He set the t-shirt on my lap, dropped to his haunches next to my pile of puke, and nodded toward my mouth. “Did my papà do that to you?”
I licked the cut on my bottom lip. “I threw a vase at his head and called him a cheating pig.”
Ace made a small noise of amusement. “Of course you did.”
Agent Allister was right now. Hit had become hits, and for some reason, I despised the man, as if he’d set all this in motion. It’d been one year since I’d seen him, but the hatred I felt for him still lay close to the surface.
“You aren’t going to tell him,” Nico said.
I didn’t respond.
“If you tell him, I will make your life a living hell.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. My best friend was fucking my husband. How did it get worse than that?
He grabbed my chin and turned it toward him. “We both know you’ll take the brunt of his anger, not me.”
“It’s my decision to make.”
He dropped his hand, sighed, and stood up. “Fine, but I warned you. I won’t feel sorry for you, either.”
I grabbed his t-shirt and slipped it on while he focused on digging through his nightstand drawer.
“Why, Ace?” I whispered.
How could you have let this happen?
I knew why I had. I was a mess. Everything I did was wrong. But Nico? He always had his head on straight. He maintained control in every move he made.
“I was drunk, Gianna. Really fucking drunk. And, to be completely honest, I still am.”
He lit a cigarette, the glow of the cherry red and angry. When he opened the blinds and then the window, and light filled the room, another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Streaks of red covered his hands and ran up his arms. Blood. I didn’t know what it was like being a Made Man, but I’d lived around them long enough to know it wasn’t easy. That sometimes, the toll of it hit them all at once.
“You look like your papà.” The words escaped me, soft, yet also so harsh in the sunlit room. The sins of the night never did sound so good in the day.
He blew out a breath of smoke, his eyes lighting with a flicker of dry humor. “Jesus.” He shook his head. “Is that what brought you here last night?”
Strobe lights. Dirty bathroom tile. Blow. A drip of sweat down my back. Accepting a white pill from a baggie. Nothing.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
“Well, whatever it was, I hope you got something from it, Gianna. Because we’re both going to hell.” He put his cigarette out on the windowsill and left the room.
I closed my eyes and tried to finish the puzzle, to piece the rest of the night together. But all I encountered was blackness. A blackness that whispered for me to fall asleep and not wake up, ever.
A box of chocolates tied with an apologetic red bow sat on our bed when I got home that morning. The same bed my husband had fucked my best friend on from behind.
I climbed into the sheets and ate every one of them.
Days passed, a blur of colors and feelings and a secret eating me alive. It was all upside-down, like viewing the world from a merry-go-round as it spun, head and hair hanging off the steel platform.
They were bad days. Cold. Lonely. High.
Antonio had shown his face only once. He came to bed late and fell asleep instantly. I’d stared at the ceiling until the sun streamed through the blinds, the bed dipped, and his presence disappeared as easily as it had come.
Soon after, sleep took me under.
A bright light flicked on, and a draft hit me as the comforter ripped away. I made a noise of protest but choked on it as ice-cold water poured onto my face.