Page 20 of One Breath After Another

Naz only shrugged. “Despite how some people in our business like to present themselves to the rest of the world, I’m fine being exactly who I am. If that makes me stand out amongst the crowd, so be it. I’m not the standard, Luca. I am the exception. Exceptional.”

Luca grinned.

He couldn’t help it.

That was the same shit their fathers had been telling them for years in regards to the family business. They didn’t have to follow the rules—they were the fucking rules. If only Luca could apply that same philosophy to everything else in his life, shit would be grand.

Right?

“And knock that shit off,” Naz muttered, rolling his eyes Luca’s way. “You sound like your father when you mouth off like that, you know?”

Yeah.

Shit.

“Here.”

He slapped the folder in front of his friend, but Naz didn’t bother to reach for it when he muttered around the rim of his glass, “Thanks. Saved me the time of driving out of the city just to pick it up. You’d think I might have my shit together by now, but—”

“We’re all doing what we can.”

Naz chuckled and set the glass back to the bar. “Yeah, tell me about it. Between Roz being pregnant ... Dad piling on more shit for me with business, and everything else, I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. Supposed to be a genius here, but I can’t even remember a fucking file I put right on my desk, so I wouldn’t forget it this morning. Some shit, that.”

Luca couldn’t help but notice how Naz didn’t mention Penny amongst the stress in his life. That also reminded him that he should probably let his friend know about the run-in he had with the girl at the house.

“Penny was at the house, by the way,” Luca said.

Next to him, Naz nodded. “Skipped school again, probably.”

“Again?”

Naz didn’t seem concerned when he explained, “Sometimes, she makes it a whole day. Other times, she barely makes it through the front doors before she turns back around. I pay enough money to the school that they ... overlook small infractions.”

“Does Roz know—”

“She’s the one who told Penny not to push it. If shit isn’t good for her, then she doesn’t need to be stressing out over something like classes. She’s got enough going on. We give her the freedom she needs to work through it. What else can we do?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Naz sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “My shit seems small in comparison. I mean, her father was just sentenced, and the lawyers are pressuring everyone to finish the paperwork needed for the asshole’s estate and restitution payments. Imagine, Luca, the man who raped and sold you to others for them to do the same is basically handing you millions of dollars ... a way to apologize. Like that shit should fix what he did to her. I’m surprised when she does make the effort to get up and go to school, honestly.”

Luca swallowed the uncomfortable lump in his throat, thinking about Penny at the house all alone. Hell, should she even be alone? That was the real question. Was there too much freedom for the girl in her situation?

He didn’t know.

“Do you ever think,” Luca asked his friend, “that if you give someone too much rope ... they might just hang themselves with it?”

Naz lifted his brow and reached for the glass with a mouthful of liquor left in the bottom. He drained what remained of the whiskey, and then muttered heavily, “All the fucking time, man. All the time.”

4.

Penny

CLICK, click, clack, click, clack, click, click.

Penny blinked, bleary-eyed and still tired, as she climbed down the dark stairwell of the suburban house where she had called home for the last several months. Maybe it had been the trip to her therapist yesterday evening, but she’d had a train of nightmares since falling asleep, and she just wasn’t in the mood to try again.

But what was that sound?