Page 117 of Joey

“Get in the fucking car, Joey.”

She folds her arms over her chest. “Not until you admit that you treat me like an idiot just because I’m a girl. You know I’m right. If you’d told me about the stupid pact between Pushkin and our father, this all could have been prevented.”

Tension ripples through the parking lot like the aftershock of an earthquake. Joey keeps glaring at Dante with her arms folded. His hand stays on the door handle.

I glower at him.Just get in the car, D.

He doesn’t. He shuts the door with a soft, deliberate click and turns to face her. “You were eighteen years old.”

“I deserved to know. You had no right to keep that from me.”

“We did what we had to do,” he insists.

“No, you did what was easy for you. Anything to avoid dealing with the fact that I might have an opinion about my own fucking life.”

“You were just a kid,” he says, the vein in his temple throbbing.

“I wasn’t a kid! And you had no right to make decisions about my life without consulting me.”

He scoffs. “Like you would have listened to anything Lorenzo or I had to say?”

“You didn’t give me a fucking choice,” she shrieks.

“We gave you plenty of chances to prove you could be trusted, Joey, and you threw every single one back in our faces.”

“Bullshit!”

“You constantly whined and pouted because your mean big brothers wouldn’t let you do whatever the fuck you wanted. But how many times did Max have to haul your ass home after you snuck out to some party? How many fucking times did I have to clean you up after you got wasted on vodka and weed?”

She balls her hands into fists, clenching them at her sides as she rocks on the balls of her feet. “I had to do those things because the two of you would never let me out of the goddamn house.”

“Because our own fucking father wanted to marry you off to a Russian psychopath, Joey,” he screams at her.

“And you should have fucking told me,” she yells louder, and I run a hand over my face. This argument has been a long time coming, but I wish they were having it elsewhere. “You should have consulted me.”

“I couldn’t consult you Joey, you were…”

“I was what?”

His jaw ticks. He shakes his head. “Get in the car.”

“I was what, Dante?” she demands. “At least be man enough to say it to my face.”

Don’t say it, D.

“You were a spoiled little bitch!” he snaps.

She steps back as though he slapped her in the face. Looking devastated, he scrubs a hand over his face and sighs.

“That’s why you sent me away? Not to protect me, but to make your life easier?” The pain in her voice makes my chest ache.

“No, Joey. We sent you away to protect you,” he insists.

“Don’t fucking lie to me. No more lies. I’m sick of them,” she screeches.

All I can do is stand back and let her vent some of the rage she’s bottled up inside for years. She has so much pent-up frustration inside her, and it has to come out sometime. I tried to fuck it all out of her, but I obviously missed some.

Dante steps forward. “It’s the truth, Guiseppina.”