Page 24 of Pretty Lies

No.

Just disappointed. As though that made anything better.

“Can’t I have oneday where I don’t have to listen to Dad worry about me?” she asked.

It was a rhetorical question.

Her father would never stop worrying. That was most of the problem in a nutshell. It was also why, despite the fact she didn’t want to get out of bed, she still would. And she would head across town to sit down for breakfast with her mother and father, too, even though it would only lead to yet another conversation about business, her involvement, and the details she’d been selectively leaving out for her father’s benefit.

Or as he told her earlier in the week, her benefit.

Nonetheless, it all boiled down to the fact he was worried. So was her mother. J, too.

In the grand scheme of things, Della was fine. A baseball bat to the head—though they couldn’t be sure if the attack was a product of her involvement in collecting her father’s loansharking debts or her ex-boyfriend who just happened to show up on the same night it happened—wasn’t that bad. Not considering everything else she had seen or got too close to over the years.

Somehow, Della needed to show her father—and maybe her brother, too—that she was just fine, and this little problem of the attack hadn’t put her off balance. She was ready to get back to work, what remained of the yellow bruise could be hidden by concealer, and when she figured out who exactly had done this to her, they were going to regret it in the worst possible way.

“Go away.”

“It’s not that bad, come on,” J said.

Turning her head to the side, Della eyed J where he had come to stand at the side of her bed. “The second something bad happened, what did you do?”

That had J giving her a look.

She stared right back.

“Dell—”

“You spilled everything to Dad,” she said before he could come up with some kind of an excuse that really wouldn’t help the situation. “You told him about everything. And what did that leave me doing? Dealing with it, J.”

“He needed to know.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Yes, he did. Because what if the attack wasn’t meant to be a singular incident? What if it had a bigger purpose? Even if it doesn’t seem like that, we have to treat it like it does because that’s the world we live in. You need to be safe and so, Dad needed to know all the details. He was going to learn that you’ve been working without me and running with guys who aren’t shit, anyway. It was just a matter of time.”

Maybe.

J had a point.

Still …

“It didn’t have to be you that told him,” she said, gaze narrowed. “Because I’m pretty sure there’s some shit in the sibling code about not ratting each other out, but especially not when we’re adults.”

“I mean … keeping you safe trumps that.”

God.

She hated when he did that.

“Get out of my room,” Della demanded.

“Get up and ready to leave. We’ve got an hour and a half—we’re doing brunch.”

“Great.”

“And chill the attitude.”