I looked my aftermath of my actions right in the eye: Lulina crying on the phone as she was knelt down in her own blood. She wore nothing more than her bra, but even that looked like it had been caught in a tornado. Her hair was matted and frayed, and her make up on her eyes were wearing strongly on her cheeks from the shed tears. She stared back at me but did not disconnect her phone call.
She continued to talk even after I put the barrel of the gun against her forehead. “I don’t want to talk about that, Jarred.” Her lips were quivering as she spoke. A stream of spit drooled from her bottom of her split lip. “I just need help.”
She listened on the phone for a moment. I could hear Papa’s loud, angry voice on the other end. I instantly knew that she was calling him and telling him everything I had done. She would bare her soul, and return fork mine right over to my blood thristy Papa who wanted nothing more than to banish the son he wished my father never had.
I pulled the hammer back and felt my trigger finger tensing.
“No. I don’t want anyone to see me like this, Jarred.” She listened a few moments more on the other end. “Tristan is close to me. I want him to come get me.”
Lulina ended the call and the phone slipped from her fingers and clattered against the floor. The room was as silent as it was dark, and it mingled well.
I had questions about the call, about what I heard, but I didn’t trust myself to speak. I wasn’t sure if my mouth opened that I would scream, or I would fall to my knees and cry and beg for something that I had no idea what it was.
Hope?
Acceptance?
Happiness?
I wasn’t sure and at this moment I didn’t care. I was done with the pursit and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that I was hanging on by a very thin sting that had already been chewed on and burned.
“You’re about to get a call from your father, Tristan,” she spoke to me.
And as the words had finished the phone rang. It sounded loud, shrill and annoying as the lights blinked on my pre-paid and vibrated on my night table.
I ignored the call.
“What do you plan on doing, Tristan?” She asked.
I pushed the gun harder into her forehead, “I plan on putting a bullet in your head then put the gun in my mouth and doing the same.”
She laughed softly then stopped and touched her swollen cheek. “Here I am, protecting you after what you did to me.”
The phone started to ring again and I ignored it.
Lulina met my eyes again. “If you want to die so bad then do it and save me the speech, but if you want to live then answer your fucking phone.”
I closed my eyes, dropping the gun away from her head and tried to think but temples flared in pain.
I opened my eyes and stared at her long and hard.
“I don’t want to live anymore, Lu,” I said.
A sob spilled from her mouth but she covered her mouth with her hand. “I don’t believe you.”
And neither did I believe myself anymore. The quiet buzz in my head slowly disappaited, the metallic taste in my mouth went away. The world that was so closed off just a moment ago, creaked open and I saw life again.
Lulina had mentioned life after this, after what I done and the self survival and perseveration started to churn inside me again.
Self preservation is an act we all share, but that doesn’t excuse it from being cruel and damning.
The phone rang again and I answered it.
“Lulina’s hurt. She’s driving to your house and I need you to bring her here,” my father commanded.
“Whats wrong with her?” My voice was hoarse, and it sounded bad in my own ears, but I noticed you could easily mistake it for someone waking up.
“Just get her over here.”
“My car died on me.”
“Did I not mention that she was driving over to you?”
“I’m just waking up. I didn’t hear you.”
“Let me make this extra crystal clear. She’s in her own car and she’s parked outside of your apartment. Go down stairs, get in her car and drive her here.”
My father hung up in my face.
I fell down on my bed. My head hit my hand, while my free hand dropped the gun on the mattress.
“What’s your game?” I asked Lulina after an exhausted bout with my thoughts.
“You better hurry, Tristan. Your father and Papa is waiting for you to bring me home. Any longer they will suspect something.”
“I’m not afraid of dying, Lu.”
“Yes you are. Here’s the golden chance for you to save your own ass while you still can, but first, Tristan, be a doll and clean my blood off you.”
I realized then that you were only truly powerful when you had nothing to lose - when you felt nothing.
Now I was feeling so ashamed and disgusted at myself that I could barely swallow around it.
I was disgusted at how the people in my life latched on to me and drained me of every single thing I ever held close.
And I was ashamed because I had become a monster when I lashed back.
I had confused monster with mobster.
***
I snuck small glances at Lulina as she watched the world pass by her window. Her eye had been blackened, her lip – both bottom and lower – had been split and bruised. Her cheeks were swollen and discolored, and they seemed to glow under the new falling of her tears.
When I had first looked at my destruction of her, my dismantling a woman I had looked at as my replacement mother – of course this was before she crept into my bedroom, and, as I thought about it, after – I was appalled at the lengths I had went to gain control of a relationship that had proven cruel and unbalancing. It wasn’t until I saw her in this light, bathed in her own blood, sweat and tears, did I become more angered at myself and sorry for her.
She sniffled and carefully tried to wipe tears from her eyes, and she gave up when her cheek proved to be too tender and bruised to touch. Finally, she looked her age; she looked like the woman she had hidden under make up, hair and tight, sexy clothes. The bags under her eyes seemed to dance under the streetlights we passed as we drove down the street.
Life had been its own hell for her.
Where Dominique flourished, Lulina had failed.
Lulina was not respected in my family, and maybe looked lower than me and Zander. She had been barely out of her childhood before she was married off to a mob boss to be nothing more than a woman to birth his child, and suck his dick without being asked. She used her face, sex and manipulation to get a mere fraction of respect and placement, but even what she did have in that department didn’t seem quite enough. My father avoided the woman for her prowess, and my Papa acted as if she didn’t exist. In this light, I wondered if Papa feared her. Lulina was much like him.
Papa used blood and bullets as his voice where she used sex and cleavage for hers.
No. Dominique would never know her hell. Dominique was smart and efficient. She could be feared and respected and earned her keep, as whereas, her mother had been the running joke. Lulina had been the scribbled messages in dirty bathrooms and lustful gaze of a man who just wanted sex and nothing more.
Dominique used me for her own purposes, and like Lulina knew, and I was soon to find out, that I was no more use to her. She had asked for a taste, gotten it, and now she could move on.
Waking up in the hotel room alone had been proof enough.
Lulina came to me tonight to help with my perception of reality.
Dominique, and thinking there was a life somewhere to be had, was a dream.
Lulina, complying with our old age affair behind the backs of the men who would kill us both, was reality.
And as for Lulina, well, she had her own reasons why she dug her hooks into me.
And here she was still trying to hold on, eventhough I had slept with her daughter and fell in love with her as salt in the wounds.
Another tear cascaded down Lulina’s cheek. She didn’t bother
trying to wipe it away, the pain not worth it.
Johnny had been Lulina’s protection. He had been her key card to this family, and now that he was gone, there was no reason for her to remain. She had no one and she was pushing almost fifty. Her daughter did not love her. When I saw Dominique look at her mother, I saw nothing but quiet rage and unfamiliarity with the woman who shared her blood. When Dominique hugged Lulina, it looked like Dominique was better off hugging a tree. Lulina couldn’t have missed it. I didn’t miss it and I had been across the room, and borderline drunk, seeing the hostile, voiltile of unspoken abandonment and resentment to the relationship that was supposed to define mother and daughter.
And the more I saw, the more I wanted to look away.
Rape was about taking away by force and I had done that. It was about power and rarely ever about sex. Cruel men partook on the act, but cowards owned the word. Men raped when they had nothing left to hold onto.
And I had just wanted control over my life. Yes, I had forced myself inside her, but I was really fucking my own world, the people in it - the people who affected me.
I had more intamicy with my own demons than I did with the woman I was destroying on my hard floors.
***
There were two nurses and one fat doctor with thick glasses waiting out front as I drove up to the compound. Lulina flinched again as the car came to a stop. In the very near future, Lulina would have to take her clothes off and be examined. She would have to relive the horror all over again and reconstruct the scene.
And maybe as this happened, she would finally tell who had done this to her.
And then it would be my turn.
The nurses hung back as the doctor slowly opened the door. Although I could hear his knees crack from where I was sitting, he bent down low. Past the thick glasses, he had kind, brown eyes. His face was compassionate and sensitive as he studied Lulina.
He was all too careful not to touch her.
“Ma’am, you’re going to go with these nurses and their going to take care of you. You don’t need to worry anymore. Your ordeal is over.” His voice was smooth and precise. He was working for us, so I know he was highly paid, but he took time with his work and did it right. “I promise that we will make this as quick as possible, and we will respect your body. It’s your body, ma’am, and we will do what you allow us to do to help us.”
I hadn’t realized that Lulina had been crying until I saw her attempt again to touch her swollen face. A nurse pushed a wheelchair up, and the three of them, helped her inside it. I followed along behind the medical aide as they pushed Lulina into the compound.
My father was there at the door waiting for us. “Did you see anything?”
I shook my head and I elected not to speak.
I did not trust my words.
The nurse stopped Lulina’s wheel chair in front of him. My father looked tired as his suit was unbuttoned and his tie was loose about his neck. His day of business had not ended, and there were no signs of it doing so. He bent down, and, I had never heard him speak so softly and sweetly to the woman.
He asked her who did this to her.
Lulina motioned him closer where she whispered in his ear for what seemed like an enternity. When she was done, he glanced up at me. His face was not angry, and that seemed to scare me even more.
He waited until the nurses pushed Lulina away before he spoke. “Go to the bar and get a drink, Tristan. Then I want you by her door, making sure that my money is well spent. After that, I want you in my office for a meeting.”
I took a step back, passing over the door’s threshold. “I rather leave.”
My father leaned his head closer, his mean eyes getting meaner. “What I said seemed to have been taken as a request, or an offer. And if you made that mistake, here is your chance to correct it; do as I told you, now.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
If someone said I could burn the world then I would ask for the match…
I skipped the drinks at the bar and paced outside Lulina’s door in the compound’s medical wing instead. My Papa had it built when he had taken a past time in beating the men who needed to gain a clear message on just who he was and what he was capable of, and allowing them to seek medical attention and heal before he allowed them to leave.
He would say, Bruises told stories. No bruises and there was nothing that could be shared.
I stopped pacing when I realized that I lost track of my steps. My head touched the cold wall and I slid down to my ass. My head were in my hands. Strangely, I felt like a waiting father and my wife was inside giving birth.
The door opened and a nurse leaned her head out. “She’s asking for you.”
It was another nudge in the ‘about to be a father’ scenario. Except, I didn’t walk into a room with a wife holding a new bundle of joy, I walked into a room where a woman I had hurt was bandaged considerably and glaring at me with a hate so raw that my Papa’s looks of blatant hate and disgust towards me would never match.
I tapped the doctor on the shoulder. “The damage?”
He glanced at Lulina before answering me. She had lost the look of hate and gave a painful smile when his eyes were on her.
“He’s like a son to me,” she said to the doctor, “he needs to know what was done.”
The doctor nodded and turned back to me. I looked briefly back at Lulina and the stare was back, her hazel eyes were icy cold and brutal.
“Should we take this out in the hall?” He asked in a professional manner.
“No,” Lulina cut in, “I want to be present as he hears this.”
The doctor nodded again and cleared his throat. “She received almost a half dozen stitches in her anus region. We stopped the bleeding and sewn the wound. She has many cuts and bruises – mostly in her face. She has two bruised ribs on her left side and a fractured rib on the right; many abrasions on her knees and hands and knuckles.”
The violence soured my stomach.
“Will she heal?” I asked, doing the best to keep the cracks out of my voice.
“On the outside, yes,” he answered and said nothing else.
He didn’t have to continue, I got the message. The obvious hurts and pain would heal, but what would be left on the inside would be the real recovery, and I was almost positive that what was broken would never be put back together.
“Leave us,” Lulina said and I watched as the doctor and nurses walked out of the room.
The door closed and I didn’t sit until I heard the click of the lock engaging.
Lulina had the floor and she took her time. She touched her bandaged face, her eyes not wincing as she stared at me. She licked her swollen lips and proceeded to fix and straighten the sheets around her.
“Just so we’re clear, Tristan,” she started, her voice even, calm and unemotional, “from this moment forward, we are enemies.”
I did not add anything to the statement.
“I have sacrificed more for you than you will ever know, but I will tell you when the time is right.”
I continued in my silence. The room was cold to begin with but the degrees seemed to drop as I stared into the hate in her face.
“I also want to make clear, Tristan,” Lulina went on, “You have nothing to worry about. They – your father or your grandfather - don’t know and I don’t plan on telling them. But, as for me, you have much to worry about. You may get away with this on the family side, but I won’t let you get away with what you have done.”
I understood her words; from this moment forward, battle lines had been dugged in the sand.
My hands touched my glock in the back of my waistband. The clip was ejected and laid on the bed next to her thigh. I showed her bullet still in the chamber then set the gun on the bed next to clip.
“Then let’s end this here,” I said, my first time talking, adding something to the conversation.
Lulina looked down at the gun, her big lips pulling away from her teeth as she tried to smile. “Shoot you
, Tristan?”
“Vengeance is vengeance.”
“But what’s the fun in that?”
I leaned into Lulina, touching my nose to her ear. My teeth grazed the top of her ear as I spoke in a heated whisper. The entire time she cringed at the touch of me and I found myself losing the shame and not caring how she felt about me. “I told you I don’t like your games, Lu.”
“See, that’s the thing, I’m not playing games,” she hissed back.
Lulina waited until I was seated before she slid those hateful hazel eyes back in my direction. “Do you really think I should forgive you? Chock it up as an argument between lovers? Again, what’s the fun in that?”
“Despite this exchange of words, I didn’t mean for what happened to happen,” I tell her.
“Oh? How much better do you think that made me feel by hearing that?”
It was my turn to cringe in my seat, and the shame I had merely evaded came right back up and lodged itself in my throat.
“Oh don’t tell me you’re sorry, Tristan.”
I lowered my eyes to the ground.
“Oh, don’t do that, you don’t get to look away from the monster you created.” She said and laughed at me. As she laughed the smaller I felt. It wasn’t until she tried to sit up and the pain marched into her face did I feel like I was somewhat in control.
“I don’t hurt women,” I offered.
“You hurt me.”
“You weren’t the bubbly teenage blonde who gave me a lap dance then tried to swat my hand away when I went for third base without kissing you.”
“So this is my fault, Tristan?”
“You were the cheerleader rather than the opposing team.”
“And this makes you feel better? You rape the mother of the woman you profess to love, but you try to pass onus onto her as if she asked for it?”
“Little big words don’t go by me, Lulina. I know what onus means.”
“Congratulations. You are the first non-idiot to be born of this terrible family.”
“Yes,” I countered, “It rhymes with anus, doesn’t it?”
The air of tension fell on the room like a hail of rocks falling from a crumbling mountain. The hate that I let get suppressed by shame and digust for myself ended up back to the same hate I had felt the night before. Lulina stopped being the victim of my hidden violence, and again became the manipulation that I hated and tried to destroy.
Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) Page 21