When The Sun Goes Down - A Midnight Mafia Novel

Seven

(Take a deep breath, and read.)

Some days you just wake up, and you know. Today will be the day I have a complete and utter break down. You have no clue why, you certainly don't wake up that way, you just know it's coming. Into my third week here, I knew I was due and it was coming. And hard. This was just too much, I was starting to wonder what would be worse. Dying, or staying here.

Granted, my poor feet appeared to be getting used to the heels, even the skimpy wardrobe was bothering me far less than before as I'd pretty much gotten used to them at this point. Even my roommate, you know the one I was grossed out by her blatant admittance of sleeping with the guys down here, was a total sweetheart. Some of the faces down here were actually friends, girls and guys alike. But I couldn't do it anymore.

I missed my family, annoying and dysfunctional, I wanted to go home. We weren't the most well put together. We always tried to get together for Sundays dinner but it was always a bust, someone was either drunk or missing. 

There was one week though it went through without a hitch, everyone was there, our dinner wasn't charred or inedible, it was nice. The falling week on of my brothers showed up with a bullet hole in his shoulder, still fresh with blood the growing stain on his shirt throughout the meal was an obvious testament to how recent the wound was. Horrified as we were, I had to give him props, he showed up at least. Weeks later he stopped showing up...permanently. 

The dinners have only gotten worse since then. There was only one reason I still attended the dinners, it wasn't to hear my dad and grandma bickering, it wasn't to play cards and pretend we didn't notice when grandma stuffed cards down her shirt and pulled them out later in the game, it wasn't the fact that someone other than me was cooking. It was for my cousin. Because at times we were all each other had anymore. And now, I was missing him more than ever.

The longer I was here the more I missed them, the more I wanted to go home, and the less shits I gave about my flat lined career. I was tired, tired of working every day and getting nothing for it, tired being looked at, at being touched carelessly, tired of pretending to be happy and well put together to avoid getting shot. I wasn't even afraid of getting shot, in all honestly, my mind was going. I started thinking how bad could it really hurt? I started wondering why I was procrastinating, putting up with the life down here knowing for me, a bullet was my only way out. Eventually Alessio would piece two and two together, how I didn't belong and after all of this I would still die, or maybe he would just leave me here forever. Which was worse?

More than anything, I was tired of Alessio. His cold gaze followed me curiously around the room all the time. When I screwed up he would roll his eyes with this smug smirk on my face, it's like he was just waiting for my mistake and of course, he never had to wait long.

Every single day my will was worn down just a smidgen more than the day before, and finally on this, the last day of my third week I knew I had reached my breaking point. Knowing Mia was an incredibly heavy sleep I moved light footed to the private bathroom connected to our room. I shut the door behind me, left the lights on, crawled in the bathtub, and just let myself be an emotional disaster. A basketcase. Something Alessio would have laughed hard at. I didn't care. Places like this, closed in places, alone, and preferably in the dark, they were my comfort zone. Closets and bath tubs, under the bed, these were the places where I would let myself break.

As I always did when I was through with being a basket case I got out of the bathtub and carried on my day as if nothing had ever happened. I showered, stalked down the hall to pick my outfit with only a towel protecting me from wandering eyes, and then I went to work the way I did every other day.