“No. I haven’t seen Roberto in months. Gianna can tell you that.”
“She’s twelve. What the fuck does she know about what you get up to when she’s at school? Like now. You’re supposed to be at work, Ma. What gives?”
“Gianna knows I’m not at work anymore—I mean, she knows I’m not at work today.”
Benito caught the slip as if Rosetta had punched him in the face. “Anymore? What does that mean? You lost your job?”
“Ileft.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t do it!” Rosetta shouted again. “You don’t understand.”
Benito drove his fist into the fridge door. Another punch that went nowhere. “Then tell me! Don’t act like I don’t give a fuck. That’s not fair.”
Rosetta flinched. Benito hated himself and backed up, crashing into the kitchen table. The wood scraped the tiled floor with an obnoxious screech. A warning siren.Calm the fuck down or you’re no better than fucking Roberto.
Benito sucked in a breath. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to shout at you. I just—fuck.Why is it so damn hard to talk to you?”
“Because you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve hated me ever since I chose Roberto over you, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.”
It was the most honest thing Rosetta had said to him in years. Benito’s head swam, but he knew her too well to fall for it. Deflection was her middle name. A trip down memory lane meant a pass on the present.Fuck that.“How long?” Benito ground out. “How long have you been out of work?”
“Since December.”
“Last year?”
“Yes. I used the money you sent for Gianna for a while, but then you stopped paying it into my account.”
A flash of guilt stabbed Benito’s heart. “I had to stop putting money into your account. The feds were all over where I was at. I couldn’t even bring cash around, but Gianna said you didn’t need it. She never said you’d stopped working.”
Rosetta sighed. “You should never have used that dirty drug money to pay our rent anyway. It could’ve got us evicted as much as this could.”
“I know that now. But I was a fucking kid when I started and there was no way out.”
“There’s always a way.”
“Oh yeah? So why are we here?” Benito held up the ruined letter from the housing association. “How have you been out of work for eleven months and not paying your rent if you have all the fucking answers?”
“I never said that.” Rosetta snatched the letter with shaking hands and tore it to shreds. “Just that you didn’t need to waste your life being a—acriminalwhen I raised you better than that.”
“You didn’t raise me at all,” Benito refuted. “You—”
“Stop fighting.”
Benito whirled around. Gianna stood in the kitchen doorway behind him, school bag in hand, tie loose around her neck as she clutched her precious orange cat to her chest. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she’d run all the way home. “The hell are you doing here?”
“I live here,” she snapped.
Benito advanced on her, two long strides that brought him close enough to see the shivers wracking her slender frame. “You don’t live here between eight and four on weekdays. Did something happen at school? Did they try and call Mum?”
“I wasn’t sick.” Gianna set Sullivan down and he scampered away. “I told them I had a dentist appointment and she didn’t answer when they called to check.”
Fresh fury corroded Benito’s gut. He threw a dark glare at Rosetta. “See? This is what your bullshit does. If Gianna was a different fucking kid, she could be on a county-lines run right now and you’d have no idea.”