Chapter 4
Mila had seen more than the push.
She told me after dinner.
Not because I questioned her repeatedly.
Because children talk when the room finally becomes safe enough.
She sat beside me wearing clean pajamas and a towel around her shortened hair.
“Daddy gets mad at Mommy.”
“I know.”
“He says baby is his ticket.”
I stopped.
“Ticket to what?”
She shrugged.
“Grandpa room.”
My council room.
The phrase had come from Gavin.
Not a child’s invention.
“What else does Daddy say?”
“Mommy has to smile when people come.”
There it was.
Public face.
Private pressure.
Gavin and Sienna attended family dinners looking perfect.
I believed the performance.
Mila continued.
“If Mommy cries, Grandma says she ruins things.”
“Which grandma?”
“Grandma Marjorie.”
Of course.
“And Aunt Sabrina?”
Mila touched the uneven side of her hair.
“She says snitches get ugly.”
My jaw tightened.
“Did she say that today?”
Mila nodded.
Then added:
“She cut Mommy’s dress once.”
I looked at her.
“What?”
“When Mommy said no dinner.”
Sienna had missed one family dinner two weeks earlier.
She told me pregnancy exhaustion.
Maybe true.
Maybe not all of it.
I found her later.
“What happened to the dress?”
Her face changed.
Sabrina had cut the back seam with scissors after Sienna refused to attend a Cole dinner where Gavin intended to introduce two capos as his “future partners.”
Sienna stayed home anyway.
Sabrina laughed and called her ungrateful.
Marjorie withheld the household driver the next morning.
Small punishments.
Fashion.
Transportation.
Food.
Access.
Not enough to look like captivity.
Enough to create obedience.
I looked at my daughter.
“How long?”
She whispered:
“Since I got pregnant.”
May you like
That was eight months.
Eight months of people waiting for a baby to become leverage.
