It’s dark when I open my eyes. I must have cried myself to sleep. Sensing movement in the room, I kick the covers back, ready to jump up if I need to. Life with Milo has never been easy. It took violence and darkness for him to rise in the ranks of the drug world. People have tested him over the years, attacking the house we managed to keep living in despite it not belonging to us. I’m always on edge. Always wary.
“I’m sorry about earlier. You know how rough it can be out there, Willa. I fucking worry,” Milo speaks from the shadows before stepping into view, the light from the moon dancing across his face from the drapeless window.
“You killed Anton.” I sniffle, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“Were you fucking him?” His voice is quiet, nothing like the boy from hours ago. The boy who robbed another of his life for something so minor.
“You know I wasn’t,” I snap. He would know if I was doing that stuff with anyone. He keeps me by his side most of the time, and when I’m not, I’m here in my room slowly wilting inside. I hate my life. I hate him. I hate me.
“Why would you need birth control?”
How the hell does he even know what they are? He’s never had a steady girlfriend. Girls waltz in and out on rotation.
“Because it’s easier than getting a period in a house where I’m not allowed to leave to buy my own tampons,” I grind out, getting to my feet to kick off my shoes. I was in such a state earlier, I got into bed fully clothed.
“You’d tell me if any of my boys…”
For god’s sake. I turn on him, poking a finger into his chest. When the anger subsides, and the irrational, terrifying side of Milo recedes, he’s a needy, vulnerable boy whose parents abandoned him. Only I get to see this side of him, and it’s always after he’s been a jerk to me or done something deplorable I’ve witnessed—and I’ve witnessed a lot of his darkness.
“What would it matter to you if all your boys were fucking me? You pimped me out years ago when it suited you,” I sneer.
Grabbing my wrist, he pins my hand to his chest and grips the back of my neck with his other, dragging me closer to him, his breath warming my face with each exhale. “I’ve never let anyone take you that way, and I’ll kill any of my boys who even try to fucking touch you.” His tone is deep and fierce, like he really believes he’s kept my innocence safe. I was eleven when I first had to “help” pay our rent. “It’s just modeling, Willa. Only…you’ll be naked.”
I am a virgin in the technical term, my hymen is intact, but my innocence was stolen a long time ago.
“I’m growing up. You’re going to have to get used to that and give me some freedoms, Milo,” I plead.
“Why would I give you freedom? So you can leave me too?”
“I will never leave you,” I grate out.
I’m thrown to the bed, the door slamming behind him as he leaves. Just as I get up and make it to the door, the latch clicks into place from the other side. “Milo!” I scream, slamming my fist against the wood. “Milo! Let me out!”
Arghhh! Fuck you, Milo!
It’s almost twelve hours later when he finally unlocks the door. Dawn creeps over the horizon, the start of a new day. “Go eat,” he commands, nodding down the hall toward the kitchen.
I know my eyes are red and swollen, but he pretends not to notice. Not one of the other guys in the house pay me any attention as I pass them, probably because of the fear Milo will gut one of them next.
My eyes track the floor where Anton laid bleeding out. It’s as if it never happened. I pass the kitchen table, stacked with cash and Wesley’s girlfriend counting it.
Wesley is Milo’s number two and best friend—if you can call loyalty through fear friendship.
She tips her chin at me in acknowledgment, and I look at the clock above her head. It’s six a.m. The house isn’t usually this busy at this time. Pulling bread from the cupboard, I smear some peanut butter between two slices and slap them together, taking a desperate bite. Grabbing a glass of water to wash down the sandwich, I move toward the table, my eyes roaming over the cash. It’s a lot more than I’ve ever seen, and a knot turns in my stomach.
“Where did this come from?” I whisper.
Wesley appears beside me, shaking his head. “Maybe you should go back to your room, yeah? Before you cause more problems.”
His body stiffens when Milo enters the room, his eyes jumping between us. “What’s the verdict?” he asks, looking to Wesley.
“Twenty K short. We have a couple days, but we’ve exhausted our avenues. We could maybe do ten by the time the deal goes down, but...”
“Fuck,” Milo growls, picking up a glass from the table and launching it across the room. It splinters into a thousand pieces. Wesley’s girlfriend and I both cower from the shards spraying across the space between us.
“Everyone out. I need to think,” he orders. I take a step to leave, but his hand reaches out to clasp my arm. “Not you.”
The sandwich has turned solid in my gut. The air is toxic. Something big is going down, and having Milo this rattled means it’s bigger than him.
“Do you love me?” he asks, his brow furrowed, eyes haunted.
“Yes,” I tell him honestly. I do love him. He’s my brother. I just hate my life with him.
“You know everything I do is for us, right? To give us more than what we were left with from our cunt parents.”
“I know,” I croak. If our mother is dead, it’s unfair to label her in the same context as our father. He chose to leave us; she didn’t have a choice. Unless she took her own life. I wish I knew more about who she was. Am I like her? Do we look alike?
“We gotta keep climbing. Never look down. If we do, we fall. But it takes sacrifice, Willa. From both of us.”
I wrap my arms around his waist and burrow my head into his chest, giving him what I think he needs. “I know,” I whisper.
“We have to do bad things, things we don’t want to, but it’s so we can have a future where we don’t want for anything.”
He pulls away, his dark eyes penetrating mine as he clasps my cheeks in his palms. “I love you. I’m the only one who ever has and ever will.”
“I know,” I assure him. He’s been telling me that since I was a little girl.
“When you hate me, remember it’s only temporary,” he pleads, his forehead coming to rest against mine.
“I don’t hate you.” I sigh, placing my hands over his. It would easier to run if I did, and although I tell myself I hate him, there’s this love for him that overrides everything when he is tender.
His eyes close, and a pit expands in my chest as he whispers, “Not yet, but you will.”
Three
Willa
Two days later…
My stomach somersaults as we drive into the city, the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention. There’s a shift in the air, in Milo’s demeanor. Things are changing.
“Where are we going?” I ask for the third time since Milo came to my room and told me to get dressed and get in his car.