“I can reach my bowl just fine, baby.”
“Good, because I enjoy being on your lap.” He turned back to his food. “How’d you learn to cook?”
“My grandmother. We moved to America together when I was about ten. Babushka wasn’t much for gender roles. She always said if a man wanted to eat, he should learn how to feed himself, damnit.”
Marcos barked a laugh.
I smiled. “You like it?”
“I want to bathe in it. A full dumpling feast. What’s her name? I’m going to send her a thank you note.”
“Vera, but your letter won’t make it. She died when I was seventeen.”
“Oh.” He glanced over his shoulder, eyes big and apologetic. “I’m sorry.”
“No worries, Solnyshko. It was a long time ago.”
“Doesn’t make it suck any less.”
No, it sure fucking didn’t.
“You said she raised you. What happened to your parents?”
I slipped my fingers beneath the hem of his shirt, caressing his skin. “That’s quite a fucked up tale.”
“Mmm. My favorite.”
I bit back a smile and tightened the grip I had on him. I liked Marcos any way I could get him, but I especially liked him like this, needy and unfiltered. Playful and bratty.
“Are they dead?” he blurted. “They’re dead, right?”
“My mother is dead. My father is the one who killed her.”
He choked on his next bite.
“Careful, baby.” I wrapped a hand around his throat. It shook beneath my skin as he caught his breath.
“I’m… sorry.Shit.I feel like I shouldn’t have asked. Your father sounds like—”
“My father is a dumpster of a human. A real bottom-of-the-barrel piece of shit.”
Marcos fell quiet for a moment, letting his spoon drop back into his bowl. Theclinkit made pulled a flinch from him, and his voice had a softness to it when he asked, “did he hurt you too?”
“He did all sorts of shit to all sorts of people. My mother wasn’t the first woman he strangled to death, but she was the reason he got caught.”
I felt the muscles in his back ripple against my chest, and then he was turning, gazing up at me with curious, sad eyes. His palm was warm when it met my forearm, and his fingers moved over my tattoos.
Years ago, the mention of what my father did to me would ignite a fury in me so bold and hot, I would destroy anything that felt like a threat—including myself. Now, I just felt numb. Resigned. Like the memories were just stories that happened to someone else.
“He was never angry when he beat me. He never yelled, or laughed, or spit in my face. There was a calmness about him that freaked 8-year-old me the fuck out. No manipulation. No motive. He just beat the shit out of both of us like our scars gave him reason to breathe.”
“Did you ever fight back?”
“I used to outsmart him, hide in the dark and pounce on him before he could turn to me. Even back then, I was patient, but the fucker didn’t like to work for it.” I ran my pointer finger over the shell of my ear. “The last time I came at him, he slammed my head against the peeling walls of our apartment and bit off a piece of my earlobe. He spat it into my mother’s hand and forced her to hold it in her palm as he wound a rope around her neck.”
Tears pooled in Marcos’ eyes, staining glitter with sadness. His throat cleared, and his finger never stopped tracing when he asked, “did you kill him, Papa?”
“No, baby, I didn’t. For some men, death is just absolution—the easy way out when suffering is owed. He’s rotting in a Russian prison, hopefully getting beaten and starved. Thirty-seven women he strangled, and my mama had no idea. Not until it was her neck the rope was around.”