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Shaking.
Fuck.
“Hey, sweetheart,” I said, trying to keep my tone calm, reassuring, as I moved in, closing the door behind me.
“Hey,” she said, a little breathless.
“Everything is okay.”
“I heard voices,” she said.
“My family,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said, brows pinching. “I thought it was the police.”
And there we were.
Right at the conversation I had to have but didn’t want to.
“Here,” I said, uncapping the scotch. “Take a shot. Trust me,” I added, passing it into her hands. “You’re going to need it for this,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said in a shaky little voice, but not nearly as shaky as her hands as she raised the bottle and took a long swig, then let out a few coughs at the burn. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“So, you know my family, right?”
“Ah, yeah. I mean, I’ve met a lot of them. Mostly the women, but your brother too. And your cousin.”
“Right. The thing is, sweetheart, I haven’t exactly been honest with you from the beginning,” I told her.
“Alright. What were you… dishonest about?”
“The first shooting, to begin with. Those bullets, those were meant for me, Savannah.”
“You don’t know that,” she tried to insist.
“No, honey, I do. I know. See, I have the kind of… profession that means that sometimes people want to shoot me.”
“You’re in… imports,” she recalled.
“That’s true. But only partially.”
God, how the fuck was I supposed to say this to her? To shatter the image she had of me in her head?
“Hey, remember that crack you made once? When I’d said that someone did a lot of work for my family?” I asked. “Do you remember what you said?”
“I said that you sounded like one of those…oh,” she said, her mouth opening into a littleOas her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said again.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding, tapping the bottle again.
She didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about.
She lifted the bottle, and took another long swig.
Then another.
“You’re in the mafia?” she asked, voice choked. “I mean… people are actually in the mafia?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “They are. We are,” I added.
