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A cross hung on my side of the wall.
Our room perfectly described us. After our mom left, I had nothing to…cling to, except keeping us together. Ava, on the other hand, clung to me at first. As she got older, it was a dark world in which she seemed to find a crack of light.
“Look,” she’d say, pointing to one of the posters at night. “So ruthless, but what would he do for love? Everything.” She’d get this dreamy sound to her voice, and then she’d fall right asleep.
I dialed her number, and while it rang, I looked at the two pictures on my nightstand. One of the three of us—Sonny looking on in the background. Then one I kept turned down. It was better that way, unless it became unbearable, and I had to glance at it. I didn’t need a reminder of what I’d lost, but of something that had been mine.
“Lucila? Lucila!”
“Ava.”
“What are you doing? Why weren’t you answering my calls?”
I sighed out a heavy breath. “I’m laying here while your psychotic cat looks at me like she’s about to pounce.”
“That’s her way of showing love,” she said. “Why haven’t you been answering?”
“Long night.”
“Did you fall asleep in the bathtub again?”
“You know me so well.”
“You don’t have gills, Luci. One day you might drown.”
“Yeah. Maybe so.”
I heard her take a sip of something, probably coffee. The city was alive in the background. She was probably hustling to get back to the office so she could report on another wave of crime, especially after the blackout we’d had.
“Molly told me,” she said, “how awful Sonny looks. His hair was matted to his head with blood.”
“Pistol whipped,” I said. “Courtesy of Mo.”
She took another sip. “How much?”
“You’ll laugh, but it won’t be funny.”
“He gets what he deserves—”
“I’m paying it,” I said.
Ava had her own feelings for Sonny Girardi, and call me softhearted, but sometimes I looked at him and couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Not that his behavior was excusable, but I understood how it felt to be…left. Ava got hit, and she learned to hit back even harder. But she’d never been in love. She’d been in infatuation with a bunch of posters on her wall for most of her life. With a bunch of men who stole other men’s hearts while it was still beating in their chests, then sent it back to their families. She was infatuated with the villain because he’d sacrifice the entire world for her, not the other way around.
But sometimes villains were just that. Villains. That included being selfish. Yeah, they might take out the entire world for a woman, but I was willing to bet my ass to Mo that there would be something in it for them, too. Villains always had an angle—and they’d play it until all the money ran out. Even after that, they’d always go back for more for as long as they could.
“Luci,” she said, and I could tell she’d stopped walking. Probably leaning against a building, fuming at what I’d done. “Why? Why did you bail him out?”
“Why do you deal with villains every day?”
“That’s my job!”
“Same here,” I said. “Except I bail them out. I keep us together.”
“He’s only going to do it again. Then what? Who’s turn will it be? Because I know Mo. He probably offered you a deal to work at The Cigar Bar. Sonny would have never been able to get out from under that interest he owes. Now you’re buried under it.”
“That long, huh?”
“This isn’t funny!”
