Page 33 of Kings & Chaos

“Thirteen,” Rock said.

“Thirteen? Oh my god… is twenty too young to feel old?” I wasn’t twenty just yet, but my birthday was coming up and I didn’t want to make a thing about it with the Kings.

He chuckled behind me. “Not at all. My mom used to say she only felt old on our birthdays, not her own.”

His voice had grown heavy at the mention of his mom, and I twisted to look up at him. His jaw was set like granite, water beading on his skin, his hair curling at the base of his neck.

I rested my hand against his cheek. “I remember your mom,” I said softly. “She was the fun one at parties. The one who danced with everybody, even us kids, but not in the embarrassing drunk way.”

It took a certain kind of person to be happy as a Mob wife, and there was more than one cautionary tale in the family, women who drowned their sorrows at big events and got sloppy-drunk, their husbands ordering their men to take her home while everyone else looked on disapprovingly.

I always felt sorry for them. They’d been so distracted by the gilt on their cages that they’d flown right in.

“She was,” he said.

“I liked her,” I said, turning back around to lean against Rock’s chest. “You… you took care of her when she was sick, right?”

I’d been young at the time — maybe thirteen? — and had vague memories of my parents talking about it.

“Yeah.” There was a storm cloud in his voice. “Somebody had to do it.”

“But you were just a kid yourself,” I said.

“Sixteen,” he said.

I pictured him at sixteen, full of swagger and BDE, and felt a twinge of guilt for assuming he was a douchebag. He’d probably been in pain, covering it up the only way men in our world were taught to deal with their emotions.

I hesitated, my next question lingering on my tongue.

“Go ahead,” he prompted.

“I don’t want to overstep,” I said.

“Hey.” He gently tipped my head so I was looking up at him. “You can ask me anything, tell me anything.”

“What about your dad?” I asked. Rock’s dad had always been friendly, a gregarious guy with a booming laugh and razor-sharp wit.

He laughed bitterly. “My dad is a selfish asshole. The only thing he lost when my mom got sick was a trophy to show off at family weddings and christenings. He wasn’t interested in taking care of her. He spent all his time prowling Score with the other degenerates in the family while I took care of my mom and Sophia.”

Score was the strip club where all our dads had hung out and probably laundered money. Rock’s dad had clearly just peaced-out after his mom got sick, leaving Rock and Sophia to watch their mom die alone.

My chest felt tight imagining it. No kid deserved that kind of burden.

I stretched to kiss him. “I’m so sorry,” I said, looking into his eyes, a darker shade of blue in the dim outdoor light. “You and Sophia deserved better.”

“We all deserved better,” he growled.

I thought about it: Rock taking care of his sick mom while his dad combed Score for fresh meat, Neo with Roberto for a dad (enough said), Oscar and his toxically masculine father who would never in a million years allow Oscar to pursue a life — or career — away from the family.

And me. Daughter of a traitor who’d abandoned his family.

“I guess we have that in common,” I said.

“Now you’re catching on.”

There was something dark in his voice, something I’d never heard before, and I turned to sit sideways across his lap so I could really see his face. “What do you mean?”

“Just that there are… things you may not remember. Stuff that we all went through because of our fathers.”

---