Page 15 of Choke

Zeke, one of my sister’s husbands, chuckles behind me. “Take it easy, Mona. The three of us have some issues.”

I smile at Zeke. Out of the three men my sister shacked up with, he’s my favorite. “It’s weird seeing how Little Miss Can-Do-Everything-On-My-Own pampers three grown men.”

Azadeh glares at me. “I pamper them because I love them, and they take care of me.” My sister gazes at Zeke and gives him a radiant smile—the kind of smile only truly fortunate people can bestow on another. Then she looks at me, her forehead creasing with a frown. “I’m not like Mamon, doing it for ungrateful brats.”

My heart sinks at the mention of my mother, and tears well up in my eyes. I’m the brat Azadeh is talking about. I know I am. When my mother was alive, I was so ashamed of who I was that I treated her like garbage. Of the three of us, I was the troubled child. The one my mother worried about. If she’d died from a heart attack instead of cancer, I’d be convinced that I caused her death.

“Anyway, how about you answer my question?” Azadeh demands.

I stare at my sister, knowing that once she hears the truth, she’ll lose her ever-loving mind.

Azadeh places her hands on her hips and doesn’t budge. “Well?”

“Someone delivers it. It’s not always kabob, but it’s always Persian.”

Azadeh makes herself a plate and sits down, the clatter of her cutlery making me think her questioning has come to a halt. The brief respite shatters as she asks her next question. “What restaurant did you order from?”

“Not sure,” I mumble as I stuff my mouth, limiting my capacity for speech.

“She’s avoiding you,” Cyrus says.

I turn to him, taking in the burn marks on his face and the smug little boy smirk forming on his lips. “You’re annoying, you know that?”

Cyrus shrugs. “Game recognizes game.”

Four sets of eyes glare at me, and I can’t help feeling I’m about to be interrogated. “Someone sends it, okay?”

“Who?” Zeke and Azadeh demand in unison.

My eyes drop to my plate as I fork a piece of kabob into my mouth. If I keep eating, maybe they’ll drop their questions.

Lev clears his throat. “You can’t eat continuously for the rest of your life. Eventually, you’ll have to come clean.”

Unlike my other two brothers-in-law, Lev usually leaves me alone. The weight of his guilt concerning what he allowed to happen to me two years ago is a heavy burden for him to carry.

Lev’s stupidity led to me spending a month with people who could have caged, beaten, raped and tortured me. The only reason that never happened is I was lucky to meet two men and catch their eye. The irony is that Lev doesn’t even know what happened to me. I lied to my sister and the guys. If Azadeh knew the extent of what happened, she’d turn away from Lev, and he’d already suffered so much.

My gaze travels between three pairs of glaring eyes. The band of misfits my mother and sister took in. My mother nurtured all three men, and my sister fell madly in love with them. They have so much baggage to work through, and I won’t add more weight to their already heavy burdens. They punish themselves enough. My sister wasted so much time delaying her happiness with these three men, and I don’t want to give her another reason to blow up her happily ever after.

But I know they won’t stop pestering me until they get an answer. So, I give the vaguest response I can think of. “Someone whose name you don’t need to know, okay?”

“Yeah, that’s how delivery usually works,” Cyrus states.

Zeke glares at me, the blaze of his blue eye a stark contrast to the black leather patch covering his other eye. “You’ve already said that, Mona.”

“I don’t know,” I sigh, frustrated that I’m the world’s worst liar. “A package is always waiting for me when I get home. It’s usually groceries.”

The clang of utensils hitting glass plates startles me, as do the eyes glaring at me in disapproval and shock. The only person who doesn’t seem to be fazed by my confession is Cyrus, who continues to shove his face with kabob and rice. He stops abruptly when Zeke elbows him.

“Whoa, Bro. What the fuck was that for?” Cyrus demands.

Zeke glares at him. “How can you keep eating after what she just confessed?”

Cyrus shrugs. “This shit’s good, and I’m hungry. It’s not like what she said is gonna kill us.”

“How do you know?” Azadeh demands.

“Hello? Mona said this has been going on for a while. If whoever is dropping it off wants to kill her, they would’ve done it ages ago.”

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