Fact-finding.
It’s very lawyer-y of her. Can I really live the rest of my life with this much blood in my throat? How long before it chokes me?Maybe I want to tell Ida because she knows me so well, more than anyone but Roman.
Maybe she can tell me how I’m supposed to feel, if all this pain is rage or heartbreak.
I don’t think it can be both, anymore.
My lips are trembling with the effort not to just throw every sick, sacred detail at Ida. It wouldn’t be fair to ask that of her. But it’s also not fair to give hernothing.
If the roles were reversed, I’d want her to trust me enough to hold a little of it. Even just a glimpse, to help make sense of why someone I love is falling apart.
“I fucked up,” I confess, the words cracking loose like something old and rotted. “Me and this guy, we were doing a…” I falter, finding the contours of the lie I have to tell so I can tell the truth. “A special investigation. We had to go to this black market event. It was an auction. For girls.”
Ida’s expression shifts—surprise, then something more potent.
“Giselle,” she breathes, “you’re not serious? I mean, I know, as a cop, you see a lot but…”
Something sharpens in her expression.
“Was it something to do with Serena? Did you find out what happened to her?”
I twist Serena’s earring, let the tiny stab of pain ground me. The studs have no home now. The ceramic swan is beyond repairing with superglue. So I just never take them out.
Back home, her picture is still facing the wall.
And the man who helped kill her used to buy me scallion pancakes when I was hungover.
And at some point, my sister must’ve looked up at him with hope, or pleading, and he—he?—
Fuck!
I nod, eyes stinging. “We saved a girl. It should have been done then, but I stayed. He wasn’t good for me, actuallyreallybad for me, but I stayed anyway. I don’t know why.”
Lie.
I stayed because he caught me, showed me nirvana with a knife handle, brought me men to kill in my sister’s name, worshipped the parts of me that I’d spent so long hating.
Then, somewhere between grief and bloodlust, I forgot how to live without him. And now I don’t know if I even want to remember. All I can do, really, is let the pain take turns beating me senseless.
Ida waits, lips parted as she processes everything, dark eyes wide and watery. I don’t know what she thinks I mean when I say I stayed, but as long as she doesn’t ask for details I think we can let it lie.
“He gave me something I need,” I finally say. “Or needed. I don’t know. Everything’s gotten all fucked up and now I don’t know what’s left. I fucked up.”
Fucked up doesn’t even begin to cover it.
I’m just one betrayal after another, sewn into a uniform.
I should have hated Russo, should have taken the knife and used it, but I was too weak.
Roman said he wasn’t disappointed that I didn’t kill Russo, but he should have been.
I am.
This is all your fault, you know. You’re the one who fell for a psycho, and when you couldn’t match his freak, you flipped out.
The tears come fast and hot and this time I don’t stop them. I let myself fall into Ida’s arms, feeling her warmth seep into the parts of me I thought were permafrost.
“We’ll get through this together,” she whispers. A fragile promise, thin as thread, but strong enough to hold me upright for now.
