice, extortion, conspiracy, illegal gambling…The list went on. That guy was a monster, and an apple never fell far from the tree.
So I sent Iannelli letters, one a month on the monthiversary of Noah’s death, just like I’d done two days ago. Nothing grandiose, nothing threatening, not yet…or maybe ever, but I hoped they bothered him. I hoped he opened them, and the words crawled under his skin. I hoped he thought about them, and they haunted him. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. I didn’t have Little Bee’s tech smarts or access to a phone to begin with. It was the best I could do…for now.
Seven months after Noah’s death, I was still boiling alive with anger. All I had left to remember my old life were Noah’s hockey jersey from college and a framed photo of myfamily and me before everything went to crap. I wore that jersey to bed every night. That picture was the last thing I looked at before falling asleep.
Now the frame lay cracked at my feet, with the photo ripped to shreds, courtesy of my older foster brother, Micah. The pimpled, skinny-assed nitwit and half-baked gangster demanded I show him my boobs. I yelled at him for thinking he had any right to ask. He should know better, being in this house with the rest of us. But maybe he’d been living here too long. Maybe the Hayeses’ ways were starting to get to him. Instead of understanding and sulking off, he stormed into Lou’s and my bedroom and destroyed one of the only prized possessions I had.
So I jumped him. I wasn’t really thinking straight. It was late in the afternoon, and I’d just finished all the ironing after already scrubbing clean all the tile grout in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom.
I should’ve known better—both Marlene and Charlie were at home—but I was so fudging angry to see all the pieces of that picture scattered about that I couldn’t help myself. He deserved worse than the few scratches, slaps, and the one punch I landed before Marlene stomped her way into my bedroom, swinging a rolling pin over her head and yelling for Charlie. They never even gave me a chance to explain. Then again, they never did care. Any reason was a good one to give any of us another painful lesson as they tossed insults to flay us open with.
“Unwanted brats.”
“Not worth the money they pay me.”
“Good-for-nothing morons.”
I was getting used to that. They didn’t hurt as bad as they used to. The beatings though? Those were a bitch to get through, and after the first few I’d received, I tried to avoid them. Only my back and ass got it today—hard enough to be painful, but unlikely to leave large bruises. I would still be sore for a coupleof days. Marlene and Charlie were clever enough to avoid leaving too many marks. Wouldn’t want an unannounced visit by a caseworker to reveal how peachy this foster home was and get their stipend withdrawn, now would they?
I hated them. I hated this place. I hated the cops who didn’t listen to my complaints, not with my record. I hated Lou’s mom for being a drug addict and for forgetting her kid so much that Lou had to end up in this house. I hated that Boyan, at five years old, still hadn’t been adopted because his burn scars made him less attractive to potential parents. I hated how Micah always tried to make things in the Hayes house more difficult for me. But most of all, I hated the person responsible for taking Noah from me.
Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure if I was that much safer living in this home than if I stood before Renzo Iannelli and gave him the finger.
I hadn’t slept well in the Hayes house ever since my first week with them, when Charlie came into my bedroom and sat on my bed, talking nonsense while petting my head, reeking of alcohol. That was the night he told me I got to call him Daddy in private. I had frozen in place, confused and lost, adrift between waking and sleeping. Luckily, Lou slept through it.
A week after that, he came to tuck me in and kissed my forehead, even though I’d locked the bedroom door. I felt the shape and press of his lips for hours that night. The lingering stench of alcohol clung to my skin until I showered the next morning.
I’d always felt that there was something off about Charlie. It wasn’t his greasy comb-over or the purplish bags under his eyes. It wasn’t even because of how much he liked to smack the shitout of us if ever Marlene raised her voice. It was the way his brown eyes followed me around the rooms, and even more the way they practically gleamed whenever Lou and Boyan were around. It made my skin crawl, so much so that I made sure neither of the kids was ever alone with Charlie if I could help it. Real-life monsters didn’t hide under beds or in closets at night when you were fast asleep. They haunted your every waking moment, pretending to be what they weren’t.
Ever since those first two weeks in the Hayes house, I stayed awake long after the light went off beneath the door. A chair bolted against the locked door handle kept him from coming in, but Charlie still tested the handle every time he went on another bender.
In the bunk bed above mine, Lou twisted and turned, murmuring through her nightmares. I winced with every other breath as I lay flat on my back. No position dulled the pain Charlie’s fists left behind. My eyes prickled with fatigue, but no matter how hard I tried, sleep didn’t come.
