Page 20 of Possessive Mafia Vows

I wish they would both leave me alone. It’s obvious that I’m not attracted to Nick in the same way that he is attracted to me. It’s equally obvious that I can’t be trusted to be alone in a room with Kyle without wanting to rip his clothes off and fuck him on every available surface.

Which is why I’m better off single.

I message Kyle back:I don’t think that’s a good idea.

I massage my temples. I want to lock myself in my studio, drag an acrylic-splattered shirt over my clothes, and paint until nightfall. Creating art clears my head. Twenty-four hours of me and my canvas, and I might be able to see things a little more clearly.

My phone vibrates a second time.

I open the message, expecting to see Kyle’s name, and realize, too late, that it’s from an unknown number.

Sienna, it’s Dad. I’m back in NYC and would really like to meet up.

I stand outside the Rinse, hands shoved inside my coat pockets, and peer at my reflection in the window. The glass is tinted a smoky brown, making me look like some kind of dirty ghost, the outline of my face distorted and hazy.

I shouldn’t be here.

I don’t want to be here.

So, why am I still standing on the busy sidewalk, avoiding the staring gazes of passers-by, unable to make the decision to turn around and walk away?

My father left us the day after my sixth birthday.

I remember how he walked into the kitchen, saw the remains of the chocolate cake Mom made for me, six used candles still lying on the side of the plate, and turned his face into a rubbery mask of pure hatred. I didn’t even see it happen. One moment, my mom was sitting next to me at the small table where we atedinner, and the next, she was on the floor, eyes bulging, face turning puce while his fists tightened around her neck.

I can still hear the screams now.My screams.

Maybe that’s why he let my mom go and walked out. Or maybe he was scared that if he stayed any longer, the cops would come for him, and he would have to take his punishment like a man.

That was the last time I saw him. His face stopped appearing in my nightmares a long while ago, and I’m not even sure I’d recognize him if he was standing right beside me. I don’t even know how he found my number, but I guess he heard about my gallery, and his curiosity was piqued. Perhaps he thinks that I’ve come into some money, and I’ll be generous enough to share it with him.

I turn around and walk a few steps away from the Rinse, head down, hands balled into fists inside my pockets.

My mom never spoke about money; she didn’t need to; it was obvious she struggled her whole life to keep us going. She never mentioned my dad at all once he was out of our lives. But it doesn’t take much to figure out that he’s the kind of man who would accept handouts from his own daughter.

I’m torn.

I don’t want, or need, him in my life, but if I don’t give him the benefit of the doubt just this once, it will always haunt me. Be the bigger person, that’s what my mom would say if she was here.

Deep breath.

I turn around, open the door, and step inside.

I’ve never been inside the Rinse before—I know it’s owned by Kyle’s brother Bash—but my dad had already booked a table. I walk through the lobby wide-eyed at the Hollywood-style glamor, the huge gilt-edged mirrors, the spanking clean black-and-white tiled floor, the sleek gold reception desk.

I’m struck once again by how different Kyle’s life is to mine. This is normal for him. He wakes up every morning in the sheer black-glass monument that is the Wraith, makes coffee, takes a shower, and never once thinks that someone in the city is staring at his home, gap-mouthed at the unimaginable opulence of a lifestyle like his.

My dad is waiting at a table in the Rinse’s glitzy restaurant when the concierge asks me to follow him.

My stomach lurches sickeningly when I see him. I thought I wouldn’t recognize him after twenty years. I was wrong.

He raises brown eyes to meet mine, and my body reacts from muscle memory. My pulse races. Heat spreads through my body and sets my cheeks on fire. My legs tremble so violently, I almost collapse onto the seat pulled out for me by the concierge.

“You came.”

His shoulders are round and hunched, his neck jutting out at a ninety-degree angle like the retro nodding dogs people used to put on the parcel shelf of their car years ago. He hasn’t aged well. His skin is slack and pasty, his bottom lip juts out, and there are deep creases across his forehead and around his mouth. My gaze drifts to his hands which are folded in front of him, and I swallow bile at the sight of his long uneven fingernails.

He looks like a man who has abused his body all his life. But my body is refusing to listen to my brain. I’m still the little girl whohid in her room whenever he came home drunk and cried herself to sleep with a pillow over her head to drown out the sounds of her mom’s screams.

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