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My chest hurt so much, it curled me over. I braced my hands on my knees while I fought to draw a full breath.
“They did this,” I said when I could force the words out. “They sent me away and made me believe they were dead.”
It explained how Vito had taken me but not kidnapped me. He’d only been following orders.
Maybe they’d had a good reason. But it wasn’t good enough. No reason was good enough. Not to me. If they’d just sent me away, I could have believed it was to protect me. But to let me believe my whole family had died was reprehensible.
Greta’s silence spoke volumes. The look of horror on her face told me all I needed to know.
I wasn’t crazy; I was right.
And I was going to be sick.
I looked left and right, my eyes quickly scanning my surroundings. I dashed toward the closest thing to privacy I could find—a narrow alley a few yards away. Garbage bags were stacked up a few feet in, but I wasn’t going to make it that far. I dropped to my knees just inside and vomited up everything I’d eaten in the past twenty-four hours.
I could feel Greta behind me. She stood there, blocking me from the view of passersby while she held my hair back from my face.
When my stomach finally relented, I leaned back and wiped the sweat from my brow.
“Raven?” Greta said quietly.
She squatted down next to me and brushed back the wisps of hair that clung to my damp brow.
“I used to wake up screaming, Greta—I still do sometimes. Images of Dominic, and Dante, and Leo engulfed in flames playing behind my eyes. The sounds of my parents screaming in agony ringing in my ears. How could they do that? How could they let me believe that had happened to them, and then tell the whole world I was dead?”
Greta pressed her lips together, her eyes caught up in thought. I prayed she had an answer. Some way to make sense of what they’d done. But she shook her head. “I don’t know, hon. I wish I could tell you why, but I don’t know.”
I didn’t know either. But I was darn sure going to find out.
Chapter Seven
Raven
“All right, we’re going out,” Greta said, throwing a silky black dress at me. It landed on my laptop, covering up the screen.
“Out?” I said, blinking my dry, bloodshot eyes.
“Yes, you know, out the door, beyond the four walls of this hotel room. You’ve been cooped up in here for the past four days, and as your best friend, it’s my job to make sure you don’t turn into some housecoat-wearing cat-loving recluse.”
“I’m allergic to cats, remember?”
“Ha-ha, very funny. Go get your butt in the shower.” She pointed down the short hall to the bathroom. “Onyx. It’s a top-notch nightclub five minutes away. We are going there to let sexy men buy us drinks and dance until you’re either too drunk or too tired to think.”
Onyx? The name tickled my memory. Not that it mattered. “You know I don’t drink, Greta. Vito would—”
“You’re twenty-one, Raven, and if you haven’t noticed, Vito isn’t here at the moment,” she said, looking around exaggeratedly.
“But—”
She held up her hand and shook her head. “I know you don’t drink or date or screw, hon, but you need to do something to blow off steam. I can’t fix this,” she said, waving at the laptop. “I wish I could, but I can’t. But what I can do is help make sure you don’t burn out.” Greta crossed her arms over her chest.
I had a feeling I wasn’t winning this argument no matter how much I persisted. I nodded and uncrossed my legs. My feet tingled after spending so much time in one place, and my brain had taken on a strange, fuzzy quality after four days of searching for answers in front of my laptop screen.
Wait—that’s where I’d seen the name “Onyx.” It didn’t belong to the Lucas—we ortheywere outside their territory—but to another New York family. But I couldn’t recall which.
I sighed and wriggled my tingling toes. “I haven’t come up with a single thing. No old family feuds that could have put me in jeopardy. No newspaper articles about vendettas against the Lucas.”
“The answer’s not in there, hon,” she said, nodding to the laptop. “I don’t know why your family did what they did, and unless you confront them, I doubt you’ll ever know. But in the meantime…” She pointed toward the bathroom and cocked a brow.
