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“Luca only chose you to be beside him because he thought I’d never harm you. See, it worked. Take you as his right-hand woman, build his fucked-up society.” Niko grabs me by the cheeks and squeezes. “Try to destroy an organization that he knows nothing about.” He shoves me away again. “You were both wrong. I see him trying to get closer to you by playing on our old bullshit friendship and relationship, it isn’t going anywhere, so here’s the deal.” He grabs a cigarette out of his back pocket and lights the end, bringing the trunk to his mouth. “You’re gonna tell him that Ghost has asked for the delivery of his father by this Friday.”
The words that are on the tip of my tongue are stuck, as if they’ve tied themselves to me and are too afraid to let loose. He used me. The pain from hearing that is unbearable, and right now I can’t afford to feel pain.
Right now, I need to feel anger. Resentment. Revenge. “And if he doesn’t?” Because he won’t. His father is the only thing that Luca cares about.
Niko flicks the cigarette onto the ground and stubs it out with the heel of his boot. “Then I suggest you pack your bags, baby. Because you’re coming underground.” He backtracks his steps, pointing toward the house. “And don’t tell Ma unless you want your name on the bullet that goes through her skull, and trust me when I say, Meraki”—he climbs back onto his bike, blowing out a cloud of smoke—“if there’s one for her, there will be one for you right after. You’re smart. You know this world and know you can’t tell her shit.”
He leaves me standing there in a cloud of burnt rubber, tears no longer streaming down my cheeks.
I straighten my shoulders, my jaw clenching as I swipe my phone unlocked and hit dial on Luca’s name. He answers on the fifth ring.
“What?”
“You might want to change your tone, lover.” I gaze out to the distance, down the dark street that Niko just flew down. “Niko knows everything and he has a message for you.”
“I thought you were working on him,” Luca growls down the phone, and I know that if I was there in front of him, his hand wouldn’t be too kind to my face.
“I was,” I snap, walking down the stairs that lead back to the road. “But it’s Niko, and Luca?” I say, looking left and right down the dark road. “He’s definitely not the same one we knew.”
“What do you mean?” I hear doors closing in the background. “Get the fuck out!” he yells, and my fingers twitch when his tone crawls beneath my skin and brings to the surface memories I’d much rather keep buried.
“I mean—” I wave down the town car that just turned down the street. Opening the door, I slide into the back. “He mentioned Ghost.”
Silence.
There has been maybe twice that Luca has been silent when something has come to surface, and both times was when his precious father was threatened.
“How far away are you?” His tone is sedated. Kind of like the eye of the storm.
“About ten minutes.” I hang up with him and scroll through my texts, rereading the messages from Niko.
How could I have missed the signs? He played right into the boy I once knew. He was the person I expected Niko to be, but older. How could I be so stupid?
I push my phone back into my pocket and squeeze my eyes closed as the driver takes me back home. Did Niko know I was trying to play on his teen emotions to get closer to him for Luca? No. Can’t have. Even I believed some of what I was doing. This has to be on Luca. On him pushing me into Niko’s lap tonight. It had to be the giveaway.
I rest my forehead on the cool window, watching the familiar trees pass as the driver takes me back to the apartment. Hope has fizzled out.
This is my life.
The driver pulls to a stop outside the apartment building and I make my way inside, needing to have this conversation over with.
As I close the front door, Luca comes strolling into the kitchen with a bottle of Jack in his hand, his hair a mess and his eyes brimmed red.
He falls down to the kitchen barstool. “Tell me what he said about Ghost.”
I take a small step closer to him, removing my jacket and hanging it on the rack near the door. “I think he’s working for Ghost. He mentioned him so brazenly,” I say, turning back to face Luca, but when I’m hit with him, he’s right there in front of me, his nostrils flaring as his eyes pin me down with a hate so vicious I can’t see any humanity inside of him.
