AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shay was around my age, maybe a few years older. She’d lost so much, like me, and had vengeance in her heart, again like me, but we were not the same.
She stared at me for a few moments, sizing me up and letting the tension in the air grow thick with uncertainty. “Well, well. I can honestly say I’m surprised to see you here. You been here the whole time?”
My mind flashed back to that warehouse, that cold metal room with a blood-stained concrete floor… the room where Miguel told me the ugly truth before trying to break me one last time.
It was not a memory I wanted to relive, especially in front of Shay, so I did my best to push it down when I answered her, “Yes. Mostly. Before I tell you why I wanted to meet, I need your word that you won’t inform Miguel or Rocco about where I am.”
Shay wore an unimpressed look. “And why shouldn’t I? You’ve been MIA for a while, Giselle, so let me inform you what your dear daddy and Rocco did: they forced a meeting with the Black Hand under the guise of you being kidnapped. What that meeting really was about was Nix and Atticus being his real father.”
“Which I warned you of. I told you Miguel was going to play dirty, didn’t I?”
She leaned back in her chair, her black-painted nails picking at a random spot on the table between us. “You did,” she admitted. “But I didn’t think the Palmers would side with them and demand a paternity test. Big shocker: it came back a match, which means Nix is now Atticus’s true heir, and Dex and Jett are runners-up.”
Fucking politics. I really didn’t give a shit about Black Hand politics or the feeling of betrayal Shay felt over the Palmers siding with Miguel and Rocco, but I had to be somewhat delicate about this, lest Shay throw up her hands and walk away.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “That sort of brings me to why I’m here, and why I wanted to meet with you.”
“This some kind of game for you and daddy, hmm? You going to tell me how much you hate your father and want to take him down, come at me from the side while dear old daddy comes at Atticus and the others from a different angle?”
“I do hate him,” I whispered, “but this isn’t about helping Miguel get on the Hand. I told you I don’t want him on the Hand. If you select him to take Piper’s place, you’ll regret it.”
Shay frowned at me. Her dark brown hair framed her face in angles, and yet even with the unflattering haircut, she was gorgeous. I could see why she’d amassed so many boyfriends during her quest for revenge.
“There are two spots open on the Hand now, and Rocco and Miguel are aiming for them,” I went on when it became clear Shay wasn’t going to respond. “Before we get into the reason why you’re here, I should tell you how I got here, first.”
“The kidnapping was staged,” she put it together, or so she thought.
I nodded once. “It was, but not how you’re thinking. Before we moved to Cypress, I frequented a church. The last time I went to that church, I found its priest dead and some gang members ransacking the place. I killed them. Those gang members belonged to the Greenback Serpents—only, I recently found out, they were bought out by Miguel. He wanted that priest dead because he was my real father.”
That finally got Shay’s full attention. “You aren’t a real Santos.”
“No, although technically, right now, I guess I’d be considered a Moretti. Speaking of, do you want to know why my father married me off to Luca?” I didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Because three years ago, he sold me for a night to Rocco Moretti, and Rocco sure got his time’s worth.”
Something changed on Shay’s face, a shade of empathy, perhaps? Either way, I didn’t tell her so she’d pity me.
“You see, Miguel knew, even back then, I wasn’t his daughter. I wanted to die after that night. I tried to throw myself off a bridge, actually. The only reason I’m still here is because of that priest… my real father. It was always Miguel. Always. He’s the reason I was shot that night. He’s the reason I’m here now—he thought he’d hand me over to the Serpents, that they’d want revenge for their fallen comrades… but he couldn’t have known they wouldn’t kill me. Miguel had no idea the Serpents would want their pound of flesh from him and not me.”
I sighed. “I was always a pawn to him. Always. Even in my disappearance and assumed death. It’s why you can’t tell him I’m here, Shay.”
Shay was quiet for a while, and I could see the wheels turning in her head. “Wouldn’t you coming back to Cypress throw off his plans, though? Why isn’t that what you want?”
“I don’t want to just throw him off. I want to destroy him. His plan on getting on the Hand, his empire, everything that makes Miguel Santos the self-made king he is. I want to annihilate him. You can understand that need for revenge, can’t you?”
That got the harsh look on her face to soften somewhat, and she let out a slow breath. “I do. I understand that need more than anyone else in this city. I lost myself to it. I let it consume me, fuel me, until it was all I thought about. If someone would’ve offered to help me get my revenge back then, I wouldn’t have trusted them—but I’d have thought about it.” She waited a moment before adding, “That’s what you want from me, right? You want my help.”
“I do. I want your help, if you’ll give it. Miguel is not someone you’d want on the Hand. He’s not someone you could ever trust to watch your back. Believe me when I say, he won’t stop at the Hand. He won’t stop until he’s on top of it all.”
Shay’s lips puckered into a thoughtful pout. “Say I agree to help you… say I agree to go along with whatever you say, and I help make sure you get your revenge on Miguel. What’s in it for you?”
That… wasn’t what I thought she’d ask. What’s in it for her to help out—now, that was a question I’d been preparing myself for. Not what was in it for me.
“Because revenge can’t be all of it,” Shay spoke. “Revenge only gets you so far. Me? If you would’ve asked me before, I would’ve told you nothing. Nothing was in it for me except cold, bloody revenge—but there needs to be more. There has to be. Revenge might fuel your hatred, but life needs to be about more than hatred.”
When I didn’t say a word, Shay asked, “Let me put it this way: what will you do once Miguel is gone?”
“I—I don’t… I don’t know.” I decided to answer truthfully, “I honestly don’t know if it’ll work, and if it does I don’t know if I’ll live through it. I spent years wishing I was dead, so it’s hard for me to imagine a future at all.”
Shay gave me a tiny twitch of a smile. “I get it. I was the same way. I didn’t care whether I lived or died, as long as I took down the Hand. I didn’t think I’d—” She looked down at her hands, leaning forward onto the table, the smile on her face deepening. “—find myself catching feelings for the ones I wanted to destroy. I’m glad I did, though. I don’t know where I’d be without them.”
