On The Ropes (Tapped Out 3)

He’d ended his diversion. Did that mean he’d simply stopped allowing women to dilute his focus? Or had he had a more particular, sinister meaning?

Your mother diverted me from my path for many years.

I sank to the couch and the poker dropped to the carpet beneath my feet.

She’d died from a strange, lingering illness that had left her bedridden most of the last few months of her life. I’d watched her waste away, and the diagnoses had ranged from neurological to syndromes with fancy names I hadn’t been able to pronounce or understand at that age. All I’d known was my mother was dying before my eyes.

My hand went to the phone in my pocket without conscious thought. And I dialed the number I’d never expected to use again.

“Costas.”

Shutting my eyes, I invoked the one ace-in-the-hole I had left. If it was even that. It might turn out to be the club that finally brought me down. “Do you remember the day before Mamma passed, you told me you would do anything I wished, anything at all?” I asked, voice hollow.

A long pause. “I remember.”

“I told you there was one thing you could do for me, and that was to make her well again. And you told me to pick something else. Any favor I could ask for, you would make it happen. No expiration date.”

He didn’t reply, but from the even pattern of his breathing, I knew he was listening.

“I need your help. This is the only thing I will ever ask you, and beyond that, you will be free of me.”

I waited for his objection, but it never came. “What do you need, fratello?”

My gaze drifted to the spotted dog in the corner. “For you to guard the only thing I value in this life.”

Twenty-Three

He didn’t bring my damn dog.

I rode home with him the next night, and he made no attempt to speak. I almost asked about the Dalmatian, but he seemed so preoccupied that I chose the better part of valor and shut the hell up.

After he dropped me off at the curb, I sneaked a glance over my shoulder and saw him on his phone. He’d been texting a lot that evening. When I came out of the dressing room, when I got in the truck. Since he didn’t have friends like normal people, the sight made my back prickle with nerves.

That sensation only grew as the week wore on, until by Thursday night, the night before Fox and Giovanni’s fight, I was practically incapable of sitting still. I made dinner for Mrs. Knox and Mia and Fox—who was as chill as an ice cube in a tray—and hung out with them for a bit. He’d been training his ass off, spending long hours in the gym, and now he was ready to relax.

Glad he could at least, because me? Not so much.

We played video games and teased each other, and my sister insisted on brushing Fox’s dog Vey, though that always got him riled up. He then dug through the trash. In other words, it was a normal Thursday night.

Having a family again that consisted of more than me and my sister was weird. Weird, but nice.

I really hoped I wouldn’t have to give it up.

I went to bed later than usual. I had class in the morning, then a shift at the Salad Hut. By afternoon, I planned to be biting my nails off as I watched the clock. I didn’t know why I was so nervous. Unlike Mia, I didn’t take fights in stride, but they usually didn’t make me want to hide under the couch either.

Maybe because this one felt bigger somehow. More important. Which made no sense. Fox would win or lose, and he wasn’t going to start fighting again regardless of the result. He might get hurt, as might Gio, but it wasn’t like they would die.

I hoped. I seriously fucking hoped.

Curled up on the floor in my sleeping bag, I listened to Mrs. Knox snore and the sound of rain pelting the glass and tried to let them lull me into unconsciousness. It wasn’t working. The sleeping bag situation wasn’t awesome either. Mia had mentioned getting me an air mattress, something I’d resisted before, but now sleeping on the floor was starting to hurt. I didn’t see how having a tadpole in my uterus could be affecting my hip joints, but the miracle of childbirth was beyond my paygrade.

I’d read on my Kindle for a bit, but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could do was lay in the darkness and hold my breath, almost as if I was waiting for something.

Then I heard the creak of the fire escape outside the window.

Heart stampeding in my chest, I sat up as soundlessly as possible, though my sleeping bag was old and kind of noisy. The material rubbed together and I gritted my teeth, searching around for a weapon if I needed one. My stupid pepper spray was in my bag across the room.

Then my phone—luckily tucked into the pocket of my sleep shorts—vibrated with an incoming text, and my heart started rampaging for a whole new reason.