Page 41 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

My palm is scraped and bloody from my fall on the pavement, but I don’t give a shit.Fuck, no!How is this even happening? How do things like this actually happen in real life?

How does a woman on her last freaking legs, after her friend died—and this girl is homeless, mind you—with her last two quarters, as she goes to talk to her mother who she hasn’t spoken to in months—tell me, how in the hell does she lose them? What are the fucking odds? How does that even happen?

I roll onto my back, glare through my tears at the sky. I know the answer to this.

She’s Joy, is how.

Joy Fucking Smith, the doomed girl who can’t take a hint. Who keeps moseying on, expecting things to be different. Painting pictures like they should be. Who can’t get it through her thick fucking skull that …

“Are you okay?”

Oh. Right. I’ve been pounding the cement with my bare palms. That probably looks a little strange.

Standing on the sidewalk, a safe distance away, in a nice, clean sweater the color of frosted blue eye shadow like the cool girls in the 2000s wore, is a little girl. Probably nine or ten or something like that, although that’s not the point. The point is, she’s staring at me with a concerned expression. She looks like me from ten years ago, not quite able to believe what she’s seeing, what the world has come to.

I turn away. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

So, I’ve sunk to this now. Humiliating myself in public. It’s not enough just to look like a crazy hobo. Now I’m acting the part, too.

The little girl in the blue sweater lingers for a few seconds, head tilted, watching me. They didn’t teach her this in the fourth-grade lessons on ‘How to be a Responsible Citizen of Planet Earth.’

“Really,” I say, hating the tremor in my voice, hating myself for hating it. “I’m fine.”

And then—finally, thank God—her mom comes and ushers her away from me as fast as she can.

I waste no more time now. I gather myself up, and head on home. I clench the tears in, refusing to let them come, not yet. I just want to get back to my tent, my last safe haven. I’m almost there, rounding the corner, and then—

“Well, lookee who it is.”

I don’t pause. I keep on going.

That unfamiliar, lecherous tone tells me all I need to know. It’s not one of the regulars. Just some creepy asswipe come to try and top how shitty my day has been.

Sorry, buster, you’ll have to do better than that to top losing my last two quarters I’d saved for talking to my mom.

Moist fingers shoot out from the shadows and close around my forearm.

I freeze.

My thoughts clatter into overdrive:Joy, you fucking idiot. You complete stupid, fucking idiot. You should’ve been looking—paying attention.

Now I sure as shit am—Creepo here is at least two hundred and fifty pounds of ugly, stinking of cigarettes and sweat that’s found safe, long-term housing. It goes without saying he’s got a face like a boiled cabbage.

“I was talkin’ to you,” Armpit Breath says.

And I was ignoring you, I think but don’t say.

More movement in the shadows. Stinky Boy has some friends, and they’re big boys, too, all topping two hundred pounds easy, with fat bellies pushed out far past their straining, stained T-shirts, and proud of it. Like they could collapse on me and suffocate me if they wanted to and they’d enjoy the hell out of the whole process.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

Not this—please not this.

His other hand goes to my cheeks, to pull my lips in towards him. “What was that?”

“Sorry!” I say loudly, letting my whole body drop.

Surprised, he releases me. I scramble back to my feet. His hand lumbers out—not fast enough, though, as I’m already racing to my tent.

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