Page 36 of Scars He Gave Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 2)

Part of me is mad. They lied to me. If I’d known it was Tomas’s money, I never would’ve taken it.

But when I get downstairs and see my dad on the couch, my rage fades away. He looks so old sitting there in his favorite spot beneath the lamp, doing his crossword puzzle. He’s my dad. He did what he thought was best for me.

He looks up when he hears me enter the room. “Morning, sunshine!” he greets.

I go slump into the couch next to him and squeeze him in a tight hug for a long minute. Then I pull back and smile. There are a thousand things I want to say. That he shouldn’t have lied to me about the money. That we’re a family and they consciously excluded me from what can only be called—even after all these years—family business. That I should’ve had a vote in whether or not we took the money for my education.

I can’t honestly say what I would’ve chosen back then. Without that money, I wouldn’t have made it to school. Not the one I went to, anyway.

But I don’t say anything at all because I don’t know how to speak up about this without sounding ungrateful.

He pats my hand. “You’re awful loving this morning.”

I stand and stretch. “Just missed you, that’s all. I should get going though.”

“Why so early?” Because he’s the dad he’s always been, he knows I’m lying. Knows I don’t need to leave right now. But he’ll let it go. Because that’s also part of the dad he’s always been.

It’s not the only question he wants to ask. I told him that Alvin and I got into a huge argument the night of the wedding and that we needed some time apart to think things over. It sounded bogus even as I was saying it, but he and Mom seemed to take it in stride, at least as far as I could tell. At the very least, it bought me a little bit of time to think of a better explanation.

“I haven’t been at work for a week, and I probably have a lot to catch up on.” Mostly, though, I just can’t wait to get back to normal. This whole wedding/husband/murderers—plural—in my hotel room is something I want to put behind me. That means a new place to live, standing on my own, not in my old bedroom at Mom and Dad’s, and getting back to work. This is my first step.

It almost didn’t happen, either. I told Tomas I intended to go back to work and he flat-out told me that wasn’t possible. We’d fought about it for a while, but eventually he relented when I agreed that he could station some guys in and around my building to keep an eye on me.

So that’s one piece of normality. My plan is to use the ride to work to process the rest of the decisions I have to make, to figure out how I feel about it all. Sixty minutes should be enough time to work out the history of my life and the lines zigzagging from one issue to another and another, right?

“Alright, honey,” he says with another one of his warm smiles. I squeeze his hand.

“I’ll see you tonight, Dad.”

“You’re not going to see Tomas tonight?” His genuine curiosity is fine with me, but I honestly don’t know. We haven’t talked about our relationship or the things that happened between us or even when or if we’re going to see each other again.

But I don’t think we’re ready—either one of us—to try to make something out of a few amazing tumbles between the sheets. “No. I’ll be home.”

I go back upstairs to shower and get dressed in a hurry. Then, with a kiss on the cheek for him and my mom, who’s now up and making coffee, I go out the front door and get into my car.

The way he asked if I was going to see Tomas lingers in my head as I drive down the road. Dad always loved Tomas. But would he love him if he knew the truth about the kind of man Tommy had become?

At least now I understand his loyalty to Tomas. My education… He paid for it. All this time, I thought he walked away without looking back, but he did. He took care of me. Even when I thought he was nothing more than a memory to me.

I don’t know how to process so much of this. Dad lying. Do I owe Tomas for school? I also don’t know how much Mom knows, how much I can bring up without causing a problem between my parents. But I want answers.

I’m not going to ask why they didn’t tell me. I would’ve said to call him and tell him to shove that money right up his ass. I would’ve never made it college. Not so shocking they didn’t share who put up the money.

Last night, I gave the cash Tomas took from the hotel room to Mom and Dad. I want it to make a difference for them. I want Dad not to work so hard and Mom to take a break. She’s been going hard at life since she was a teenager and she’s missed so many things because she’s too busy spinning past them to notice. And it’s because she has to just to keep up. The money is enough that she can slow down.

I smile. I know they won’t take it any easier, money or not. But I like knowing they have the option, and that I gave it to them—in a manner of speaking. They might buy better groceries now. At least real Oreos rather than the chocolate wheel cookies that don’t taste at all like the real thing.

I’m at work now. Somehow, I’ve battled bumper-to-bumper traffic, taken the correct left and right turns, and pulled in front of the building where Sentinel Security is housed. It’s glass and steel. Not skyscraper tall but tall enough I’m not taking the stairs more than once a week.

This is the place where I feel most at home. The place where I can take numbers and letters and make a computer respond exactly the way I want it to. The one place where things go according to plan.

The street isn’t busy this morning because most people are just now getting up for work, so my parking is primo. Since there are so few cars on the street, the black Lincoln across the street with its tinted windows and gun-clad Russians inside sticks out in a world of Priuses and hybrids.

My “protection.”

I wave because I don’t know what else to do. The protocols for a situation like this one are so outside of my realm of expertise. I turn and walk inside the double-glass doors with my hand still cocked in wave pose.

I have my own Russian posse now. It’s just another thing I’ll have to figure out how to deal with.

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