Believe him? How can I trust a thing he says? I know what he’s done. But I don’t know why. I feel sick that this man that I love deeply, has done this to me. To my family. He wasn’t falling in love with me like I thought he was, was he? I was just a game to him.
“I know your trying to tell me the truth, but how the fuck am I meant to feel when you stand there telling me that you used me this whole time. And for what? To get at Mauricio?”
I become furious with the situation more so. He’s not telling me the whole of it. What the hell is he hiding?
"Why?" I scream frustration taking over me. “You’re as bad as he is, what the fuck is wrong with you. Why do you want him dead?” I launch myself at him, hitting him in the chest taking all my frustration and pain out on him. Hitting him over and over, my fists pounding into his chest. I hate myself for it but I can’t stop. He just stands there and takes it as I lose my mind.
“Fucking asshole. Tell me what Mauricio has done so bad that you want him dead? Why you fucking used me?”
He gently restrains me grabbing at my wrists, pulling them up to the side of my head and pushing me back into the wall of the house. He shouts in my face, his voice pain stricken.
"He killed my fucking parents Olivia that’s why! Are you happy now? He killed them. Why should he have a perfect family when he took mine away?”
I freeze. Completely. Staring at his darkened, raging eyes as he loosens his grip from around my wrists, letting my arms flop lifelesslyto my sides.The blood drains from my face. I’m frozen to the spot, shaking my head, refusing to believe. Tears automatically forming. The lump in my throat has grown, causing my breathing to fail. His words echoing in my ears. He murdered my parents.
“No. He couldn't...he wouldn’t. You’ve got the wrong person.”
Mauricio killed Calvin’s parents? No way. My mind is rejecting to accept it.
“That can't be right, you have this wrong.”
I feel bile building up inside me. I come over all faint, feeling dizzy with grief, incredulity.
This can't be true.
I can't look up at Calvin, the anguish his face holds is too heart-breaking. He looks at me like he’s re-living that very moment in his head. While he watches me staring at him unhinged.
"It was him. Mauricio Fahoney. He took my family away, Olivia. It was him that killed them. Now do you understand? Now do you see why I despise that man? Tell me, honestly, would you want to get pay back? They were my fucking parents. We were just kids and he took them from us."
I walk away from him still in denial. “No!" I shake my head refusing it. “How could he do this…I don’t understand.”
“He murdered them and he burnt their bodies leaving nothing left. Nothing left but ashes. He's a fucking monster.” He shouts as I walk away.
No. No. No. I can’t take it.
I’m going to be sick.
Vomit pours out of my mouth not stopping, not letting me come up for air. My stomach is churning. This revelation is too much. I hold on the metal gate of Mayra’s mom house for support with one arm. My stomach is wrenching. Splitting into two.
Calvin wouldn’t lie. But I can't believe it. I won’t believe it. Could Mauricio be so cruel and so cold hearted to do something like this?
I compulsively vomit, letting sobs of cries out in between making it hard for me to breath. Calvin stands behind me trying to help me to me feet. I can't support myself. I am paralyzed with devastation.
Calvin helps me up and holds me tight against his chest.
"No!" I cry out loudly, my chest wheezing. He holds me firmly in his grip. Taking care of me. “Olivia, I’m so sorry." He repeats. "I’m so sorry."
I cry out even harder, burring myself into him. This can't be happening. The man who have brought me up as his own since I was four years old. The man I called dad, a stone cold murderer? He murdered the parents of someone I have fallen in love with?
I can't register it all in my head, it won’t go in. Deep down I know it’s true but I don't want to believe it. My mind is in denial.
Calvin continues to try and sooth me, rocking me in his arms. I’m devastated.
“I’m going to take care of you baby, I will.” He declares.
I know now this is going to fuck up everything. My relationship with Mauricio is dead as from now, even more so. I can't have my family any were near him. He will have no one left when this gets out. Just like Calvin wanted, and he has a right to doesn’t he? Yes, it all makes sense to me now, of course it does. Why he picked me in the first place out of all the beautiful girls he could have had. Why Mauricio’s businesses are going pear shaped.The arguments I’ve overheard about jobs getting high jacked, about snitches? The way my parents have been acting. The reason why they hate Calvin so much.
Wait a second. Do my family know who he really is? If they do has my mom new about this all along?
Oh god, I’m in too much of a state to talk, to even think. I can’t deal with this. My mind blacks out. The pain is unbearable.
I’m briefly aware of Calvin picking me up into his arms. He's cradling me like a young child, putting me into a car. I’m too exhausted to complain or take notice of whose car it is or where we’re going. My eyes close on their own accord, like they’re telling me I cannot cope with any more news, no more pain. And I’m glad, I don't want to open them. I want to go into a sweet dream and not wake up until this is all over.
I hear Mayra’s voice in the background, but I don't open my eyes.
"I don't know what’s happened Calvin but please take care of my Olivia." He strokes my hair as my head rests in his lap.
“I will take good care of her May, nothing else matters to me anymore.”
“Goodbye.” She says before shutting the car door. I know she's crying, I can hear it in her voice, but I fall to sleep. Blocking out everything today has thrown at me. Caving in, letting it win.
Chapter Fifteen*
It’s dark. All I can see is Mauricio’s face coming towards me. Smiling that sardonic smile down at me. He tilts his head back and laughs, it’s haunting. I see flames of fire. I hear a women screaming, begging for her life. No! I scream and cry for help but no one’s coming.
“No!”
“Olivia, wake up, wake up!”
“Get away from me, get away.”
“Olivia, baby it’s me. It’s Okay.”
I shoot open my eyes after being shaken awake. My breathing is erratic. I can’t calm down. I’m covered in sweat and I’m crying. I look around frantically unsure of where I am until I see Calvin’s face. I hear him calling me as I come back to earth.
“Baby, it’s Okay. It was just a bad dream.” Calvin wraps me up in his arms as I cry myself back to sleep laying across his chest.
***
I wake up next morning feeling disorientated. I stare up at the ceiling when I come round. My head still hurts. I feel exhausted and I’m boiling hot.
I look around to the window on my right, confirming I’m at Calvin’s apartment. I turn my head to my left and see Calvin lying next to me asleep. Its then I realize why I’m so hot. His leg is around my legs. His arm thrown over my chest. He has a frown on his perfect sleeping face like he’s dreaming something unpleasant but I don’t wake him. I notice the bruising on his eye turning slightly yellow, the grazes still visible, but it still doesn’t mask the beauty of him, not one bit. His full pink lips are parted slightly as he breathes out softly. His dark golden hair falling a little across his eyes. I smooth it out of his face not being able to help myself. He stirs at my feather-like touch. Without opening his eyes he brings his hand up to grab hold of my hand and gently places it onto his cheek.
How did I ever deserve such a beauty of a man?
Oh wait, I didn’t.
I sigh taking my hand from his, frustratingly remembering the conversation last night. I remember what’s gone on and why we started this relationship in the first place. I remember the cruel reality of Mauricio and it’s sickening. I
t’s so messed up.
I rub my aching forehead as my stomach begins to whirl.
“Olivia, you alright?” Calvin breaks the silence opening his bright blue eyes lazily untangling himself from me.
As I sit up, I notice myself dressed in one Calvin’s shirts. That denim shirt. Shit, I wasn’t in that much of a deep sleep for him to god damn undress me was I?
“Olivia?”
“What!” I snap at him but instantly regret it. "I’m sorry." I frown at myself.
“Hey.” Calvin says softly pulling my chin to face him. “Don’t be sorry baby, you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s me that’s been the asshole."
“You can say that again.” I mumble.
“It’s me that’s been the asshole.” He repeats. I look over to him and he tries his best to keep his smirk at bay. Normally I would have gave in and laughed, but right now, what the hell have I got to laugh about? I just can’t bring myself to feel any happiness.
Calvin sits up pulling me from my waist into him. I lay between his legs, my head on his chest and stay quite. Just listening to his heart beat for some time. I have been waiting for this, to be with him like this since the day he left me. And now I’m here, in his arms again. But it’s a bitter sweet situation.
That’s how we stay for a while until I disturb the peace. I have to.
“Calvin, I can’t get my head around this, none of it. He murdered your family? I mean, how have he kept this quiet? Why was he not caught?”
His body tenses underneath me. I don’t want to speak about this any more than he does but I need answers. I need the information. How have he carried this burden around with him for so long?
I wriggle out of his grip and sit back onto my heels in front of him. He slides up the bed with his back resting against his suede head board.
“He killed them Olivia, what more is there to say.” He answers me firmly but I can’t leave it like this. This is all I have thought about all night.
“I need more. He was my step dad. And he did this to someone’s family behind our backs, where did your parents live?”
He never told me where they lived, he’s never told me much about them at all.
“We lived in Brooklyn. It would have been before your mother met him. You only would have been what? Two years old.”
I inhale sharply. Brooklyn? Where we also lived and where my mom met Mauricio in the first place. Does she know what her husband did?
“I obviously couldn’t tell you where it happened in fear of you thinking something was up. I’m sorry.”
He rubs his head in his hands. It feels odd to me to see him strained this way.
He climbs out of bed, pulling on sweat pants that he’s picked up off the floor.
"Was it him who slept with your mom?" I wince at my own words as my eyes follow him around the bedroom.
“Jesus, no." He dismisses that idea immediately walking away from the bed. I turn my body around on the bed to follow where he stands.
"It was a man who worked for Mauricio. You see, Mauricio was on his way to big things back then. In his early twenty’s maybe? He was just starting to make a name for himself if you like. This is what I’ve found out on my way. It’s funny how you can get people to talk."
He has a glint of spineless cruelty in his eyes but it soon changes back to anger. He continues slowly getting me to follow, standing at the end of the bed, while I sit up watching him, trying to ignore his bruised ribs.
“When he heard about my mom’s situation he wanted to teach them a lesson, anyone who messed with his men messed with him. They didn’t pay the money, my dad beat up the son-of-a-bitch when he found him. It didn’t look good for Mauricio did it? So he killed them. After all, the dead can’t tell tales.”
I stare into Calvin’s hooded eyes, trying to take in what he’s telling me. Feeling sick at every single word that comes out of his mouth.
“So Mauricio is the one who killed them?” My voice is a whisper. I shake my head not understanding. “Are you sure about this Calvin?”
The way Calvin looks at me, I know I should never have doubted him but I’m just trying to get my head around all this. My step-father a murderer?
“Am I sure?” he almost shouts at me, his stare incredulous. “Olivia, you have no idea what that fucking animal is capable of. He shot my parents and set their bodies on fire. It was him. It was Mauricio. I have no doubt about it. He’s a fucking murderer.”
“I’m sorry, I just...” I try explaining my question but can’t. It breaks my heart that this is what Calvin is haunted by and I’m finding it hard to adjust.
He begins to become angrier, with me it would seem.
“You know the worst thing Olivia,” he closes his eyes in pain before continuing. “My mom was pregnant, and he fucking knew it.”
I Inhale sharply at the news, placing my hand over my mouth. This is too much, no!
She was pregnant! The cruel, spineless asshole.
I begin to cry, suppressing my sobs with my hand. Calvin doesn’t look at me. I know he would break down at this point if he did. He closes his eyes shut like its torturing him.
"The people I have spoken to, well actually, someone told me that apparently, when he found out she was pregnant, setting fire to a women in that condition has haunted him ever since, but he still did it not wanting to look weak. And there’s me thinking the mother fucker had no feelings." He scoffs.
I hold my head in my hands. My mind is spinning. I can see on so many levels why Calvin and Ashton want Mauricio dead. Who wouldn’t? How dare he put this family through hell? Who the fuck does he think he is. I’m seething at the seams. I can’t imagine how Calvin and Ashton felt.
"And you were so young." I cry. The thought of a little boy waving goodbye to his parents from the back of the car still kills me.
Calvin’s scowl softens, only now realizing the distress I’m in and comes to sit back onto the bed.
"Hey," He pulls me into him wiping my lingering tears away. "It’s Okay."
“No Calvin, it’s not Okay. It’s far from Okay. Who the hell is this man? Actually, he is no man, he’s an animal. And to think I’ve been living with him. Breathing the same air as a murderer. He needs to be taught a lesson. What the fuck gives him the right to do this to people. To your family? Who else has he done this to? It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. It’s truly heart-breaking, it really is.”
I can’t comprehend this at all. “Did you know your mom was pregnant?”
Calvin shakes his head in deep repugnance. "Not until I moved here, that made me and Ashton even thirstier for his blood. We’ve been trying to find him for so long. We had no money, that’s what seemed to urge people to talk, so we knew we had to make some, and fast. That’s where the idea of professional poker came into it. We’d always been good at it, so we took it on full time, made more money than we ever wanted.”
I look up at him through glazed eyes. “That’s all it took? Money? And they told you where Mauricio was?”
Calvin looks away from me almost ashamed. “Amongst other things. Things that I’m not proud of, but what choice did I have? What choice did we both have?”
In normal circumstances I would scold him for being no better, using violence is never the way. But can I blame him?
I listen patiently to every word Calvin is telling me. I don’t say anything as I don’t want him to stop talking. It feels like a breakthrough for me. He’s letting me in, getting me to understand the truth. That’s all I want. Even if it is hard to hear. Even if it’s something I would never have thought up in my wildest dreams. It’s all slowly making sense.
"When we went to live with my grandparents, they were incredible. But Ashton, until he was out of school, he made their lives hell. He was getting into fights almost every day. The temper on him is unmanageable. He would stay out all night and not come home for days sometimes. My grandparents would get worried sick, but they never gave up on him, on neither of us. Of course now, he can't do
enough for them. He regrets everything he put them through but they understand.”
“And what about you?” I sniff.
“Me? I wasn’t as bad. I’d get into fights, we both have bad tempers, but I’d speak about my problems and my thoughts with my gran, but no one else. Ashton would keep it bottled up and let it out the wrong way. He still does.”
Calvin looks down at my hand that’s resting in my lap, he takes it, kisses my knuckles, and then keeps hold of it while he continues.
“When we found out where Mauricio was, Ashton wanted to kill him straight out. Me, like I told you last night, told him we needed to break him down inch by inch, and we were doing a good job of it too.”
“Why did you stop? Why did you leave?” I have that pain in my chest again. I don’t think the picture of him leaving me, in my mind, will ever evaporate.
“I left because you fell in love with me Olivia. I could see it coming. I was falling for you to and I should have stopped it. Ashton warned me time and time again not to let it get so deep, that I only had one purpose with you, but I ignored him, like a fucking asshole. I let it get too far. I should never have made love to you that night it was a reckless thing to do.”
So he did make love to me?
“Reckless?” I whisper in obvious dismay. How can he call it reckless?
He continues on in a hurry, ignoring my comment but trying to elaborate.
“It was reckless at the time. There are no words to describe how much I regret hurting you like I did and leaving you like that. I will regret it for the rest of my life. But I did it for you, don’t you see? I couldn’t carry on watching you fall in love with me, only for to me to keep hurting you.”
I hold back more tears and stand from the bed. I feel him watching me, but I turn my back on him looking out of the windows, staring out at what seems afternoon in Chicago.
“Olivia?” he asks confused and cautious.
I answer him wrapping my arms around myself, still with my back to him. “I was falling in love with you because you made me feel things I’ve never felt before Calvin, we clicked. Your gorgeous yes, but there was something else. The first time I set my eyes upon you, it was like I was completely drawn to you inexplicably. I thought you felt it too, following me out like you did, but now I realize,” I turn to him, “you knew I would be there that night didn’t you? You knew it, you knew it was my birthday. Was that your plan to lure me in?” I inhale slowly closing my eyes. It hurts like hell that I feel all this for Calvin, yet every part, on his behalf, was planned out. And there was me thinking that maybe, yes, we met by fate.
Confessions and Olivia (Olivia #2) Page 15