Me: I fucking love you, Kitty
Me: You hold on
Kitty: Stan, someone’s coming!
Kitty: Oh, my god. I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do.
Kitty: He’s trying to bang the door down!
Me: Can you hide?
Me: Arm yourself.
Me: Do whatever you fucking have to.
Me: I will NOT lose you
When she cut contact, I thought I’d have another heart attack—only goddamn fitting, seeing as she owned it now.
But as her silence persisted, our cars convened outside a shitty dry cleaners in a relatively upscale street where Dead To Me took point once she stole my phone and created a group call.
As I scanned the building, it registered how easy it was to hide such a business from the outside world if you had the backing. The real estate alone would cost millions, but by buying up a block, you had a chunk of space to create your very own Hades.
Dead To Me reached for the door handle first, but as she opened it, she twisted back to face me. “Sometimes, you can’t be kind to enemies. You have to slice their throats.”
And with that cryptic comment, she surged into the battle ahead of us.
“What the fuck did that mean?” Luc groused. “When are we ever kind to enemies?”
I shook my head because I was as in the dark as my brother. But embracing the chaos that was Dead To Me, I silently prayed for Kitty’s safety and rasped, “It’s a nice night to watch Nolita burn.”
FOUR
KITTY
“Prifti, open the door! They’re coming closer. We need to move her!”
When I read Stan’s suggestions, they stopped me from freaking out about the guy kicking his way into the room.
Mostly because I felt like flipping Stan the bird.
What did he think I was going to do—stay out in the open by choice?
This room was a pigeonhole with zero cover. If I hid behind the curtain between the bedroom and bathroom, it wouldn’t shelter me for long.
“Iwillpunch him when I see him,” I vowed to myself, relieved that sheer exasperation kicked my adrenaline back into gear, which stymied my tears and my fears.
I scuttled over to the body, the man who’d been alive moments ago, the personI’dkilled, and I snagged the lamp. Then, I armed myself with the knife.
Praying that I’d survive this to punch Stanthensit on his knee while I asked him what the fuckliunissameant, I scrambled over to the door and crouched beside it.
Then, I closed my eyes.
“Vinny, I’m not ready to see you again. Not yet.Please.”
Whether my dead brother was eavesdropping or not, whether it was his godawful insistence on only watching Bruce Lee movies that year before he’d passed or whether it was more Irish luck that I needed to patent, when the door finally gave out, my bruised brain fired on all cylinders.
With one hand, I brought the knife down.
