I reach for her, but she shakes me off and stumbles back, out of reach.
"Lola, please. You know this isn't what I want. And I didn't?—"
"What did I just say about me having had enough of your lies?" She shakes her head and wraps her arms around her stomach. Around Squish.
And my heart dies a little.
"Right now...right now I'm not in the mood for you or your lies or anything."
"Lola..."
She meets my gaze. "If you had any sense, you'd give me some space to calm down. Maybe then I'd listen. Maybe then I'd think differently. But right now... no."
Lola turns then, and this time heads to the elevator, pressing the button, as if the stairs are too much after this, as if I've somehow drained her.
But as the doors open, she puts her hand on the open door to stop it from shutting. And she looks back at me.
"You might want to focus your attention and words on your sister." She closes her eyes. "On Lyndall. My sister, I guess, by blood. Yours by virtue of growing up with you."
She shakes her head. "As bad as I'm feeling right now, Lyndall must be feeling a thousand times worse. She doesn't deserve what you did to her. So, grow the fuck up and try to do the right thing for once."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
LOLA
I could kill him.
Downstairs, there's the sound of pleading from fucking asshole Enzo and shouting from poor Lyndall.
She told me she has music lessons.
No doubt right now Lyndall can't wait until she gets to play. She once told me everything is absorbed by the music, and if that's her escape, then she deserves it.
I flop on my bed. I'm so fucking angry right now! But worse than that is the disappointment that weighs a thousand pounds. My heart is too heavy and too broken.
And what kills me is that I can't blame just myself or Enzo.
This is my fault because I decided to trust him when I had so many reasons not to. He showed me his true colors so many times, but I kept using tinted glasses to paint him the way it suited me.
But this is also his fault for this whole huge bag of lies and half-truths.
Fuck. I'm pulled in a million directions.
And I can't stop aiming some of the anger at my dad and at her mom for this.
I know Lyndall is around eight years younger than me. I also know her mom was young. What I don't know is how long the affair was going on.
All these lies and half-truths.
I can now sort of understand why Mario hated Dad. Why he might hate me.
What I don't get is why he took a baby in as his own and then took pleasure in treating her as he does Lyndall.
Sure, he's macho mafia and a brute. I'm beginning to see they all are. And I guess sucking up and taking another man's daughter as his own is better than admitting his second wife had an affair.
But Lyndall is innocent. She always was.
Then again, so am I. And I got blackballed.
