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It's the same generic response my father used to give and I know I'm right. I hate that I'm right. And I miss my father so much my heart feels like it's splintered.
I hate the agency. I hate them for taking him away from me. For lying to me. And I am angry at Javi too, right now. For not having the consideration to think that he might do the same one day.
That he might just disappear, and then...
Then I would be free.
It hurts to think about. I look at him, uncertain. He is confused too, by my response. By my emotions.
"I am sorry, Bella," he says.
And he is sorry, but for what I don’t know.
"How can you work for them?" I ask. "Knowing that they don't care. That you might meet the same fate. How can you do it?"
He raises his brows, reaches for me, but stops himself.
"I am not going anywhere."
"That's funny," I tell him. "Because it's the same thing my father always used to say."
"Your father did not want to leave you," he says. "He did not do it by choice."
"I understand that," I snap. "But the very agency that he has risked his life for refuses to tell me anything. For all I know, they want him to stay gone."
"Bella," Javi says, and this time he does touch me. "Your father was not the man that you imagine in your head. He has many secrets. And many enemies too."
His words are not meant to hurt me this time. I can tell by the way he says them. But he believes them wholeheartedly. And I still can’t accept this when I know how much my father cared for him. I can’t comprehend what happened between them to make Javi hate him so much.
But I’m tired of guessing. Avoiding. And I know he won’t be this agreeable forever. So if Javi wants to tell me some truths about my father, perhaps it’s time for me to listen.
My fingers fall into my lap, and I lean back in my chair.
"Will you tell me about him?" I whisper. "Will you tell me about your relationship?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
HER EYES ARE SOFT. Hopeful. I can't deny her.
It would be better that she did not know. It would be better if she did not ask these things of me. But she has seen me. Touched me. And I want her to do it again.
I want to give her the answers she seeks. The only thing I can ever really give her after the things I have done.
"What would you care to know, my sweet?"
"How did you meet?" she asks.
It is an innocent question. And because my Bella is so innocent, she could never know the depths of her father’s depravity. She could never know the injustices he served to not only me but countless others. And she could never know the deepness of the despair this memory invokes in me.
I will forever remember the day that I met Ray Rossi.
He found his way into my room at the sanitarium, and I assumed he was another doctor. Someone else sent to pry the secrets from my mind. But he was different. Both in dress and decorum.
He was powerful.
He told the nurse to go, and she listened, hesitating only briefly at the door. She informed him that I was dangerous. He met my eyes and smiled.
“He is a child.”
The nurse left, and Ray sat down with me. He wasn't like the others. He did not ask me questions. He did not ask me to talk.
Instead, he handed me a workbook. It had puzzles and math equations. Things that I liked. I wondered how he knew.
I had done some of my own, on the paper they sometimes let me have. The doctor would stare at my scribbles strangely. He tried to make sense of them, I think, but he never could.
This man, though, he understood. And this is exactly what I tell my Bella.
"He brought me puzzles."
"At the sanitarium?" she asks.
I nod.
She waits quietly. Hoping for more. I don't know what to tell her. There are so many things. Things I have waited to say.
Hateful things. Painful things. Things that tear at the very fabric of the man I am now.
I want her to know what a coward her father is. I want her to hate him as much as I do. To understand that given a choice, he would probably betray her too.
He would rather leave her here with me than risk his own life to get her back because that’s the kind of man he is. But for as long as I’ve waited to say these things, I can’t seem to tell her now. Not yet.
“He brought them to me every week.”
"So you liked the puzzles," she says. "I see you working on them sometimes, around the house."
"Yes."
"Because you're smart, Javi."
I don't reply.
My mother always said I was smart because I was good at science. Like her. But I was never good at people.
"And then what happened?" Bella asks.
I try to recall the exact order of events. The time that I was locked away, and for how long. At first, I had counted the days and weeks and months. But when Ray started coming to visit and bringing me the workbooks, the counting ceased. I spent my free time completing the books. They became more and more challenging over the course of his visits. And I always wanted more.
Sometimes, I completed them too soon, and I had to wait days for another. Until finally there was a day that Ray came back, and he wasn't alone. He had a different man with him this time. And he asked me for the workbook. The workbook that had been the most complicated one he'd ever brought me so far.
I gave it to him. He smiled like he was proud of me. He hadn't even checked it yet. But he told the other man he didn't need to.
He handed it off to the stranger who inspected it with a furrowed brow. That man looked at me, uncertain.
"This can't be right," he'd said. "He's only a boy."
Ray laughed and handed me another workbook.
"Javi, can you do me a favor?"
He opened up the book and pointed to a page.
"Can you solve this one for me?"
I took the pen he provided and solved it in ten minutes while they watched. The man beside him was smiling too when I finished.
"Well, I'll be damned."
They looked at each other, and then to me.
"So?" Ray asked. "How about it?"
"I think perhaps you are right," the man said. "I think he will make an excellent addition to the program."
Ray looked at me and nodded.
“Indeed.”
I didn't know it then, but my life was about to change. It was about to get better, for the first time in a long time. I didn’t know then that I would grow to hate Bella's father so much. I didn’t know the kind of man that he was. Because he showed me something else at first. Something I needed at the time, in a world where nobody understood me.
The man who gave me guidance and a purpose. The man who took me away from the sanitarium. He never treated me like I was dangerous. He helped me with my anger. He helped me as much as he could. He did everything he could to help me.
And now here I am, holding his most beloved daughter captive in my home.
When I think of those early days, and how much I cared for Ray- how much I respected him- it hurts to think of what has become of us.
I can't uncross the lines I have already breached. I can't undo the moments I caved beneath
the weight of my darkness and gave into temptation. But what I can do is be honest with her. I can try to make her understand. At least some of it.
Until I’m ready to give her the truth.
"It was never about leaving you," I tell her. "Or choosing me."
She looks at me, eyes shining, and then hides them beneath a veil of hair.
"That isn't what it felt like. He left me to go to you. He did it all the time."
"Because he was responsible for me," I explain. "And he was teaching me. It was only part of his job."
She glances up at me, and her eyes are still wet, but it isn't for herself.
"You were never just a job to him, Javi. Surely, you must know that. He cared about you as if you were his own son."
His own son.
Those words hit me hard. Much harder than I could anticipate. I knew that he was proud of me. I knew that he felt responsible for me. But I also know why he took on the burden of helping me.
I did not live with him as a son would. I was kept separate. Alone.
He came to visit me at the program, and I kept to my routine. I did what he asked of me, and I excelled at everything he put in front of me. Because I wanted to make him proud.
At the time, I felt indebted to him. For saving me from that place. And for saving River too when I had requested it.
He had given me so much.
I never had a father. But hearing Bella say those words makes me feel as though perhaps I did. Perhaps I did see him that way, and I just never knew it until now.
And now, there is a foreign sensation inside of me when I look at my Bella. So soft and sweet and broken. Caring for me after all that I have done to her.
She is inherently good.She sees past my ugliness. My feelings for her are split.
I want to hurt her. But I want to protect her too. And I think that perhaps she was right. I think the person she most needs protection from is me.
"What are you thinking about, Javi?" she asks.
I don't like that she can see me so well. That even beneath the hood I have replaced, she can read me. It's strange, not being able to hide anymore.
It makes me feel exposed. I want to forget that she has seen all of me. That she has witnessed my scars. I wonder if they haunt her. If she cringes when she thinks of them. But I cannot tell her these things.
