Chapter 16. Decision Time

I wake slowly the next morning and yawn. I can’t hear Mama and Baba in the kitchen, so I’ve slept in a little, but there’s not enough sun filtering in through my closed eyelids to be truly that late in the day. Exhaustion clings to my limbs like I stayed up all night finishing a paper, but the tables won’t wait themselves. I open my eyes and sit up.

My heart slams the brakes. I’m in a huge bed in an even bigger room decorated in simple, neutral tans. Where are the soft blue walls I picked out when we were redoing the restaurant, and Baba found a buy-one-get-one sale on paint? Where is the creaky twin bed I’ve slept in my whole life? Where are Mama and Baba?

At the thought of them, memories start to filter back in. The auction. Sneaking home with enough money to save our lives. Baba’s heavy expression as he carried the baseball bat to the door. The smell of Baba’s blood–and Frank and all those strange men on the floor of the auto shop. And Dante, in the co