There was a dusty cardboard box of yellow rubber balls. To squeeze and relieve stress, or something like that. It had a happy face painted on it. I grabbed one for Meatball. He might like to chase after it. Then I took a second ball. Meatball might want to play with this second ball after he devoured the first one. I also snagged the box of Kleenex on the doctor’s desk because we were running low on toilet paper at home.
I was pondering the box of Band-Aids when the doctor on duty appeared. He looked at my chart, and refused to take the cast off until he was sure that the fingers had healed properly. I had waited all morning for that five-minute denial.
“I’ll sign a release form. It’ll be our little secret. I promise not to sue you.”
The doctor was already out of the room. He was like a waterspout. You’d never know he’d been there unless you had actually witnessed it.
I stole the box of Band-Aids before being sent to another door down the hall, where I was to meet yet another medical authority for an X-ray. As I came to open the door to Callister University’s X-ray room, I happened to read the warning sign hanging on the door, and I paused.
Insignificant details of the past few weeks started trickling through my head.
Insignificant details became momentous signs. Life-altering.
I headed back down the hall. When I got back to the clinic, I found and flagged down the first medical staff I could find. A young nurse, in training. There were a lot of those here. I pulled her aside, came close to this stranger’s ear, and whispered.
When I was done, she took a breath, arched her head up, and smiled, obviously struggling to control the inexpert fit of giggles that were climbing inside of her. She went to the cabinet of free stuff for students, where college medical essentials were stocked. Barf bags. Medication in samples, the better stuff (whatever the staff hadn’t already looted). A shelf just for condoms, and in the corner, long white boxes that reminded me of the jewelry boxes—diamond necklaces, diamond bracelets, diamond watches—my mother would get as gifts from my father. Usually as an apology or bribery.
The nurse handed me a white box, and I took it into the washroom.
I sat in a stall and waited for the umpteenth time that day, even though I already knew. My world was spinning out of control. The signs had been ignored, by me, but they had been there. The theatrical nausea, the throwing up in trash bins, in front of the doors to the philosophy class. Even before the full five minutes was up and the two lines on the complimentary pregnancy test had revealed themselves, I knew I was pregnant.
While I held the evidence—the pee stick—in one hand, my free hand had found itself to my belly. When I noticed, I whipped it off like I’d been burned. Then I threw the pregnancy test on the ground and used both my feet to systematically stomp it to pieces.
Revenge is a strange thing. It tests you. It changes you. It makes you do things that you would have never thought yourself capable of doing.
Revenge feels a lot like survival. The need to hurt, the need to kill consumes you. Except that when revenge turns to survival, hate is replaced by total desperation.
CHAPTER TWO: CAMERON
ERASED
I had spent so much of my time designing the Farm. Every board, every rock, every shrub, I had placed there with Emmy flooding my brain—her likes, her dislikes, the color of her eyes, her smile, her laugh. Though I would often daydream and see her flowing through its rooms, I never thought she would actually ever see it, let alone live in it. Still, the Farm had always been meant for her.
Now all I wanted to do was burn it to the fucking ground.
Maybe someday I would be so lucky, but for now I was forced to let our guards erase all of us from it. Once we had finished packing, wiping it down, scraping the blood out, we would board it up and vacate.
Spider and I were outside leaning against the rail, watching through the glass doors as our cleaning crew pulled the floorboards up. This was where my brother was murdered, his blood left to soak through the floor, his ghost left to forever haunt me and this place.
Carly walked through the living room, keeping her eyes ahead and making an extra-wide circle around the cleaners. She came to join us on the deck and wiped her blackened hands on her jeans.
“I hate moving,” she grumbled.
She watched the guards carry out her millions of boxes from the pool house.
“Maybe moving wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have so much crap,” I told her.
Spider sneered, until Carly shot him the look of death.
“It’s not like we don’t move every other month, Carly. You think you would have figured this out by now,” I added.
This comment would have normally gotten me my very own look of death, but Carly had been very careful around me lately. Like I was holding a gun to my head. I hated that she was doing this, so I provoked her whenever possible. And Spider let me get away with it. This too irked me.
It had taken a while for us to feel safe enough to return to the Farm after Victor’s men had stormed it and started the war against us. We could not return until we were sure that the echo of shots being fired hadn’t attracted unwanted attention from the distant neighbors or local police.
We had just a few hours to pack up and go back into hiding.
We had over a hundred hideaways throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Not counting my cabin, which Spider and Carly didn’t know about. We moved every other month. Sometimes we moved, only to pack up the next day. No one was as good at disappearing from civilization, so often, so quickly, as us.
My mom and I moved around all the time when I was a kid; I had learned to travel light from birth. I didn’t get attached to anything, and Spider had the same philosophy. Carly, on the other hand, had so much junk that she was running out of room for it in the pool house. She was constantly picking up stuff at flea markets, garage sales, curbside garbage. She was attached to all her junk and everybody else’s.
It had been a while since all three of us had been together for longer than a few minutes at a time. I had created a mile-high pile of shit in the underworld, and the captains were incensed. It hadn’t helped that I had brought up the subject of retaliation against Shield. I couldn’t explain to them why we needed to risk notice by taking out the union leader of the United States police force. I had no proof that he had been the one to storm the Farm and kill off my men. The only person who had witnessed the crime, and was still alive, was Emmy. As far as they were concerned, Emily Sheppard did not exist. As far as they were concerned, Rocco had never been related to me. As far as they were concerned, I was insulated—I had no lovers, family, or friends who could be used to distract me from making them money.
Because of my negligence, we had lost two drug shipments to Somalian pirates, our Canadian allies were in a state of chaos, and the Mexican drug cartel had broken the southern turf treaty. Just a couple months of Emmy, and I had lost control over the underworld.
And Shield had used all of this to start campaigning against me with the captains and helping some of them out by messing with the justice system, pulling favors. While he may have denied involvement in any of this, we both knew that he was the cause of my grief. He would have to pay for that, eventually.
I had never made so many dumbass moves in my life. I needed to refocus on the one thing I was good at—making money for the lords of the underworld. But this was easier said than done because I missed Emmy so badly that at times I felt like doing exactly what Carly expected me to do: shoot my brains out. Having had Emmy by my side—immediately addicting—nothing would ever be as good again.
I missed how her lips tasted. I missed the softness of her skin and how her hand fit so securely into mine. I missed the smell of her hair and the puffiness of her face when she was tired. I wanted to wake up next to her and have her all to myself every day, forever.
I missed all of her, and I needed more. But all I could get nowadays were glimpses into her life—something that used to
be enough for me. Now, just seeing her walking down the street made me ache even more.
All of a sudden, I found myself walking through the glass doors and getting held back by Carly’s hand on my shoulder.
“Did you hear what I said?” she asked me.
I hadn’t heard a word. All I could hear was the echo of Emmy’s voice bouncing around my head, pulling me back to her with the force of a magnetic field.
Carly kept her hand on me. “Where are you going?”
“I’ve got stuff to do before we head to California.”
“Like?” Spider was keeping his spot against the rail, his arms permanently crossed over his chest. He still had traces of a black eye after Emmy had broken his nose with her tiny hand.
He thought he knew everything about the business—what I did, who I talked to, who I killed. And that used to be true, but things had changed. He wasn’t involved in everything I did anymore. He had been distracted himself over the last few weeks—disappearing, bowing out of meetings. And I had made decisions that I had wanted to keep from him and Carly.
While I tried to figure out how to get out the door without further inquisition, Carly looked to the heavens in exasperation.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Cameron. We know where you’re going.”
I shut the glass door in her face, stopped at the landing, and changed course to the library at the end of the hall. A couple of guards were packing up the books into cardboard boxes.
“Get out,” I ordered.
They sprung up and left, keeping their eyes ahead, as if I were never really there.
Most of the books had already been pulled off the shelves and packed. The packed boxes were spread across the room, with a few tossed over the piano I had bought for Emmy. This whole room had been for Emmy—the floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books, the stone fireplace, the windows overlooking the forest. Out of every room in the house, this one I had made especially for her, imagining her lounged on the couch, reading in front of a fire.
When Emmy had entered this room the first time, I had been nervous—and I never get nervous. But to see her fingers stroke the back of the books, to see her face light up, I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to pull her off her feet and dance around the room with her in my arms.
As realization set in that I would never dance with Emmy in this room or any other room, I wanted to take an ax to it.
I shoved the boxes off Emmy’s piano and started tearing open the boxes on the floor. When the door slammed behind me, I kept going, hoping I would quickly find what I was looking for so that I could escape the cross-examination.
Spider and Carly sat on the couch in the middle of the room and watched me for a little while. But Carly is the most impatient person I’ve ever met.
“How was Emmy when you saw her?”
There was an immediate squeeze to my heart.
I had been watching over Emmy from the apartment across the street. Sitting by the front window for hours, hoping that I would be able to see her, even if it was just to see her come and go. But she didn’t come out very much, just to take Meatball out for walks.
I had never seen Emmy look so … despondent, as if the life had been sucked out of her. She was frail, like a gust of wind would be enough to break her in half. She didn’t look like herself. She didn’t look like my beautiful, strong Emmy. As happy as I was to see her, seeing her in this way made my heart recoil.
Carly had been analyzing my countenance.
“Cameron,” she pleaded, “enough already. Go get her. You can’t let her fall apart like this. There’s still time to make it better.”
I kicked the recently emptied box across the room and tore into the next one that was closest to me. “Go get her, and do what? Have her stay here as a sitting target? Wait ’til someone else has it in for us and takes it out on her? She’s not meant for this shit life.”
Carly locked eyes with me. “You don’t give her enough credit. She’s a lot tougher than you give her credit for. Than we all gave her credit for.”
“She deserves better than this,” I said, my tone severe. Emmy had the luck of being born into privilege and could have had anything she wanted. She should have been happy. Someday, she would forget; someday, she would be happy and safe and alive. I had convinced myself of this. “We’re stuck living in this kind of shit. There’s no room for family or friends here.”
I watched as Carly and Spider shifted in their seats as I said this. And I saw Carly draw back.
But Spider wasn’t about to back down.
“If you keep spying on that chick, she’ll eventually see you. For all we know, she could have already seen you.”
I kicked yet another emptied box across the room, and then kicked the loose crap that I’d strewn on the floor so that I could clear a path to the last unopened box that was next to the piano. “She didn’t see me. She won’t see me. I’ve been able to hide from her all these years. I know her too well. She had no idea I was even there.”
This hadn’t been exactly true. Meatball had spotted me watching from the apartment and had almost given me away to Emmy. I had to hide in the bathroom when Emmy came to drag him back into the house. How could a dumb dog be so goddamn smart?
“Except that it’s not just her, Cameron,” Carly continued. “You know that Victor probably has people watching her too. After everything we went through to make her believe that you were—”
Carly took a breath and stopped herself from reminding me of the most painful day in my life.
“We’ve worked hard to get them to think that you left her and that you don’t give a shit about her,” Spider continued. “If they find you, they’ll know that we’ve been playing them. And then we’re all in fucking trouble, including Emily.”
I ripped open the last box and immediately found the books I had been searching for. I got up and took the box with me.
“You can’t keep living in between.” Carly’s face was drawn in concern. “If you’re adamant that you’re not going to go get her, if you really want her to move on, then let her grieve and give her a chance to live on.”
“We have to get back to business,” Spider added. “The constant interruptions are not going to get us back into the good books.”
I knew they were both right, but I wasn’t about to admit it. And staying away from Emmy … forever … I didn’t think I would ever be able to, even if I knew in my heart that it was in Emmy’s best interest.
“You have to stay as far away from her as possible,” Spider said.
While I stood, ready to leave, heavy goddamn box in arms, Spider and Carly watched me and waited.
“Did you forget the promise I made Bill?” I asked to Carly specifically. “I told him I would always watch over Emmy. Keep her safe.”
As expected, this made Spider irate. “Bill’s dead. Who cares if you break your promise to that idiot? Besides, I don’t think he expected you to watch her so closely that you’d be naked on her.”
My fingers dug into the cardboard while Spider smirked. As much as I knew how to get a rise out of him, he knew how to get a rise out of me.
Carly put up a white flag. “If you just want to make sure she’s safe, I can make that happen. That way, you can still keep your promise to Bill without risking being around her.”
This caught both Spider’s and my interest. “How?” I wondered.
“Do you trust me?” she asked me.
“Mostly.”
“Do you trust me to do everything possible to keep Emmy and the rest of us safe?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
“And do you promise to stay away from Emmy?”
I hesitated there. “You’re not going to tell me what you’re planning, are you?”
She shook her head. “It’s better if you remove yourself completely and let me take care of Emmy.”
When I eyed Spider, looking for elaboration, he just raised his shoulders. This was all Carly.
“Cameron,
you know it’s for the best. If you don’t go get her, then you have to let her go,” she said.
My heart tightened and my teeth clenched, because I knew that Carly was right. “I’ll stay away from her.”
The words coming out of my mouth felt like knives on my tongue.
When I got to my car, Tiny, one of the few men I ever trusted with my life, was waiting for me. I was carrying the box of wordy and dense philosophy books from the class Emmy and I had once secretly shared. An amphitheater-sized class where I could keep an eye on her and easily keep myself hidden. We should have been attending another class together this school year. But I wasn’t going to be there.
I placed the box on the backseat, and we drove off.
I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep my promise to Carly. Keeping away from Emmy, letting someone else look after her … just the thought of it made me want to slit someone’s throat.
****
We drove into a tidy neighborhood in New Jersey. Tiny dropped me off on the corner and drove away. It was already dark. Through brightly lit windows, I could see families sitting down eating their dinner in front of the TV, oblivious to the fact that I was stalking through their backyards. When I got to the neat backyard of a little bungalow, I swiftly peered through the backdoor window and chuckled at the sight of the red eye of a motion detector.
Alarm systems aren’t just a joke; they’re dangerous. Their purpose is to make you think you’re safe. Make you feel like you can relax and let your guard down. But anything that one human created, another can destroy.