Page 110 of Wanted
“Who are you trying to bullshit?” Valentina tilted her head to the side accusingly. “I know my husband. If he were meant to be with us right now, he’d be awake and fucking me back in our house. We had plans, you know. There’s something wrong with him, and I fear things will never be the same again.”
I should’ve argued, but Aris and Valentina always carried a deep connection that nobody understood. How had they actually met? Yes, they were neighbors. They’d told the journalists a bunch of lies about their early union.
Valentina and Aris kept their early relationship under wraps. I had never seen them together up until she showed up on our doorstep on Christmas with a beaten face. I’d called up Aris, fearing that he had done this to the poor girl.
But he hadn’t.
He showed up a little later, and he took care of her. I watched them together from afar, and I didn’t recognize my brother. He was a fun man to be around, never letting anything get to him. But with her, he let his guard down.
We didn’t hit women. Contrary to the West’s beliefs about our abusive country, violence toward women was a clear no. Not even my father hit women, and he tended to think he was invincible.
“I want to eat soup today,” Valentina revealed, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Can you make that happen?”
“For sure.”
“When did you and Aris know you wanted to marry?” I asked out of the blue.
“No.”
“It’s just a question,” I contended.
Uncrossing her arms, she drummed her fingers on the window of the Wraith. “You never gave a fuck before, Weston. I know you’re trying to live up to your role now, but you’re not fooling me. If I wasn’t pregnant with his child, you’d throw me out. I’m not under the illusion that we’re suddenly best friends now. You hated me for a long time. You don’t have to pretend so much. You’ll get wrinkles. There have been enough hospital stays in this family. We don’t need anymore.”
“I hated you because you brought out a side of Aris that I never knew existed,” I told her honestly. “We have our coping mechanisms in this family. I’m the quiet one. Kamila is the addict. He’s the joker. He never really was a joker, was he? He pretended.”
“That’s not my story to tell, Weston. Don’t fucking push me. I’ll get a hotel room.” She added, “My father killed your moms. Is that correct?”
“How did you…”
“Mandy had the decency to tell me,” Valentina interrupted me. She was much smaller than me, and I shouldn’t have feared her, but there was something dangerous about this woman. “After a long night of nightmares, she opened up to me, and she told me everything all of you have been hiding from me. Do you know how that feels?”
“It feels like your entire life has been a lie. You’re familiar with that sentiment,” Valentina continued. She flared her nostrils. “I don’t plan on being a cockroach for much longer. I’m everything you loathe. My father has betrayed my family, your family, and Mandy. He has caused us pain. I can’t forgive him. I know you never will. What’s worse, having a living parent that you loathe or a dead one that you loved?”
She took in a deep breath. “I don’t know the answer to that either. I can’t apologize for what my father did because I was just a child when he did it. I didn’t have the power to stop him. When Travis Cross sets his mind on something, he accomplishes it. I didn’t take a lot from my father’s DNA, but I got that. If Aris dies, I won’t be responsible for my reaction.”
“If he dies, which he won’t…”Don’t fucking die, you prick. We need you.“You won’t have to worry about a thing because we’re all going to back you whatever you decide to do.”
She drew her eyebrows together, but her eyes had softened. Silence in a room with Valentina was unheard of. It only took a couple of seconds until she broke the eerie quiet. “Can you show me his room? I’m new to this house. Aris and I never came here before you moved here.”
“But you used to work in the South Side, didn’t you?”
She nodded, her eyes glowing. “Yes, with Carmelo Ciccone. I was his intern for months.”
“He’s that fashion designer who wanted to dress Kamila for her wedding, right?” Kamila ended up going for a different option, a more expensive one, imported from the States.
“I don’t know anything about that. I haven’t talked to him in years,” she confessed, giving me an awkward smile.
Valentina followed me up the stairs. His room was the first on the right. I opened the door for my brother’s wife, and she walked by me, instantly soaking up her husband’s room. She said, “This looks like a time capsule.”
“When you two came to visit us the other week, it was the first time in years that he’d stepped foot in here.” I stepped into the room, gently closing the door behind me. One of the Star Wars wallpapers had fallen off the wall, crinkled on the floor. It wasn’t a messy room. Kamila didn’t want to admit it, but she used to come here a lot before leaving Katantia. That was why the house was in such perfect shape. She kept everything in order.
“Did Aris want to become a cop?” Valentina asked, picking up one of the books next to Aris’s bed. “Understanding Interrogations.He read this?”
“Mom always got us books for birthdays and on holidays,” I told her, and she widened her eyes in surprise. Our mother treated Kamila with kid gloves, but she behaved like we were grown men when we were in our teens. She held us accountable for every mistake we made, and we were terrible kids back then, doing all sorts of things that got us into trouble. On some days, it felt like she resented our existence. She spent so much time with Kamila that Aris and I felt excluded. Mom gifted us books that we could never understand at fourteen and fifteen. She pushed us to do better. “But he didn’t want to become a cop. At some point, he wanted to become an actor, but I’m unsure if that was a joke. He liked movies, though. You guys watch a lot of movies, don’t you?”
“Yes, we do,” Valentina confirms. “He pays for a Netflix subscription like a weirdo. He doesn’t need movies when he has me in his life.”
“Your confidence baffles me,” I commented. She put the book back in its place, taking a seat on Aris’s bed.
