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“I’m going to check,” I say, stuffing my gun into the back of my jeans. “I’ll be right back.”
“Seriously?” Dixie says, sounding annoyed as she climbs back onto the bed. “If they dropped something, can’t you wait until morning to get it?”
“No,” I say, thinking about Dad with his fucked up leg from when they jumped him from behind. He tried to fight back, but they broke his leg and castrated him anyway—just another day of debauchery for a Dolce.
Of course I’m going to be fucking paranoid.
And of course Dixie isn’t. The worst thing they’ve done to her is coerce her cousin into blowing one of them and then telling her it meant nothing.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell her, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Wouldn’t want you stepping in anything on your way out in the morning.”
“Okay,” she says, grabbing the front of my shirt and pulling me back down for a kiss. “Hurry back, though. I’ll be waiting.” She gives me a sexy little pout, and I growl and nip at her lip. Then I straighten and head out, grabbing a flashlight on my way.
Satan’s spawn haven’t targeted our part of the Darling family since my attack last year. They probably think we’re overdue for a visit with pure evil. Maybe I’m a dumbass for going out to check, like the damsel in some scary movie that hears a noise outside and gets chopped up by an ax murderer, but I’m not going to let Dad step on a landmine if they tossed something out the window. He won’t even know to look in the morning. And it’s not like calling the cops would do any good. Half of them are on Tony Dolce’s payroll.
Not that my family was a whole lot better back in the day. We just wielded our influence in more discrete ways—becoming judges instead of getting them elected, working with the police as lawyers instead of buying them off, marrying into the mayor’s family instead of blackmailing him into compliance.
I step outside and cast the flashlight beam around. I don’t think Dixie would throw me to the wolves, but maybe someone got out of the car before she went to the window.
The gravel lot is empty, though. Just my truck and Dad’s car and Dixie’s. I walk around studying the ground, but all I see are the tire tracks dug deep in the gravel where Gloria pulled out earlier, spinning her tires as she raced away like she thought I was a Dolce boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
I glance up at the big two-story wooden house. Like Gloria said when she was here, it’s not the biggest or fanciest house in town. Dad spent a fortune on legal fees to get out of his marriage and be able to marry Mom instead of the woman Grandpa Darling chose for him—Mabel’s mom. And then he wanted to give Mom the wedding of her dreams, not to mention the drawn-out custody battle for Mabel. It all happened a long time ago, but it’s the shape of my childhood. At least I wasn’t dragged back and forth until I had whiplash, the way Mabel and Devlin were. There’s a room upstairs for each of them for when they were here, both empty as the guest room that’s never usedanymore because no one wants to associate with us, let alone stay in our house.
I turn back to the lot and climb up into my truck. I fell asleep with my clothes on, which means I have pills and smokes in my pocket. I pull out one of the pills I replenished after giving mine to Lo and thumb on my phone. I know I shouldn’t care if she’s okay. She took the pills and split. But she was upset, and part of me worries that she wasn’t thinking straight and might have used the pills to calm herself—and then kept going. I picture her lying peacefully in a frilly pink coffin, her hands folded over her chest, her wicked nails sharp as daggers.
The image should bring me joy, but I shudder instead. Then I shoot her a text followed by a message on theOnlyWordsapp.
Again.
Message delivery failure.
Again.
I stare at the screen, then swipe back over to my texts. Then I drop my head back on the seat, closing my eyes and fighting the urge to do something even stupider than all the other stupid things I’ve done today. I toss my phone down and light up, dragging bitter smoke into my lungs. After a few minutes, I pick up the phone again. This time, I dial.
“Why you calling me, dipshit?” answers the voice on the other end.
“Were you at my house tonight?”
“No,” Duke says, his tone resentful. “Why would I be at your house?”
“Don’t act like it’s out of the realm of possibility. You’ve been here plenty,” I point out.
“Yeah, when I was railing your sister.”
“Is that why you were always sniffing around here like a dog? I thought you were trying to catch a glimpse of my sexy ass.”
“Fuck off, gay boy,” he says. “She was the one always begging us to come run trains on her.”
I sigh and rub my forehead. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s why she tried to kill herself and then changed her name and left town,” I mutter. “Because she couldn’t get enough of your dick.”
“You know Baron found her, right?”
“Yeah. Royal told me.”
He’s quiet for so long I wonder if my phone went dead, but when I check, the call’s still going, the seconds ticking away where neither of us have anything to say to each other.
“You heard from her?” he asks finally.
