“The cops you mean?”
“No.” I’d been battling with whether or not to mention to Lorie that my brothers were less-than-reputable, but since hearing from Giovanni that they were legitimately organized criminals, I didn’t want to take a risknottelling Lorie the truth. She had to know that if they sought her out, they were potentially dangerous. “My brothers are… not good men. When they used you to take me from Giovanni the first time, they did it because they wanted to kill me. They want to kill my dad too and… Gio told me, they’ve been in this underground world for a while now. I won’t go into details, but--”
“Avion!” she yelped. “What are you doing?!”
“What?” I said, jumping and looking all around. The sudden screeching and movement alarmed Milli who undid his seatbelt and started to climb out of the car. I held out a hand and stopped him, then looked to Lorie. “Shh, you can’t do that. What’s wrong?”
“What are you talking about? Your brothers are trying to kill you and your father? You think they attacked Merrick Raines, one of the most dangerous men in New York? You called himGio’s dad. He’s a lot more than that, you know? I’ve attended the funerals of people he’s killed. He’s not just a dad. He’s a murderer!”
Merrick and I hardly got along. The couple of interactions we’d had still haunted my nightmares, including him slamming me against the wall by my throat or leaning down over me and telling me that I’d be better off dead. No, Merrick Raines was not just a dad. Not any more than his wife was just a mom or his son was just a kid. Even Milli standing ten feet from me was an incredibly dangerous man in spite of the fact that he allowed me a few moments of freedom to come and speak with Lorie.
“Trust me, I’m aware of the situation,” I said.
“Then why aren’t you trying to get out of it? Are you scared? Is all of this stuff about your brothers coming from them? They could be lying to you.” She took a step back towards the front door of her building, holding her key card to get in shakily in her hand. “Come with me right now. Once we’re behind this glass, it’s bulletproof and reinforced. Once we’re behind ithecan’t get to us. Just trying to break it will alert every police officer for miles.”
“No, Lorie--”
“Can you not make any sudden movements? Can he hear you?” she asked. “If you’re in danger, blink twice.”
I just stared at her, being very careful not to blink in any way that would communicate danger. “Lorie, I’m fine. I’m not…” I started to say that I wasn’t with Gio by force, but it wasn’t entirely true. I’d like to think that Gio and I were beyond the place where I was a prisoner of his, but I don’t think he’d give me the free will to come and go if I asked. That was exactly why Milli brought me to see Lorie without him knowing. “I’m okay. I swear. No one is trying to hurt me, in fact, Milli saved my life. I promise. I’m okay. Don’t worry. Just… If my brothers try to talk to you, don’t trust them, and tell me right away, okay?”
“Avion, I’m not… I can’t do this stuff. I had to lie to the police to get them to stop the raid! I can’t do stuff like that. This weird life you seem to have chosen for some reason, it’s not me.”
“I know,” I said. “I don’t want it to be your life. I’m sorry. I swear, I’ll never ask you to do anything like that again, I just need to know if my brothers say anything to you, that’s it.”
“No, you don’t understand…”
“Avion!” Milli called. “We gotta go! Gio’s calling!”
I walked up to Lorie and wrapped my arms around her. “I love you so much. Really what I came here to say was thank you for your help. I really owe you one. We all do.” I pulled back and pinched her cheek lovingly. “Stay safe, okay? I’ll call you later.”
“But Avion…” she started, but then she just let out a defeated breath. “Never mind. Go. I’ll talk to you later.”
She flashed her card in front of her building reader and walked into her building, and once she was safely inside, I turned around and walked back to the car. Milli was still hanging half-in and half-out, but climbed back in as I approached. “How’d that go?”
I climbed into the car and shut the door before answering. “Somehow both better and worse than I thought. How are you?”
“Bleeding’s stopped, but I should still see someone,” he replied.
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for doing this.”
He gave me a rare, warm smile. “You’re welcome. We’d all be a lot worse off if you weren’t able to call on that connection so… don’t think you’re useless.”
I furrowed my brow despite smiling. “Are you… trying to console me because of what Merrick said? Is that a human I’m seeing in there?”
He immediately frowned and shifted the car into drive. “Shut up.”
Back at Gio’s estate, Dr. Aurora had her hands full. After running the full monty on Merrick who had come within an inch of his life, she then had to turn around and patch up Milli’s gunshot wound and fix my busted stitches. We all got a fairly healthy lecture about health and safety as though being a mobster on its ear wasn’t amajorlife risk, and then we were all sent in different directions to rest and recover.
It was in my room that Gio came and found me, a look of deep concern about his face. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m not even in pain,” I said. “It was just tripping all over myself back at your dad’s house. I’m fine.”
“You don’t think it had anything to do with earlier?” he asked.
“You mean up in the greenhouse?” I set the book I was reading aside and sat up in my bed. “No, I don’t. I was fine. Trust me. I felt pain in my side thesecondI did something that exacerbated my injury, and then it happened again. Almost immediately I got dizzy, felt sick. It happened there. Trust me.”
“Okay,” he said. “Um… Milli told me what you did. And what Lorie did. Thank you. That probably saved Merrick’s life.”
