Half of me wants to scream. Not just any kind of scream but one of those ear piercing, voice scratching, vigour draining, long screams to help deal with the temperamental energy gnawing away at me. The other half wants to slap myself for the situation I am now faced with.
Seven sits on the leather seat opposite me sitting on my small couch. The silence growing suffocatingly thicker and thicker in the air between us.
"You wanted to talk, so talk." I goad him. He answers me with a frown as his fingers brush over his hair.
"I guess I'll start with why I left." Seven sighs reluctantly before informing me that it was his uncle Victor's plan to separate Seven and myself. He tells me that Victor had someone following me in the black sedan that had caused me so much stress all those months ago. That was how Seven knew about Tom and I kissing, because Victor's person saw it and even took photographic evidence of my intoxicated mistake. I vaguely remember that night I kissed Tom, it was also the night I had chased after the sedan so Seven's explanation adds up. He says Victor used the kissing photograph against him causing him to believe that I had been seeing Tom the entire time we were together. He apparently still believed this until my confirmation in the bathroom tonight that Tom is merely a friend. I don't admit how it hurts me to know he thought I had been cheating on him this entire time.
Seven then explains that Victor's man following me in the black sedan had taken many photographs while watching me. The most significant being one taken of me at work in the bottle store with the Russian cartel leaders son, Junior. When I object to it being a purposeful meeting Seven says he understands it could be a mere coincidence but coincidence or not the photograph proved as damning evidence for the allegations Victor held against me.
"A spy!Why on earth would he think I was a spy?!" I gape at the completely farcical idea.
"Because Lily, he thinks you were plotting some kind of revenge plan with Sergey against him. I know it sounds stupid but I've come to know my uncle is rather unstable and thinks everyone is out to get him or take away his power." Seven sighs and leans his elbows down on his knees.
"Revenge? Revenge for what? Making me a fucking server?" I've had one encounter with Victor and that was enough for me to be both terrified and content to never require another rendezvous with Seven's uncle ever again. Not if I can help it.
Seven's eyes meet mine in a steely gaze, I had half expected him to at least smile at my server joke but he doesn't. Instead Seven is very serious.
"Look, what I'm about to tell you is going to come as a bit of a shock. But I think you deserve to know the truth, about everything. I also want you to know that it is the truth, I won't lie to you and I want you to be able to hear what I have to say and know I'm only telling you this because I care about you and I know deep down you'd want to know all this, no matter how painful it might be to hear." Seven warns me and instantly my mouth goes dry and I can feel my breath scraping the insides of my dry windpipe. I don't know how to answer him so I simply give him a single nod, indicating for him to continue.
The gold on Seven's knuckles glimmers as he nervously pushes his palms to his knees to wipe the slight sweat built up. I know this because my own palms are slick and I too wipe them against my jeans as I wait for Seven to tell me what he's been wanting to talk to me about this entire time.
"Your parents weren't killed by some random in a house robbery." Seven says and I'm already thrown off by those first eleven words. I had no idea what he was going to say but I didn't expect it to be about my parents.
"Your parents were murdered in a revenge killing." He continues.
What?
"By my uncle Victor."
What?
Seven eyes me like a hawk. Waiting for some kind of reaction but it doesn't come. I am frozen, literally stopped in time. My body does not move, my words are completely lost, lungs unable to intake a breath. The most I can muster is a single blink and even that seems to take effort.
Although my physical self is shocked into paralysis my mind is jumping from thought to thought at a rapid pace.
Victor killed my parents?!
Why?
How?
How did he know my parents?
Did he even know my parents or is this some kind of sick coincidence?
Did Seven know? This entire time he's known me, did he know?
He sat next to me in his car while I told him about my parents death, he sat there and listened but the whole time he already knew the truth?
Oh my god.
Oh my god!
As if Seven has some kind of link to my inner thoughts he begins to speak again.
"I didn't know any of this till that night I left. He told me then, he admitted to it and to..." His words fade as he seems to struggle with the next bit. With a frustrated grunt to clear his throat and a swipe of his hair Seven continues.
"He admitted that you were there that night. That he thought he had killed you too, but his bullet missed its intended target." Seven's conflicted green eyes drop to my chest and like a reflex reaction my hand jumps to my side, feeling over the scar torn into my skin there.
Like a scene from a horror film my mind is flashed with a short snipped of something. I feel the burning pain in my side, the feeling of blood soaking my nighty and making it stick to my body. I can hear the voice of my younger self crying, calling out for my mother. The awful scene fades just as fast as it appears. Like a terrible nightmare the details are fuzzy but that was no nightmare. That was a memory. A memory that has been buried deep in my mind, hidden in the darkest of places never to see the light. I had thought I had simply forgotten a lot of memories about my childhood and parents but perhaps rather than forgetting I have simply repressed them. I have an awful feeling there is a lot I may have left hiding in those shadowed places. And that perhaps Seven is going to shine his torch on some of them.
"Victor convinced me that you were using me to get revenge for your parents deaths. And I was stupid enough to believe him. I hope you know how sorry I am for letting him get in my head like that, for making me turn against you. I didn't see it then but I know what he's capable of now, and the motives he had by taking you away from me." Seven's eyes drop to the floor ashamed. It seems so obvious to me that Victor would lie to manipulate Seven. But I can see how easy it would be to fall into those manipulations when paired with such damning evidence. Especially when I myself knew so little, or at least shared so little.
Still unsure of what to say or do Seven continues to fill my silence with more information and just when I think I'm over the shock he hits me with another revelation that is even more shocking.
"I don't know how much you know about your parents. But I know how important it is to you, being a history enthusiast, that you would want to know your own history. More specifically your parents and who they were." Seven flicks the end of his nose with his knuckle before clasping his hands together on his lap. I can tell he seems nervous once again to tell me what he's going to which only makes me more apprehensive.
What does he know about my parents?
"I know you think your parents last name is Kapley, but it's not. Your parents were Evangelina and Jacob Costello." Seven says but he doesn't know that I actually just found this out for myself. The fact that I know he's telling the truth makes me conscious of the fact that everything he's telling me is also probably the truth.
"Your father was the best friend and right hand man of Ivan Ricardo. My father." I watch Seven's mouth as he talks, his lips caressing every syllable that it looks as if his mouth moves slower than his speech coming from them. But when the last words, "My father," come from his lips, my eyes snap back to his brilliant green.
What did he just say?
My father and Seven's father were friends? Best friends? His right hand man? But that would mean...
No. No! That's absolutely absurd. My father was not apart of a gang! He couldn't have been! He was a good man, I remember him as a good man! This can't be true, this can't be—
And then another thought crashes into the next.
If my father was Seven's father's best friend then that also makes him... His killer? Seven has told me about the betrayal of his father by the mans best friend. It was the sole reason he had been so committed to Victor's rules of not trusting anyone and avoiding building relationships with anyone other than blood family. Because his father had trusted his best friend, and yet that best friend betrayed him causing his death. And that best friend... was my father?!
Although I don't want to believe this, there are thoughts connecting in my brain like a circuit, they all link together creating the same narrative. How that man Sergey had laughed at the bar and said it was fitting that Seven and I had found each other. I don't doubt that man knew Seven and I's fathers had been best friends. He had also told me that my families name was Costello but I had thought it was the ramblings of a drunk man. The swallow birds engraved into my fathers flask and on my mother's jewellery box. Seven had said they were the symbol of his family, his family being the gang... my father had also been apart of it. My fathers journal, it's first page inscription now making more sense under the circumstances.
Family can be determined more by behaviour than blood. Our brotherhood is not dependent on the blood we share, but by those willing to bleed for us. To the brotherhood, and to the family we chose.
Oh my god. Oh my fucking god.
"I..." like a reflex I stand to my feet. As if standing instead of sitting is going to help me process this information any easier. I'm glad my body seems to be moving again, and although my speech has found itself again I have no idea what the fuck to even say.
Seven stands as well, unsure and wary of my reaction.
"Look, I know this is a lot—" He begins.
"A lot? That's a fucking understatement!" I interrupt him in derision.
"I just thought you should know. About everything." Seven looks worried as if he's made the wrong decision by telling me.
He's right though, I would want to know the truth. In fact I would've demanded he tell me it but now knowing what that truth is, I almost wished I was clueless again. Having blanks in my memory and unknowns about my family history is better then finding out this as the truth. My father was a murderer, he was in a gang. But where does my mother fit in all of this? Did she know? Her photographs in my fathers journal show her in a police uniform.
"Did my mother know? About my father being in the gang? Did she know?" I'm not even sure if Seven even knows anything about my mother but when he nods I almost fall back down to the sofa in disturbance.
"Your mother was also apart of the firm. She worked as a mole in the police department. Helping members get off convictions and covering up crimes for the gang." Seven divulges and once again I'm stunned into silence.
For some reason the revelation about my mother stings in a hurtful way. Did my grandmother know? The way she stood so proudly next to her daughter in uniform, her only child. How could my own mother do such a thing? In a line of work that should be respected and should above all help people, but the only people she was helping were not worth that assistance. The disappointment burns and I feel almost embarrassed of my mother's duplicity and involvement in such a wicked underbelly.
My fingers rake through my hair, trying to asses and understand how my life became such a lie when Seven steps toward me with his hand outstretched to offer some kind of comfort.
"I know you're probably feeling—"
"How could you possibly know anything of what I'm feeling!" I snap at him and move away from his attempted touch. I know it isn't Seven's fault, the choices my parents made have nothing to do with Seven but he is the only person here that I'm able to take this bizarre frustration out on.
I feel frustrated and disappointed by the truth of who my parents were as people. The irony that despite my grandmother doing her best by changing my last name and completely shielding me from the truth and from the life they lived only for me to find myself immersed in that very same life style as they did, is not lost on me here either. My grandmother had tried to protect me from such a treacherous existence but here I am, finding out the truth of it all from a man at the centre of such a life.
Seven's eyes dart to the floor and he retreats his touch at my harsh words.
"I was just meaning I understand that you're probably in shock by all this and that you might want to process it in your own way." He steps forward again but doesn't try to touch me.
"But I want you to know that I'm here for you Lily." I don't understand the emotions pulsing through my thickening blood. Everything is hard to figure out; how I'm feeling, what to believe, what to say, what to do next. I don't know any of it and all I can figure out through the haze of fluttering emotion is anger.
And the audacity that Seven has to come here months after he left me to dump all this awful information on me and then to finish off by saying he's here for me, sets me off for some reason. Why had he not been here for me when I needed him the most? When I needed answers about his actions and not him hanging up on me? When I was in the hospital and wished he would walk through the door of my ward and comfort me. Or those first few months when I was so depressed my mind would wonder to the darkest thoughts I'd ever had. Where was he then? But all of a sudden he can just walk back into my life and tell me that he's here for me now?!
"Lily?" Seven asks at my lack of response. I rub at my temples, trying to straighten out my muddled mind.
"Lily are you okay?" Seven's hand cups my shoulder and I flinch immediately at the contact.
"Don't! Don't touch me." I warn him.
"Sorry. I'm sorry I won't touch you." His holds up his palms in surrender as his eyes scan over my face. I have no idea what he sees. I'm just so confused right now.
"Is that all you had to tell me?" I ask him and fold my arms. My head is beginning to hurt as if I have a headache on the way.
Seven looks slightly hesitant.
"I-Well..." He stutters but doesn't carry on speaking. Usually I would question him on the rest he obviously has to say but I honestly can't take any more revelations for the night so I don't push him for anything else.
"You can see yourself out." I turn away from him as I speak.
"What?" Seven sounds shocked from my dismissal.
"You've said what you needed to, now I want you to leave." Deep down I know I don't want him to go but I need to be alone right now. I need to assimilate what he's told me.
"Lily I don't think you should be alone right now—"
"That's not up to you to decide. Now please, leave." My voice has become a whisper at this point. Seven is quiet for a moment behind me before he speaks again.
"I know you don't believe me but I still care about you Lily. I'll leave you alone to process this, but I'll be outside in my car when you need me." He says and the way he speaks so softly even when I've been rude and dismissive makes my eyes prick with tears. I'm a roller coaster of emotions and I make a mental note that I'm possibly also coming onto my period soon.
Seven doesn't wait for a response before he walks past me. I watch his back as he leaves through my front door and when I'm in the safety of solitude my eyes let the tears fall as I slump to the floor. My arms hugs my knees to my chest as I sit crying on the floor of my living area, completely overcome by the last few hours.
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