“You want to talk about it?” He asks, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear.
I shake my head, wiping the last of my tears from my cheeks and eyes. “No, I want to talk about why you’re here… have been here for a couple of weeks without telling me. And why you found it necessary to fake your own death.” I’m using him as a distraction from my own feelings.
His lips part to speak but snap shut when we hear a soft knock on the door. I quickly move for one of the guns on the opposite side of the bed while Layton grabs a gun from the nightstand and rushes over to the window.
“Stay down,” he instructs as he pulls back the curtain and peeks out.
I linger near the bed with the gun aimed out in front of me. “Is it them? Is it Frankie’s men?”
It takes him a second to say anything and when he does speak it’s to himself. “Dammit, I thought I had more time until she showed up. Fuck.” Shaking his head, he turns to me, and the expression on his face startles me—packed with remorse. “Lola, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re always saying that.” Nervousness bubbles inside me at what the hell could possibly be on the other side of the door. “So what are you sorry for this time?”
“For what’s about to happen.” With heavy reluctance, he goes over to the door and opens it up. I’m not sure what to expect on the other side. Part of me believes that it’s going to be Frankie’s men, that Layton has betrayed me, that I just had sex with someone who’s going to help kill mer. But quiet honestly I don’t know what to think about what I actually see.
A woman about the same height as me with the same color of hair and eyes, similar lips and facial features, dressed in leather pants, boots, and a jacket. The woman in leather?
She looks like some sort of badass ninja assassin from the movies, a gun on each side of her belt, and boots that hug her legs and go to her thighs. Her dark hair is pulled into a tight ponytail She stares darkly at me as she strolls into the room, glancing around at the back area and then the bed, appearing completely unbothered by the gun in my hand. “You weren’t supposed to be seen, Layton. Tell me that through all that shit none of Frankie’s men saw you... They need to still think your dead otherwise we’re both fucked.”
“I’m not sure… I’m hoping not.” He closes the door and flips the lock and slides the chain over. Then he turns and gives me another apologetic look while the woman continues to stare at me with curiosity.
“I thought she’d be prettier,” she says with a bored expression.
“Who the hell are you?” I elevate the gun at her. “Start talking or I’ll shoot.”
She rolls her eyes like I’m pathetic. “We both know you’re not going to shoot me, that you have a history for freezing up.”
Okay I already don’t like her. She’s struck a nerve. A deep nerve. “Layton, who the fuck is this?”
He sighs tiredly, massaging the back of his neck tensely as he paces the space between the bed and the door, his gun still in his hand. “If I could just—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I point my gun at him. “No more running around and distracting me with sex. Spill it. Now. Who is she?”
His eyelids lower and the look he gives me makes my skin tingling all over. “The sex wasn’t about that and you know it.” Then suddenly he grows uneasy again. “God, you’re going to hate me after this.” Another sigh as he stops between the ninja girl and myself. “Lola, this is Solana.” He pauses, biting at his bottom lip. “Your half-sister.”
I don’t even flinch. “Nice try, but I don’t have a half-sister,” I state, putting one hand on the bottom of the gun handle to steady it. “I’m the only child and you know that.”
Layton starts to move toward me, taking tentative steps, his gun in his hand, but his hand lowered to his side. “That letter of your mother’s that you found wasn’t about you. It was about her.”
I’m trying to keep composed, just like I was taught to do, but it’s becoming harder when my life is getting more and more flipped upside down. “How do you know about the letter… No one knows about it… no one alive anyway.”
“A couple of people do.” Layton stops just short of me, so my gun is pointed at his chest, proving that he’s not afraid of me, proving that he knows me too well. “Well, not so much the letter but what the letter contains.”
“A couple of people?” I ask. “Like my father… Is that why…” Is that why my mother’s dead?
“Your father does know about it—about Solana.” He offers me a sad smile. “Frankie knows too and a couple of others. It’s part of the debt your father was in with Frankie.” He gaze flickers to Solana who’s standing stoically, looking directly at me with her arms folded. “He helped keep her hidden from what he considered the wrong people and in return, your father owed him a lot of money. When he didn’t pay, then… well, you know the rest.”
“But why would he need to keep her hidden?” I ask, lost. “It doesn’t make any sense. Who are these wrong people?”
“He doesn’t want my real father to find out.” Solana intervenes as she moves with measured steps toward me, her heeled boots shuffling against the carpet. “Everson Milantes. I’m sure you recognize the name.”
It’s starting to make sense, the few things I didn’t quite understand in the letter, things that didn’t seem to pertain to me. “It wasn’t me she was talking about,” I say it more to myself than anyone else. I glance at Solana and there’s no denying that were related. Very, very closely related. “But I still don’t get it… why would he want to keep you hidden from everyone, including me. And why can’t Everson know he has a daughter?”
She lets out a laugh, but it sounds hollow and wrong, empty like her eyes. “Because our mother cheated on Larenze Anelli and not just with anyone, but with another Anelli.”
“But letter said it was Everson Milantes.” I look back and forth between Layton and her, wondering why they’re telling me knows, wondering a lot of things. “Not Anelli.”
“That’s because he changed his name,” Solana explains, sitting down on the dresser near by, and letting her legs hang over the edge. “See your father once had a brother who didn’t want to be part of this shitty drug world. But Anelli’s have no choice so instead of accepting his fate and either taking over or getting killed, Everson ran, kind of like you,” she muses.
“But it said you might not be Everson’s,” I tell her. “That my mother—our mother wasn’t sure.”
“Oh I am,” she assures me with disdain. “Your father made sure of that right before he sent me away.”
“But I was born right after my parents were married,” I say, still unable to wrap my head around the fact that I’ve had a sister all my life and never knew about her. “And they barely knew each other before that… I mean, how far apart are we in age?”
“Only a year.” Her eyes turn icy cold. “But don’t worry, all your precious stories are true, except for when they met. They still got married on the same day, still had you right after. They just forgot to include me in the stories, but that’s probably because for most of them I wasn’t in them.” She pauses as if debating whether or not to say something. “And it doesn’t matter. Even if there was some chance I wasn’t Everson’s daughter, what’s done is done. I can’t erase the past. I am what I am and there’s no changing it.”
There’s a sadness in her voice she’s trying to cover up and it makes me wonder…
“Where were you?” I ask. “All these years—where did you live?”
Something flashes in her eyes like a bright fire doused with fuel, but when she speaks her voice is impassive. “I lived with your Aunt Glady until I was old enough to go to a… A special school.”
“Wait a minute?” I ask, noting that Layton shuddered at the mention of the school. “My Aunt Glady knew about you.”
“Our Aunt Glady does,” she says expressionlessly.
All these years, not only did my parents lie to me, but my Aunt Glady did too. I thought I cou
ld trust her, but I guess I was wrong. My whole family is a bunch of fucking liars.
“So why the fuck are you suddenly showing up now.” I swing the gun back and forth between the two of them. “And leaving me notes I’m guessing.” My attention lands on Layton, because now that he’s here and alive, it’s starting to make sense. The reason the handwriting looked so familiar, the woman in leather being at The Dusky Inn, the note on my hand after the Tenner incident.
“It was the only way I could think of to make contact with you without giving myself away.” His gaze welded to mine, barely blinking, like he’s afraid I’m going to bolt. “I was trying to get you to leave Glensdale, trying to get you to leave subtly before…” He scratches the back of his neck and the looks to Solana for help.
“Before what?” My voice carries warning as I cock the gun.
Solana rolls her eyes at Layton then looks at me. “Before I have to kill you.” Her expression is dead serious, stone cold, her hands near her weapons. The look in her eyes tells me she’s planning on doing exactly what she just said. “You broke the rules though Layton,” she says, hoping off the dresser. “We had a deal. No contact with her ever again.”
“Well, it’s a stupid pointless rule,” he says in a low, heated tone as he starts to stalk toward her, raising her gun. “One you made up just for your own fun.”
“I have my reasons. And besides, it doesn’t matter why. You still broke the rules by seeing her—broke our deal.” Her eyes drift to the unmade bed. “And fuck her apparently.” She glances back at him. “You’ve been a bad boy.”
I should kill her. Kill her now and protect myself. But I know I can’t. Know from too many experiences it’s not going to be easy.
“So you’re here to kill me?” I ask in a surprising firm tone. I eye her over, wondering what to do next, attack her because I sure as hell can’t shoot her. Maybe I could lunge forward and wrap my fingers around that pretty little neck… I trail off at the sight of a tattoo on her neck. A triangle with the Roman numeral ten inside it. Bloody, fucking hell. My muscles ripple, tighten. “Who the fuck are you for real?”
Layton and her both give me a perplexed look. “Lola, we just explained this to you,” Layton says, stepping toward me, but I step back.
I disregard him, my eyes fixed on the tattoo on her neck. “Do you know Nyjah?”
She looks absolutely bored. “You’re boss at your whorehouse? Yeah, I saw him when I was scoping the place out.”
“You have his family crest tattooed on your neck,” I say, but then realize that it might not be a family crest. It could mean something else. “He has that exact thing tattooed on his neck as well.”
“Well, it’s not his family crest.” Her fingers wander to the tattoo on her flesh and she touches it absentmindedly. “But it explains some things.”
“What things?” I huff out a frustrated breath. “Tell me what the fuck it means.”
Neither or them speak, both just looking at each other as if waiting for the other one to explain. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. Whatever they’re waiting for I don’t want to be around for.
One…
Two…
Three…
I fucking run, because I’m better at that. I don’t for the obvious choice thought—the front door—since both of them are blocking my path. I sprint for the bathroom, slamming the door behind me, and locking it right as someone rams against the other side.
“Lola, open the door!” Layton yells from the other side. “It’s not what you think!”
I back away from the door until my back bumps the sink. “You don’t even know what I’m thinking so how can you possibly know that.” I glance around at the bathtub/shower, the sink, and then at the window, which is way too small for me to fit in. Nowhere to go.
As Layton continues to bang on the door and yell at me, I sink to the floor and rest my head back. I’m not even sure I’m tripping on the tattoo so much as the pile of lies and secrets the two of them dumped on me. All these years, my entire life, is nothing but a lie. I’ve known this for a while, but didn’t realize the vastness of the secrets hidden in the Anelli family. It makes me wonder just how many more there are.
But I think the real thing that gets me more than the secrets, the thing that’s clawing at my skin, is that I’m here right now, in this place, the crappy person that I am, the person who kills and fucks men for a living, because I had to settle a debt my father got into with Frankie because he what? Wanted to hide Solana? Because my mother cheated on him with his brother, who he doesn’t like? That’s why all this shit happened? Because of that. It’s bullshit.
As I’m stirring in my own anger, the door suddenly bursts open. Layton stumbles inside the bathroom, shaking his head, while I remain calm on the floor.
“How long have you known about all of this?” I ask as he catches his breath. “About Solana and my father—her father. How long?”
His mouth sinks to a frown. “I… For a couple of years… pretty much since I started working for Frankie. Well, at least about Solana. I didn’t know the whole story though until… until the day I technically died.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I rise to my feet, loathing how hurt I am that he kept so much from me. It reminds me of why I shut down so much. “We were best friends—why didn’t you just say something. I wouldn’t have told anyone.”
Looking torn, he glances over and then steps all the way into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. “It was more complicated than that, otherwise I would have.” He takes a step toward me then another and I have nowhere to go since I’m already pressed up against the wall. “That day I started working for Frankie was because I had to, Lolita. My father made me.” There’s so much hatred in his eyes. “They’d made a bargain a long time ago about it… out of all the people, it had to be Frankie Catherlson.” He dares another step toward me and then another until he’s right in front of me. “That day your mother died I learned that it would happen eventually—that eventually I’d work for Frankie. That the Everett’s and Catherlson’s would join each other and unite their bloodlines. It’s part of the reason why I decided to fake my own death Lolita… the things Frankie was making me do… what he was going to make me do… I couldn’t do it anymore…” he trails off then blows out an exasperated breath, his hand coming down on the wall beside my head. “That night—the night we killed. Frankie set you up. And I knew about it.” He yanks his fingers through his hair and lets out an exasperated breath, eyes blazing with self-hatred “God, I fucking knew that you were going to walk into that trap. I was told to let them kill you, punishment for your father getting into debt with Frankie. But I couldn’t do it… couldn’t lose you… never can…” He reaches out and grazes his finger across my cheekbone, sending warmth throughout my body. “I can never let the girl I love get killed.” He swallows hard, his breath faltering. “So I stepped in and… well you know the rest. They put a hit on me when they found out, but thankfully I found my way out, thanks to Solana.”
My brows knit. “What does Solana have to do with this?”
“A lot,” he says as his hands spread across my cheek. “But I think it’s better for her to tell you… it’s her story… the things she went through… what your father did to her to keep her hidden… Lola, she’s had a rough life and that tattoo… it has to do with it so just let it go for now. Please.” He gives an elongated pauses, his eyes searching mine. “Tell me you forgive me. I need you to forgive me.”
I’m not sure if I should be angry with him or not. He knew that night that I was walking into a trap and didn’t warn me, but he also saved me, just like he did tonight. “I feel like my head’s going to explode… This is so much to take in Layton. And you know me enough to know I don’t do well with the whole emotional stuff.”
“I know.” His gaze never wavers from mine. “And I have to be honest, there’s more to it than what I’m telling you—more that I’m not even sure of… but right now, we’ve got to g
et you out of here and someplace safe before Frankie’s men find you. Solana says there’s a safehouse nearby we can go to until we can figure out where to go next.”
Safehouses was create by a group of ex-mafia men who needed to hide out from being hunted. That’s the thing with the world we live in. Once you’re on the bad list you usually stay on until you’re dead, so the odds of us walking out of this alive look grim, unless we keep running.
“Solana says, huh?” I question with a hint a jealousy in my voice that makes me cringe.
He gives me a strange look. “Are you jealous? That doesn’t sound like the Lolita I know.”
“It must be the trauma,” I say sarcastically. “Or maybe the bump on my head from the other night is making me crazy.”