Page 2 of End It All

"For us?" she asked. "Blake, they're going to catch you. You have to know that."

"Not if we don't say anything."

"And what? Sit on this shit for years until the heat is off? Or did you already line up buyers?"

I sealed my lips together. The latter was true, but was that so bad? I'd mapped out the bank perfectly, had been fucked into oblivion by Manual, the guard, so I could get the codes, and Iwas the one to come out on the other side victorious. I stood up and closed the space between my mother and I. Reaching out, I tucked a black strand of hair behind her ear. She hissed as my fingers trailed over another bruise on her cheek.

"What's so wrong with doing this for us?" I whispered. "You can't keep living like this."

She smacked my hand away from her face. "It is my job to take care of you, Blake, not the other way around!"

"I'm twenty-two years old! At some point, it is my problem."

"No," she growled. "You are supposed to be going to school to make something of yourself. And then, maybe, you can lift both of us from this goddamn shithole!" Her fingers shook as she took another drag. "We need to get you out of here. You can't be in the city," she said as she stared at the ground, a faraway look in her eyes.

"What? Where am I supposed to go?"

Slowly, her gaze met mine. A cold chill traveled down my spine. The wet clothes on my body felt like shards of ice now. I watched as she walked down the hall to her bedroom.

"Pack a bag! Only take your essentials."

"Mom, what are you talking about? Are you losing your goddamn?—"

I stopped as she wheeled on me and glared. That look in her eyes said that she absolutely wasn't playing, like the time I broke the neighbor's window and she made me clean it up and pay for it with my allowance money. Whatever was running through her head, I wasn't going to get out of it.

Swearing under my breath, I slipped into my tiny, dingy room. I yanked a few clothes from the closet, things that were well past their expiration date honestly. A charger, my cigarettes, my father's silver lighter, and a few other odds and ends ended up in my army green duffel. When I emerged fromthe room, my mom stood in the hall, a slip of paper held out between her long, pristine, red fingernails.

"Go there. Tell them you need help and that your father is the boss of the Vitale family."

I blinked at her. "What?"

She smacked me up against the side of my head. "You don't have time for questions, figlio. Trust me, go. I'm sure you’ll be taken care of."

Yeah, I should have been getting the hell out of dodge, but I couldn't take my eyes off my mom. What the hell was she saying?

"Who are the Vitales?" I asked.

Her bottom lip trembled and my mother wrapped her arms around her body as she looked away from me. "They're your family."

I stared, my heart pounding in my chest. "You're my family. Just you and Dad. And he wasn't no Vitale."

When she met my gaze, a sinking feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

"What the fuck is going on?" I asked.

"Your father is a Vitale. I never wanted you to know, baby. That's why you have my last name. We never married. I mean, he said we were a family, but we see how that ended."

A foggy memory of my father packing a suitcase and walking out of our home attacked me. I stepped back, grabbed the front of my shirt, and tried to tell myself it wasn't real. The father in my head had loved us. He did love us. That version was one that I had tuned out for years. It was better to believe he gave a damn than to see him leave and never come back.

Or at least that's what I'd told myself back before my mother had to sleep with strangers to keep food in our bellies. Before I'd been teased for being dirt poor. When I was nothing but a terrified seven-year-old boy watching my father, the man Iidolized, as he walked out the door, who promised he’d be back. I didn’t know how hard things would get.

"The Vitales, they're hard men," she whispered as she touched my face, grounding me back in reality. "Gangsters," she muttered. "Mobsters."

"What?" I whispered.

"That wasn't a life I ever wanted for you, but he promised that we would be well taken care of. He lied. I'm so sorry, Blake. I-I was stupid. I should have?—"

I dragged her into my arms and buried my nose into her lavender scented hair. The aroma used to lull me to sleep, a comforting hug that never ended. Now, it choked me, strangling me for dear life.