Prisoned: A Dark Twisted Erotic Standalone Read Free Page B

bracelets on my wrists, heels on my feet.
    In the bathroom, with my makeup bag open and my cosmetics spread over the counter, my hand shook as I drew a strip of liner over my lids. I didn’t know why I was making such an effort. This was a funeral, not a reunion. Anyone who recognized me had seen me at my worst. I’d been twenty pounds thinner back then, my skin gray, my hair ratted. But still, I added more makeup to my face, curls to my long strands of dark hair. Perfume to my skin.
    When I ran out of things to put on, I finally paused and took the time to really blink, to take in the face that stared back at me in the mirror.
    I could dress her up. I could cover her face in makeup. I could brush her hair and make her skin smell clean. I could fix her teeth and add twenty pounds to her frame. I could fly her first-class and book her in a hotel suite.
    I’d done all of that already.
    But, under this cosmetic blanket, I was just a girl from the projects.
    A girl who had been holding in the biggest secret. A secret I had never spoken to anyone.
    The secret lived in this state, so why would I ever come back here?
    If I were smart, I would grab my purse and rush off to the airport, catching the first flight out of here and pretending the last hour hadn’t happened.
    I was smart. I just wasn’t as strong.

    Anthony and I stood against the back wall of the chapel. There weren’t enough chairs for everyone in attendance. They were at least thirty short, maybe more. And no one here was dressed up…but me. I was in a roomful of torn jeans and wrinkled shirts. There was a thick breeze of stale cigarette smoke and heads full of greasy hair. My brother had at least put on a clean shirt.
    Had I not been on autopilot before I left Tampa, I would have packed less black, shorter heels, and a jacket that wasn’t so starched. I should have known better. I should have paid attention. This wasn’t the kind of crowd who wore black suits and shiny shoes. This was the crowd who looked into the open casket and thought, Fuck, will I be next?
    The only other suit in here was worn by the man who stood next to the casket. His was blue—blueberry blue—with a stain in the middle of his tie. I just stared at it while he spoke about Billy and tried to decide if it was salad dressing or pizza grease.
    It was either that or stare at the casket, and there was no way I could look at the latter any longer than I already had. Billy was in that box. A shiny dark brown box that glistened from the corner of my eye with a puffy white fabric that lined it.
    This wasn’t the Billy I remembered. He was too clean. Too ironed. Too tucked in.
    Too at peace.
    Billy was the only person in this room who was at peace. The rest of us were from The Heart, and The Heart didn’t allow it. And, for those of us who were close to Paulie and were around after he died, we definitely weren’t at peace. The aftermath of his murder, the mourning. There was enough pain to last the rest of our lives.
    But those weren’t the only things I remembered, the only things that made me hurt.
    There were the things that had happened just moments before Paulie’s death and the second after, like the sound of the car’s engine, Paulie’s footsteps, the gun, the gasp, the feeling of the car door, the tires squealing on the pavement.
    The words that echoed in my ears.
    His words.
    The ones that had haunted me since the moment they’d been screamed at me.
    I sucked in a deep breath and turned my head away from the stained tie and the shiny casket. I’d had enough of both. Obviously, Anthony hadn’t. He was looking straight at them. He was so calm, as if he were listening to a friend speak about plans for the weekend. How could he not be shaken by this? How could he not look at that casket and think there was something we could have done to stop Billy from overdosing? I assumed Anthony was here because he thought it was the right thing to do.
    But it wasn’t right. Not even