Page 95 of Pretty Lies

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Reality came with a heavy hand.

Calls with lawyers.

Avoiding police.

Money that needed to be handled; people who needed direction. Her mother who needed her even though Chloe didn’t want to say it. Her father who couldn’t afford for their family to fuck up again. One day bled into two, and then three and four quickly followed.

“Joe’s bead on some shit came through,” Cory said quietly.

Della glanced up from the papers that were currently spread over her workspace. A desk that she hadn’t used all that often in her place. Mostly because, often, she found herself working directly on the streets to get shit done. Handing out loans, or collecting when a particular debtor didn’t pay.

Now, she was reorganizing so that others did that for her while she kept track of everything else involved in her father’s books. And it was a lot.

A lot more than she realized.

“And?” Della asked.

“The drugs that were boosted are gone. For sure.”

“That fast,” she noted to herself.

“Like that was the purpose, hmm?”

Exactly.

“He’s still working on some other info there,” Cory said. “Because right now, we can’t find Luis or his crew. At all. It’s like they’re ghosts, and that’s not how it works in Chicago when the Outfit goes looking for somebody. This is looking like it was planned for a lot longer than we think.”

“Yeah, it does.”

Which bothered her more.

“And Jennika popped up this morning. At one of her regular haunts not far from her place. She was out of it like you said she would be when we finally found her.”

Della swallowed the lump that formed in her throat at the news. She wasn’t surprised. After days of no contact with her best friend, she had basically deduced that Jennika went into another one of her spirals and literally nothing would bring the girl from it except a hard and cold rock bottom.

That didn’t make it easier.

It really sucked that it had to be now that her friend decided to say fuck this to life and have a breakdown, all things considered. She could really use Jennika where work was concerned, and just as a fucking friend. Where was her best friend with a bottle of wine and a blunt to let her drown all her sadness and cry on her shoulder?

Della was trying a new thing, though.

Not being selfish.

Her friend was going through shit, too. That much was clear. So, instead of feeling the brief bitterness at the news of Jennika showing up again, she tried to find the silver lining instead.

“At least, she’s safe,” Della said. “I’ll text her later.”

“Joe sent over a friend. He’ll clean her up over the next couple days. See how it goes from there. Maybe she’ll be ready to get back to work, or whatever.”

Della pulled the papers into a pile and closed the file on top of them. “She doesn’t have a choice. I’m no longer in a position to work around her. I need her to start working for me, or I need to put someone else in her place. Right?”

She glanced up from the desk.

Cory stared across the office, calm as always. “As long as you make the business keep working, then you’re doing it right.”

He kept telling her things like that. She tried to remember it even when at every new turn, she felt like a baby deer on new legs trying to navigate unknown terrain. Nobody learns how to do your father’s kind of work overnight, Della, he had told her more than once, but you’re luckier to know more than most, so don’t forget it.