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I should be heading back to the mansion, but I circle around and stop outside Eve’s apartment again. It is hardly secure. Her father should have done more to protect her. The mob lifestyle is anything but safe, especially for a beautiful woman like Eve, and doubly so for someone with a reckless father like Benedetto. He makes too many enemies. I never realized how nice it was to have her living in the mansion. I didn’t have to worry about her. It allowed me not to focus on the car bombing that happened at Cal Higgs’ funeral, killing Samuel Notarianni.
I know Eve thinks I had something to do with it, but I didn’t. I would have never planned something so public and something that could have easily injured her. She was within the blast radius.
No one in the Volkov family fessed up to the attack, and my father didn’t know anything about it, so I don’t think it was carried out by my family at all. Which means Benedetto has garnered other enemies, as well. Enemies who might want to take out his daughter next.
My only hope is that the Irish mob is responsible. If so, we are three-quarters of the way towards shutting them down. However, I have no idea how the Irish could have gotten so close to Benedetto’s top advisor’s car without anyone noticing. It worries me that they were able to slip under the radar at the funeral and again at my wedding.
When I finally get home, I lay in bed and research houses for sale in the city. Eve doesn’t want to live with me, but maybe she’d allow me to put her up in a more secure house. It takes me longer than I’d like to admit to realize how pathetic it all is. Eve ran away from me. She left the security of my house to live in her tiny apartment. Why should I care about her safety?
Still, I bookmark a few houses for later. Just in case.
23
Eve
Chiara kicks her feet up on my coffee table and hugs one of my turquoise throw pillows to her chest. “I missed you, girl, but this shit is crazy. You should be up in that mansion on the hill. Not in this dinky apartment.”
“It’s not dinky,” I say. Though, it is. Especially the kitchen. I was spoiled by the sparkling white modern masterpiece at the Volkov mansion. My kitchen is slightly remodeled, though the cabinets are clearly from the late 80s and have been painted so many times I bet I could peel the different layers off like a sticker.
I expected Luka to come for me last night. I couldn’t sleep, thinking every footstep of my neighbors above and below me was Luka sneaking in the apartment to drag me back to the mansion. But he never came for me. He never showed up or called or anything. Part of me wonders whether the tracker in the bracelet wasn’t just a lie he told to scare me. If it was, he must have laughed and laughed when the threat of the bracelet kept me docile for so long. How stupid I must have looked to him.
If it was a trick, he’ll probably be coming for me soon. I wonder if he’ll kill me, but I can’t imagine it. Not really. And if he did come, switchblade at the ready, I’d tell him about the baby. Maybe that would sway him. Loyalty means more to him than anything, so even if he was willing to kill me, surely he wouldn’t hurt his unborn child.
“I can’t believe you are going to have a baby,” Chiara says, holding her hands a foot away from her stomach, imagining what her own pregnant belly would look like.
I run my hand down my still-flat abdomen. “I can’t, either.”
“Do you think Luka will take the baby?” she asks.
“I don’t know.” I really don’t know. While sitting awake all night, I wondered whether I shouldn’t keep running. I could flee the city and the state and the country, even. I could raise my child far away from this lifestyle, but even though Luka is a wild card and a possible threat, the idea of taking his child so far away from him feels wrong. Even if I never let Luka have a relationship with his child, it still feels wrong to flee the country.
Chiara grabs the remote and flips on the television. I’m amazed I still have cable since I wasn’t paying any bills while I was gone, and it suddenly strikes me that Luka must have been covering them. “He should at least pay child support. God knows he is good for it.”
I’m too tired to think about child support or cable bills or any of it, so I flop down on the couch next to her, prepared to watch hours of some ridiculous reality television show that, honestly, is beginning to bear too much resemblance to my real life. But just as I sit down, my phone starts to ring.
“Is that Luka?” Chiara asks, rising up on her knees, desperate to see the screen.
I shove it back in the pocket of my favorite pair of jeans and shake my head. “My dad.”
I have no idea if he knows I left the Volkov mansion or not. If he doesn’t know, he is probably calling to see what information I’ve gathered, in which case I have no desire to speak to him. If he does know I left, then he is probably livid and is calling to yell at me, in which case I still have no desire to speak to him. Either way, I’m not answering. He leaves a voicemail. Despite not wanting to hear his voice, I can’t resist checking it.
“Eve. Call me. Now.”His tone is the same one he used to chastise me for misbehaving as a child. He definitely knows.“We need to talk.”
No, we don’t.I delete the message.
When my phone vibrates again, I think it is my dad calling back, but it is actually a calendar alert. “Shit,” I mumble, dismissing it. “I have another class with Véronique Cauchon tonight.”
“Are you going to go?” Chiara asks, far less interested in me now that she knows I’m not talking with Luka.
“I don’t know. What if Luka shows up? He knows about the class, so it would be a surefire way to find me.”
Chiara raises a penciled in eyebrow. “Do you really think he doesn’t already know where you are? He could come get you anytime. If he hasn’t broken down your door already, he isn’t going to. I say, go to the class.”
I know she is right. But why hasn’t he come for me? The only reason I can really think of is that he doesn’t care anymore. Luka didn’t want to spend time with me, anyway, so maybe this arrangement is better for him. Now he doesn’t have to avoid his own home to stay away from me.
My throat thickens with unshed tears, but I swallow them back. I’m tired of crying.
* * *
