Today though I used the key Giovanni gave me and went in.
It wasn’t even four a.m. and if she’d come back an hour ago she could be asleep.
The last thing I wanted to do was ring the bell or knock on her door and wake her.
If she was sleeping I’d just look in on her and leave.
If she was awake I’d just ask her if she was okay then leave and figure things out.
The door to her room was ajar and the light beamed full force from the crevice, signaling that she was awake.
The next thing that told me she was awake were the little sobs that filtered through the door. I pushed the door open and she jumped off the edge of her bed.
I didn’t think it was possible but she looked worse than when she came to me earlier. She looked like something more had happened.
“Jia.” I rushed to her but she placed her hand up to stop me, shaking her head vigorously.
“No… don’t come near me.Don’t.I don’t know you! I don’t know you.”
I narrowed my gaze at her, wondering what the hell she was saying and what could have happened in the time since we’d last seen each other.
“What are you saying to me? Did something happen?”
I took one step forward and she dashed over to her chest of drawers, opened the top drawer and pulled a gun on me.
Needless to say shock flew through me.
This was the woman I couldn’t kill. But she was holding a gun on me, looking like she was ready to kill me. Her eyes blazed with fury I’d never seen on her before. Not in the short time I’d known her had I seen her look like this.
Like her father. A killer.
Chapter 2
Jia
The gun wasin my hands.
Cold, hard, steel…cold…
It felt like death.
Very symbolic of death. Ironic because it could take life.
Guns were tools designed to kill.
The coldness reminded me of how my mother felt when I’d watched her die. As I’d watched the life leave her body.
My mother…
As she lay on the ground in a pool of blood and I held her, watching the life drain from her, that was the first thing I noticed. How quickly she became so cold. So cold. Unnaturally cold.
Of course it would be, death wasn’t natural to me and at sixteen years old, it was the first time my eyes were opened to the truth of my life and the darkness of my world. Hard truth had hit me with a slap to the face.
It slapped me into a state of awareness, reminding me I was the daughter of Giovanni Marchesi.
All the while I’d been aware that our family was quite unlike all my friends, and we belonged to the mafia, I’d never really took note until that day.
In that one event I knew to always expect the unexpected.
