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“You’re so good to me,” she murmurs, tears tracking down her cheeks as she holds the glass unsteadily. “So good. So good. So good. So…”
“Drink the water, Mom. It’ll make you feel better.”
She does, lifting the cup and taking small sips. Eventually, some of the glassiness fades from her eyes, and she sits up a little bit straighter.
I can feel her eyes on me as I sit beside her, and she gives me the same look as everyone else has today, taking in my new clothes.
“You look… good,” she says, sounding surprised. “I’ve never seen that outfit before.”
“It’s new,” I reply self-consciously. I still haven’t told her about the extra money that showed up in my account, or about how I paid for tuition. “I needed new clothes for school. Do you think you can stand up and shower?”
“Yeah.” She holds her hands out to me, and when I help her up, she pats my cheek unsteadily. “I’m glad you’re doing so well for yourself, baby. That’s good. That’s really good.”
“Thanks,” I murmur, glancing away. Then I wrap an arm around her waist. “Come on. Let’s get you in the shower.”
13
RANSOM
The dayafter I visit Willow at her school, we get ready to head out for the job in Philly.
By the time we all convene down in the garage, Victor has packed and repacked the car about a half dozen times, making sure everything is right where he wants it and that we have everything we’ll need, and Malice has worked himself into a deeply foul mood.
Whenever we have to drop everything to go do a job for X, it pisses Malice off more than any of us. Vic and I don’t like the interruptions or being told to jump and fetch like we’re dogs, but it hits Malice somewhere more tender.
Probably because he’s the one X got out of prison, which makes him the reason we owe this guy in the first place. It’s why we’re on the hook to a person we’ve never even met.
That grates on Malice, and whenever the job is something big or something that takes more time than we’d like, it really gets to him.
Vic and I have never blamed him for any of it, of course. He’s the one who took the fall for our dad’s murder, when really, it was all of us who killed him.
And there’s no doubt the fucker deserved it.
The man was a piece of shit who tortured Victor just because he could and abused our mom. He beat the hell out of me and Malice whenever he felt like it too, and he treated all of us like trash. He deserved to die and probably should have suffered more if there was any justice in the world.
So we took that shit into our own hands.
We thought we did a good enough job covering our tracks, but we weren’t as skilled then as we are now, and when the cops pieced together enough evidence to came sniffing around, Malice was the one who took the blame for it all. He protected us. He claimed responsibility and was sentenced to thirty years in prison, of which he served four, so the least we can do is have his back now.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Malice says as Victor slams the trunk closed. “The quicker we get out of here, the quicker we can call this shit done and come home.”
“Amen to that,” I say with feeling, and we all pile into the car, ready to head out.
Malice glances at me in the rearview mirror as I settle in the back seat. “You checked on the girl yesterday?”
I nod. “Yup. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
What I don’t mention is that instead of just watching her to make sure she’s going about her regular routine the way I was supposed to, I stopped by her school and talked to her.
I know it was probably a bad idea, all things considered, but I meant exactly what I told her.
I wanted her to see me. I wanted those mesmerizing brown eyes of hers to focus on me. Wanted to hear her voice.
There’s something about her that intrigues me. Something I saw in her the first day we met, and something I’ve seen more of ever since then. She has this incredible strength mixed with vulnerability, and it’s alluring as fuck.
She’s delicate and fragile, like a doll that you’d think would be easy to break. But underneath that porcelain exterior, there’s something more like iron at her core.
There’s a hell of a lot more to her than meets the eye, that’s for sure.
