Page 76 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
Only in a storybook does a tale like Nico and Avery’s have a happy ending. He was right: some betrayals you can never escape. Some wounds are far too deep, and far too painful, to heal.
Avery’s real name was Amy. She was beautiful from birth, one of those babies people are always saying should be in commercials, gurgling happy and picture perfect, a gem. By the time she was a toddler, men would stop their mother on the street to tell her how gorgeous her daughter was, and why didn’t she move the family to Hollywood and put her in the movies?
Their father noticed little Amy’s beauty, too. He noticed it all too well. When it finally came to light that he was molesting his own child, their mother—a former stripper, with no education beyond the ninth grade—blamed Amy. She walked out the door, never to be seen again.
Leaving her three children in the hands of a monster.
In comparison to what Amy suffered, the two boys fared fairly well. There were regular beatings, long, drunken rants where dishes would be thrown and broken, whole days when their father would be blacked out on the kitchen floor and they’d try to pretend everything was normal by going to school and pasting smiles on their frightened faces. That, at least, was bearable. Sometimes they’d get lucky. If you’re quick enough, you can dodge a flying fist. You can learn to leap out of the way of that plate or vase or picture sailing toward your head.
But a little girl is helpless when she wakes in bed with a grown man on top of her. There’s no dodging his groping hands, his brute strength, the horror of his body invading hers.
And if she loves her father, if, underneath all the terror and shame, she still loves him, she learns to deal with the reality of her life, and the unthinkable betrayal of the one man who’s supposed to protect her, by learning to hate herself.
Amy’s rage turned inward.
At eleven, she began cutting herself with a razor blade. At twelve, she began taking drugs. By thirteen she was sleeping around, the most promiscuous girl in school. When she had an abortion just shy of her fourteenth birthday—her father’s baby? Some other, uncaring boy’s?—Nico knew he had to get her out of that house and that destitute, godforsaken Tennessee town, or doom her to a life of misery, followed by an early death.
His father didn’t think that such a good idea.
They tried to sneak out. Their father caught them. There was an ugly scene, a scuffle that turned into a brawl. A scared, seventeen-year-old Nico pushed his father down a flight of stairs in a fit of anger, and watched crying as the tyrant that had terrorized them for so many years lay broken at the bottom and didn’t get up.
His brother and sister, holding hands behind him, were crying, too. They were still crying when the police came, still crying when their father’s cooling body was taken away. There was an inquiry. Their father’s death was ruled accidental; toxicology reports showed he’d been drunk at the time, of course.
They were scheduled to be put into foster homes, but when the social workers showed up, the kids were gone, riding a Greyhound out of town.
Their father only gave them a single thing of value in his life: the contents of his wallet. He’d had just enough to cover three student tickets to LA.
“We lived on the streets for a while, stealin’ food, sleepin’ in doorways, until Amy got caught tryin’ to walk out a store with a loaf of bread. The owner woulda sent her ass to jail, but there was this woman in line who turned out to be some rinky-dink modeling agency owner. She paid for the bread and smoothed it out with the store owner, then bought Amy a meal. Told her she could be a star. Told her she’d give her a place to stay if she signed a contract with the agency. So she did. Amy started modelin’ under some fake name, tellin’ people she was eighteen. She could pass for it, too. All the shit she went through, she coulda passed for thirty.”
We were lying together on the carpet at the foot of the bed. His head rested on my crossed legs. I stroked his hair and kissed him repeatedly as he talked, his voice hollow, his eyes closed, my heart breaking over and over and over.
“I lied about my age, too, got a job at the Pig ‘N Whistle, bussin’ tables, washin’ dishes. My brother, Michael—he was the middle one, fifteen at the time—started runnin’ drugs for some local dealer, sellin’ to elementary school kids. I shoulda known, he was bringin’ in so much cash, it shoulda been obvious what he was doin’, but I was so fuckin’ scared, always thinkin’ the police would figure out what really happened and knock on the door and arrest me. I just shut my eyes to it.
“He used to bring this skinny Portuguese kid around the place we were stayin’, the shitty apartment the modelin’ agency rented for Amy. Name was Juan Carlos. Barely spoke English. Always gettin’ the shit beat outta him ’cause he had a big mouth, but he had mad swagger, was a little fuckin’ Napolean, and Amy fell for him hard. Wasn’t long before he convinced her to go back to Brazil with him. He had family there. Said they’d get married, and she’d
never have to worry about anything again.”
For a long while, Nico was silent. His throat worked soundlessly, as if he was swallowing sobs. “So she went. Left me and Michael a note, took all our savings. Three years went by and not another word. Then one day I get a phone call, outta the blue. ‘I’m coming back,’ she said in this weird voice, all foreign soundin’, no trace of Tennessee left. ‘Just like that?’ I said. ‘What, your husband leave you?’
“There was this long pause, like she was thinkin’ how to tell me somethin’, lookin’ up at the ceilin’ like she used to do when she was gatherin’ her thoughts. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she answered, and the way she said it, all weird and quiet, I swear I got chills. I knew just by the tone of her voice that Juan Carlos was dead. And I knew she had somethin’ to do with it.”
Nico opened his eyes and stared up at me. “So she came back. I barely recognized her. Grew half a foot, bleached her hair, lost so much weight she looked anorexic. Had this crazy smile all the time, tryin’ so hard to pretend she was someone else. This girl she made up named Avery Kane, an orphan from the slums of Sao Paolo who came to the US to make it big. She was such a good actress, spoke such perfect fuckin’ Portuguese, had all the details down about her fake past, even I started to believe it. She was always smart, Amy. In another life, she coulda been a lawyer. A teacher.”
He made an ugly sound, halfway between a choke and a laugh. “Instead she was Daddy’s fuck toy, then Juan Carlos’s. He had family all right. And the family business was brothels. He was a recruiter, came to the US a few times a year to find new talent. You can guess what happened once Amy got to Brazil.”
I was horrified. “Oh, God.”
“When she came back here, she had enough money to rent an apartment. Probably stole it, I didn’t ask. So she starts modelin’ again. Sellin’ herself, one way or another, ’cause no one ever taught her she was worth anything except for the way she looked and what was between her legs. I tried to get her to stop, go back to school, find somethin’ she really loved doin’, but she was stubborn as fuck.” He paused for a moment, breathing raggedly. “You remind me of her that way.”
I thought I might remind him of her in other ways, too. Secrets. Lies. A dark, painful past. I wondered if that’s what attracted him to me. I wondered if, deep down, he knew he couldn’t save his sister and hoped to save me instead.
“She picked up the heroin habit in Brazil. The brothel boss made sure all the girls were high; made ’em easier to handle. Even when she came back to the States, Amy could never shake the habit. I put her in a dozen different rehabs over the years. She’d do fine for a while, then somethin’ would set her off and she’d slide right back into it.”
I smoothed my hand over his skin, down the muscles of his back. My fingers trailed over the shadowy figure of Nyx. She stared up at me, mysterious as the sphinx. Nico saw where I was looking and sighed.
“Amy always used to say she had nothin’ but death and darkness at her back, so much sin it would devour her if she ever turned around. One day we were watchin’ this show about Greek mythology—this was right after she got out of another rehab—and they showed this painting of Nyx. When they said she was born from Chaos, and was the mother of death, darkness, pain, and deceit, we just looked at each other. Guess we kinda felt like, she’s our people, you know? She’s us. Went right out and got inked. Michael, too. Made us all tighter, in a way. Had another little secret between us, but this one felt almost like . . . I don’t know. Protection, maybe. Like a talisman that could keep us safe.” Nico’s voice broke. “So fuckin’ stupid.”
Gently, I smoothed the hair off his damp forehead. “It’s not stupid, Nico,” I whispered, desperate to offer him anything that would help soothe his pain. But he only shook his head, disagreeing.
