Don Leo heaves himself up from my couch, and Anthony tries to scramble away, only to be caught by the back of his neck.
"Let’s go." Don Leo crosses the room toward me. His footsteps are heavy, deliberate. "I’m getting impatient, and I don’t want to stay in this shithole any longer than I have to."
He stops in front of me and his foul scent hits my nose—expensive cologne doing a terrible job of masking the odor ofsweat and cigar smoke. Underneath it is something sour and foul, the smell of a body beginning its slow surrender to decay. He reaches up and pats my face with a meaty palm.
I want to scream, and shy back from his touch. But I know better than to show him fear. I need to be brave, if not for myself then for Anthony. I stand a little straighter, a little taller, and jut my chin out in that defiant stance Luca taught me.
“That’s it,ragazza, I like it when they have some fight in them.” Don Leo chortles when he sees it. "You and I are going to have one hell of a time."
I look away from him for a brief second, my eyes finding Nico’s across the room, and I pour everything I cannot say into a single look.
You said you’ll save both boys, now fucking prove it.
Nico gives me a small nod. His lips move, shaping two words I can only read in the spaces between breath:Trust me.
Then he says out loud, "Let me take the boy with me."
Don Leo turns, and as he does, the tanned rolls threaten to spill out of his clothes. He looks back at Nico whose hands are still protectively around Lydia’s shoulders, and then back at me.
"No." His mouth widens into a smile that reveals the rows of stained yellow teeth. “He's going to watch what happens to people who think they can outsmart me."
Then his hand grabs me by my arm, and he marches me in front of him out my door. And as the door closes behind us, I cling to the single thread of hope that Nico can reach Slava before it’s too late.
It is a very thin thread.
And I’m not sure I believe that it will hold.
51
SLAVA
I stand at the sink,hands braced against porcelain and head hanging between my shoulders while the shower runs in the background. The mirror is fogged over.
Good.
I don't want to see what's looking back.
If you ever betray me, malyshka, you'll wish you were still my enemy.
My knuckles tighten around the sink’s edge until they turn white. Those words had been so fucking easy to say. But it was a whole different thing to see them realized in the worst possible way.
And nothing could’ve prepared my heart for those three simple words that fell from her lips just a few moments ago.
I hate you.
Bella did her best to put the poison behind those three words, like she was trying to convince herself even as her body shatteredaround mine, and her fingers dug into my shoulders to leave her marks on me the same way my mouth left my marks on her.
I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
There was no mistaking the three words she meant.
And instead of giving her the truth of what her heart wants, I gave her the lie she craved.
My jaw clenches so hard that I can hear my teeth grinding in my skull. I think about all the ways I've been cut open over the years—bullets and knives and every kind of way pain can be inflicted—but nothing hurts like this.
None of them ever made me want to peel off my own skin and leave it on the bathroom floor.
I knew what we were both trying to do. Maybe I’ve always known, even when anger was the only thing clouding my vision after I discovered her betrayal. Both of us wanted to push each other away, because both of us believed that if we were foolish enough to fall for each other, then we would be reckless enough to destroy each other because of that love.
