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“Fuck both of you.” She snatches her heels off the pavement and makes her way back through the exit. As soon as she’s out of earshot, Ari turns back around to face me.
“That went about as well as I expected.”
I snicker. “Yeah.” Blowing out a cloud of smoke. “You gonna chase her?”
“Yeah.”
I knew he would. It’s not that Ari is soft, it’s that he cares. He has a heart for people and always has, and Meraki, she somehow made it into the center of his.
“Are you not?” He raises one eyebrow.
Ari has buffed up a lot since we were kids. He also grew his hair out and wears it in a pretty little bun, which somehow works for him.
“Have I ever?” I ask, grabbing her lost clothes and turning back around to face Luca’s body.
“Actually, yes.” Ari laughs so loud he has to hold his stomach to contain it.
Fucker.
He gets closer as his laughter dies out. “What about the pedo dad?”
“Shot him on the spot.”
“Really?” Ari moves closer to Luca’s body, pushing him over with his foot until he’s lying faceup. “You didn’t want to have playtime like you did with Luca?”
I shake my head, grabbing the gasoline from the wooden table that’s against the wall on the other side of the room. I start pouring liquid over his corpse. The room already smells of death, and I think it always has because of the history with it, but I gotta admit, since Luca and his father stole the establishment, there have been a lot more bodies that have dropped and burned.
I toss a Zippo down until it bounces off Luca’s face and ignites his whole body into an inferno of flames. “Nah, saved it for Luca.”
We both watch as his body turns to ash on the concrete slab.
“What are you going to do about Meraki?”
Ari finds the hose that’s connected to the wall and twists it on, putting out what fire is still simmering.
“Might just lock her in my house until she dies.”
He pauses. “I’m serious, Nik.”
My eyes find his. “So am I.”
“You’re going to take down the fucking French Mafia?”
“Nah.” I inhale the smell of burning flesh. “She’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.”
“That’s it?” Ari chokes, turning to face me completely. “You’re just going to let her walk again?”
“Ari, it’s either that or she dies, so which will you choose?”
My feet ache and the harder they slap against the forest floor, the more frantic my breathing becomes. I can’t stop the pain from tearing at my chest as the words keep replaying in my mind.
Luca is dead.
So is his father.
I hit the podcast on my phone as sweat drops to the screen. And I like it.
“I can’t stay long. I probably should have said that before I dragged you into this podcast. This is a love and leave.”
She breathes out loudly and I’m guessing she’s smoking on her cigarette. I searched her podcast name on Google one time and found almost no information on her. It was like her podcast didn’t exist. How do people not know about her? Some of her episodes have helped me through the toughest situations with Luca. The anger and pain I felt, and how Luca had time and time again brushed them away was felt through her episodes.
“So back to the man who I spoke about at the beginning of the podcast, back in episode one. We’re going to just call him—him. For now. Not because I want to protect his identity, but because, well, we will get to that.
“Mexico, late summer. The sun was just setting, and I still remember the blinding orange hue that bled across the sky. It hit my skin like a warmth I had never felt before, and I closed my eyes, inhaled, and let out a deep sigh of relief, because I had gotten out. I escaped my father’s arms and got out of a situation that I wasn’t destined to ever escape, and I did it for me. Just me. I found a food truck a couple blocks down the road from the little motel where I was staying. The Mexican flag hung on the front of the truck, and a short older woman and her husband greeted me with a smile that I had never felt in all my seventeen years. I told them what I wanted—a taco—and they handed me my food in exchange for what little money I had. I knew I needed a shower and a change of clothes, but none of that mattered at this moment because right now, I had something that no one could give me but me—freedom. Freedom to run if I wanted, to have sex when I wanted, and to laugh and cry whenever it was fitting to do so. I made it back to my motel and washed up in the shower that took ten minutes to heat before dressing in some clothes I had pinched earlier that day. Okay, sure… not my greatest moment, but I had no other choice since I had spent all the money I had on that taco, and truthfully, I wouldn’t have enough for clothes anyway. What I was dressed in was simple. A sundress that I tied around the back of my neck. It was sky blue with tiny suns printed over the thin material. It made me feel like I should be somewhere like Fiji. Tropical, cocktails, and smiling. That night ended the way I never thought it could.”
