His Mafia Queen

Confession

"Whatever you think happened, didn't."

We stare at each other, challenging ourselves. One of us has to break and say something.

"What happened?"

"Riley, how much do you want to know about me? Really, truly know. Because the longer we're together, the more this crazy thing between us ignites, you're going to get to know me well. Possibly better than anyone has in a long time. Do you want that? Think about it. Think hard."

"I know a lot about you already." Her gaze is defiant.

"You know virtually nothing."

"I want to."

The fingers on my right hand dig into my palm. I want her to, as well.

"Catherine and I grew up together. Our parents were business associates. Our grandparents were friends. We attended the same schools, were a year apart, and when I graduated, I went to college at USF and she went to UT across town. We didn't live together, but we studied together, partied together, and saw each other almost every day."

Riley's staring at me with something like anguish written on her face. Maybe it's because I'm speaking in a low, robotic tone.

"One day I showed up at her apartment with coffee and she was still in bed. I had let myself in, because we had keys to each other's places. But her being in bed, that was unusual, because she was an early morning person. I thought she was sick, but instead, she was practically catatonic."

"What happened?" Riley asks..

Now all the old anger is flowing back. My fist is clutching the duvet cover so hard that my fingers ache. Probably best if I recount only the bare-bones details. This isn't my story to tell, after all. "She'd been raped by someone who worked for her father."

"Oh, no," Riley whispers.

"Yeah. And then some other things happened, really I shouldn't be talking about this at all, and then she decided to leave school. She was upset at her father, understandably. But she made me promise not to tell him where she was, only that she was safe. By then someone in her school had filed a missing person report, so it made the news, and it was a big fucking mess."

"Wow. I'm...sorry."

"Yeah, it made life really complicated for a long time. I missed her as a friend. But I still had to work with her father, you know?" This is as much as I'm going to tell Riley. Nothing about how I killed the man who raped Catherine.

"Sorry, back up. So Donnie, who was your grandfather's age, was Catherine's father? Just trying to get this straight."

I nod. "Donnie was much older when she was born. Which led to its own complications when he found out what happened to her."

Riley winces, but for once, she has the good sense not to ask more. "I'm sorry for bringing this all up. I shouldn't have."

"It was the worst time of my life. But if you want to know whether Catherine and I were a couple, we weren't."

Riley starts to scoot away from me, like she's getting out of bed. "Where are you going?"

At the edge of the mattress, she looks over her shoulder. "Home."

"Why?"

She shrugs. "I don't think you want me here."

"Riley," I say sharply. "I will always tell you what I want. And I don't want you to leave. I probably should, but I don't. I want you to stay. With me, in this bed."

Her eyes narrow. "Okay. But I need to know one last thing. Why did you say earlier that it 'got real weird, real fast' when she showed up?"

I rub the tense muscles of my neck. If I was given one wish right now, I'd want this conversation to be over. "Oh, that's easy. Because she hadn't talked with her father for more than a decade, since she left. So I didn't think she'd come to his funeral. And..."