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Lily’s words echo, and I take a moment to think about what she said.
What if I didn’t reappear when Vance is dealt with? Everybody already thinks I’m gone. What if I let them keep believing it?
The thought is a tempting one. I could start over, leave all this bullshit behind and go somewhere that nobody even knows the Barretti name. And if I took Lily with me…
We could be free.
She’d be safe. I’d be happy. It sounds pretty damn good to me.
But I sigh. I know it’s just a fantasy. I can try to change things here in New York but running away isn’t really an option. I’ll always be who I am. It’s in my blood.
I’ll be a Barretti until the day I die.
A noise startles me out of my daydreams. I reach for a gun automatically, but stop when I see who just walked in.
“Avery.” I exhale. “Who gave you keys?”
“I’m not going to stand around and ring the doorbell,” she snaps, still clearly pissed at me. “What are you going to do, come answer the door so anyone can see?”
She walks past me, into my office, pulling a stack of paperwork from her bag. “I need signatures,” she says, when I join her. “Everything’s backdated, before your tragic death. Should keep things running a while longer.”
“Good thinking,” I nod. I don’t know what I’d do without her around to run our legitimate businesses. She’s one of my most valuable assets.
And a friend I can rely on.
I start flipping through the stack of papers she brought as she sits in the seat in front of the desk and waits. I scrawl my signature on the dotted lines without really reading anything. By now, I can trust that every report is just fine. Avery is good at this sort of thing.
“Lily talking to you yet?” she asks.
“Define ‘talking’,” I reply with a rueful scowl.
“Yeah, well you owe her your thanks—and an apology. She was really shaken up.”
“From what?” I look up. “She thought I was dead for all of five seconds before busting into the room.”
Avery gives me an odd look. “I’m talking about before that. When the bomb went off. Thank God she followed you to the meeting,” she adds. “Guess she figured out Vance was dangerous and decided to warn you.”
I stop dead. “Wait… What?” I demand. Lily followed me? “She was there?”
Avery furrows her brow. “You didn’t know? She’s the one who saved you,” she explains. “She gave CPR, got you breathing again. If she hadn’t been around… You wouldn’t have made it.”
I sit down, stunned. I thought that I imagined Lily crying out my name, pressing her lips to mine. I thought it was my mind producing the only thing that could really provide me with comfort when I was so close to death.
I was wrong.
“I had no idea,” I say quietly. “She never mentioned it.”
Avery lets out a low whistle. “OK, you’re really going to have to grovel,” she smirks. “Buy something expensive. Really expensive.”
I continue signing the papers without further comment, but my mind is racing. We finish up, and Avery lets herself out, but I’m still turning the information over in my mind.
Lily saved me.
For days, she’s been spitting mad. Saying she wished I had died in the explosion, that I deserved to suffer for everything I’ve done. I know finding out about the murder of her mother changed everything between us, and I thought that rift was permanent. That there was no hope of ever repairing the damage and getting back to the trust and happiness we’d found.
But she saved me.
Why?
