I've never forgotten it.
I even clipped a picture out of a travel magazine and kept it hidden in a medical file for years. The Albanians found it once. They ripped it up in front of me and said dreams were for girls who still had choices.
I do now, so that's where I'm heading when I have enough.
Soon I won't have to be around people like Declan.
Fuck him. Fuck all mafia men. With their two-faced smiles and their violence just beneath the surface. They're all the same, treating people like property, deciding who lives and who dies. Playing god with other people's lives.
"Your only job is to keep women good enough to be on their backs to fuck and men on their feet to defend what we have," the Albanians used to tell me. I patched up sex workers after brutal clients, stitched together enforcers after turf wars. I kept my head down and my mouth shut.
And in those eleven years, I learned one thing: there are no good mafia men in this world. Only men who haven't shown their true nature yet.
I sit up and look at my reflection from the bathroom mirror.
I'm twenty-five years old, a quarter of a century, and what do I have to show for it?
I don't answer the question. I just repeat to myself my mantra. Two more years. That's all I need. Just 24 months of patching up fighters and hustlers, of keeping my head down and saving every penny. Then I can disappear. Start over. Build the quiet life I deserve and people like Declan can rot in hell.
3
DECLAN
Ishould be anywhere but driving through Boston like I've got nowhere to be and no one to answer to.
The cut she fixed above my eye pulses, sending sharp twinges down my temple with every clench of my jaw.
All this time, and her face hasn't changed.
She stood there, calm. Untouched. Like she didn't look me in the eye while my cousin bled out at her feet.
I grip the steering wheel tighter.
"Freelance," she'd said, like that absolves her of everything.
My thoughts spiral back to that night, the night Joyce died. The night I learned what helplessness tastes like.
We got jumped in Southie. A deal gone sideways. Nothing new, but they came harder than expected. Joyce took a knife to the chest. Punctured lung. I knew it was bad, the way he wheezed, the pink froth bubbling at his lips. But he was still conscious, still breathing as I half-dragged, half-carried him down those concrete steps into the underground clinic.
I'd heard about the Ghost Angel from a friend at a nightclub about a month prior. A woman so skilled she could bring people back from the brink of death. She was at a place in Dorchester. I managed to get the address. Didn't know she was tied to the Albanians. They forgot to mention that.
When we arrived, she just fucking stood there. Didn't move. I pulled a gun for persuasion, it normally works, but not with her. Before I knew it, I was outgunned and leaving with Joyce was my best option.
I gathered him in my arms, and we left. He was dead by the time I got back to the car.
"Should've killed them all when I had the chance," I mutter, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white.
The memory burns away as I pull up to my house. I cut the engine and get out.
I let myself in through the front door, tossing my keys onto the marble-topped table. The house is quiet except for the low hum of the TV coming from the living room.
Keira.
Fuck, I'm still not used to her being in my house. Her place is being renovated and she's crashing here.
I head down the hallway and turn to see my twin lying on my couch, scrolling through her phone, a half-empty glass of red wine on the table.
She looks up as I enter, her green eyes, identical to mine, widening at the sight of my face.
