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Chapter 3
Lola
I haven’t cried in forever, so I’m not sure how to turn it off.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Layton as he slides out of me with a worried look. “I don’t even know what the hell’s wrong with me.”
He looks like he understands as he wraps his arms around me.
It takes a while for the tears to stop, but finally they do. Without asking any questions, he lets me go and helps me get dressed. Then he slips his jeans and shirt back on and sits down on the bed beside me.
“You want to talk about it?” he asks, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
I shake my head, wiping the last of my tears from my cheeks and eyes. “No, I want to talk about why you’re here and have been here for a couple of weeks without telling me. And why you found it necessary to fake your own death.”
His lips part then snap shut when we hear a soft knock on the door. I quickly move for one of the guns on the opposite side of the bed while Layton grabs a gun from the nightstand and rushes over to the window.
“Stay down,” he instructs as he pulls back the curtain and peeks out.
I linger near the bed with the gun aimed out in front of me. “Is it them? Is it Frankie’s men?”
“No. Dammit, I thought I had more time before she showed up. Fuck.” Shaking his head, he turns to me. “Lola, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re always saying that.” Nervousness bubbles inside of me. “What are you sorry for this time?”
“For what’s about to happen.” With heavy reluctance, he goes over to the door and opens it.
I’m not sure what to expect on the other side. Part of me believes that it’s going to be Frankie’s men, that Layton has betrayed me, that I just had sex with someone who’s going to help kill me. Quite honestly, I don’t know what to think about what I actually see.
A woman about the same height as me, with the same color hair and eyes, similar lips and facial features, dressed in leather pants, boots, and a jacket. The woman in leather?
She looks like some sort of badass ninja assassin from the movies with a gun on each side of her belt and boots that hug her legs and go up to her thighs. Her dark hair is pulled into a tight ponytail.
She stares at me as she strolls into the room, and then glances around at the back area and the bed. “You weren’t supposed to be seen, Layton. Tell me that, through all the crap that just went on, none of Frankie’s men saw you. They need to think you’re dead. Otherwise, we’re both fucked.”
“I’m not sure. I hope not.” He closes the door and flips the lock then slides the chain over. He turns and gives me an apologetic look while the woman continues to stare at me with curiosity.
“I thought she’d be prettier,” she says.
“Who the hell are you?” I elevate the gun at her. “Start talking, or I’ll shoot.”
She rolls her eyes. “We both know you’re not going to shoot me. You have a history with freezing up.”
Okay, I already don’t like her. She’s struck a nerve. A deep nerve.
“Layton, who the fuck is this?”
He starts pacing the area between the bed and the door, gun still in hand. “If I could just—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I point my gun at him. “No more running around and distracting me with sex. Spill it. Now. Who is she?”
The look he gives me makes my skin tingle all over. “The sex wasn’t about that, and you know it.” He grows uneasy again. “God, you’re going to hate me after this.” Another sigh as he stops between the ninja girl and me. “Lola, this is Solana.” He pauses, biting his bottom lip. “Your half-sister.”
“Nice try. I don’t have a half-sister.” I put one hand on the bottom of the gun handle to steady it. “I’m an only child, and you know that.”
Layton starts to step toward me. “Your mother’s letter that you found wasn’t about you. It was about her.”
I’m trying to keep composed, just like I was taught, but it’s becoming hard when my life is getting more and more flipped upside down.
“How do you know about the letter? No one knows about it … No one alive, anyway.”
“A couple of people do.” Layton stops short of me. My gun is pointed at his chest, proving he’s not afraid of me, proving he knows me too well. “Well, not so much the letter, but what the letter contains.”
“A couple of people?” I ask. “Like my father. Is that why …?” Is that why my mother’s dead?
“Your father does know about it. About Solana.” He offers me a sad smile. “Frankie knows, too, and a couple of others. It’s part of the debt your father was in with Frankie.” His gaze flickers to Solana who remains stoic, looking directly at me with her arms folded. “He helped keep her hidden from whom he considers the wrong people, and in return, your father owed him a lot of money. When he didn’t pay … Well, you know the rest.”
“Why would he need to keep her hidden?” I ask, feeling lost. “It doesn’t make any sense. Who are these wrong people?”
“He doesn’t want my real father to find out,” Solana intervenes, taking measured steps toward me. “Everson Milantes. I’m sure you recognize the name.”
It’s starting to make sense, the few things I didn’t quite understand in the letter, things that didn’t seem to pertain to me.
“It wasn’t me she was talking about,” I say more to myself. I glance at Solana. There’s no denying we’re related. Very, very closely related. “I still don’t get it. Why would he want to keep you hidden from everyone, including me? And why can’t Everson know he has a daughter?”
She lets out a hollow laugh. “Because our mother cheated on Larenze Anelli, and not just with anyone, but with another Anelli.”
“But the letter said it was Everson Milantes.” I glance back and forth between Layton and her, wondering why they’re telling me this. “Not Anelli.”
“That’s because he changed his name,” Solana explains, sitting down on the dresser nearby and letting her legs hang over the edge. “See, your father once had a brother who didn’t want to be part of this shitty drug world, but Anelli’s have no choice. So instead of accepting his fate and either taking over or getting killed, Everson ran, kind of like you,” she muses.
“But it said you might not be Everson’s,” I tell her. “That my mother—our mother—wasn’t sure.”
“Oh, I am,” she assures me with disdain. “Your father made sure of that right before he sent me away.”
“But I was born right after my parents were married,” I argue, unable to wrap my head around the fact that I’ve had a sister all my life and never knew about her. “And they barely knew each other before that … I mean, how far apart are we in age?”
“I’m a year older.” Her eyes turn icy cold. “But don’t worry; all your precious stories are true, except for when they met. They still got married on the same day. Still had you right after. They just forgot to include me in the stories. That’s probably because, for most of them, I wasn’t in them.” She pauses, as if debating whether or not to say something. “It doesn’t matter. Even if there was some chance I wasn’t Everson’s daughter, what’s done is done. I can’t erase the past. I am who I am, and there’s no changing that.”
Her voice carries a drop of sadness. It makes me wonder …
“Where were you? All these years … Where did you live?”
Something flashes in her eyes, but when she speaks, her voice is impassive. “I lived with your Aunt Glady until I was old enough to go to a … a special school … Although I wasn’t old enough—”
“Wait a minute,” I respond, noticing that Layton shuddered at the mention of the school. “My aunt Glady knew about you?”
“Our aunt Glady does,” she says without expression.
All these years, not only did my parent
s lie to me, but my aunt Glady, too. I thought I could trust her, but I guess I was wrong. My whole family is a bunch of fucking liars.
“So why the fuck are you suddenly showing up now?” I swing the gun back and forth between the two of them. “And leaving me notes, I’m guessing.” My attention lands on Layton because, now that he’s here and alive, it’s starting to make sense. The reason the handwriting looked so familiar, the woman in leather being at The Dusky Inn, the note on my hand after the Tenner incident.
“It was the only way I could think of to make contact with you without giving myself away.” His gaze welds to mine. “I was trying to get you to leave Glendale, trying to get you to leave before …” He scratches the back of his neck then looks at Solana for help.
“Before what?” I cock the gun.
Solana rolls her eyes at Layton then looks at me. “Before I have to kill you.” Her expression is dead serious, her hands hovering over her weapons. The look in her eyes tells me she’s planning on doing exactly that. “You broke the rules, though, Layton,” she says, hopping off the dresser. “We had a deal. No contact with her ever again.”
“Well, it was a stupid, pointless rule,” he growls as he starts to stalk to her, raising his gun. “One you made up just for your own fun.”
“I have my reasons. Besides, it doesn’t matter why. You still broke the rules by seeing her.” Her eyes drift to the unmade bed. “And fucked her, apparently.” She glances back at him. “You’ve been a bad boy.”
I should kill her. Kill her now and protect myself. Yet I know I can’t. I know from too many experiences it’s not going to be easy.
“So, you’re here to kill me?” I ask in a surprisingly firm tone.
I eye her over, wondering what to do next. Maybe I can lunge and wrap my fingers around that pretty, little neck …
I trail off at the sight of a tattoo on her neck. A triangle with the Roman numeral ten inside of it. Bloody fucking hell. My muscles ripple, tighten.
“Who the fuck are you for real?”
