SWNOVELS Mila: The Godfather: Part 1 – Chapter 6
MILA
“Did you know that bad ideas create the best memories? I didn’t, but I do now.” – M
Scrolling through my phone, I go over all emails from the last three years and find the ones I’ve been looking for. I do this until I find one of the last ones.
Message from: C
Did you know that butterflies can’t see their own wings? They can’t see how beautiful they are.
That was it.
One of his last messages to me.
It’s been a year and it stings to not know what went wrong or if something happened to him.
My first friend outside of my sisters and the employees.
It still feels like yesterday when Carlotta approached me with the pen pal idea. For years, I exchanged emails with a stranger, who in the end, became my best friend.
It took a few emails before I was spilling my fears and dreams to him, and I got the same in return.
Until one day, he just stopped.
Out of the blue, his emails stopped.
It hurt.
It still does, but I guess I didn’t mean to him what he meant and still means to me.
I read his intentions wrong.
Maybe I was just someone he needed at the time and nothing else.
Putting the phone down next to me in the seat, I take a deep breath and try to forget about things I cannot change. Instead, I focus on the now.
“Princess, please reconsider this. The boss will have my balls if she finds out I helped you leave the premises.” Augustus, one of my sister’s men and a good friend of mine, tries to reason with me as he drives us through the busy streets of Detroit.
Augustus appeared out of nowhere like a guardian angel. He is the only person besides Carlotta, one of the few staff members allowed near me, who treats me as a person and not like a piece of furniture in our house. He’s the one who sneaks me in all the magazines with my sister, Arianna in them, without Kadra noticing. He’s my accomplice if you want to get technical.
He’s also very smart and kind, something I concluded the first time we met many years ago.
While most of my family’s employees and business associates felt uncomfortable around me, talked down to me, or looked at me pitifully, Augustus didn’t. Not even once.
At first, our situation was rocky since I don’t cope well with new people. It takes time for me to get comfortable with new people since I’ve been hidden and kept isolated all my life.
I’ve been granted more liberties now that my sister has taken our father’s place as the boss of our family, yet it doesn’t feel like freedom.
Nothing in this city does.
Not really.
Playing with the delicate silver chain around my neck, I twist the star pendant three times, untwist it, and start over again, then I move to play with the brim of my cap, finding the texture of it comforting.
I do this when I am anxious.
Or when I feel nervous and guilty.
The consequences of going against my sister will be catastrophic for Augustus, but I’ll protect him from my sister’s wrath. Nothing will happen. I try to convince myself and then him. “Just… just take me to the airport, and I’ll take it from there.” I throw that in, knowing there’s no way he’ll do it.
Any other man would jump at the opportunity to get rid of me even if their heads were on the line but not Gus. “Now, kid…you’ve barely left the house your entire life. There’s no way I’ll let you leave the damn city by yourself.” Gus snorts, and although he doesn’t mean to be unkind, his words remind me how little I know about the world. How little I’ve lived.
All I truly know are the walls inside a cold home and not all that much about this city.
Just the ugly parts.
I don’t mean to be ungrateful because my problems seem so insignificant compared to bigger issues around the world, like poverty, global warming, and everything else that’s slowly killing this planet and its inhabitants. Yet, I can’t help but feel sad, but I push it down like I always do and smile. I smile as I trained myself to do. If I smile, the people I care about won’t worry. “Thank you, Gus.” I look at the rearview mirror, my eyes clashing with his warm brown eyes for a short moment before I break eye contact and look at his bearded cheek instead. Gus is a handsome man with fair skin and inky black hair that is cut close to the scalp on the sides and longish on top. He has a nice build, a strong Roman nose, and big lips. He’s the type of man you would find on a runway somewhere in Europe, if it weren’t for the fact that he is a trained assassin and part-time babysitter for the mob.
“Don’t thank me yet, kid.” He mumbles while concentrating on the road ahead. “Let’s try and get this suicide mission done without me getting my balls chopped by the boss. You and I both know she’ll use them as stress balls.” He shivers, but then a smile breaks free when he sees the look on my face.
I cringe, and suddenly my face falls.
Is he joking? He certainly isn’t. My sister would hurt him when she realized he helped me leave not only the mansion but the city.
Panic takes over me, making me stutter. “T-t-turn around. It’s n-no—” I don’t get to finish my sentence because Gus interrupts me. “Hey, it’s okay. It was a bad joke.”
No.
“It’s the truth,” I whisper. Maybe this is why my sister doesn’t trust me to handle myself out in the world. This is a bad decision I’ve made, and although I pride myself on being a logical person because logic makes sense to me while emotions do not, this time I acted recklessly. Letting myself be persuaded by my emotions and my selfish need to feel an ounce of freedom that I didn’t listen to my gut and brain when they told me this would be bad, not only for me but for my friend too.
“I’ve seen you smile more in this fifteen-minute ride than I’ve had in the last five years,” Gus whispers, drawing my attention away from my hands to his tattooed ones that rest on the car’s wheel. “Whatever punishment comes my way, it’ll be worth it.” His tone changed. It’s gentle, and all humor is gone.
Tenderness.
I know that one.
He’s being sincere.
I let his kind words wash over me because that’s something I’m not very used to.
Kindness.
So on the off chance it happens, I treasure it.
“I’ll protect you,” I say matter-of-factly. I will. I will protect my friend.
Gus laughs softly, and I feel his eyes on me, so I do my best to meet his gaze for only a second so he knows I mean business. “Appreciate it, sunshine.”
Sunshine.
I have a hard time figuring out when other people are genuine and have trouble deciphering insults from terms of endearment because nothing is black and white. Nothing is ever simple.
The mean men that worked for my father would call me names you would think are terms of endearment, but they would turn them ugly with sarcasm and their negative energy.
Turn them ugly with cruelty.
For example, some would call me princess, but with a smile that seemed forced, or they would roll their eyes at me whenever I opened my mouth.
I learned to stay quiet around certain people and people that I do not feel comfortable with.
That is mainly everyone, at first, until I can figure out if they’re the good or the bad guys.
I’ve known only bad guys until Gus.
Gus, I can trust.
He is kind, doesn’t treat me like a nuisance, and is patient with me when I do something that is normal for me but might seem strange to him.
Pressing my nose to the window, I hum the twinkle, twinkle little star song as I watch the city around me as Gus drives and silence falls upon us. I like the silence because some people tend to scream and be loud when they have nothing constructive to say.
Gus and my sister, Kadra, give me that.
A quiet and safe place, and now I’m breaking all the rules.
I am stepping out of the shadows to do something for myself, for once or rather for my sisters.
I couldn’t offer them peace when there was only war at home, but I can bring them back together. Because as long as my sisters are away from one another, they’ll never find true peace.
Not really.
I haven’t, and I am the most positive person they will likely ever know. But I should have known peace is always so out of reach for me.
Life proves it in the next instant when I notice a blue sports car speeding beside us, The driver rolls the window down just enough for me to see it is a man. A man with gorgeous brown hair that looks like silk. Will it feel the same? I wonder.
I like the feel of silk. It makes me feel calm.
I stop humming when I focus on the man driving next to us and his soft-looking hair.
“Oh, shit,” Gus hisses at the same time the man rolls his window up and speeds up, leaving our side.
Turning my face away from the window, I look at a now worried Gus, but before I can open my mouth to ask what is wrong, there’s a loud screeching sound of tires that makes my ears ring painfully. It all happens so fast that I am unable to register it all. First, I hear Gus screaming profanities like a madman, and then it all grows eerily quiet.
The car doors open, and I’m being rushed out of the car. I feel like my head is about to explode, and my skin prickles with the unwanted touch. I don’t like strangers touching me.
Not really.
Just my sisters were able to touch me without triggering an episode.
An episode I feel rising to the surface.
“Mila. Listen to me. It’s me. It’s me.” The burn of his touch fades as I focus on his shoes while listening to the rough sound of his voice when the ringing in my ears too fades. “We don’t have much time.” A crash sounds eerily close to where we’re standing on a dead-end street. “Mila!” Gus yells, making me whimper. “I’m sorry.” Then his voice softens. “I need you to trust me. You are not safe. I need you to run as far away from here as you can and hide. He’ll find you.”
Shaking my head, I look up at his bearded cheek. “I am not leaving you here.” I don’t know what’s happening. All I know is that Gus has never sounded this worried before and that there is a lot of noise around us.
Cars honking.
People yelling obscenities.
It’s all too much.
Something is wrong.
“If you stay, then we’re both dead.” I play with the brim of my hand absently, contemplating his words. “I can’t take care of them if I have you to worry about. Please, princess, run. Now.”
He gently pushes me forward in the direction he wants me to go, and I do. My feet have a mind of their own as I move farther and farther away from him without knowing where I am headed.
This is my fault.
This is my fault.
I did this.
Stupid, stupid, Mila.
My mind won’t shut off, taunting me with the reality of my selfish decision.
Looking around me, all I see is a dead-end street and a back alley.
A huge dumpster.
I assess it and deduce that it might be the only place big enough for me to hide when I have no options.
I also think of the trash.
The awful smells.
And the germs.
All of that makes me stop dead in my tracks.
I don’t like germs, but I also don’t get triggered by them.
I can do this.
Making a decision I move towards the big, green metal box, but before I reach it, I hear it.
A sound I know all too well.
The sound of a fire machine going off.
Gus!
No.
No.
My friend.
Dropping to the ground, I cover my ears and lie there in a fetal position trying, to quiet the loud noise of guns around me and the whispers in my head, screaming at me for my mistake.
I just wanted to see my sister smile.
I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen.
I didn’t mean to cost my friend his life.
Feeling tears fall to my cheek, I rock myself like I do when the world is dark and sing to myself. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder where you are.”
I am so deep inside my head, in my safe place where no one can hurt me, that I don’t notice footsteps approaching. Perhaps Gus’s friend found me.
How wrong I was.
There’s a click sound just before a strange voice says in an ugly tone. “Found her. Yeah, she’s alive, but there’s something wrong with her.” The stranger pushes his boot on my back, and I whimper, afraid and in pain. “I think the bitch is retarded.”
Retarded.
Retarded.
Retarded.
I’ll take sticks and stones any day over these words. How hard is it to comprehend that cruel words do hurt and cut deep. They have the power to echo in your mind and stab your heart until all it’s left is a bleeding mess. They cut holes into your heart until you start believing them. Until you let them take control of you and they change you.
They change how you not only view others but how you look at the world too.
Then it was not enough for him to call me such an ugly and vile word, but the man went ahead and snatched my cap off my head before grabbing a fist full of my hair and pulling me up from the ground as if I weren’t human. As if it doesn’t chip away a part of my soul when someone looks down at me for the way my mind is wired.
He hurts me just like my father used to.
I try to pry his harsh hands off me, but my attempt is useless. He’s much stronger than I am. “Please. Let go of me. Please.” But the man does not release me. Instead, he pulls harder on my hair, and that’s what triggers my demons.
I lose myself to the painful memories, and I go under.
All I see is black.
I escaped to my safe place, back to the pages of my storybooks, away from everything scary.
Away from cruel men with black hearts.