Page 82 of Bishop

Bishop’s door swings open and I gasp, shoving to my feet as light floods the hall.

He glowers at me paused in his doorway. “I need a photo of Adena. Air-drop it to me.” Then he slams the door in my face without warning, plunging me back into darkness.

I do as he requests and within minutes I’ve returned to the floor, my back pressed to the wall, my eyes closed as I listen to him chat with one person after another.

He calls in a stack of favors. Most in English. Some in Italian. I hate how easily I hang off the foreign language, the dreamy, confident words sinking under my skin.

He’s still at it after midnight. “Yasmin, it’s Bishop… Hey Martin, it’s me… Diego? Yeah, man, it’s been a while. Can you do me a solid and look into someone for me?”

It’s one in the morning when I grab a sofa cushion from the living room and make myself more comfortable on the floor beside his door.

I’m not sure what time I fall asleep, but when I wake, I’m not in the hall. I’m in my bed, the covers pulled up to my chin, my curtains closed around the beaming sun.

I rush to my feet, anxious for an update, but Bishop barely looks at me from his seat at the dining table as he announces my mother hasn’t been found.

He doesn’t talk to me again.

I stay out of his way all day. Either walking in the fields or lying in my bed.

Salvatore texts, demanding my location. Remy does the same a few hours later with much more finesse. I ignore them both while my hope for finding Tilly fades with the passing hours.

I grow tired, and it’s not the sleepy kind. Exhaustion turns my limbs to lead. A bone-weary lethargy that’s filled with sorrow and so much agonizing self-pity.

I should be doing something. Anything. But I’ve fought this battle for my daughter for two years without victory, and defeat nips at my heels.

I’ve begged. Pleaded. Negotiated. Argued.

Emmanuel promised she was safe. Loved. In need of nothing.

Was it wrong to believe him? To take the photos and videos and trust they weren’t doctored?

I sit on my bed and fixate on the cocaine vial resting in my palm as pans clatter in the kitchen. I assume Bishop is making dinner when all I crave is a bump.

I need something to take away the ache in my chest. Yet I haven’t loosened the cap since I took it from his jacket back at the house. It remains screwed tight, the powder locked inside, taunting me with its ability to numb my sorrow even if momentarily.

I won’t succumb.

I refuse to push Bishop farther away no matter how bad the pain increases.

His footsteps carry down the hall while I keep staring, continue craving, hating the existence of the white powder while I yearn for it in the same breath.

He enters my periphery, his large suit-covered frame standing in the doorway. He’s silent, his animosity thickening the air between us.

“Are you high?” he asks without emotion, as if he’s given up on me.

I shake my head.

“Do you plan on being that way in the future?”

I tilt my hand, letting the vial roll down to my fingertips. “I’m tempted. But no, I don’t need it. I told you I’m not an addict.”

I came close once. Close enough that each day blurred into the next, my intake increasing along with the jobs my father demanded of me. I rode the wave too long, too hard, but it was so much easier to live like that… Until I realized I’d been mindless enough to forget taking my contraception pill.

My drug use was the reason I fell pregnant. The reason a little girl may now be living through hell because of my mistakes. Or maybe she’s no longer living at all.

“Dinner is ready,” he mutters.

I nod, hating the silence that follows, the bitter taste of my manipulation yesterday still lingering.

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