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“Sure,” I agreed, waiting for her to make the cups, then come into the living room.
“Avery Brennan,” I said, waving a hand toward the coffee table.
“Ah, yeah,” she agreed, shuffling her feet, seeming not to want to sit down next to me. But she must have still been a little foggy because she eventually did drop her ass onto the arm of the couch. “I thought I’d dreamed you were here.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I came in and you almost seemed dead you were so out of it.”
“Ah, yeah, I guess,” she agreed. “I wasn’t sure I was going to wake back up,” she admitted.
It didn’t sound like much. But that statement paired with her comments when she’d been out of it, saying that “he” gave her one, and, yeah, my family’s comments about her being forced into this were starting to make a lot more sense.
Someone had drugged her.
And she’d thought it was to kill her.
All the anger, the betrayal, it fell away, replaced almost instantly with pity. Because I knew what some of the men in this world could be like, how willing they were to use and abuse women to get whatever they wanted.
Tapping her fingers against her coffee mug, she exhaled a deep breath.
“So, my name is Avery Brennan,” she said.
“Yeah, honey, I gathered that,” I agreed, nodding.
“But, ah, it’s just that because my step-father never officially adopted me,” I said.
I felt myself tensing, having a gut feeling that shit had just gotten serious.
“Who is your step-father?” I asked.
“Frank Lombardi.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Avery
I’d always been a complete fucking mess. That was my personal, you know, brand.
And did I struggle at times with phases of anxiety and depression? I mean, yeah. Life was hard. Especially when you were dealing with the things I’d gone through. I had my moments where it was hard to get out of bed, to find any sort of joy to get me through the week.
But I was not and had never been suicidal.
So when I woke up feeling almost a little, well, disappointed, yeah, that was incredibly jarring.
I didn’t want to die.
But living was a little excruciating right then.
I’d lost everything that I’d begun to love.
The house, the lifestyle, the kittens, and, yes, Emilio.
God, Emilio.
I couldn’t begin to imagine what was going through his head the hours after I’d run out of his home. Had he spent the day tearing apart every interaction we’d ever had? Coming to conclusions about me, about us?
Did he think it was all fake?
How could he imagine I faked all of that?
Christ, not that I could blame him if he did believe that.
What else could he possibly think, though?
It really, really didn’t look good.
Some random woman shows up at his house, inserts herself into his life, gets close enough to have access to every room, to his own bed.
There was no way he was just going to give me and the situation the benefit of the doubt. Not with all these things stacking up. Especially if he linked me to Renzo. Then, yeah, there was no way he could think I’d been innocent, or that I wasn’t some professional sent there to infiltrate his world, to get everything I needed out of him. And then possibly doing worse eventually.
I couldn’t imagine what he must have been thinking of me. The clumsy-ass girl he’d taken pity on when she’d come stumbling into his life.
Was he seeing it all more clearly now? Realizing he’d been slumming it with me? A woman clearly not from his sort of world.
Was he regretting everything we’d shared?
I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes, and let out a grumble, trying to fight them back as I rolled over in the bed.
Then I’d misjudged the space, ending up falling out of the bed, pain ricocheting up the side of my body.
That felt… appropriate.
But at least my aching side helped fight the tears back as I went into the bathroom to wash my face, brush my teeth, and scrub my feet that were filthy—but luckily uncut—from running the streets barefoot.
Life, it seemed, had to go on.
Not that new life I loved, though.
The one with the beautiful home full of carefully curated things, with cute little kittens purring on my lap, and a big, strong, beautiful man to share meals and a bed with.
No.
I had to go back to my other life.
My old life.
Full of nothing but unyielding struggle and uncertainty and, God, I didn’t even know now.
Renzo hadn’t killed me.
But there would have to be some sort of repercussions for failing him, right?
I couldn’t even begin to fathom what those consequences might be, though.
I suddenly regretted not keeping a closer eye on the workings of the Family as I got older. At least then I would have known what was typically done to people who’d failed to follow through.
