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Good. I hope she’s angry. I hope she ruined everything I own. And I hope she feels better for it.
Rory disappears upstairs and comes back in her sweats, her curls piled on top of her head and a paper bag tucked under her arm. “Therapy dog,” she says, dropping Maggie in my lap. She plonks down next to me, tosses the chips on the coffee table, and with a stolen glance over her shoulder, she upturns the contents of the bag between us.
“Don’t tell anyone, but I keep all the good stuff upstairs,” she whispers, letting the candy fall through her fingers like it’s a pile of gold coins.
She then reminds me that I’ve already watched this football game twice this week, and turns the channel to some trashy reality TV show.
I pick up a gummy thing wrapped in loud plastic and hold it up to the light. “Is this strawberry flavor or raspberry flavor?”She sighs. “Swan, this breakup really hasruined you.”
Rory tears her eyes from the show we’ve been watching about rich housewives in Beverly Hills. We’re balls-deep into season two, and fuck, I guess it’s easier to get invested in who’s sleeping with whose husband, rather than think of the Penny-shaped hole burning in my chest.
“It’s red flavor.”
“Yeah but—”
“Shh. Kim is about to confront Kyle in the limo about stealing her goddamn house.”
Outside, the purr of a super car melts in from the driveway, then a car door slams. Rory sighs, pausing the show. “Never mind; I know that slam. You’re in trouble.”
I turn to her. “How do you knowI’mthe one in trouble?”
She scoops the sleeping dog off my lap and flashes me a look of disbelief. “Not going to be me or Maggie, is it?”
The front door slams shut and rattles all the windows. Angelo’s voice booms through the foyer. “All right, that’s it.” He appears in the doorway of the living room, bringing in cold air and animosity with him. “I’ve put up with a week of this shit; now get up.”
I glance at him. Pop the gummy in my mouth. “Nah, I’m good.” I turn to Rory. “Plot twist: I think it’s watermelon.”
“Ooh,” she squeals, digging around in the candy pile for one.
Angelo’s charred glare flicks between me and his wife. He braces his palms on the sofa armrest and grits his teeth. “Get up. Shower. Shave. Put on something that doesn’t have an elastic waistband, and meet me in my car in twenty minutes.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Kim’s about to confront Kyle about stealing her goddamn house.”
Beside me, Rory nods in approval. “We’ve been waiting all season for this.”
His blistering glare scorches my skin, but I hurt too much everywhere else to notice. “I told you to make a plan.”
“And my plan is to take a break,” I growl back.
“A break fromwhat?”
My back molars grind together. A break fromeverything.From being Raphael Visconti. From being an underboss; a CEO. A brother, a friend, a fuckinggentleman.Anything that requires me stepping outside this house and into the world where she isn’t. Through half-lidded eyes, I look back up at him. Now, his irritation is softened by something around the edges.
“Don’t do this to me,” he says quietly. “Gabe’s disappeared off the face of the planet again.”
“Good. The cunt almost had me killed.”
His eyes flash. “You know he didn’t mean it.”
Gabe’s done a lot of reckless shit in his time, but swapping out the cat-killer for Dante tops everything. I don’t know whether Gabe gave him the glass shank or he smashed something to get it; I just know it ended up three inches deep in my stomach, narrowly missing a main artery.
I lost a lot of blood, but in the end, it was a pretty superficial wound. I managed to get a good swing to his head with the claw side of the hammer before hitting the deck. The last thing I remember was hearing Gabe’s gruff voice muttering something about how he couldn’t take it anymore. How he was going out of his mind.
I glance down at my feet. The lucky socks didn’t work, which confirms what I already knew: while the Queen of Hearts is in my bed and under my skin, I’ll burn until there’s nothing left of me.
