Zahra
My mind stayed fixated on my argument with Elio as Daiyu applied the finishing touches to her work. I wanted him here, with me. Our disagreement had been unexpected, and I didn’t think he would just walk away, as if he couldn’t stand to be near me. I understood why he was upset, and maybe I didn’t do enough to ease his worries.Maybe I didn’t see why he should be worried because this wasn’t something I’d done before.
Relationship. Commitment. Those were foreign words to me. Words I was only just starting to understand.
“Everything is prepared for the coming days,” Daiyu said in Mandarin. “Once you supply the coordinates, my people and I will take a getaway boat to the cruise ship.”
I nodded absentmindedly. “I already have plans to get my friends out so I can assist,” I responded in the language too.
She paused. “You don’t have to, Zahra. We don’t know the ranks of these people. They might recognize you and send word to Sicily. I would hate to get you in trouble with Manuel.”
My chest tightened at the mention of that name. “Don’t worry about Manuel, he’s taken care of,” I said. “And even if he wasn’t and word gets back, he wouldn’t care since he’s no longer in the business. He left after… that incident.”
Daiyu nodded in understanding. “Well, if that’s the case, it wouldn’t hurt to have the extra hand,” she said.
I nodded, wondering what Elio was doing now.
“Are you sure your friends can’t be involved? From what you’ve told me about Street, they seem like great guys.”
“They are,” I answered. “But the less they know about me, the easier it will be to protect them from… everything.”
“You don’t think they can handle it?”
I frowned. “They might have been through hard times but they’re innocent to this part of the world and the ugliness of it. I don’t want to ruin that, I don’t want to taint them like that. They deserve more.” I sighed. “We both know that being aware of this organization is literally the end of anyone’s normal. They’d never be able to leave the box once they’re in. I don’t want them to be caged. I know how it feels, and I’d rather they hate me than ever have to feel what I feel every day.”
“You care about them.”
I nodded. “Yes. They showed me the meaning of family. The least I can do is make sure they leave unscathed.”
Daiyu went quiet, but I could already hear the question before she asked it. “You don’t plan to be with them long, do you?”
I dragged in a breath and let it out. “I have many plans, and one of them is making sure they don’t live the rest of their lives as… criminals. Whatever that might mean in the future, it’s a burden I’m willing to bear.”
Daiyu smiled, applying a cooling ointment to my new tattoo. “You never change, do you? Sacrificing your happiness for the sake of the people you care about,” she said in English.
“That’s the thing, Daiyu. I was never created to be happy. I was created to give happiness. At least now I get to choose how I do that.”
She chuckled lightly. “Well, I can’t argue with that.”
I smiled.
“Anyway, while I might be okay with you helping, I still don’t think you should risk yourself like that.”
“It’ll be fine.”
The pain from the tattoo was dull, and my mind was moving between here and where Elio currently was. The thought of him distracted me from Daiyu’s concerns. She was right to worry, but honestly, I couldn’t be bothered, not when I was toobusy trying to understand how the fuck everything with Elio had gotten so serious so fast, how I’d almost reached the finish line of this whole thing after starting the race without a heart or an attachment to anyone or anything.
But the past few years had impacted my life in a way I never thought they would. Street, Elio, our relationship—I was swimming with a boatload of denial, guilt, regret, and anger, heart-stopping, nerve-racking anger at the fact that I had to do any of this at all, that I had to fight in secret, a fight that was meant to be fought in broad daylight.
Hearing footsteps approaching, I turned my head toward the door. The room was occupied by Daiyu, me, and some guy who was getting his whole back inked. He had headphones in his ears. The door opened, and my eyes widened. All my previous thoughts took a back seat in my mind.
Elio walked in, his eyes finding me instantly while he closed the door behind him.
Some warm and fluffy feeling swirled around my chest at the sight of him.He came back. I didn’t know why, but all that mattered was that he did. Maybe that was his way of showing me he wasn’t mad to the point that he didn’t want to be near me.
But he was here. He was around my past, around a story I’d never told. I brought him with me to create a picture, one that featured my present with my past. I wanted to see him in that lighting, to pretend even for a moment that he knew every single thing about me, and he accepted me, flaws and all.
I was careful not to move even though I had the urge to. “Hey.” I smiled, but he didn’t come over; he just settled onto the visitor’s couch next to a kid of about eleven, who I supposed belonged to the guy getting his back tattoo.
