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-Lilah-
When I get into my apartment, my anxiety kicks in, and I do a thorough inspection, checking that everything is the way I remember leaving it. I mean, if they had my keys and knew where to park my car, it wouldn't be too farfetched that they’d come inside, right?
Thankfully, it seems nothing was touched, so I go about my normal routine before my shift, pulling out the note my mom left on top of the box of journals and rereading it.
It's become a reminder of sorts, and folding the note back up carefully and tucking it into the envelope meticulously centers me. It's a reminder of why I’m here and what I’m doing. A reminder to keep going when my body is exhausted and I feel defeated.
And today, it's a reminder of why handsome distractions can't be part of my life.
This little note has become my way to ensure I never lose sight of my true mission.
And the reality is, working at the Carluccio-owned-and-operated gentleman’s club has given me the exact in I need to make my plan a reality.
I came to Jerzy Girls looking for the proof needed to take down the Carluccios and take my seat at the Russo table.
What my mom wrote in those journals haunts me daily, the cryptic words making slightly more sense with a fuller picture. The note she left in the box tells me she knew I would find them one day when she wasn't there. She knew that, despite her best intentions, I would need them. I’d need to use the information scrawled in the margins and hidden in lines to unravel my history and find answers to questions that have long since been forgotten.
The day my sister was kidnapped, Johnny Vitale confessed to killing my father. He had known about me since I was born and crafted a complex plan of creating an opening in the Russo family and using his ties to the Carluccios to rule. He planned to make me his unwilling bride, to take me to the Russos and demand he’s given what is rightfully mine.
But there is just no fucking universe where the right hand to a powerful Don goes and murders an heir to an opposing family without anyone knowing.
Without repercussions.
Withoutapproval.
When Johnny confessed, he made it sound like he was working alone, that he brewed this idea, but I’m not buying it. That family is too intertwined with my own for it to be a coincidence, to be simply a crazed man.
And when I heard the whole story, heard what Johnny confessed, a single passage from the journals that made no sense finally clicked in my mind.
* * *
From Libby’s journal, weeks after Arturo was killed.
Dear Diary,
My love is gone forever.
Every hope and dream we created together—the plans we had to help me escape this loveless marriage and finally be with my soulmate—have died with him.
And now I am alone.
My daughter will never know her father.
The worst part is, no one knows who did it.
No one knowswhy.
The family is just accepting what the report says: a random drive-by, wrong place, wrong time. But since when has a mafia heir been murderedaccidentallyin an unrelated drive-by?
Never.
Coincidences are so rarely ever actually coincidences. They're usually carefully crafted events made to look like there is no need for investigation. The powerful men in this town know the value of leaning on a coincidence. They just think no one will know, no one will look into it.
But I know. I know that Arturo was not killed in a drive-by.
This was intentional.
But even more, I know it surely wasn’t just an overzealous henchman nor a jaded potential lover who made that final call.
