Page 3 of The Prizes We Win
To Dante.
To Lorenzo.
I just have to wait.
I know I have to. Yet, every second that goes by that I can feel my father’s stare on me brings me closer and closer to snapping. I force myself to look into Seb’s bright blue eyes, and his stare instantly does what I hoped it would. It grounds me.
But I can see it. I can see the hurricane raging inside those deep pools of blue. It’s a storm I’ve never seen in him. One I imagine being reserved for men like Luca and Dante. Hell, I’ve even seen it on Lorenzo’s face, but to see such fury raging within him leads me to believe I’m about to see a side of Sebastian Moore that very few people have had the opportunity to see.
“So, Joey, you going to ask me or not?”
And just like that, the little bubble I was trying to surround Seb and me with pops. My nostrils flare at the sound of his voice, and the use of my childhood nickname sends a shiver down my spine. It was once a name that was attached to so many happy memories; I couldn’t have counted them even if I tried. It was the one my dad yelled as I ran into his arms when he got home from work. The one he used when he wished me sweet dreams. The one that was right at the end of every “I love you.” But all of those memories were tarnished in the blink of an eye once he started using it while he screamed at me and called me worthless, while he burned my skin with cigarettes, and while he beat me within an inch of my life.
He lost the right to call me by that name a long time ago.
“Wait,” Seb mouths ever-so-subtly.
“Ignoring my letters all these years was bad enough; the least you could do is show me some respect when I’m speaking to you. I am your father after all; you owe me that.”
What in the actual fuck?
Seb closes his eyes and inhales deeply. Because, while he knows that I will wait and follow his instructions, it doesn’t mean I’m going to do it quietly.
A maniacal chuckle rumbles in my chest, and as I slowly turn my head to look at my dad, the chuckle becomes an all-out laugh. One that is entirely inappropriate for the situation that we’re in, but I can’t help it nonetheless.
“Something I said funny?” Dad snarls from his spot next to me as the SUV we’re in continues to dodge in and out of traffic.
“Yeah,” I reply as I wipe a stray tear that has rolled down my cheek, and I try to get my laughter under control. “Are—are you fucking serious right now?”
“I suggest you watch your tone when you speak to me, Josephine.”
Sebastian stiffens next to me, and I know he probably wants me to slow my roll here a little bit, but I wouldn’t be the woman he loves if I didn’t speak my mind.
The woman heloves.
“Yeah, that’s not going to fucking happen.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see a black Audi Q2 in the rearview mirror, and it’s approaching us quickly. No one else, especially the two men in the front, has noticed it yet, so I choose not to draw attention to it. “Because, you see, there’s a reason I haven’t opened any of your letters. There’s a reason I have never, not once, attempted to speak or reach out to you since the day you got sent to prison. It’s because you are not my father. I lost my father when I was just a girl. I lost him to an addiction that ruined our family’s lives. I lost him. The Daddy that I once knew, theman that I loved more than anything, is gone.” My voice cracks at the last word, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction of me missing the man he once was. “The man that’s sitting in front of me isnothing. You are a man who tried to break me when I was nothing but an innocent child. You made my brother fear becoming a man because he lives in fear of turning into you.Youare a man who tried to kill his own daughter before beating his wife to a pulp as we both lay on the ground helpless. All so you could score some money to buy drugs. You are nothing more than a piece of shit, dressed in a nice suit, pretending to be someone important.”
John’s face is now the color of a strawberry, and the vein in his neck, one I became all too familiar with keeping a close eye on, is pulsing. But as he sits in front of me, I realize… I’m not afraid of him. I haven’t been ignoring his letters orhimfor all these years because I’m afraid of him; I’m just afraid of all of the memorieshecomes with. Memories that I have tried my best to bury, and yet… they’re always just one bad dream away.
Quickly, I look in the rearview mirror to find the Audi is hot on our heels, and right behind it… is Dante’s truck.
Sebastian must hear the familiar rumble of the exhaust because he shoves my leg with his and whispers, “Now.”
I turn back to John, narrow my eyes, and lean as close as my seatbelt will allow, and just before I’m about to speak, I finally hear the two morons up front as they finally recognize that they have a tail. “So, no, John. I don’t owe you shit.”
And just as his palm lands on my cheek, Dante’s truck drills the back of the SUV.
3
Sebastian
Several things fill my senses all at once. Oddly enough, the first thing I notice is the smell of New York Bay mixed with smoke and gasoline. I can hear the sounds of people shouting in the background and the faint sounds of the ferries as they carry passengers around Governor’s Island. The familiar sound of Dante’s deep voice registers in my brain as it gets louder and louder, likely encroaching on the SUV.
The taste of blood coats my tongue, and judging by the throbbing sensation coming from my forehead, I’m going to assume I split my forehead when I slammed into the seat in front of me.
But none of this is what’s causing me to panic. No. I’m panicking because the one sound that I don’t hear, that Ineedto hear right now, is Josephine. I try to blink away the fogginess in my vision until I can see the fresh imprint of my forehead that’snow permanently engraved in the seat that I just crashed into. My peripheral vision is slowly coming back, and I quickly realize that I don’t just not hear her, but I can’t see her either.
Fuck.
