Queen of Hearts

Chapter Four

ROSIE

“You did what?!” Lola screeches before she bursts into laughter. “You can’t just go around pushing his dates down stairs!”

I swallow the rest of my wine in two large gulps, “She tripped, Lola. Tripped.”

My best friend snorts. “Yeah. Over your foot.”

We’re in her tiny kitchen, two days after the charity gala and I’m finally filling her in on how my evening went. I would have called her, but I tended not to use my phone very often since I cycled through burner phones quicker than I could count to ten. Besides, it was nice having someone excited to see me when I turned up on their doorstep. There were others, who offered me a bed and place to stay but they did it out of obligation to my parents or the belief that I should be running The Family. Lola wanted me here in her cramped little apartment because she missed me, because she loved me and that…that hurt as much as it lit me up.

The wine is making me morose, so I shake my head and crack an egg into the bowl she just handed me. “Are you going to help me make these cookies or not?”

“Still can’t believe you’ve resorted to terrorizing his dates, Ro.” She shakes her head and pushes aside the magazine we were looking at earlier in which a very sad looking Maddison Miles talks about her ‘traumatic’ evening at the hottest charity event in Newtown. She praises Julian for taking ‘great care’ of her even though I know he left her with the paramedics and did nothing more than send her a basket of fruit afterwards. Lying little toad.

Lola grabs a marker from the drawer as I mix in chocolate chips, and begins sketching out something on a sheet of paper. “And nope, I’m going to watch you make cookies while I make a sign to stick in my window for the creeper across the street.”

I narrowed my eyes at her window and out into the darkness of the building opposite, as if I could see the stalker across the road, which I can’t. But he doesn’t know that. “Why don’t you call the police on him.”

Shrugging, she gives me a small smile. “He’s not bothering me yet, just…watching.”

I keep mixing before I cover the bowl and chill the mix in the fridge as she tapes the giant dick she’s drawn to the window. “Hmmm, so no murder vibes then?”

“Rosie…” Glaring at me over her shoulder, she huffs. “Are you even allowed to ask that? You’re my best friend and you actually murder people.”

I kept very little from Lola because I’d never needed to. When I ran ten years ago, at eighteen years old, I ended up wandering the streets. Alone. Afraid. Covered in blood. I wasn’t even sure if I was in Newtown anymore, and it turned out, I wasn’t. I’d somehow, in a complete haze of grief and rage, made my way to East Point, a city a few hours away. That’s where a bruised and scrawny, twenty-one-year-old Lola found me and took me in. She never asked whose blood I was wearing. Never demanded anything from me. Never made me explain anything. She simply took me as I was, and that was that.

We were best friends, found family—sisters. We even looked alike, both blonde although her eyes were green where mine were blue. And she was tall and leggy, whereas I was shorter and curvier. We milked it when we needed to, whether we used it as a story to lure men in before we robbed them or whether we said it simply to give each other comfort. It didn’t matter. She was the only family I had left.

“People who deserve it,” I remind her as I pour us both another glass of the cheap red wine she bought from the store. One day we’d have enough money to waste on nice wine and fancy glasses to drink from. One day when I took back what was rightfully mine.

“Irrelevant,” she retorts as she grabs her glass and sinks down into the second-hand loveseat she bought at a garage sale a few weeks ago. We spoke about my family, and Julian often, but Lola never mentioned hers. When I wanted to move back here after living in East Point for a few years, she never even blinked. There was no one she had to say goodbye to and no one she talked about. Her only stipulation was that we avoided Aberfalls, and that we never went there and that was just fine by me.

“Do you want cookies or not?”

Watching me wipe down the counters and clean the dishes she tilts her head, thinking about it. “Are you using the cannabutter?”

My baking was legendary in her building and one of her neighbors, a small-time dealer named Brad, had given us some cannabutter last week. I wink. “Nope, saving that for the brownies on the weekend.”

My weekend plans consisted of special brownies, dancing and maybe a hot body to crawl into bed with. For a moment I picture Jay, stripping off his shirt, slowly. One button at a time, all seductive and sexy. The man is built, I could feel it when we danced, his muscles moving under my hands. For a moment I wonder if there’s a way to lure him out with us on Saturday, but I know that’s just wishful thinking. The man’s so upstanding in public I bet he’s never even experienced the nightlife in Newtown, not like he should. He probably just skulks around in the background, making sure his dues are paid and his Captains are behaving.

“Then yes, I want cookies,” Lola grins. She thinks cookies made with the cannabutter taste funky and she has a point. But cookies are quick and easy to make, whereas decent brownies take time, they need to cool down to get that soft gooey center.

“What’s your plan for Asaro now? I think you like him,” she teases in a sing-song voice, blonde curls bouncing as she gives me a little shimmy.

She was much prettier than the other ‘Flowers’ at The Top Hat, and she worked hard, learning new dance routines all the time, taking care of her body. They didn’t deserve her but at least she had the choice not to sell her body there, thanks to the new regulations Jay introduced. It was her business, her body and that’s the way it should always be in this town for women like Lola and me. It’s one of the reasons I’d been able to garner support from others in The Family, I wanted to protect them and I would do anything to ensure they were safe. Julian Asaro was losing men every year, admittedly…it was my fault. But if he’d had the balls and the ability to stop me, then he should, otherwise he was just another weak leader with a soft spot for a pretty face.

“I think you like your stalker,” I snap, tossing a dish towel at her head.

She glances backwards at the window, now partially covered up, the outline of her artistic cock rendering shining through thanks to the street lighting. “He tips well, keeps his hands to himself and makes eye contact instead of staring at my tits. Of course I like him.”

Men like that were usually too good to be true, especially to the dancer in The Top Hat. “Are you sure he’s not dangerous?”

She flashes me a smug expression. “Oh, he’s dangerous, Ro. But so am I.”

We laugh but I feel more settled about it when we finally come to portioning out the cookie dough mix on a baking tray. Lola wasn’t some airhead stripper, and sometimes I had to remind myself of that. She was the one who taught me how to survive on the streets, how to build a life with the scraps we managed to pull together and nothing but our brains. She also wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, and in return for her taking me in, I’d shown her how to handle a knife and a gun like my father had taught me. You wouldn’t want to meet either of us in a dark alley, and yet because of the hair and cute smiles, we were always underestimated.

“Are you really going to kill him?” she asks, voice quieter now. Concerned.

No.

Yes.

His life was mine. He owed me, and I wasn’t about to write that debt off. He could have warned me. Could have warned them. We could have run together. Instead, he knew and he kept his mouth shut. No, worse than that. He put his mouth on mine, and made me want things I could never have. He turned me inside out, before hanging me out to dry. And that was unforgivable.

I turn my back on her so she can’t see the hesitation that still lingers and I switch on her oven with a click. “Eventually.”