“I like the other girl better,” he says, flicking his finger at the mainstream novel.
There were many times when the C Crue guys were still working for my dad that I suspected someone was watching me read. And a lot of times a book I’d just finished would go missing for a while and then pop back up again. Was he reading them?
“You know how I got started reading?” I ask. “My mom didn’t want me to watch too much television, so there was no TV or computer in my bedroom. But I was forced to stay in my room for hours when my father visited, back when he was having an affair with her. A lot of the time it annoyed him to see me because he didn’t want a bastard daughter back then.”
Sasha scowls. “He’s a dick.”
“I read books and pretended to be the characters. It was how I coped when he threatened or rejected me.”
“He threatened you?”
The murderous look on Sasha’s face should scare me. Instead it’s satisfying. So is the fact that he bought me books. The only other man who buys me things is my father, and he only gets me things to wear so I’ll look good on his precious social media account. Fancy clothes and shoes serve his own interests, not mine. He used them to make me an Instagram star and to trade me to a New York Mafia heir.
“Do you read much?” I ask.
He shrugs.
“Did you read my copies ofFight ClubandThe Coldest Girl in Coldtown? AndPaper Towns?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Why?” I ask.
“To see what was in them.”
“Did you like them?”
He shrugs. “I liked the necromancer vampire mafia ones better. I read all those.”
I laugh and find it hard to stop. The thought of him reading sex-filled urban fantasy novels full of over-the-top wisecracking characters is crazy to me.
He smirks.
It’s so rare to see him smile that I stare up at him.
“Trick calls them trash. But he reads them all too. Sometimes I buy ones where it’s all sap ‘cause I know he’ll force himself to read them to mock me.”
“Do you read the sappy ones?”
He shakes his head.
I laugh again, this time at the idea of Sasha tricking Trick, who’s known to be dangerously clever.
“Are you and Trick friends?” I ask. They hadn’t seemed like it when they worked for my father.
He shrugs. “More like brothers. Stuck with each other, forced to be together all the damn time.”
“But you’re close?”
After a moment he shrugs again. “Not close as friends. But no one can come for one of us without coming for all three of us.”
“The family you choose,” I say, nodding. “That’s Zoe and me. Can you ask C to bring her here? I want to see her.”
He looks away.
“Why not? I won’t tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
