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She wipes her nose again and sits in silence. The only sound in the field is the gentle hum of the wind through the grass and the birds singing somewhere nearby.
“It’s real peaceful here, isn’t it?” Keres asks, a soft smile on her face. “It’s good to know she’s here surrounded by peace when her life was so full of chaos and pain.”
“Yeah, it’s real nice, Fuck-up.” Romeo presses a kiss on the top of her head.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Trouble,” I mutter, and she turns her attention to me. “You’re a Moretti? You couldn’t have told us this sooner?”
She shrugs. “I never felt like a Moretti. I didn’t think you needed to know.”
Romeo pulls her closer, and she shuffles until she’s leaning against his chest. He wraps an arm around her, and I feel an acute pang of jealousy at their easy relationship. “Do they know?” he asks her.
“I guess so. Lorenzo figured it out.”
I wait for further explanation, but she doesn’t offer any. “You said he rescued you?”
She licks her lips and nods. “Yeah.”
Although I have no right to probe further, I can’t help myself. The need to know everything about her burns inside me. Maybe it’s the only way I’ll ever understand her. “From where?”
She presses her lips together, and I figure she’s about to tell me to go to hell, but instead she takes a deep breath. “My mom was sold to a man named Hank Sizemore when she was pregnant with me. Sold as a slave when she was nineteen. She was kidnapped to order. Hank wanted himself a young bride with olive skin and dark hair and a tight cunt—those were the exact words he used. And I know that because he told me the story often, like it was some fucking fairytale.
“Anyway, what nobody realized until my mom had been with him for a few months was that she was pregnant with me. The man who’d arranged her kidnap, Salvatore Moretti, raped her while she was waiting to be transported.”
A strand of her hair gets caught in the breeze, and she tucks it behind her ear. “So old Hank thought he’d hit the jackpot. Two for the price of one, right? Once my mom was too old and worn-out for him, he’d have her virgin daughter to take her place. He used to tell me that too.”
Bile burns my esophagus and I swallow it down. I can feel Romeo’s eyes burning into me from over Keres’s head, but I keep my gaze fixed on her face while she bares her soul. In my peripheral vision, I see his fingers tighten on her shoulder, and I get it. I want to fucking hold her tight and never let anyone hurt her again.
“But the men who sold my mom, well, they wouldn’t stand for that. Hank didn’t get to keep me. I was their property, not his. So when I was eleven, they found a buyer for me. He wanted two little girls with dark hair who hadn’t started their periods yet. Sick fuck.”
I shove my fist into my mouth and bite down on my knuckles so hard that I draw blood. Rage and adrenaline pump through my veins, making me feel like I’ll explode if I don’t let it out soon.
“My mom tried to stop them, of course. She offered herself in my place, which made Hank livid. He was already losing one of his toys and now she was trying to leave him too. When the two men came for me, she screamed and begged them to let her keep me, and I begged too. Even a life with Hank at that point was better than what the future held. But they laughed at her, and when she fought them, they beat her. Hank fought them and they slit his throat. Mom somehow found the strength to keep fighting, but she couldn’t win. They tortured her right in front of me. And the last thing she said to them was that I was Salvatore Moretti’s daughter. You know what they did?”
I shake my head but she’s staring off into the distance, and I don’t think she even sees me.
“They laughed at her and told her Salvatore had fucked so many women and had kids all over the place, but he only cared about the kids he gave his name to. Then they slit her throat too.”
“Jesus Christ, Keres,” I rasp.
That seems to snap her from her daze, and she blinks at me.
I shake my head. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
She shrugs. “You didn’t do any of that. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Romeo’s frowning at her. “How did Lorenzo rescue you?”
Her slender throat thickens as she swallows, and I realize with a horrible sinking feeling that this story isn’t over. “The men who took me, they delivered me to the buyer. He already had Phoenix. I was the last package. He said… he said we had a long journey. Told us we needed to be quiet. I guess he didn’t think we would be unless he… in order to make sure we were quiet, he—” Her voice cracks, and the agony written all over her face shatters my heart. The suffering her eleven-year-old self endured makes me wish I could go back in time and save her.
She clears her throat and continues in a clinical tone. “He raped us both. He locked us in a box in the back of his van. I wanted to die.” Her harsh laugh scrapes over my skin like sandpaper. “Hell, I don’t believe in any kind of god, but I prayed to die. The van stopped. I planned to run, hoping the man would shoot me. But I was scared. Scared my mom would be mad at me after she died trying to keep me safe.
“I remember there being more than one man. I could never remember much else. But I’ve never forgotten the voice of the one who pulled me out of that box. A few days ago, I learned that voice belonged to Lorenzo. He took Nix and me to Father Mike. He saved us.”
“Holy fucking shit, baby,” Romeo says on a breath.
She wrenches herself from his grip and jumps up, brushing the grass from her jeans. “It’s getting dark. We need to get some food and check in to a motel if we’re going to get to Theo tomorrow. As soon as we deal with him, I can get out of your hair and we never need to see each other again.”
She looks out over the field rather than at either of the men she just bared her deepest, darkest secrets to. And while I understand her closing herself off after laying herself bare, it still hurts like a motherfucker. Every single time we break through any kind of wall with her, she builds another even stronger one in its place.
