Heart of a Monster: A New Reign Mafia Romance: Chapter 1

The meds weren’t working. Daddy was getting worse. The glass in his hands shook so much, the water spilled over onto the worn linoleum floor. He winced and managed to set it back on the table.

Rushing to grab the towel from the sink, I did a quick wipe over the yellowed patterns, trying my best to swipe away the evidence of his disease quickly.

He sighed as I stood back up. “I’m sorry, Katalina.” His voice cracked with the effort and pain of saying each word. My father had never been a man to apologize. I remember the time he took me to a baseball game just a few years ago. A man barreled into both of us. He was two times the size of my father, black tattoos of skulls covering his massive arms. He’d yelled at us to apologize for spilling his drink, told us we were clumsy.

My father stood there, composed as ever, as the man ranted on and on. I started to apologize, but my dad put his arm around my shoulder to whisper in my ear, “Never let them see you cower or back down, Katalina. You are better than everyone.”

Then he dropped his arm from around me, met the man eye to eye and stared him down. “Walk away or apologize for running into my daughter. And let me be clear: we will not be saying sorry.”

With a crowd forming, the man’s eyes bounced around. A few of my father’s friends, ones I saw every now and then but never really hung out with, seemed to appear out of nowhere. They always did. Men in black suits with slicked-back hair and very nice shoes.

He stepped back from my father, eyes wide, and shook his head vigorously back and forth.

So our lives went. My father never backed down, never had to. I wasn’t sure why until so much later.

Douglass King presented himself with discipline, precision, and restraint. My father had emigrated from Jamaica and followed all the immigration laws. He’d legally waited his turn, ten years of waiting on the list to come to America. He told me that when he got the call, he cried, and he wasn’t sure if they were tears of joy or sadness.

He’d left his whole family—mother, brother, and sister—to come here and worked like a dog the moment he stepped foot in the United States.

Somehow, his work paid our bills. Daddy was always cutting a nice house’s lawn, always fixing something in a big house that had more garages than I could count at a young age.

He’d followed the rules of the men he worked for, but one night when he called in sick, in too much pain to go in, the men in nice suits showed up at our little home’s door.

“Your daddy home?” Mario’s frown was genuine; I could see how his eyes creased just enough to show sympathy.

I nodded but held the door where it was, cracked just enough so the man couldn’t step forward with two other men behind him. When I squinted, I saw three boys there too.

“Bellissima bambina, he’s sick. I know he’s sick. He needs care. We’re just here to talk, heh?”

I nodded. “He didn’t invite you here.”

“No matter.” He waved away my concern. “You know me. Look, I brought my sons and nephew to meet you. Roman, Sebastian, Caden—introduce yourselves.”

All three boys stepped up on our cracked cement porch. None of them looked like boys, though. They were tall with wide shoulders that guys at my school didn’t have. They filled out their dark jeans and collared shirts, none of which had a single wrinkle in them. Dark hair, dark eyebrows, and dark stares, none of them smiled at first. These weren’t children. These were young men, molded by the experiences they’d already had. Not good ones either.

The night air blew cold around us, filled with a grim tension none of us could quite shake. The son that stood in the middle of them all stepped forward first, smiling at me with straight white teeth as if that would slice away at the gravity of whatever was about to happen that night. He held out his hand. “I’m Bastian.” He pointed his other thumb over his shoulder. “No need to meet the others. You’ll only need me.”

I glanced behind him, and my eyes caught on the one who lingered back just a bit. His hair was longer, and his dark eyes stared through me like I was nothing. I tilted my head at his assessment, and he crossed his massive arms over his chest. He didn’t smile; he didn’t step forward to introduce himself like Caden, Bastian’s brother, did.

We stared at each other like a war was beginning, a power struggle that would last decades. None of them could have been much older than me, but he seemed to be tearing apart my soul in those moments, sifting through all of me and finding every hidden part of who I was. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t rip my eyes from his. They captivated me like no other person’s could have.

A creak in the hardwood floors had me jumping away from the door as my father hobbled up, clearly woken from his bed. “Mario,” he said from behind me. “I told you I didn’t want help.”

“Doug, you’ve worked for me for twenty years,” the old man with peppered streaks in his dark hair retorted. Then he clenched a fist, his large gold ring on his pinky finger digging into his flesh.

“I cut your lawn and fixed some light bulbs, nothing more.”

“Ah, you’re everything more. You’re family. I can get you a nurse. Just someone to help around the house, huh?”

“No.” My father glared at him and then turned to me. “Katalina, go upstairs.”

At fifteen, I knew my father’s tone. That low, measured command meant business even if I didn’t want to listen. I glanced at the boys, and one side of Bastian’s mouth turned up while the boy whose name must have been Roman stared off into the darkness. “Dad, I can show them my room . . . so they don’t get too chilled?”

He contemplated the options for a second. “Only for a minute.”

I nodded and waved them all in. Slowly walking up our scuffed hardwood stairs, each step creaking beneath us, I was suddenly self-conscious. Had I cleaned my room, made my bed? Was there a bra on the floor?

I sighed and turned the rusted knob. “Sorry for any mess. I didn’t expect—”

“No need to apologize. Thanks for inviting us in.” Bastian glanced around the room, and his eyes fell on my laptop with papers piled next to it.

I cleared my throat. “I’ve just been trying to learn as much about his disease as I can.”

Every paper looked crinkled, worn at the edges, and had highlights where I found ways to make my father’s Parkinson’s more bearable.

“You can’t save him,” Rome said, his voice just above a whisper, but the words pounded loudly on my heart, sending my walls flying up.

I glared at the one who was trying to crush a dream that wasn’t even there. “I know I can’t save him. I didn’t say I’d accomplish that. I’m researching for his comfort, not a miracle.”

I knew better than anyone that miracles didn’t exist. I didn’t need a drop-dead gorgeous guy with hollow eyes to tell me that.

Cade jumped in, trying to ease the tension in the room. “Our mother passed when we were young. I understand doing what you can to help him.”

“She doesn’t need to know our business.” Rome’s arms were still over his chest, and he stared out the window. His eyes bounced to the door when he heard a rickety squeak coming from downstairs.

“Just my dad’s rocker. Doors and walls are thin here.” I shrugged because I knew they probably all came from money. My father only cut lawns for people who could afford it. “Not that you’re used to that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rome’s chest puffed up like he knew it was an insult.

“It means if my dad cut your lawns,” I motioned toward them all, smiling as I took in their name brand attire, their dark jeans with engineered weathering and faded spots, “you’re not used to a home like mine.”

“Your daddy cuts my uncle’s lawn. Bastian and Cade live there.” He glanced at them, and then his dark eyes fell on me like a ton of bricks. The weight of his stare crushed me, smashed my confidence, reminded me I was in a roomful of guys much bigger than me that I knew nothing about. “Not me.”

“And you live where, exactly?” I raised myself up onto my tiptoes, trying to appear as big and bad as they seemed, and spun to look at myself in the mirror hanging from my door. I fluffed my black-and-pink curls. I’d dyed my hair a few weeks back, taking pleasure in the fact that I could change my look any day I wanted. “You don’t go to school around here.”

I would have remembered him, the way he stood there like life could pass him by and he wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow. He wanted nothing to do with the world, or maybe the world wanted nothing to do with him. He had that black ink of a soul that washed over a person, that made even me feel darker.

He wasn’t like the normal boys that went to my school. I walked the halls, and they turned to stare at me, at my changing hair colors, my mercurial looks, and my always-different-than-their-own skin tone. I scared the normal ones, but Rome wasn’t one of them.

He picked at a few of my highlighted pages and laughed at them like I was naïve. “You don’t need to know where I come from, little girl.”

Cade had resorted to sitting down at my desk and fiddling on his phone, but he lifted an eyebrow at that. “Ignore him. He lives near us, about an hour from here. It’s easier that way.”

“Easier for what?”

“For his dad and him to be around. Family’s everything, you know?” Cade replied.

Bastian walked over to tilt a photo on the wall. They hung from little clothing pins, and I’d strung lights around them to add joy to the memories. “You’re close to your dad, huh? You guys look like you’re always having fun.”

“Of course. Who isn’t close to their father?” I shrugged, baffled by the question.

They all looked at each other as if pained by my response.

“No brothers or sisters? No mother or friends?” He wiggled a picture between his forefinger and thumb as if I didn’t know my own photos I had hung up.

“No brothers or sisters. No mother either. As for friends . . . well, you know what Cade said.” I shoved a hand into my jean shorts’ pocket, and my other hand caught the gold necklace hanging from my neck. “Family’s everything.”

Bastian hummed low as he continued studying my wall of mementos, but Rome stepped closer to me and squinted at my neck. His scrutiny had my body tightening, tingling, aching in a way I’d never quite experienced before.

“Cleopatra,” he murmured as his hand shot out. His fingers touched the etchings on the front. “What a powerful being.”

My breath shuddered as we stared at each other. Sure, people had commented on my necklace before. “Oh, what a pretty woman she was,” they would say, or “The balls on that woman,” but never had they breathed her name with such awe, like he felt what I felt about her, like he knew that whether she was a man or woman was irrelevant.

.

I soaked up his words, his enamored stare at this woman, and thought for the first time ever that I wanted a man to look at me like that. I wanted a dark man, full of secrets and depth, to look at me just like Rome looked at my necklace.

“She’s a reminder of what someone, even someone like me, can strive to be even when the odds are against them,” I said.

“Or maybe of what you already are,” he whispered, and his hand didn’t leave my neck. It rubbed my collarbone like he knew me, like we’d met in another life and he was sure we’d be connected in this one.

We heard a loud bang from downstairs, and he yanked back his hand. I felt the loss of his skin on mine immediately but was too concerned about my father to mourn it.

I rushed to the stairs. Bastian and Cade followed. Rome showed up a minute later, like he took his time with everything in life.

We huddled at the top, quiet because we knew our fathers hadn’t called us back, that they didn’t want us privy to their conversation.

“Dougie, you know you can’t go on like this much longer,” Mario pleaded with him. “Your girl needs a dad, and she needs help. You going to let her take care of you all alone?”

Hearing the truth out loud sometimes hurts more than keeping it bottled up inside. My daddy was dying, and everyone here knew it. This disease ate at the brain and didn’t give it a way out. The only dream I had now was that someone would make him more comfortable than I could. I leaned closer to the staircase, suddenly more hopeful than I had been in months.

“I don’t want her involved ever,” my dad responded in the soft voice he’d adopted since the disease took over. “I told you this. You respect that. You respect the one thing I got.”

“I’ve always respected that,” Mario shot back. “I’m trying to help.”

“You’re trying to control. You don’t control my life. We made that deal long ago.”

I heard a deep sigh and a string of curses before he responded again. “She’ll end up in foster care. And that’s a recipe for sex trafficking. I used to have deals with half the families around here.”

“I’ll make plans with someone.” My father’s voice cracked.

I hung my head and fisted one of my hands.

Rome’s shoulder bumped into mine. “Easy, Cleo,” he whispered. “Not time to fight yet.”

At that moment, I decided I would fight Rome forever. It wasn’t his right to tell me when to protect those I loved. “You all need to leave. This stress isn’t good for him. And we’re just fine here.” I almost choked on the words, knowing how much I’d bargained with any god in existence to save my father.

“I don’t doubt it,” Rome grumbled under his breath.

Did he actually believe that? Did he think I’d be okay without my last parent standing? Without the man who sang me lullabies when I’d cried as a kid and had still tucked me in most nights before the pain in his body became too much?

Now, I put him to bed, sang him a lullaby just the way he’d done to me. The nights he fell asleep quickly were days I cried myself to sleep with joy that I’d given him some comfort. Most days, though, I took the pained expressions of my father and knew I wasn’t much help.

The weight of the lonely world pulled my heart down into what felt like the bottom of the ocean. Without my daddy, I was nothing. Without the only person that got me, I could never, ever find a way to get myself.

His uncle’s voice traveled up the stairs, reiterating what we already knew. “Dougie, you’ve got no one else. You and the little girl are alone. There aren’t any plans to make.”

“So be it,” my father rasped out.

I moved to rush down the steps, but Rome grabbed my arm. “Don’t.”

I took a shaky breath, trying to let the conversation between the men down below come to a natural end.

Mario continued, “It’s not a good life. Let me help. If her mother were around—”

I gripped the necklace, the only thing my father said she’d left behind.

“The answer is no.”

I winced at the finality in my father’s words. The men downstairs were right. We had no one else, and I was about to have no one at all, not even my father. Still, I trusted my father’s judgment over theirs.

Bastian and Cade watched me awkwardly, like they didn’t know what to say, while Rome looked me up and down.

I didn’t realize a tear had escaped until Rome brushed it away. “You’ll live. Because if you don’t, you’ll die.”

My throat almost closed in fear at his callous words, but I gulped away the temptation to give into my emotion. I wouldn’t show any one of them more of my weakness.

I heard footsteps coming toward the stairs.

“Boys, let’s go,” we heard from around the corner. They filed down the stairs.

Bastian pulled me close. “Nice to meet you, Katie. Probably best we don’t meet again, even though I admit that’s sort of tragic.”

Cade shoved him, and he chuckled as he let me go. “Like he said, nice to meet you,” Cade repeated, but I was sure he didn’t care one way or the other. Both of them would forget me tomorrow. They held themselves with enough confidence, I knew that wherever they lived, they had enough attention from those around them.

Rome idled behind him for an extra second. The way he stood a whole head taller than me should have made me shrink away from him.

Instead, I shrugged and held my hands out. “What?”

He dragged one finger down my gold chain as he studied me. “Yeah, you’ll live. Remember that the best of us go through the worst.”

With that, he glided down the steps, and I heard the door open and close. The click of the lock was as final as a coffin lid dropping shut.

My father didn’t acknowledge the conversation he’d just had when I met him at the bottom of the steps. “Go to bed, Katie. I’m on my way there, too.”

“Dad, do you think we should talk—”

“Nothing to discuss that can’t wait until morning.” He reached over to flick off the downstairs lights and then hobbled past me to his bedroom. Normally, I’d bring him a drink or snack, but he shut his door on me and on the world.

Sighing, I made my way back to my room.

On top of one of my stacks of research was a crumpled paper with messy handwriting that wasn’t mine.

He left his address like I was going to write him, like we could be friends, like I didn’t hate the way he made me feel.

I balled it up and threw it in the trash basket next to my desk.

Late in the night, when the darkness stole away most everyone else’s consciousness, my fears crept in.

I tiptoed to the bin and uncrumpled the paper. I lay awake, clutching the crinkled edges of it as tears streamed down my face.