Page 70 of The Brutal Arrangement

Eventually, I got out. It would serve me no purpose to linger and wallow in that tub or anywhere else. There was no hope for me to have any control over my life in any way, but sinking—literally—into dread and gloom seemed like a waste. Wishing things could be different also seemed like a futile joke, but I couldn’t help it.

After I dressed, I dropped into bed and stared at the ceiling, doing my best not to picture my mom being shuffled from her current nursing home to another location. Moving wasn’t ideal for someone in her position. Her memories were already locked away and out of reach, but the faint ability to form short-term connections to her surroundings would mess her up like this.

Routines mattered. Keeping things consistent and predictable were preferred. But once she got into that shitty state-run facility, she’d be just a number. Just a body to place somewherewithout any adequately trained staff there to give a damn about her.

Tears began to fall again, but since I was alone in this bedroom, I didn’t care. My body hurt too much. My heart ached with such a severe, gaping intensity that I doubted it’d ever be pieced together again.

This was it.

This was myonepurpose. My one mission in life.

And I’d failed it.

All I had tried to do since my dad died was comfort my mom. Then as I noticed signs of her mental decline, I tried to take charge and be responsible for keeping her as safe and happy and comfortable as I could.

But that, too, was so far out of my control that I shouldn’t have ever gotten my hopes up to think I could succeed there.

I’m sorry, Mom.

I tried.

Regret made my heart sink lower, and I doubted that I’d ever forgive myself for thinking I could have a shortcut to financial security, that I could’ve found a lucky fortune to have her moved into Dream Garden.

It really came down to one simple fact that I’d so dumbly ignored.

If something seems too good to be true…

I sighed, opening my eyes as I accepted that I’d failed that test twice.

My first mistake was in thinking Katerina would hold up her end of the bargain. That was the price I paid for being so eager for a friend that I believed her.

My second mistake was in starting to think that Damon could begin to care for me. That was the price I had to pay for being so desperate for affection and love that I thought he cared.

Clearly, Katerina had duped me.

But I bet Damon had no clue how he was playing with my heart now. I was so hopeful that he meant it when he wanted to let me into his life and learn to like me. I realized that he was a guarded man, and it had felt like such a reward to earn his approval, to win his attention. He’d shown his true colors, though. He couldn’t care about me at all if he’d cling to the accusations that I was lying.

In a hazy fugue of stress and exhaustion mixed with despair, I dozed and eventually slept all through the night.

Alone.

Damon hadn’t come back.

As if that distance wasn’t telling enough, he stayed away from me the next day, too. A maid delivered me food that I had no appetite for. Just like that, it seemed I’d be thrust back into that isolation I’d started with here. I got it. I wasn’t to be trusted. I was an outsider. I was a person sent to them under false pretenses from someone they deemed to be their enemy. I could connect those dots and see how they’d be skeptical of anything I said.

For all their skepticism of me, though, I wanted to argue that I wasn’t giving them any room to doubt me. I hadn’t called anyoneall this time, save for that call back to the director about my mom being moved out of their facility. I hadn’t emailed. I hadn’t even powered my phone on, partly out of fear.

If Damon doubted all of this about my mom, it wasn’t like it’d be hard for him to check it out. My mom had kept her maiden name even after marriage, too much of an old-school feminist to take my dad’s name even though I had his at birth. Still, these Mafia men had resources. They couldn’t verify that I was telling the truth?

Before I could suffer through another day of nothing, locked up in Damon’s apartment, he returned.

I looked up from the chair I’d chosen to sit in near the window, staring at the rain falling out the window. It streaked down in rivulets, almost mesmerizing me in a zoned-out state of blankness.

He didn’t speak as he strode toward me. That serious, stern stare he gave me would’ve chilled me weeks ago, but I was too empty inside to care now.

Is this it?

He’s going to kill me now?

---