Page 6 of Last Hand

She needed those pills just to breathe without her chest rattling like loose gravel. Needed them to keep her heart from giving out before she even reached kindergarten.

And I wasn’t there.

The guilt of it—I don’t think I’ll ever crawl out from under it. I failed him. I failed both my girls. I failed myself.

I had relapsed after Fallon and tried to get clean. Failed again. Nathan never gave up on me. He begged. Dragged me to meetings. Hauled me off the floor more times than I can count. They don’t call it the devil’s drug for nothing—it reaps your soul and drags you closer to death with each hit.

And then I got pregnant again. Emma.

I stayed clean through the pregnancy—I swear I did. It was too late. The damage had already been done, long before I knew she existed. I was too far in; by the time I realized I was pregnant, I was already halfway through my second trimester.

She was born tiny. Too tiny. Her whole body trembled, like she was cold from the inside out. Her skin was pale, waxy, and almost translucent. I remember thinking she looked like a porcelain doll someone had dropped, too delicate to survive, too cracked to fix.

She didn’t scream. Didn’t wail like a newborn should. Just let out this thin, broken whimper that barely filled the space between the beeping monitors.

Her eyes fluttered open once. Bloodshot. Tired. Like she’d already lived a hundred lives before she ever took her first breath. They said she was withdrawing.

I didn’t need them to explain it, I knew what that meant. The shaking, the quiet, the stiffness in her limbs. She was born already fighting a war I put in her blood.

They placed her in a plastic crib, covered in wires. Her tiny chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven gasps. Every breath I held mine, praying it wouldn’t be her last, praying to take her place. She was punished for my addiction.

“Too much pressure on her heart,” one doctor said, like he was reading from a textbook. Like she wasn’t a person. Like she wasn’t mine.

”Her heart’s enlarged. Not pumping properly. She’ll need medication immediately, possibly for life. Without medication and oxygen, she’ll be lucky to make it to her first birthday.”

I sat there, arms still numb from delivery, bleeding between my legs, and couldn’t stop shaking. Not from pain. From shame. I had done this to her.

With the price of medication, even the doctors knew it would be a miracle. That miracle came in the form of her father; she fought and after a month in intensive care, she somehow started breathing a little easier. Doctors couldn’t explain it, her heart kept beating despite what we were told, eventually they sent her home with oxygen and a list of medications we couldn’t afford. Even at one-month-old, she looked like a premature baby, and somehow, Nathan kept her alive all those years. Gosh, he must hate me.

A mother is supposed to protect their child, and I failed mine. She needed treatment, and we needed money to pay for it, so I did the stupidest thing I could have done. I robbed Mikhail. And then he found me.

Dragged me off the street before I even made it home.

When he asked if I had family, I lied. I said no and begged for my life, not theirs. Told him I was just a street rat, which wasn’t far from the truth.

Orphaned by the time I was four, I grew up in the foster system until I aged out of it, mostly in group homes. Eventually, too old, they showed me the door. I slept in doorways, trains, and bus stops. Ate from bins. I learned how to steal before I learned how to read. I didn’t have anyone, not until Nathan came along.

So I gave him up to save him. Gave Fallon and Emma up, too.

Mikhail didn’t question it. He intended to put me to work, earn his forgiveness. He didn’t mean to keep me. Not at first.

When Mikhail found me, I was just another addict who owed him more than I could pay, despite him getting his money back. He was going to sell me, just like he’d sold dozens of others before me.

Then he found out I’d just had a baby. One he believes died because I couldn’t keep a needle out of my arm. It wasn’t too much of a stretch. Even to this day, I still have the scars on my arms.

He didn’t get sentimental—Mikhail doesn’t feel things like that. So, he kept me. Not as a guest. Not as a girlfriend. Just as a body. A thing to use when the mood struck. He said I was already ruined.

He liked that I fought him at first. Said it made it more fun.

He liked breaking me even more. He kept me in his house, chained to the fireplace in his living room.

And for a while, that was all I was—something to keep his dick warm when the need arose. Until the night everything changed.

It was one of his father’s old enemies, some washed-up rival from a family feud that started decades earlier. That was the first time I ever heard the name Pressutti. Vittorio was even more ruthless than Mikhail from what I heard, though whether it was true, I do not know. Mikhail said he had it handled. ThatVittorio was worried because he moved to the states, this was a turf war which became so much more than that when Lydia, his sister, decided to help. She was fifteen years Mikhail’s junior. That was much later though, this particular night, Vittorio sent someone to kill Mikhail.

The man came fast. Quiet. A gun to Mikhail’s chest before he even stood from his chair. Mikhail didn’t hear him slip in the back door, nor did we expect it since his father returned home. Though he heard my scream, which warned him, he twisted just in time.

The shot ripped through Mikhail’s shoulder. His gun went skittering across the floor.

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