Dark Secrets(36)

"Interesting group of people you know, shrimp," he said and she smiled warmly. "Nice nickname by the way. Surprised you haven't cut out his tongue."

"Well, compared to all them, I'm tiny. That's what they called me when I showed up and demanded they train me. Whether it was to piss me off or some way of dragging me into the fold, I don't know. All of them have nicknames for each other. But," she added with a pointed brow raise, "if you call me that again, I will happily cut out your tongue."

"You're great with those girls," he said, changing the subject.

"I've had a lot of practice," she brushed him off, walking toward the bathroom to grab her clothes.

What she didn't expect was for the door to slam behind her. When she looked up into the mirror, Danny was leaning against it, watching her reflection.

"Why do you train them?"

Faith shrugged a shoulder, tried to shrug off the deep meaning of it to her. "So no man can get the better of them."

"Did a man get the better of you?"

Her eyes closed for a long moment as she drew a breath. When they opened again, there was a vulnerability in them that she wasn't sure she had seen there in years. "Yes."

She watched his face in the mirror as he winced slightly then met her eyes. "I get it if we're not at that point, but eventually, would you tell me that story?"

Faith bit into the inside of her cheek, suddenly swept with the overwhelming urge to tell someone, to trust someone else. K knew a big chunk. The guys, including Trey, knew part of it. The girls she trained, especially at the shelter knew bits and pieces as well.

Vin, Anthony, Gio, and Salvatore knew it all.

And they were the only ones.

And that fact somehow made her feel almost painfully alone in the truth. Because where Vin and his sons knew, it was something they never, ever talked about. For good reason. The story suddenly felt like it grew inside her, spreading out and overtaking her, becoming bigger than her. Never before had she truly wanted to purge it like she did right then.

So she did.

"I was sixteen," she started, watching his face in the mirror as he realized she was doing it, she was opening up, she was giving him something other than the mask. "My father was," she paused, knowing there were parts of the story that would always have to be censored, no matter how much she wanted to shout them to the world, "involved with some illegal things. He just so happened to, as a form of protection, keep records of some of the more sinister things his associates had done. One night, two guys showed up to the house. My father shoved me into the hall closet and demanded I didn't come out, no matter what happened."

She paused and Danny moved closer, so close that she felt the warmth of his body against her back, but he didn't touch her. "What happened?"

"They came in and screamed and demanded to have his files. They beat him. The door in the hall, it had those slats so that you can see through, you know?"

"Yeah, sweetheart," he said, his voice low, sweet, understanding.

"Anyway. He was almost unconscious," she added, remembering the twisted, painful knots her belly was tied in so vividly that her stomach mimicked it in that moment like she was reliving it all over again. "And just about then, my mother came in, asking why a guy was sitting in the car in the driveway and," she swallowed hard, pushing the bile back down her throat, "and then they used her against him. They beat her too. And then, and then they started to tear her clothes off and... and I couldn't stay in that closet anymore."



       
         
       
        

"You needed to save her."

She gave him a completely humorless smile in the mirror, her eyes completely empty. "I was sixteen and soft. I flew at the guy on my mom and I wailed at him as my father screamed, as the guy holding him down laughed at me as my mother pleaded. Then he slammed a fist into my mother's head and she went out. Then he came at me."

"Faith you don't have to talk about it if he..."

"I was a wildcat. I might have been young, but I wasn't stupid. I wasn't some little kid. I had the body of a woman. He would just as easily rape me as he would rape my mother. So I scratched and hit and kicked and screamed and bit. I guess it made me too much trouble and he eventually just beat me unconscious."

"Small miracle," he murmured, moving closer still, his front pressing into her back.

"When I woke up," she went on, once she opened the floodgates, she found there was no closing them anymore, "my father had a bullet between his eyes and my mother was in a corner, rocking, sobbing, half her clothes gone, everywhere bloody."