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ChapterThirteen
Alicen’s hostility is starting to strangle me.
Didn’t I say I wanted to come home and read a romance book while taking a bubble bath? That had been the plan, but it hasn’t happened yet. Why, you ask? Because as soon as I walked in the door Alicen jumped all over my shit. Her and Milo didn’t say a word when I climbed into the car or on the entire trip from Nico’s little secret house to my apartment. The car had been as silent as the grave.
However, the moment we walked through the door she wasn’t shy about letting me know how much they didn’t appreciate me going off with Nico and the guys. She really let me feel her displeasure when she realized the trip had been for nothing.
It wasn’t really for nothing. We did find out about the house. It might seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but it really was an interesting tidbit of information. It was another location that could hold some of the answers we needed. It was another place for us to snoop around to gather information at least.
“I don’t know why you didn’t just tell them to fuck off. You do that every other day. What made today so different?” She crossed her arms over her chest and threw herself down onto the couch. Her black and lavender hair was loose and flowing around her slender shoulders today which was abnormal for her. Since I’d met her, I’d probably seen her hair down like twice before now.
“They probably didn’t give her much of a choice in the matter, Allie,” Milo said from his spot on the floor across the coffee table. He wasn’t any happier with me than Jasper and Alicen, but he was still trying to come to my defense with our other friends. I really didn’t deserve a friend like him. Even when he’s beyond pissed at me, he still gives me the benefit of the doubt. Even when I don’t deserve it.
“Don’t make excuses for her. She knows how we’ve been feeling since the docks. She could be a little more considerate.” I knew she was just pouting right now and wasn’t thinking about what she was saying, but her words cut a little deeper than I thought they would.
I knew everyone, myself included really, was struggling since I got shot, but she also knew that I had a job to do. I had things that would take me off to do things and they wouldn’t be able to go with me. They wouldn’t be able to know every move I made. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep things from them, but I didn’t want to put them in the line of danger. If anything happened to any of them, I would lose my fucking sanity. I wouldn’t be able to handle it.
“I couldn’t tell them no. Not this time. In my defense, I didn’t just take off with them. Jasper knew I was going. I also knew that he wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I was perfectly safe.” I wasn’t going to mention that when Jasper walked into the room Nico had been pointing a gun at my head.
“You were safe this time. I’m trying to be a little understanding because I know you have this whole thing to deal with when it comes to Gio. That doesn’t mean you need to take unnecessary risks with your life.
Pulling a pint of Double Fudge Brownie ice cream out of the fridge I popped the lid off, wrapped the freezing container in a kitchen towel, and stabbed a spoon in it before moving to sit beside her on the couch.
“I’m sorry I made you worry. Everything is okay for now. I can’t tell them no right now. Especially since they now know I’m the one behind all the deaths of their men. They’re not going to let me go so easily. Who knows what would’ve happened at the school today if I’d walked away from them? I don’t want anyone to get caught in the crosshairs. Especially not innocent high school students.” I stretched out my arm towards her, swinging the pint of ice cream back and forth under her nose. “Here’s a peace offering. Please forgive me?” I bat my eyelashes at her while poking my bottom lip out in what I would say was an impressive pout. I didn’t make that expression very often in my life, but I would like to think I was dang good at it.
She looked at the ice cream in my hand and then scowled up at me before snatching the creamy chocolatey goodness out of my hand.
“Fine whatever. You want to go off with men who probably want to kill you? Fine. Do it. Who am I to stop you? Just remember that if you die, I’m most likely going to be the one to pick out your burial outfit. Piss me off, and I’ll send into the afterlife dressed like a fucking clown. Red nose and all.” She took a vicious bite of ice cream off the spoon. I could hear the metal of the utensil clink against her teeth as she sat there seething.
“Good. Right. Now that we’ve all made up and are on good terms again, there’s a few things we need to talk about.” Alicen growled around the hunk of chocolate brownie she just shoveled into her mouth as Jasper sat down on the end of the coffee table in front of me.
“What’s up?” We had so many things up in the air right now, there was no telling what he’d found.
“Remember that photo you found in the yearbook? I did some digging and found out some things that you’re not going to like.” I watched Jasper’s adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. He was nervous about telling whatever it was he found.
If he was nervous to tell me, then I was nervous to hear it. That photo had brought up a shit ton of questions that I pushed to the back of my mind and couldn’t find the time to deal with. Not when I was running around trying to find those girls.
The ones that never existed in the first place.
I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like whatever he had to say about that photo.
“Just say it.”
“Apparently your parents and Gio were good friends all through high school. Like the best of friends. From what I could gather they were almost inseparable. That friendship continued well into adulthood.” He pulled his laptop out of the little black bag he carried it in as he spoke. I could feel my heart break a little as we spoke about my parent’s past. My heart shattered every time I thought about them. That wasn’t anything unusual, but thinking about them before they had me, before their lives were taken away, always seemed harder than thinking about their final night on this earth.
His fingers clicked away at his laptop as we sat in silence, and I tried to get myself under control. It was moments like this when it was hard to not march myself down to Gio’s home guns blazing and take my revenge, everything else be damned. It didn’t matter if I was going to jail or if I died in the process. As long as I took him out, I would feel so much better.
“I also found some old photos of them as adults. I found photos of you with them as well.” Before turning the computer around to face me, he ran his hand haphazardly through his white, blonde hair. His eyebrows cinched together creating a little furrow in the middle of his forehead.
Our eyes met and held for a single breath before he spun the laptop around on his lap so that I could see what was on the screen. I took one more fortifying moment in his gaze before looking down.
I was having a hard time processing what I was seeing. It didn’t make any sense to me. He’d set it up in a little slideshow so that every few seconds a new photo appeared on the screen. These photos were of moments I didn’t remember ever happening. If Jasper wasn’t my best friend, I would’ve thought he faked them.
There were shots of my parents laughing with Gio and his wife. Moments captured of my mother and Maria in a kitchen somewhere cooking dinner together with nothing but joy on their faces. Gio and my father standing arm in arm in the middle of a green yard in front of a lake. Snap shots of me in a little yellow dress standing next to a boy with striking green eyes and a head full of dark black hair.
One after another they filled the screen, and I could feel my mind swirling in all kinds of directions attempting to make sense of them all. Trying to explain to myself how I could be seeing these photos when they contradicted everything I’d ever been told about my parent’s and Gio’s relationship. I knew that my father worked for Gio’s syndicate. I knew that Gio had my parents killed because they were going to turn him into the Feds. These were the facts I’d been raised on. They were the ideals that I’d built my entire revenge plot around.
Looking at these photos it would seem as if there was more to the story. Something else had been going on between Nico’s father and my parents. The fact that there were pictures of me and Nico when we couldn't have been any more than three or four years old spoke volumes to me.
