Friends, enemies… sometimes they were the same things. That part wasn’t fair.
“I hate it,” I said, baring my teeth. I couldn’t help the edge that had taken over my existence. There was just too much for one person to deal with. This morning, though, it had become evident that either Alex and/or Jude were fucking working against me.
Fuck.
“What?” Gio shrugged. “Boss, there’re many things you hate. I have a list somewhere. Not on me.”
Dante chuckled. “He hates Mondays because he thinks it’s a Marxist concept, and he hates blue M&M’s because they’re pointless.”
“Stop making fun out of me.” I pointed at them both.
“Or you’ll kill us?” Gio taunted, knowing I wouldn’t. “Come on, tell us what’s the part of the shit that’s going on that you hate. The part about Alex and Jude? Or is it the girl? The girl you’ve been cautious with for the last seven years?”
“You don’t know what happened.” It was stupid of me to state the obvious. Of course, they didn’t know what happened.
“So, enlighten me.”
Dante and Gio had come onto the scenes just before Ava and I had broken up, and they’d never met her until after I was married to Marissa.
They never saw how I was when I was with Ava.
Alex and Jude had joined the business a few months later, so again got me in the height of my short-lived marriage to Marissa.
I’d never confessed this to anyone, but all four guys helped me in one way or another to cope with losing Ava, then Henry, and yes, even Marissa. Although at that point, I wasn’t sure if one of them had betrayed me. For years, I’d wanted to believe that it couldn’t be that. It was in my nature to be suspicious of everyone, but for them, friends, I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe that somehow, Goliath had found out where Marissa was because he was who he was. Every time, though, my gut told me it wasn’t that.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped.
“You know I got the feeling once, a long time back when we weren’t quite friends yet.” Gio gave me an arrogant smile.
“What feeling was that?”
“About Ava. It was the way you looked at her. You were with her before Marissa, weren’t you?”
I just stared at him. Maybe it wasn’t that hard to figure out. “It’s not important.”
“Why not? We’re up here watching day turn to night. Might as well talk, right?”
“I’m breaking things off with her after this.”
“Why?”Dante asked, narrowing his eyes. “She looks like a girl you could keep. Why in the fuck would you do that? And what would you do? Go back to bar whores?”
They wouldn’t understand. What had happened to me didn’t happen to them. I would never be disrespectful and say their losses weren’t like mine. What I meant was, what happened to me was different because I’d caused it.
That was the big difference. No one could excuse that oh-so-important fact. Sure, Joe Manello got me mixed up with a bastard like Goliath, but I got me in that mess.
When he’d offered me that job, I should have declined it. It was that simple.
“She doesn’t belong in our world. It’s danger in every sense of the word. I had no business bringing her into the darkness again.”
Dante stood up and squared off with me. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
“I’m not Luc, Dante. I’m a mobster. That’s me. Sure, I would do anything for her, but if you’re going to tell me to be Luc, then I wouldn’t be me.”
“Jesus Christ, what the hell?” Dante smirked. “I wasn’t going to say that. Luc’s a real badass, but you two are different to each other. That’s not the issue here. Has it ever crossed your mind that she must have known what she was getting herself into went she hooked up with you?”
I didn’t want to think about that. My mind was made up. It was just as I’d said to Ava. If you love someone, you have to know when to let them go.
“It’s the right thing to do.”
