Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 56680 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56680 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
“You know who I am.”
Jackie shakes his head. “I just work the door, sir.”
“But you know who I am?”
He says nothing but gives a little nod.
“So you’ll know not to repeat this.” I wonder if I even drank. I can’t taste whisky. I don’t drink, especially not since this started. “I’ve been having blackouts. It’s like time traveling, Jackie. Only you don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve done. That’s not good for a man like me.”
Jackie says nothing, then slowly and somewhat innocently reaches out and places his hand on my arm. “I hope you get some help, Mr. Bianchi.”
I sigh, shaking my head. I can’t afford to get help. If I do, then what? Surgery? Recovery? I have to work. I have to make more money. I have to take care of Ma.
As I take careful steps, my legs feeling wobbly as hell, I go to the elevator and ride it up to our floor. Maybe the blackout will fade into snippets over the next few days like the others did. It’s been months. That must mean it’s getting better.
When I get to the apartment, I know something’s wrong. It’s in the air, a stale smell, a stale feeling. I rush into the living room, smelling sharp metal and blood. Mom’s on the couch with blankets shrouded around her, her skin covered in so many beads of sweat. It looks like she’s drowning. She’s shuddering, but only slightly, like any second she could pass out.
“Ma.” I rush to her side, picking up the phone and quickly dialing 911. “It’s okay, Ma. I’m here.”
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
CHAPTER 6
Mia
“That was quite the surprise,” Scarlet says during the car ride home, saying it in that particular way she has, subtly questioning, always able to get to the bottom of things, but not this. I can’t let her.
Beside me, Molly sits in her car seat, babbling softly.
“She doesn’t have to tell us every little detail of her love life,” Elio says with a smile.
Scarlet glances at me in the rearview, her eyes narrowed. “No, I guess not.”
I can tell she suspects something. I’ve been living with them for months, and we’ve been getting on well, but I never once mentioned Vito. I wish I could tell them everything, all the sick things I experienced. It cuts deep into a person, like a tattooist’s needle going right to the bone, bleeds the ink into their core.
When we get home, I carry Molly into the house. She giggles and wraps her arms around me. “Why sky blue, Me-Me?”
She melts my heart, and I have to remind myself I never want kids. I have to ignore the warm blossoming in my gut. “I guess it was just made that way.”
“Why, Me-Me?”
Scarlet holds the door open for me, giving me another look. Luckily, their house is enormous, so I can disappear into my bedroom. With my headphones in and trash pop music on, I focus on my sketching. I’m outlining a piece that’s supposed to show a wolf becoming a dog, the larger animal bleeding into the smaller one, with one side of the painting wolfish and silver and the other brown and canine.
Yet my fingers itch like they’re trying to get me to paint something else. Paint him. When I close my eyes, though, I can’t see Dante clearly, not how I want to. I want him to be right there, staring down at me with that intense look in his eyes.
Then he got cold, though, when Vito arrived. It was like his mafioso shield was dropping. I stopped existing to him because I’m a woman, and now, apparently, I belong to somebody else.
Scarlet walks in front of the canvas, waving her arms and moving her lips, but nothing comes out except trashy pop lyrics about how things will never be the same. I loop my over-ear headphones around my neck. “Sorry, Scar,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “I tried knocking about a thousand times. What’re you listening to?”
“Nothing as angelic as you,” I say, turning off the music.
She laughs. “You know why I’m here then.”
She’s seen through me. Maybe I was flattering her so she won’t ask a bunch of probing, impossible questions and tell me how messed up I am.
I sigh, putting my pencil down and then moving to the bed. Scarlet follows me, pulling up a stool from my makeup table. She rests her forearms on her knees. She’s only a few years older, but she feels like the mama bear of the group.
“Who’s Vito?” she asks.
“My fiancé,” I tell her.
“But…” She smiles with a flourish of worry as if she thinks something is wrong. “Who is he to you?”
“My boyfriend.”
“How many times have you said—”
My phone vibrates. I grab it and look at it. Scarlet cuts off, maybe because she can see the fear pulsing through me. It’s from Dad. You’re such a wonderful daughter…