Page 89 of Wicked Me
“With hats?”
“For starters.” She winced down at a loose thread on her fingerless gloves. “I saw the news. How’s Riley taking it?”
“How do you think?”
She waved at the bruises on my face. “Did he do this?”
“The prep’s a lot tougher than he looks.”
“Does he think I leaked it?”
“You?” I shook my head. “Why would he?”
She stood up quickly, the messy flyaway hair on top of her head streaming out behind her like tail feathers, to pace the room, her mouth pushed together in a weird frown.
I followed her movements with a narrowed gaze. “What are you not telling me?”
Her reflection stared hard at me from inside the mirror across the room. “How about whatyoudidn’t tellme, Sam? About Hill’s blackmailing us?” She absently swatted the hair on top of her head in an attempt to smooth it before turning her quick pacing toward me. “You should’ve told me.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You mean while you were detoxing? Because you weren’t exactly in the listening mood.”
That pulled her up short. She glared, and a fury that shouldn’t exist inside someone like Rose tightened her fists. If I were to be punched in the face by another Cleary, she deserved to be the one to do it. But instead of a physical punch, she gave me the kind that hurt much worse.
“You should’ve come to see me sooner, Sam,” she said. “Riley did.”
Special emphasis on Riley. Not the big brother who led her to believe she was a superhero, but the one who screamed bloody murder whenever she got in his way. Why? Because I was a fucking coward who was too afraid to see what she was going through. All that shame at the back of my throat made it hard to breathe, so I pushed to my feet and stepped toward the open window for some air.
“He told me about you working for Hill, and I pretended to know all about it since it was obvious all he cared about was his damn job and Dad winning the presidency. But Sam, no more lies. At one time, yes, I was in debt to Hill, but not anymore. There isn’t anything I owe that man.”
Her words rang clear, but I struggled to grasp their meaning. If there wasn’t any debt, then why did Hill lead me to believe there was for the last two months?
“Hill has nothing on this family, not even proof of Riley and Dad with prostitutes.” She took a long breath. “Riley ripped half of my little black book from my hands before he left, but...I’m the one who leaked a torn page of proof to the press early this morning.”
“What?” I whirled around to face her, my mind reeling to catch up.
She picked up another crocheted hat from her dresser, this one with a rainbow-colored stringy fluff on top. “Hill was working on expanding his turf, trying to take over some guy named Slim’s neighborhood, and he wanted to expand his trade, too. I found more girls, pretty ones, and so many upper-level government people flocked toward them, toward...us.”
Bile climbed up from my stomach, acidic enough to burn the backs of my eyes. I shook my head, refusing to piece together what she was trying to tell me.
“I was desperate for more heroin, but I was already in debt to Hill. So we made an agreement.” Her gaze met mine, pained, haunted, yet somehow relieved. “Drugs for sex.”
“Shut it,” I barked, so completely done with this...this...sick confession.
She flinched and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that flowed down her cheeks anyway.
A prostitute. She let Hill reduce her to a prostitute so he could control her by dangling her next fix in front of her while she fucked some random guy for money. My little sister.
Oh my fucking God. I fell back on her bed and buried my knuckles into my eyelids to dig all that shit out, but I couldn’t un-know it and it made me sick.
“Talk to me, Sam. We need to talk about this,” she begged.
“I...No.” I flew toward the door and into the hallway, blinded by truth when I’d been living inside a dark lie for so long, while Rose’s sobs broke my fucking heart all over again.
