He has to know how to get in touch with Lucia and if I give him something he wants, then he’s less likely to deny me.

I stick my thumb in my mouth, biting down on the nail. It cracks.

It’s not like I haven’t fucked Maximo multiple times already for nothing so I shouldn’t hesitate to do it again for something. But I wouldn’t even know how to approach him and try to persuade him.

And he’s going to have questions, there’s no way he won’t.

How much does Maximo know?

It’s not something that I’ve considered. Diamond hadn’t brought Maximo up in any of this, which is another reason I should probably believe him. He hates Maximo the most out of the Costas, especially since Maximo blew out the brains of one of his friends right next to him. Maximo would be the one he’d pinned this all on if he was just framing him.

But his name has been left out of all conversations. I know he’s only a couple of years younger than his brother, so he would have been old enough to be around whatever the family was doing at the time my mother was ordered to be killed.

Yet, he’s seemed even more confused about what his brother wants with me at times.

He doesn’t know anything.

I’m not sure if that’s going to work in my favor or not.

***

I end up not having to find Lucia, she locates me first.

When she bursts into my room without knocking she looks… a mess, or at least as much as a mess as I’ve ever seen her.

Her dark hair is pulled into a messy bun of all things and somehow it makes her look younger, closer to my age than she usually looks. She’s wearing a black tank top that shows off her tattoos, her green eyes have bags under them and she looks exhausted.

I have to imagine that when people saw me the last few weeks I must have looked like this to them, or worse.

Lucia kicks the door closed behind her before moving into the room. Surprisingly, she doesn’t come over to me, instead moving over to my wall and inspecting it. Someone was supposed to have already come to fix it, but I’m guessing that it’s been forgotten because the bullet hole is still in the plaster, accompanied by bigger holes left by Maximo’s fist.

Lucia traces a finger along each hole before letting out a soft whistle. “If I was Enzo, I’d be pissed at Maximo right now too.” She shakes her head, tapping her finger against the bullet whole before turning to look at me.

There’s this wariness to her gaze that instantly has me on alert, the questions I had for her completely fading to the back of my mind.

“I consider us to be friends, Winter. I watched your back for a week or two, kept you alive, makes us friends, right?”

Wrong.

I do think of her as a friend now, but not because she guarded my life, but because of the fun little moments that came in-between.

“You were ordered to do that, you didn’t do that out of the kindness of your heart,” I remind her.

She waves a hand. “Semantics.”

My lips twitch and I relax slightly. Her eyes track the movement and she smiles, though it doesn’t take away from the exhaustion on her face.

“I have some questions for you,” she says after a moment.

Now’s the perfect time. “Good, because I have some questions for you too.”

I have to go into this with strength and that same sense of fire I had after Diamond first told me the Costas killed my mother. I can’t show any weakness, because friend or not, Lucia will pounce on it, and not regret it for a single moment.

She takes a step closer to me, slow and calculating, her eyes moving over my face as if it’ll let her in on the questions I have. “I see,” she draws the two words out and as her eyes move to the side, I know she’s considering it.

I’m not sure what kind of questions she can ask me that I’ll have answers to, but apparently it must be important if she’s being this calculated and methodical, if she’s entertaining the idea of answering my own questions without further information.

“Fine,” she finally says, giving her shoulders a shrug. She plops down next to me, the mattress dipping under her weight. She crosses her feet at the ankle, her boots clunking together. She reclines her arms back behind her, trying to give the appearance of casualness, but I can feel the tension in her body where it touches mine.

Tags: Quirah Casey Erotic
Source: readsnovelonline.net