The word “gallivanting” hung in the air for a fraction of a second. But it was the name that followed that detonated the last vestige of my control: Mafia Locas.
The sound I landed on Sarah’s face was not a slap. It was a punctuation mark. A full stop, written not in ink, but in the stinging flesh of my palm against Sarah’s cheek. A period at the end of the sentence she uttered. A sentence that shattered the fragile glass box I had built around my new life.
The mention of Locas, of the world he represented, a world of whispered secrets and dangerous promises, was the final thread to snap. The shame, fear, sleepless nights, and constant looking over my shoulder, all of it collided into a white-hot ball of pure, unadulterated rage in the pit of my stomach. And I could not hold it anymore.
