My eyes widened at the baritone sound. She slapped a hand over her mouth. Her face flamed like her hair.
“Sorry.” It was barely more than a murmur.
She fetched a pen and paper and began writing.
You’ve got to stop this. It’s not healthy.
“I can’t. I feel like I’m just waiting around when I should be doing something.”
You’re not the only one who feels like all we get to do is sit on our asses when we could be doing something better. Get used to it. This is the system, babe.
“That’s it?”
She stared at me deadpan, then scribbled more words.
Yeah. If those of us who’ve aged out can’t fight it, what hope do those of us in it have?
I read her words over and over, a wave of helplessness hitting me. “I just miss him. I don’t even know if they caught his killer yet.”
Little Bee’s mouth twisted as she pulled me into the far corner behind our bunk beds and pulled out the phone from inside her mattress.
With a few swipes of her thumb and a mischievous grin, she connected it to someone’s Wi-Fi network.
“Look,” she croaked.
It was a news clip about the shooting from the day after Noah died. I listened to every word, absorbing it all in. A shoot-out. A turf war, they guessed. Seven dead—two were from a nearby motorcycle club, a businessman and his employees, all with suspected ties to the criminal underworld, and one innocent bystander, for whom they flashed a woman’s face instead of Noah’s. I frowned but kept watching. Three others injured.
Then they zoomed in on a thumbnail of a man in his mid-twenties, tall and imposing, clean-shaven to perfection, like he used a razor just before this was filmed. Those eyes, that face. It was my sandwich stranger. I’d recognize him anywhere. I glanced up at Bee in confusion.
He strode along a sidewalk past glass windows, surrounded by men in suits as overpriced as his own. His eyes were narrowed in irritation, as if being in the presence of others was an inconvenience, even though the rest of the hard angles of his face were smoothed out. It did nothing to lessen his good looks.
Reporters ambushed him, and they volleyed questions and requests for comments. A line of bodyguards held the press back. Renzo Iannelli, they called him. It rolled off the tongue with a rise and fall. The name suited him: strong, mysterious, rich.
“Son of victim, Elio Iannelli, the real estate tycoon suspected of mafia ties…CEO of PREI Group Inc, Renzo Iannelli, has been called in for questioning…his blood found at the scene…evidence of recent firearm discharge…currently the only suspect…”
A sob caught in my throat. My eyes burned. What? No. He couldn’t have taken my brother from me and then stood there, in the police precinct, like nothing happened. He gave me his food like it was all easy. Like anything could be thrown away. A sandwich. A life.
Oh god, I was so stupid. I was going to be sick.
I hated this guy’s stupid, angelically handsome face. I hated the way he walked without a care in the world, one arm stiff while the other swayed slightly. I hated how tall he was and how he seemed to look down on everyone around him. I hated that I’d met him and thought him remotely kind. And that sandwich—I hated it too. It was long gone, but I wished I could purge it from my system. I hated everything it stood for. How cared for, it made me feel. How normal. How much I’d enjoyed it. How often I thought about the murdering asshole who’d given it to me.
My ears rang as I watched Renzo Iannelli disappear through a pair of double doors. When they zoomed out, my heart thumped harder. Part of the building sign read Police Department. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. They were going to arrest him. It wasn’t enough, but at least it was something.
“Sorry, Ainsley.” Little Bee’s raspy whisper seemed to take up the entire space.
“Why? They’re going to get him.”
She typed.They never get the rich guys.
“No.” I refused to accept that as I scrolled through the news feed. “There’s got to be something else. Something more recent.”
Bee rolled her eyes and quickly punched in some rapid-fire code on a pop-up bar. The phone screen flashed with several new internet tabs. She scrolled through them.
“From today,” she mouthed.
She tapped the screen, and a new video popped up.
Renzo Iannelli was in another swanky suit, gray compared to the previous blue, looking just as rigid and impenetrable as he did the day I met him in the police station. He shook the police chief’s hand under the flash of cameras as the reporter broadcast:
