𝐌𝐢𝐚 𝐑𝐨𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐳. Even being born right next to the cruel and sick crime life never changed the charismatic and positive Mia who wanted to help change the messy world she formed part off.
Becoming a nurse at the age of 25 and joining her d...
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Three weeks later
I stand under the cascading water of the shower, my forehead and hands pressed hard against the tiles to try and keep myself steady. The water is hot, so hot that I feel it burning my skin but I don't move or change the setting because I have learned that physical pain allows me to dissociate from all that's been happening in my life lately, and funnily enough, it is a lot less painful.
It's only when I fear I might get a first-degree burn that I finally close the faucet and step out of the shower to end up staring at my reflection in the mirror right across the room. I can barely recognize myself. Truth be told, I haven't been able for a while, my usually perfect haircut has lost all its shape, the stubble I was too lazy to shave is more of a beard now, my eye-bags are darker than the night itself and I haven't been this thin since I was seventeen, I have lost too much muscle, too much definition. If I continue like this I will have to wear five socks for my prosthetic to fit.
Pulling the towel from the wall I use it to dry my hair first and then I wrap it tight around my waist wanting to hide as much of my body as possible.
Then, as if it were routine I open the drawer on the left of the vanity, reach out for the pain meds I should have stopped taking one week ago, and pop two in. I don't even need water to swallow them anymore, that's how good I have become at this.
My ribs have healed pretty nicely or at least that's what Danielle told me when I saw her two weeks ago, two days after Matteo's trial...
Ten years, that's how long he will have to be in prison for, that's how many years of his kid's life he is going to miss, fucking ten.
Nathan was at the trial, and seeing him there hit me hard, I felt like I had betrayed Matteo by asking him for help that day, for accepting his help. But mostly I hated the part of me that understood that at the end of the day, Nathan was only doing his job, that we, Matteo and I were actually the bad guys, I hated the part of me that knew Nathan hadn't been unfair, maybe an asshole but he had always honored his word.
Basically, I hated that I couldn't hate him.
When I told Danielle about this the same day she checked my ribs I expected her to be mad at me for working with a man like Nathan but she wasn't. On the contrary, she said that she understood why I had done it. She explained how she also hated that Nathan and the FBI went after Matteo the way they did but that it was their job, and holding a grudge against them wouldn't change anything.
I felt a little better after hearing her say that, knowing that it wasn't just me who had all those confusing feelings about the situation. At first, I didn't want to tell her because she had enough on her plate but I needed to let something out or I would have burst and Danielle always seemed to know what to say.
