Page 66 of Mr. Match

“The eleven-year anniversary was two weeks ago and I never even noticed.”

“Do you usually notice?”

“Every fucking year,” he whispers. “Every fucking year I get up, get on my bike, and ride until the day is over.”

Suddenly he makes a lot of sense. “‘Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me. The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.’”

“Yeah,” he says. “When I came home from Brown about a week after the accusation, the first thing I did was stop by the tattoo shop to see my sister, Jasmine. I had a thing for that poem. Song of the Open Road. I already had the bike. She did it the summer before I left. The second I turned eighteen—and I do mean the second, because I was hanging out in the shop the night before my eighteenth birthday—I had her ink me up.”

He stops to smile. Like this is a really good memory.

“My fucking parents. My dad threatened my Uncle Vic. Said if that tattoo machine put one speck of ink on his only son a minute before he turned eighteen, he’d kick his ass.”

I picture it in my head. I don’t know who would win that fight. Probably the guy who had something to fight for, and not something to fight against.

“He was being dramatic. They used to fight a lot, but hadn’t fought seriously for a few years. Vic took the warning to heart. Anyway, Jasmine had already done the bike. So that evening I came home from Brown she did the words. Because all I wanted to do was disappear. And it didn’t seem fair that I couldn’t. I was out on bail.”

God, that sucks. “You know what I was doing that night?”

Oliver pulls himself out of his past and enters mine. “That night?”

“The night you were accused of rape I was getting my throat cut.”

“That night?” Oliver squints his eyes at me.

I nod. “That same night. I was eleven.”

“What the fuck?” He’s looking at me like he has no idea who I am. And he doesn’t. Not really.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know what it means. I was young. I had some clue what my parents were into, ya know? But not really. Little kids have a hard time imagining the dirty shit that happens in the dark. So I would hear the word Bratva and my American mind would translate it to brothers. I called the Vory uncles. My father was Shestyorka. Associate. A nobody. But he wanted to be a somebody.”

“No,” Oliver says. “Tell me he did not give them permission.”

“He did. I didn’t understand then and I don’t understand it now. Because I would never let anyone hurt my little sister. No matter what the promise was. I’d take her cuts myself before I let them do that to her.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this?” Oliver asks, propping himself up on his elbow.

“I think they loved me,” I continue without answering. “My parents. They left me money after it all went to hell. An escape plan. A very well-thought-out escape plan. That’s how I got here.”

I want to tell him that last tiny detail about how I got here. But I can’t. Not yet.

“But before it went to hell, they made my father Vor. Thief. Bratva. Family. He earned his respect by letting them cut me with that scalpel. I wasn’t supposed to fight back.” I look up at Oliver. “But I’m just a fighter, I guess.”

He traces the words that cover the scar on my shoulder, looking down at it for a few seconds before looking back up at me. “This one was an accident.”

I nod. “And it wasn’t pretty. But it was my fault. They made that very clear when they sewed me back up.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

It’s funny how you hold things in for so long they almost start being a fantasy. But then there is one moment that changes everything. One moment and the words just come spilling out. One moment to make them real again.

“But just because you’re made Vor in the Bratva doesn’t mean you stay that way forever.”

“What did he do to lose favor?”

“He refused to give me to one of the Italians. The one who cut me.”

“Lucio Gori.”