Chapter 9: Sisters

Pippa was sitting on our kitchen floor with her back against the dishwasher and her phone in her hand.

She'd taken the bus.

She was still wearing her hospital bracelet, and her braid had come half undone.

"Eighty-one thousand views," she said, without looking up. "Someone put it on a gossip page. Look. They gave it a name."

She turned the screen to me.

The photograph was there again, the dawn, the iron gate, my face turned up to his.

The caption said: MAFIA BOSS & HIS WHITE ROSE. PRICE OF A SICK SISTER?

My knees went weak.

"Pip."

"Is it true?"

I sat on the floor across from her, with my coat still on, and put my hands on my knees.

"Part of it," I said. "I'll tell you all of it. Then you can be as angry as you want."

She waited.

I told her.

She stopped me twice, and both times it was to ask the wrong question.

Her mouth fell open at "offered."

I read her the line about her place.

"We've slept together," I said. "Once. It was mine. I walked across the hall. The paper had nothing to do with it."

Pippa stared at me.

"You offered yourself," she said, "to a mafia boss. For me."

"Yes."

"Without telling me."

"You'd have said no."

"Of course I'd have said no!" She was crying, furious, her voice cracking. "I'm not a price, Noelle! I'm not something you trade yourself for!"

"I know."

"You don't! You never ask me! You decide everything and then you do it and you tell me after!"

"Because I'm scared!" I said.

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