76 - Till she came

"I aspire to be an old man with an old wife

laughing at old jokes from a wild youth."

― Atticus Poetry

. . .

Her questions did not stop.

"Favourite movie?"

"I don't have one," I answered. "I don't watch movies much." We were alone in the limousine. Zavier and Ashton were out to get food for Olivia. She ate, a lot and sometimes she did not even realize she was hungry till she was asked and when asked, she rarely said no to food.

"What do you do in your free time?" She inquired, drinking the soda I had given her from the mini-fridge. The mini-fridge had a lot of alcohol that she eyed greedily but her being drunk could risk her safety. I made her settle with soda after a few painful threats she blushed prettily because of.

"I..." I shrugged. "Play piano. Work on cars. Workout." "Cars?" She asked.

I hummed, picking her up and putting her on my lap. "Yeah. Nothing big but I like to rebuild old cars sometimes. I don't get much free time, though."

"Oh." She set her head against my chest. "That's cool." "Is it? Better than art?"

"Everything is art if you think about it." She took my hand in hers, the one which had a bandage around it under the glove. "Anything which requires imagination and thought is art...my father used to say that." She bit her lower lip. "You three...know about Brian, don't you?"

We did.

The thought of her being helpless like that with no one to protect her was a punch to the gut.

The limousine opened and entered Ashton and Zavier with boxes of pizzas and the cake she had asked for. Her period was soon approaching from what I knew. Which could explain the need for food and chocolate.

They eyed her face.

"What are you two talking about?" Ashton asked, taking his beanie off.

"Brian," I muttered. The identical furious expression came upon their face and they looked at Olivia who kept looking down. Then, came the tears.

"You always knew," She whispered. "You didn't say anything."

"We..." Zavier sighed, sitting back in his seat as he opened a pizza box. "We knew about it. We did not want to ask you about it. We wanted you to tell us about that yourself."

"What's there to tell?" Her voice was emotionless. She wiped the tears away. "He and his friends bullied me. They abused me. Brian was about to...rape me when my father found him." She took a deep breath. "Brian had asked me to come out. He did that many times, normally it was during the weekend when he was drunk after a party or something. My father was suspicious. He found me with Brian, in that alley, half-naked." Her breath trembled. I wrapped my arms tighter around her. She didn't relax. Her body tightened more.

"He shot Brian, right at the heart. Brian's father is an influential man. He got my father arrested easily and then, as Brian was a minor and son of a rich businessman, not much was held against him and my father was sentenced to life imprisonment. I visited him, it wasn't allowed at first but I begged my step-father, who became my mother's boyfriend about two weeks after my dad was thrown into prison after one day trial, to do something to let me see dad." She ran her small hand through her hair, tugging at the roots. "First few visits were normal. Then, my mother got engaged to Jack Campbell - my step-father, and when I told dad, he lost it. He yelled at me, blaming me for...everything. That was the last time I saw him." She sighed. "How much of this did you three already know?"

"All of it," Ashton said, his hands fisted. We were giving her truths now, truths that could potentially make her run away. But the biggest one guaranteed her leaving us so we kept it with ourselves.

"Oh." She said softly and got off my lap, sitting down a few feet away from me. From us.

We watched, waiting for her to say something. She didn't.

We ate in silence. She felt a million miles away.

We reached the mansion in a few hours. It was a complicated destination, known by very few people. Harry, The Valentinos, us, and a handful of guards who had proven their loyalty million of times with blood.

I watched as the giant iron gates which had our family crest on them opened. A 'C' with serpents on it. Olivia watched with wide eyes as I silently lost my mind.

. . .

A capo doesn't feel pain.

The words hissed in my ear. My body felt torn. Small. Weak. I was a skinny kid, nothing like my cousins who my father preferred over me. He never hurt them. He always hurt me.

My Uncles said that it was to make me strong. As did everyone else. Except for mom. She didn't say anything but he hurt her too, so perhaps that was the reason.

He didn't hurt my brothers. They were just eleven years old and never going to be the capo so it made sense. He had started hurting me when I turned thirteen. My birthday gift had been a slice on my thigh, something which made me limp for days and since then, I could not remember a day when my body wasn't bleeding.

It will make you strong.

It never made me feel strong. It made me feel small as if my soulwas coming out with the blood, leaving me with nothing but pain that never stopped.

A capo needs to know how to kill.

So I killed, eager to please my father. I killed a Russian first. Father had tied him to a chair and given me a dagger. Don't make it clean, Were his only instructions. He wanted it to be painful so I made it painful in hopes that it would earn me a few days without being tied to the same chair. Yet, father said that ten slices were too less, there should have been thirty at least. He demonstrated that to me, somehow not killing me in the process.

So next time, I did fifty. It was an innocent man. Someone's father had picked up from the city. He had a wife, and two kids for whom he had been out buying pastries. I killed him slowly while he begged. I didn't eat more than bread for the next week.

Make it hurt.

So I did.

Forget your emotions.

So I did.

Love can only make you weak. So I never loved it. Not truly. Till she came.

Then, I knew nothing but love.

. . .

Okay. I kinda like this chapter.