Page 40 of Ruined

“Good,” he says. “Let’s go home.”

* * *

Angelo takes me home. Not to a place any of us have been before. To a new home, a new background for us to live our lives against. The very concept of home has been perverted now, along with everything else.

I go with him because even though I am absolutely furious, I am relieved at this twisted turn of events.

I want to take a shower, get cleaned up, and put some fresh clothes on. I want to feel like myself again. Even a few days in custody has a way of starting to morph the mind. It’s hard to maintain your identity when the entirety of your world has shifted and is forcing you to adapt. Here, with Angelo, I’m Riley. In their custody, I was Inmate Cooper.

I take a shower to wash that title off me just as much as to get the actual filth of three days in a cell away.

I get dressed again, long socks, boots, tight pants and a black sweater. I really favor black these days, and boots. I like to feel like there’s some weight to my presence, that I’m anchored. They’re still soft and pliable enough to run in, though, and that matters.

Bobby’s not happy about the fact that I just slapped Angelo and lived to walk away. If he had any sense, like I do, he’d know there’s no chance in hell that’s what really happened. I know Angelo will get me back for that sooner or later. I know I won’t see it coming.

“You’re not going to whip her ass for that? You’d beat me for a month if I did that.” Bobby’s outrage is making him a little pitchy. It’s kind of cute. I feel a warmth in my stomach at that voice. These are the little intimacies you get to enjoy when you really know

someone.

Bobby was wrapped up in this plot too, obviously, but I doubt he had any choice in it. Angelo manipulates the world and the things in it to an extent I do not think I will ever be able to truly fathom or appreciate.

“She’s a little girl and that slap barely made an impression, Bobby. Besides, she had a right to vent her anger. She lasted three days against relatively intense interrogation. She’s proved herself. I’ll take the slap. You’ve done worse.”

“And I paid for it.”

“Boy, you’ve done things no other man would live through, and you know it.”

Bobby’s dark little laugh indicates that he knows full well that is true. He stops whining as I enter the room. Angelo smiles at me. I smile back. It really does feel like coming home to family. A twisted, fucked up, suspicious family, but still a family. Angelo asks me the one question that makes everything better.

“Are you hungry?”

17

I’ve been tested and have proven myself. I’m not a snitch, and I’m not waiting for an easy out or some offer from the government to turn Angelo in. He can trust me, and I can trust him.

Of course, there’s still the fact that he tested me. I still don’t love that. I understand that Angelo really only trusts one other person in the world, but what he put me through could have destroyed me. He would have rather I was taken apart by the law than not know if I was able to hold myself together.

It’s fair to say I’ve been left with more than a little bit of an attitude, though I know better than to express it to his face. I won’t get another free slap. The next time, he’ll fuck me up.

That idea thrills me a little.

I am part of the family now. I no longer fear being cast out. I know that I am going to be a Vitali until my last breath. And that gives me a certain amount of freedom I’ve not had before. I’m now free to be bad. To misbehave. To get myself into the kind of trouble I’ve only ever dreamed of.

There’s an impulse for self-destruction so common to the human condition that there’s a term for it, call of the void. That’s what I feel when I look at Angelo, a yearning to dash myself against the eternity I see in his eyes.

I want him to hurt me. I want to feel the pain only he can provide, that sensation with deep and twisted context. I want to feel the line between safety and oblivion, walking the tightrope of forever with only his hand to steady me.

This desire marinates in the secret parts of me for quite some time. Days pass, and many nights, and Angelo might be forgiven for thinking I was that all too pedestrian phrase: over it.

I relax into my new life. I feel out my new family. I let myself be happy. And I plot my revenge, like a true Vitali.

Generally speaking, Angelo and Bobby and I do nothing for very long stretches of time. Angelo’s empire allows for a great deal of leisure time. Certainly, we must always be careful in case of enemy attack or lawful incursion, but for the most part, we live charmed lives.

One sunny morning at a lovely mansion somewhere in Greece, I make my move. Angelo is sitting out on the terrace which looks out over the bright blue Aegean Sea. He is wearing a white shirt, no cufflinks, drinking his coffee. Bobby is sitting across from him, entirely shirtless and flexing as he chews toast and looks out over the ocean.

It is a moment of deep peace, but I feel a little pang of panic, as I do quite often in the mornings when I see Angelo having breakfast. I don’t remember the details of the day I was shot all that clearly, but my body remembers, and there are certain moments, sights and sounds that cause reactions deep inside me.

I choke the feeling down and force myself to keep watching him, because it is important. Today is important.

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