“I see…” She taps her fingers against the bar, her gaze thoughtful. “Maybe you should have gone to her for help,” she mutters after a moment.
I don’t tell her how Lucia would have probably been much more agreeable in killing her cousin. Her relationship with Giovanni is strained to say the least. I didn’t grow up around any of my cousins. Our father’s brothers would show up every now and then begging for money, but that was the extent of our relationship with his family. Some days, I believed mom didn’t even have a family. She never talked about them and there weren’t any photos.
But if I had a cousin, I don’t think I’d ever be able to forgive them for knocking the shit out of me the way I’ve seen Giovanni do to Lucia.
“Does she live here? In the city?” Amarie inquires.
I can’t determine where she’s going with this line of questioning, other than the fact that I’m pretty positive she’s attracted to Lucia. “I’m actually not sure.” I know that Lucia leaves for long periods of time while she’s out on work, which would mean having an apartment or house would be useless. Especially since she’s only ever back in town for a couple of weeks at most. But I don’t imagine her living in the compound the way everyone else does.
If she did, I’m sure Giovanni would already be dead.
So I’m not sure if she actually lives in the city in her downtime.
“She’s never really in town long.”
“And when she is, what does she do?”
It’s my turn to raise a brow at her. “She drives one cousin crazy and parties with the other.” I decide to stop beating around the bush as I notice a man at one of my tables looking around, likely for me. “She enjoys sleeping around.” I push off of the bar as my eye catches Amarie’s. “I hear she prefers women.”
Or at least, that’s what Maximo had once said.
A muscle twitches in Amarie’s jaw, subtle, but I don’t miss it.
I smile at her before making my way to my table.
Eventually, business picks up and it keeps me busy. I’m in the middle of heading to the stock room to grab more shot glasses when a hand wraps around my arm, jerking me into a dark corner.
I whirl around, heart racing in my chest. I pause as my eyes meet familiar brown ones.
“Miss me?” Diamond asks, a toothpick sitting between his teeth.
“No.” I turn my head to look around. We’re still in the inner portion of the club, right in the corner that sits next to the door that leads to the back. With the lights dimmed in this area, we’d be hard to see. Especially from the spot that Enzo has chosen to stand for the night.
Diamond grins. He’s wearing a dark tank top but also a jacket.
“It’s one hundred degrees outside,” I tell him, eyeing the thing.
“Figured it’d help with my sneaky spy shit,” he says with a shrug before sliding his hand inside of his jacket. As he pulls out two pieces of paper, I realize he’s right, it does help with his sneaky spy shit. He waves the two papers around before flopping them in my hand. It’s hard to see the first one in the dark, the black letters seeming to merge together.
“Coroner’s report,” Diamond says as he watches me squint at the paper. He clucks his tongue before tapping the paper. “You can read it later, but what this right here will tell you is that the wounds on your mother’s wrists weren’t self inflicted. They weren’t the right angle and with how deep they went into both wrists… your mother wouldn’t have been able to cut so deeply with both hands. One would have been more shallow, considering it would have not only been her least dominant hand, but she would have already been weak from bleeding out of the other wrist.”
My heart stops beating completely for a moment as I stare at the paper. I still can’t see the words, but knowing what I’m going to be reading later has my stomach feeling weak.
I raise my gaze to Diamond’s as he pulls out another piece of paper, this one much smaller and thicker. He turns it around and my head spins.
She’s younger, they both are, maybe teenagers in the picture. Her hair is pulled into a half up, half down doo, the curls much healthier than the last time I saw them. Her eyes are bright and her smile is wide.
This is the first picture I’ve ever seen of her at such a young age but I’d recognize her anywhere.
My mother.
And her arm is wrapped around Dox’s shoulder.