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“Let’s hope you do, because you have bigger fish to fry here. Next Thursday, the Black Hand is having a…” My father paused, thinking. “Let’s just call it a party. All of the others wanting the Lipman position on the Hand will be there, along with their heirs. You are going to join me at that party. I want you on your best behavior. This will not be the first time you’ll meet the others, nor the current Black Hand members.”
Ooh, yippee. I literally couldn’t wait. Heavy sarcasm on that.
Though I had a few choice things to tell my father, all I did was give him a tight-lipped smile and say, “I can’t wait.”
Another lie. Lies were all my father and I told each other these days.
The rest of dinner passed without much talking, and I excused myself as the maid cleaned up. I headed upstairs to my room, hopping in the shower. Feeling the warm water coursing down my body, washing me clean… it wasn’t enough. It never was.
I ran my fingers through my hair, breathing in the hot, steamy air. Though I’d taken it off before getting in the shower, my hand went to my chest, feeling for the cross. It wasn’t there; it sat on the vanity countertop a few feet away, on top of my clothes. I’d gotten into the habit of reaching for it when my mind wandered.
It wasn’t like it did anything for me, so I didn’t know why I bothered. It was just a silly golden cross that should’ve been buried with him. Or cremated. Or whatever the diocese did to Father Charlie’s body. I had no idea; I wasn’t there, and I tried to keep my nose out of it, knowing I’d already done too much.
My hand dropped to my side, and I stood there, the water pelting me, for I couldn’t say how long. My mind drifted off. I didn’t even think of anything; I just wasn’t there. Spacing out was something I’d started doing a few years ago. Sometimes not being present in the situation was better than being there, being aware of everything that was going on.
Sometimes nothing sucked worse than reality itself, trust me.
Some people might think being Miguel Santos’s daughter was a walk in the park. Some might be jealous of the power and the money, but the truth was, I didn’t have any power. That all belonged to my father. The money? Sure, I spent it wherever I wanted, but that’s it. I’d never had close friends, all because my father suspected they were getting close to me in an attempt to take him down.
And maybe they were. Who could say?
An unspecified amount of time later, I pulled myself out of the shower, turning the water off. I bundled myself up in a towel, drying my hair. With one hand holding a microfiber towel to my hair, I used the other to wipe the steam away from the mirror. My reflection stared back at me, a slight frown on her face. Brown eyes, much like my father’s, except they were worse. Worse because they were dead.
I felt dead, sometimes. It’s not a truth I’d ever want to admit to my father or any of his men, especially Zander, but it was true. This life… what had it given me besides scars no one could see? Sometimes those scars were worse than any visible wound. Your body healed, at least to a certain extent. Your mind didn’t.
And my mind? My mind was a maze, a twisty-turny carnival ride, half-broken. Angry, sad, dead. I was all of that.
But I was here in Cypress. This was a new city, and so I would see to it that it was a new start. I would take back my life piece by piece, and I was going to start tonight. It’s what Father Charlie would want me to do.
Well, maybe not that, but… but he’d want me to live. If you couldn’t live for yourself, live for someone else.
But what happened after the person you were trying to live for was murdered by a group of gang members? What happened when you had no one else to turn to, no one to rely on—no one who really gave a shit about you?
I acted like I was going to bed. I changed into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, did my nightly routine. My father was working in his study, as always, and I went to him and told him goodnight, kissing him on the cheek like a good little daughter. And then I went to my room, shut the door, and turned off the light.
I waited.
I waited and I checked the time. The minutes turned into hours, and soon enough, the clock struck midnight. With bare feet, I rolled out of bed. All the lights were off, and I peeked my head into the hall, looking both ways. My father’s men would be in the front, but there was more than one way to get in and out of this house. A lot of windows, even a back door.
So I had options, you see.
I walked past my father’s bedroom, finding the door closed—something it was only when he was in his bed, sound asleep. It was time to go. My feet took me back to my room, and I rushed across the dark bedroom, straight to my closet. I shut myself inside it, hitting the light switch that illuminated the walk-in space.
It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the light, but once they did, I got to work. I changed out of my silky white pajamas and into an outfit I kept hidden in a sleek box in the corner, beneath multiple pairs of shoes. Anyone else walking into my closet would simply think more shoes resided within it; they’d be wrong.
Instead of the white I wore during the day, this outfit was black. I got it for myself after I nearly threw everything away. At the time, it had been a promise to myself that things would get better, that I would take charge of my life and live it how I wanted to. I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to actually put it to use.
I shrugged on the new outfit. Sleek, tight, and black, it was everything my daytime outfits weren’t. Slightly risqué, the pants leathery; badass through and through. I even had a matching set of black leather gloves—which I slid on after making sure my hair was knot-free. I wasn’t going to put my hair up tonight; it would stay down. Down and free, like I planned on being.
Once I was fully dressed, I found some black boots I’d hidden away, zipping them up. The color black was not something my father liked seeing me in, and it felt good to cover myself in it. Kind of like a metaphorical middle finger to dear old daddy.
The thing that completed the outfit was a fake I.D. I’d had it made two years ago—I was now officially over twenty-one on it. Time for a little party, I think. That and some cash went into my pockets, along with my phone. I wouldn’t carry any cards that held my real last name on it. According to the I.D., my name was Josefina Baez. A pretty enough name for a pretty enough girl, don’t you think?
Flicking the light off, I exited my closet and left my room. I’d already planned out which window I’d escape from—the downstairs bathroom in the eastern corner of the house had a pretty good-sized window in it, and it was hardly ever used. I couldn’t say that my father or I had used it since moving in here; we both had our own private bathrooms on the second floor, and should we have guests in the house, well, there was a closer bathroom near the front that they used.
The house was quiet at night. I took to the back, slipping through the shadows, careful not to make any noises; didn’t want to alert my father’s bodyguards that his daughter was attempting to sneak out. I made it to the bathroom, quietly shutting the door before going to the window. After unlocking it, I slipped out, and I left the window open two inches so it’d be easy to slip back in.
Houses like these never had screens, because no one opened their windows. They always preferred the air conditioning or the heat—or at the very least the house’s built-in circulation system that made the air smell of fresh laundry.
