Beautiful Thief (Omertà Law #2) Read online

  “Oh sweetie, you shouldn’t be up,” she says softly. Her pink scrubs bringing a little light to this dreadful place.

  “Where are my parents?” I ask, and her smile thins.

  “You are at White Wing Psychiatric Center. We’re here to help you get better, and your parents are just fine,” she states. Walking behind me, she unzips the back of the jacket and begins to unclip and loosen it.

  “How are you feeling? Do you feel sick to your stomach?” she continues to evaluate me.

  “No,” I lie, I feel like I drank too much water too fast and I need to puke. I’m not sure if it’s from waking up here or the shot they gave me.

  “Okay, well, that’s good. The doctor will probably see you tomorrow, and we’ll know about your limitations and privileges. So until then, you can join the others in the common room, or return to your room, okay?” She pulls the heavy white coat off of me and looks down at me with an annoying big grin. Her red lipstick smudged on her bottom teeth.

  “Oh!” She raises a finger, her lips puckering into an O-shape, and darts into the office, grabs something off her desk and comes back to hand it to me.

  I take it, it’s pamphlets about the place, their mission to help us get better with smiling kids on the front. Glancing around the place, I don’t see a cheerful child in sight.

  Sighing, I turn around completely, not sure where to go or what to do. I’m tired, really tired. The episode I had this morning at school really took it out of me, and I feel as if I could sleep for days.

  My eyes land on a semi-pretty girl at a table in the middle of the room. She’s doing a puzzle by herself. She’s in clothes similar to mine. Scrubs, like we’re in a hospital, her hair comes down the left side of her shoulder in a tight braid, and she has big round eyes. She suspiciously looks around the room and quickly gobbles up a puzzle piece. My eyes widen. She just ate that!

  Scratch sitting next to the girl who eats things. Crossing my arms, I look at the kids watching the movie, they all look very different. One bald with stitches in his head, a girl with green hair, and I can’t stop looking at the girl with cuts all over her face and neck. Did she do that?

  I don’t think I want to sit there either. I don’t belong here. Where is my dad? He knows people to get me out of here. Just before I turn to head back to my room, I see someone sitting at a round table at the back of the room by two windows. She has crazy blonde hair down her back, and she’s hunched over as if she’s working on something.

  Curiosity getting the best of me, I slowly tread that way and glance over her shoulder a good distance away.

  She has a three-inch pencil with a dull head and is drawing on a sketch pad. I can’t really see her face, but she has pink cheeks and freckles.

  “You can sit, you know,” she says, and I stiffen. She glances over her shoulder and big eyes with a color I can’t determine look at me. Her nose is too small for her face, and her bottom lip sticks out farther than her top.

  Scratching the top of my head, I mull over her offer, and my hand suddenly aches. Pulling it down to inspect it, I notice my knuckles are cracked with dry blood. From beating up Casen.

  My eyes flick to hers. I don’t know what happened this morning, maybe I’m not safe. I belong in that straitjacket.

  Turning around, I reject her offer and head back to my room where the temperature drops ten degrees and then I lie back on the hospital-looking bed. I close my eyes and listen to my beating heart. It’s slower than it was earlier, but I’m scared shitless regardless of how it drums within. I want my brother, and I want out of here.

  Tomorrow, that doctor will see that this morning was just a mistake and I’m normal.

  Just like everyone else.

  “Romeo, it’s time to get up.” A man’s voice makes me wake up immediately. Snapping upright, I find a man with graying hair with a matching mustache. He has on a suit, not as nice as my father’s, it’s not fitted, and a white doctors coat.

  “W-what?” I groan, my throat dry. Looking to the window, it still looks like the same gray sky and I don’t feel like I slept at all. Is it the same day?

  He walks up to me with a sense of power on his shoulders and grabs me by the chin. My heart throbs in my chest and I shove the stranger away.

  “Don’t touch me!” I shout, my stomach still feeling ill. Who is this guy and why does he think he has the right to just come in here and grab me like that?

  He lowers his head, his fuzzy brows glaring at me.

  “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, I just want to check your vitals.” His is voice deep and unsettling. His face is sharp, eyes unfriendly. He must be the doctor.

  “Where is my dad? I want out of here,” I demand, pushing him away again. This is crazy, I don’t need to be in here.

  He sighs loudly and leaves the room. That was too easy, where’d he go? Sliding my legs over the side of the bed, I stretch my neck as far as I can to see out the door. My back starts to sweat, the grappling jaws of fear nibbling at my flesh.

  Kieran always said never let them see you break, so I take a deep breath and lift my shoulders.

  The nurse comes in right behind the doctor with a straitjacket in her hands.

  “Wait!” I fold my legs underneath me and hold my hands out to keep them away. The doctor grabs both of my wrists, jerking me forward. I kick and scream, trying to buck him off me.

  “Should I get one of the men?” The nurse looks at the doctor with a nervous look.

  “Nah, Miss Sissy, we can get him,” he says in a low, confident tone. He inches my left arm in the jacket, his strength surprising, he manhandles me into the tight coat before pushing me face down and strapping me in. Before I know it… I’m restrained.

  They both grab a strap from the bottom of the bed and secure my legs and I freeze. I thought things like this only happened in movies. They can’t do this. I’m a human, a normal person. Letting me go, he takes a step back, taking a clipboard from Miss Sissy.

  “Thank you, Miss Sissy,” he drawls out, and she leaves the room. “Now, let’s try this again.” He tucks the board with a thick amount of paperwork under his arm, and snatches my face by the chin, shining a flashlight into my eyes, blinding me. I wince and pull from his grip. Grinding my teeth, he looks my face over, his dull blue eyes unfazed by my attempt to fight.

  He listens to my heart, watching the watch on his wrist. It’s an ugly watch, all black and plastic looking.

  Satisfied with my vitals, he finally backs away and closes the door before leaning against it. He takes a deep breath, looking at the window while scratching his chin deep in thought. “So, you brutally attacked one of your classmates yesterday,” he states, not asks. I don’t answer. He obviously knows what happened.

  “Have you ever done that before?” he continues to ask questions, tilting his head to the side as he adjusts his glasses on the bridge of his nose before looking at me with an unreadable look. He’s the stereotypical doctor you’d see in a horror movie overlooking a patient in an asylum.

  “Do you ever feel sad, Romeo?”

  I silently laugh. “Who doesn’t?”

  “Right, but there’s sad, and then there’s a sadness where you don’t want to get out of bed for days or go even as far as wanting to hurt yourself,” he explains, watching me closely. He’s probably reading my reactions, the tone of my voice, all the things he learned in doctor school.

  “I don’t know,” I growl, irritated.

  He taps his chin, humming. “I know who you are.” He pushes himself off the door and my eyes widen at the movement. I’m tied to a table in a closed room with a man that has the power to do anything he wants with me. “I know your father is known to be a very powerful, dangerous man,” he states, but I don’t reply. I remain silent.

  “I’m sure you’ve seen things or heard things that have you feeling uneasy?” His glasses slip down his nose, his eyes looking at me intently.

  “I’m not talking about my father,” I finally tell him, a
nd he pushes the glasses back onto his nose with a disappointed look. He wouldn’t be the first person to try to squeeze juicy stories out of me.

  “Right, well I have twenty-four hours to do my job, if you want my help, and I think you do, then I suggest you cooperate with me, Romeo.” He raises a brow.

  I look to my restrained feet, the straps look brand new. I wiggle my toes within the tan hospital socks. I don’t know what happened yesterday, and I don’t know what is going on inside of me. I can’t talk to my father about it, he’s always busy and irritated by my presence. My mother has enough problems with what my father does, so that leaves me alone in my room rocking back and forth wondering why I feel the way I do.

  “Okay,” I mumble, the urge to rebel is tempting but deep down I am tired of these… moods, I have. I want to be a normal kid and not feel like I’m on a never-ending roller coaster.

  “I get sad, yes,” I state, l turning to look at the gray blank wall. “Sometimes I want to hurt myself, sometimes I just want to lay in my bed and not be bothered for days, and sometimes I want to take whatever is inside of me out on someone else just to feel something different than unhappy.” My own words surprise me, I didn’t know I had all of that inside of me. When I opened my mouth to explain myself, I wasn’t expecting my soul to pour from my lips.

  “I see,” he mumbles, scratching his chin with clean fingernails. His hands look soft and clean, he sits behind a desk all day judging people, that’s as dirty as his hands get.

  “When you attacked the kid at school, what was going through your mind?” He digs deeper.

  I roll my shoulders, the jacket hugging me suddenly feeling relaxing as I tell this man things I don’t want to talk about. Things that have been rolling in the back of my mind like a tumbleweed in a western movie.

  “I don’t know… relief.” I shrug. When I was beating the shit out of Casen I felt in the right, like it was okay, it felt good and I wanted to keep doing it… until I was pulled away and I saw what I had really done. It was like I slipped into a black void and and now that I’m out and looking back.. it didn’t feel so okay anymore. I wanted to slump into a vast darkness and hide from everyone, including myself.

  “So you didn’t blackout, you knew what you were doing?”

  My brows furrow, anger settling on the tip of my tongue, ready to lash out like a whip. His questions are narrowing in on me being a crazy person, getting off on hurting others, and that’s not it.

  “I don’t want to do this anymore,” I snap, my eyes focused on my feet again.

  He sighs, taking the clipboard out, he scribbles on it and it makes me even more mad. I don’t know what he’s writing, but I feel it’s not good. He’s judging me, dissecting me, and trying to get me to say things I don’t want to.

  “We only have so many hours together, Romeo.” His voice slips into my ear like a hushed whisper, the watch on his wrist suddenly ticking loudly as the minutes count down my escape from this place. If I want his so-called help, I have to talk about feelings, and things even I don’t understand, but couldn’t I just be a kid with hormones or something? I’ve seen on TV where doctors are over-diagnosing children and putting them on unnecessary medication.

  Feeling exposed, I yell, “Get out.”

  Walking up to the foot of the bed, he undoes the strap around my feet with one quick move, blood floods to my toes making them feel all tingly. I lift my left leg, the freedom somewhat settling. He reaches for the straitjacket, I jump away from him.

  “No, I want to keep it on,” I protest, looking at him as if he was ready to strike me instead of taking a restraining device off a kid who means no harm.

  He looks at me with that unreadable look again and writes on the clipboard. Grinding my teeth, I look to the wall again, curious what he’s saying about me; thinking.

  “Stop writing about me. I’m fine, there’s nothing wrong with me and you can’t fix me.” I slowly turn my head toward him, glaring at him through hooded eyes.

  His thin lips turn into an arrogant smirk. That spark of anger inside of me blooming into a rage ready to plow his stupid face in.

  “One thing I’ve learned in my fifteen years of working here. Those that need my help the most are the first to say they’re fine, that they’re normal.” My mouth parts, I want to scream at him, cuss him out even, but I’m left speechless as he leaves the room.

  I’m not crazy.

  I’m normal.

  Breathing heavily, feeling agitated as ever, I feel my nostrils flare. The thought of a normal kid running with others and playing innocently flaring in the back of my head like a commercial on a cable TV show for children.

  I’m not that. Far from it. I’d be the one on the stairs, wearing all black, looking at them all with hatred. Their bright-colored clothes and Cheshire Cat grins making me want to stomp over to them and tell them life isn’t fucking rainbows and smiles.

  Later on, after I settled down, I walk out into the main room, the air in here carrying a chill, and find the girl in the corner is still drawing. Passing the children of the corn watching TV, I head to her and sit across the round table. Her hand slides across the paper as she hums a song I don’t recognize, drawing a flower, but it looks wilted. Weird. Her hair is even more crazy than earlier, kinked and curly like she hasn’t brushed it in days. She seems lost in her own world, not caring what others think of her.

  “Nice flower,” I finally speak. Her hand stops drawing for a split second, her bottom lip slipping into her mouth, before looking up at me. I hold my breath as she looks me right in the eyes. Hers so green they look like the grass in Central Park.

  “It’s a sunflower,” she informs me, her voice soft and silky. She sits back, flipping through the pages of the sketchbook, almost all of them drawn with the same looking sunflower and all of them looking near dead. My brows furrow at the near-dead ominous flowers, it doesn’t suit her. Her down-to-earth energy, beautiful bright eyes, and lively hair.

  The straitjacket giving me a bit of courage, I scoot up to the table to get closer to her. She watches my movement, and I notice the side of her palm covered in black-silver from the lead of the pencil. She tucks some of her hair behind her ear, resting an elbow on the table, she holds her hand behind her head and smiles at me.

  “Did you know that on dark days, sunflowers turn toward each other for energy?” She tilts her head to the side, waiting for me to reply.

  I shake my head. Why would I know that?

  She gives me an awkward look, drops her hand to the table, and begins to shade around the flower.

  “My name is Luna,” she whispers, and I feel a tug of attraction toward her. The name is perfect, like her.

  “Mine’s Romeo,” I whisper back.

  Her hand slows down in shading, a smile spreading across her face before she continues to sketch at normal speed. And that’s it. Neither of us saying a word as we both sit side by side. She draws, I watch. The sun behind the clouds becoming darker as the day moves on, making the nurses turn on the lights.

  She looks up at me and I look back, but she doesn’t need to talk for me to understand her, and I don’t need to respond for her to know I’m next to her.

  Two staff members that have been pacing the floor all day suddenly come and set trays of meatloaf and Jell-O on our table, the smell making me want to gag. I haven’t eaten since yesterday but looking at the food placed in front of me, I can say with confidence that I’m not hungry. My eyes flick up to the fat man wearing gray slacks and a white button-up shirt. His name tag hanging from the pocket of his shirt crooked.

  Jim

  “Let me take that straitjacket off you, son,” Jim offers, and I jerk away from him, scooting the plastic blue chair as far into the corner as it can go.

  “No!” I snap, fear making my voice crack. This coat is like a cape, making me feel safe knowing I won’t hurt anyone if I’m in it.

  “Come on, you can’t eat with it on!” he growls, irritated, swiping at me from over the tabl
e.

  “No!” I repeat, using my feet to kick him away. I want it on. I need to have it on if I’m out here, doesn’t he understand this. Where is the doctor? He’ll tell him.

  “Leave him alone!” Luna yells at Jim. My eyes don’t only widen but bulge at her outburst. She’s so small and sweet looking that the anger in her voice was unpredictable.

  “Luna, you stay out of this!” He points at her.

  Abruptly, she stands up, the chair falling back onto the floor, her arms stiffening straight and screams at the top of her lungs.

  The two men taking their attention off me and toward her. She doesn’t even take a breath as her blood-curdling pitch takes over the room. She’s lost it, gone crazy as everyone stares at her with hard judgment. I, on the other hand, think I’m in love. She’s the right amount of insane. Jim grabs her by the arms, and the other guy that was walking around the place takes her by the feet, she squirms and jerks, biting at their hands as they take her away, the room falling in a deafening silence.

  I swallow, the heart beating in my chest matching the butterflies in my stomach. Who knew my first crush would be in a mental hospital?

  Sitting in the corner, my eyes looking at her drawing she left behind. The sunflower that is hung over with a sense of depression, the sky behind it dark and unfriendly as petals fall to their death on the thirsty looking dirt. Is this how she feels inside? I can relate on certain days, my insides matching the dying flower.

  A boy with a shaved head, tray in his hand, comes to the table. His eyes naturally wide and round. He shoves a fork full of meatloaf into his mouth, some of it falling onto his gray shirt.

  “What did you do to lunatic?” He chuckles, proud of himself for the pun. I glare in reply. The overwhelming feeling of unhappiness circling in my chest. Is it sadness or anger though?

  “Her name is Luna,” I growl under my breath. Turning my head, I hope he gets the hint and goes away. I don’t want to be bothered by him.