Chapter 14

Corrin

“Are you certain I can’t help?” I persist as I put a gauze pad and a disinfectant on the sink besides Sevina.

Aida ordered to patch her before she shoved a little black bag into my hands and Terrel said to bring something cold, but I didn’t want to waste time.

Sevina idles for a while. “You can do something else.”

“What?”

“You can… can you cut my hair?” She utters into the ground. “My shoulder hurts.”

Inwardly, I beam from at least some form of good I can provide. “Sure. Why, though?”

“Lenore said it can’t be long.”

“All… right.”

Sevina checks the shelves for scissors and finds some rusty brown ones, rotates them in her hands and puts them back.

“Knife?” She takes the bind of her wrist and hands it to me. I look away as she slides out of her dark brown, bomber jacket. It’s definitely from a thrift shop as you don’ see those in expensive clothing stores.

She turns me her back. “Don’t linger.”

“I’m not exactly a hair stylist.” I try to tie a neat and high ponytail. I take out my knife. “Do you really want to cut it?” Her ponytail is straight and at the length of her elbows. I never noticed her hair was this long and this… attractive. Corrin, refrain from such thoughts! Sooner or later she’ll look me in the eyes and it’ll be hips situation again. She has seen much worse, though…

She glances at me through the mirror. “Do I have a choice?”

“Most likely not.” Sevina faces the mirror. It’s short all right, although the front is longer than the back.

As if refusing to accept the change she averts from her reflection, her short hair swinging with the movement. “Will do.” She shrugs on her jacket, failing to hide a grimace of pain.

“I can check your shoulder.” I throw the hair into the trash bin. “My mom made me attend medical classes with all the injuries I received when I was a kid.”

“No.”

Despite myself I step closer. “Sevina.” Her yellow eyes flick at me fiercely and I stop. “We’re in the lion’s den here. You, refusing help is… foolish. You have to utilize what you can, while you can. That I learned on the streets.”

She sniffs, toilet paper jutting from her nose. “Fine.” She turns me her shoulder, sliding from her jacket again. Carefully, I pull the sleeve of her tee up and place my hands on her cold skin, probing it with my fingers.

“Your hands shake,” she says.

White faces and speckles of horrors have been flashing in my mind for a while now. “It’s nothing. This whole place is… constricting.” Corrin, don’t think about it… say something else. “It’d be great if you blended in more.”

She observes me in the mirror. “What do you mean?”

She has things to learn, has to adjust her appearance too. The way she carries herself— feminine and unsure— doesn’t fit the streets. Her uncertainty, from the small steps she takes to her head, always down, screams I’m prey! “Your walk, the way you carry yourself. It’s… too… not suitable for the streets.” Every day spent on the street shaped my posture into bigger strides, into rigid, paranoid movements. Polite smiles were overtaken by frowns and menacing glances. I didn’t even intend for it to happen. It just did.

Inevitably, same that happened to me will happen to her. But can I prepare her? Her delicate mind won’t be able to take the sudden change if it hits as it hit me. “And your clothing.”

“What’s wrong with my clothing?” She asks again, undercurrent of intentional spite in her voice. She must be allowing herself to mess with me. I killed her friends and now I’m ordering her what to do.

At her hateful reaction my chest tightens with panic and loneliness, air slowing in my lungs. She’s not pretending to care, because she doesn’t. It became clear when she kicked the wall last night. “Nothing is wrong with it, we just need to find you something more… street-ish…” I force myself to exhale.

If Sevina notices she doesn’t show it. “Street-ish?

“Something that hides all… you know…” I subtly line the hourglass shape in the air with both hands.

“Okay.” She sees it in the mirror and pokes her shoulder, shuddering. Maybe she really didn’t understand and it’s me, raving mad in this place, wrongly assuming she hates me. “Will my shoulder be okay?”

“It should. I didn’t feel anything in particular. Still better put something cold to it and don’t strain it for a while.”

She props her arms on the sink, in thought.

An engine roars in the distance and I choke up. Trying not to show it, I sit on the ground by the door.

Corrin, talk… you have to talk… “Sevina, you know you’ll have to fight again, right?”

“I know.” She halts for a minute, thinking, then breathes a short sigh as if she’s decided something. “I have to learn at least something for my real self. You gotta show me how to shoot and steal first.” She looks at me on the ground. “Whenever you’ll be capable.”

She’s accepting it. She’s fighting for the same cause. Pitiful pride washes over me. Hey, look, she sees use in me. I can be helpful to this partnership by something more than using her powers. And she wants me to do it.

…

At night, unable to sleep, I sneak into the kitchen and open one of the rusty fridges, laying my eyes on all the goods. I seize a pack of processed meat and some bread, put my fingers on some canned food—

“Tst, stealing protein from those who need it most, huh?”

With a huff I pivot, ready to throw bread at whoever will attack me. Quint scratches his ear, or rather no ear. I ineptly slide the fridge door close with my foot and holster the food in my arms, out of habit widening my stance to appear bigger. Is there punishment for stealing?

Quint notices on my technique. “It’s better to have a thick vest.”

“Vest?”

“Yeah, I once made this double one from my pillow. Leather on top, pillow underneath. Makes you look bigger, keeps the warmth in.” He pats his chest.

“What?” My temples pounding, I still expect a beating.

“Come on, think all I care about is women. Here, it’s impossible to do.”

Over my claustrophobic, buzzing mind I stumble through words. “That’s… great. Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Quint sits at the table. “Food will do you good. You are a mess.”

“Why are you here?”

“It’s a job.” He yawns and checks his watch. “Delivering some supplies. By the way, don’t worry about the food. Terrel told me of your… episodes.” Ah, terrific, one more guy knows my weaknesses. But Terrel’s letting me steal it. When Terrel asked me to step away, during Sevina’s first fight, I reluctantly disclosed that I need rest to build my strength back, and, to my surprise, Terrel nodded his nearly bald head with understanding. For a gang member he does have a good heart. Sevina was right about him.

“What’s the job? For who?” I sit at the table and stuff some bread into my face.

“I don’t know. Someone.”

“What kind of jobs are there?” I pry, chewing.

“Delivery mostly. Packages, drugs, supplies. Contracts. Weapons. Cash. Sometimes we do the heavy lifting, storing stuff in the warehouses.”

I swallow. “Do you, you know… kill?”

“Sometimes, yes, the more trusted ones get to kill.”

“What if you fail?”

“Ha, that’s funny.” His buoyancy reminds me of Dan. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? That’s why it’s so hard to get a well-paid job. We are just the workforce, not mob. We have to prove ourselves if we want to be taken into the real mob business.”

“So, you’re saying that if,” I imply in an unsuspicious way. “Let’s say, I want to be recruited into the family, I’ll have to kill.”

Quint rolls his eyes. “Duh, of course.”

Oh, God. How am I going to do this? I’ll never kill again. But what if I don’t have a choice. What if to face my father again I have to stare down the barrel at some person? Sevina already hates me. What will she think of this? How will I pull myself together to not only keep on my feet, but also protect and support her?

“Don’t worry,” Quint’s voice breaks my chain of thought. “Best you’ll ever do is take my or Aida’s place if we leave. You have no chance of making it into the ranks of the real mob.”

“No?” I say simply, somewhere deep inside me finding the speckle of valor. There was valor in me when I stepped into the restaurant, ready to do terrible things. There will be valor in me to stop them. I have to find a way, somehow… “So what happens if Aida or you leave?”

“I sure hope we’ll get a steady supply of jobs to be able to feed all these kids. Usually the mob prefers the gangs from which their members came,” he says. “But half of the kids will run away, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Terrel’s strong. But other gangs are competitive, stronger, and ruthless. Even working guys here see them as more successful. Kids hear the men talk about false prospects outside of this gang. They want to follow, take care of themselves. All Terrel’s doing is raising a bunch of useless people because he refuses to train them.” He scratches his ear scar and shrugs. “Some moral stuff Aida says.”

The structure of the other gangs might differ, but this place is quite strict and organized for a gang. I can only imagine how harsh the other gangs are. And for fifteen grown people to feed over seventy mouths, I’m thinking, is a bit problematic. But who else will take them. Even if they’d be taken into other gangs not many of them will be able to lead a murderer’s life. I know, I couldn’t.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“Don’t know, mate.” His eyebrows arch and he chuckles with sincerity. “I hate this place.”

“Kids definitely loved your hate in the fighting pit.” I catch myself wishing to swing a punch again, to feel control over myself.

“Eh, fun will keep’em here longer.” Quint grabs a bottle of water from the fridge.

When I was a kid, my fighting used to be careless, fun with no stakes. Dan loved playing with me. In front of Dan I was tiny, but whenever we sparred I forgot about the world and focused on keeping calm and collected. Even after Dan went off for his trial I spared with one of the Fathers men. Well, it’d be hard to call it sparring, but I was still focused on how to bring a huge oaf on the ground. I never succeeded. But even when the man would snatch me by the leg and lift me upside down I kept trying. All changed when Dan started preparing me for the trial. I began failing from, what I now think, was the constant dread and endless pressure of the trial. “Quint, if you ever feel like fighting again. I’m ready for it.” Yet simple sparring still is a happy memory.

“Sure thing,” he answers. “Keep the food hidden from the other guys.”

I nod and he leaves, on the way ruffling one of the kid’s hair, who stumbles into the kitchen, his murky eyes barely open. The boy grasps some bread and sags in a closest chair, a table away from me. I assume, it’s morning already. I haven’t shut my eyes the entire night.

“Do you guys leave often?” Why not prod some more? Sevina will have less trouble telling me things.

“We leave, yeah.” The kid’s thirteen at least. A lean tyke with a messy ponytail.

“Are you allowed to steal?”

“No, what are you an idiot?” He snarls. “Over the years cops caught five of us, yeah. Terrel said they got placed back into foster care. Then, he said, mob killed them.”

Heavily, I let another statement of death slide past my ears. “Really? Does mob bother with five kids who stole?”

“They do if the assholes talk about the gang. And it is easy to make kids talk, yeah.” I understand that no one cares about them. They’re unneeded; runaways from the foster care, victims of abusive families, I imagine. And all they are, together with the gangs, is a tiny part in a huge system, trying to survive in a city of twenty-five million. “But I don’t give a shit. I want to get out. There’s nothing to do here.”

Tough talk for a thirteen-year-old. “So what do you do then?”

“All that can be done with civvies.” He shrugs. “Resell stuff. Buy food and stuff. One- day jobs. Hard to get, though.” The kid who overlooked my thievery in the tech shop must’ve been one of them.

I never imagined there is a scheme in motion beyond our family’s business. I thought Father had his dealings, his people, and he kept to them. But a lot of people look like they depend on each other, like they’re all intertwined. Sevina implied just that when she told me about the gangs and crime families forming a hierarchy. It’s a wall of bricks without cement. But I can’t help but wonder, is it a wall of bricks or a house of cards?

Sevina is capable of finding it out.