So forgive us all, women, Alex, for not trusting men.
7
The Itch
Alex
There was an itch inside my brain. It was powerful and there wasn’t anything that could soften it. The itch grew stronger with every passing day.
The itch was Jade Moretti.
The young woman who worked with her father to prosecute us. The woman who actively contributed to our possible demise.
In fact, our business was facing new and unforeseen challenges every day, and she may have been responsible for them. One of our crew was arrested the day after we took her—that was a huge blow. Andrei and I were now certain we had an informant on our team, maybe two.
And Sebastian Moretti was incessantly issuing threats on local news stations.He threw around big words, promising the most severe retribution for his daughter’s kidnapping.
Instead of focusing on that, all I could hear were Jade’s words.
What do you think it means, Alex?
He didn’t beat me to a pulp or anything.She said it so casually, like the thought of him hitting her had settled in herhead and she was grateful that he didn’t pummel her, just that there wereincidents.
He tried to rape me and I escaped. Barely.
The idea crawled into my head during lunch with Jade and it was now exploding inside me. Andrei would disapprove, butfuck itbecause the decision was always mine in the end.
I had my security guys tailing Knox since I said goodbye to Jade and I was simply waiting for the right time to put a bullet through his skull.
In the meantime, the itch was unbearable. It had been three days since I closed the front door of that beach house and I picked up a very toxic habit—I checked the camera in the house once or twice a day. Maybe three times. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I reached for the phone again, but caught myself right in time and picked up my car keys instead. No, I wasn't going to see her, I wasn’t going to drive byagain.
I headed to Andrei’s.
He opened the front door of his mansion and invited me in, the TV blasting Moretti once more. Olga stood at the kitchen island, extremely pregnant, eating yogurt straight from the container.
We all stood together in their massive sitting room, watching another press conference.
"You boys both know you're not cut out for this,” Olga piped up, shaking her head. “Just stick to what you do best. Make your money, move on.” She sighed, but we all knew that it was too late for that.
“Olechka, sit down, baby.” Andrei addressed her in half-Russian, half-English, pulling out a chair for her. I always admired their union. They were truly and madly in love since high school. Olga knew everything about our business, andAndrei never kept her in the dark. He was fully honest, and she chose to stay with him through thick and thin.
"We couldn't anymore. He was getting too close. It was bound to happen at some point, we just hoped it wouldn't be so fast," I explained quietly for no other reason than to fill the silence.
But the silence was also broken by a call. Gianna’s number showed up on my phone screen for the hundredth time, and I was ready to throw my phone in the garbage.
I stepped into another room, ready to launch into her for the final time, but her sniffles paused whatever I had planned to say. We’d been through a good number of breakups and some were rough, but crying? Gianna didn’t really cry.
"B-baby," she pleaded quietly. "I'm s-sorry. I'm so sorry for what I said. Please. Please just don't walk out of my life like this."
I didn't have the emotional bandwidth for Gianna.
This was a lose-lose situation. If I comforted her, we would be back to the exact same spot as always—a limbo of back-and-forth dates and passionless nights and empty conversations. And if I didn't, I'd be the asshole, and she would double down on this behavior. The phone calls. The pleading. The manipulation.
"Gianna, I—" I didn't know what to say. I had absolutely zero words left for her. “I cannot do this anymore. We broke up a year ago,Gianna. Let's just both move on, please—"
"Alex! Baby!” Her crying intensified. “We’re meant for each other, you know that! We're just going through a rough patch right now, baby, but we can move past it! Please,pleasejust come see me."
