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The pain of that long-ago loss prickled through me, dulled by time but not completely vanished. What would Edmundo have become if he’d lived? Who would he have been now?
The sad thing was, I wasn’t sure it’d have been anything good.
I could have thrown away the best thing to have ever come into my life over someone who’d never truly earned that loyalty.
Lou had lowered her hand with the stone while I talked. She met my eyes with a pensive expression. “My mom did a lot of shitty things, but she didn’t usually go around killing random people just for the hell of it.”
“I know.” I cleared my throat, trying to work the roughness from my voice. “At the time, I hadn’t interacted with her at all, and I was reeling with grief and anger… I just wanted revenge.”
Lou set down the first skate and picked up the other. She ran the blade over the stone, starting up the rhythm again. “And then?”
My heart sank with the memory. “After I’d been working with Mireya for a few years, working my way up through the ranks, I found out that it hadn’t been random. Edmundo and the other two guys had tried to screw over a smaller gang in the city that we didn’t know the Cordovas had a stake in. They’d killed a few people and stolen a bunch of merchandise.”
Shrrrk.“And my mother retaliated with matching brutality.Thatsounds like her.”
“Yeah. Reasonable retaliation.” I shook my head, not knowing how to convey the full depth of my anguish to her—that I’d been so wrong, that Edmundo had made a move both so brainless and so heartless that it had nearly turned me into this spectacular woman’s enemy. “I hate that I lost my brother, but as soon as I got the full story, I understood that it was his fault. He essentially attacked her first.”
“But you stayed on,” Lou said. “Why did you stick around if you weren’t still planning some kind of revenge? I know you didn’tlikeworking for her.”
“I didn’t,” I agreed. “I didn’t like how she treated you or parts of how she ruled over her people… I had a bad feeling about the ambitions I caught glimpses of. I’d already been watching over you for more than a year then, and I could see you were better than her. I thought I’d stay, protect you and help you, and when you took over it could all be different.”
“I guess you couldn’t have gone back to your old gang empty-handed anyway.”
My voice turned fiercer than I meant it to. “I didn’t want to. I could see that I was doing something better by looking out for you. Even when you were a kid, there was something about you that shone through… It reminded me a little of my parents when they still had hopes for a better life. I couldn’t abandon you and let her destroy that spark.”
Lou let out a dry laugh. “So you stayed to wait for a preteen to ascend to her mafia throne.”
I shrugged, affection clogging my throat as I thought of the girl I’d stayed for and the incredible woman she’d grown into. “It seemed like the best choice I had at the time. Although frankly, I’m happier here waiting for you to become a figure-skating superstar free of all that madness.”
Her hand stopped, still clutching the stone. Her next words come out so low I barely hear them. “I’m happier like that too. Or I was.”
That hint of the pain I’d caused her gutted me. I rubbed my hand over my face. “I should have told you sooner. After we got close. Given you the whole story so you’d know. But I—I didn’t want you to think badly of me. I never thought I’d run into those cabrónes again, so it wouldn’t matter. It could just stay in the past.”
Lou put the second skate down next to the first and set the stone on the coffee table. Her hands clasped together on her lap. She looked down at them and then at me with so much hurt and determination smoldering together in her eyes I couldn’t have torn my gaze away if I’d wanted to.
“I want to believe you,” she said. “But it’s so hard when you let me get blindsided like this… I need to know I can depend on you—now more than I ever have before. Everything I’ve worked for—everythingwe’veworked for—falls apart if I can’t trust you.”
The faintest quaver ran through her voice with the last sentence. She couldn’t completely suppress the blow I’d dealt to her faith and her confidence. I closed my eyes against the urge to bash my own head in for fucking things up so badly.
But taking my guilt out on myself wouldn’t help her. She’d just said it—she needed me. I just have to prove to her that her faith had been justified after all.
Violence came easy to me. That didn’t confirm anything. I had to give her something that hurt me in a different way, that went against all my instincts… except when it came to the woman I’d have died to save.
My heart gave me the answer. I pushed myself off the sofa onto my knees and bowed my head before her, resting my forehead on her knee. Lou sucked in a softly startled breath. Her stance went rigid.
“You’re the only one in the entire world I’d give my whole self over to, Lou,” I said, putting all my devotion into every ragged word. “My strength, my pride, my life. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do if you asked. You could tell me to jump into a volcano right now, and I’d do it, because you asked.”
A sputter of a laugh burst out of her. “I don’t think it’s going to come to that.”
“Maybe it should. Because if you can’t trust me again, if you can’t bear to have me with you, then I have no purpose left. Every decision I’ve made, every step I’ve taken, for years, has been to serve you as well as I can. I made a mistake, but itwasa mistake. I’ve got no secrets left. Please, don’t make me give you up now.”
Lou inhaled shakily, and then she was grasping my shoulders. As I rose at her tug, she wrapped her arms around me, leaning into the embrace I returned automatically with a rush of relief.
“I don’t want to lose you either,” she choked out, muffled by my shirt. “I was so afraid I already had.”
I buried my face in her hair. “Never. You’d have tothrowme into a fucking volcano to get rid of me now.”
Another laugh hitched out of her. Then she pulled back, her dark gaze searching my face. “If you haven’t had anything to do with your brother’s gang in all that time, why are they attacking you? It must have been one of them who found my number and sent all that proof, right? Do they expect you to still get revenge on me and my mother—they think they can force your hand?”
