CHAPTER ELEVEN: WINTER
AMonthEarlier…
“What do you mean my mother’s death wasn’t a suicide?” My heart beats fast in my chest as I stare at Diamond.
“She was murdered,” he says so casually and detached that it stings. I have to remind myself that she was my mother, not his, so obviously he isn’t going to feel the same emotional attachment. Nor is he going to walk on eggshells when talking about her.
“How do you even know my mother?” I ask him. Because that’s the biggest question I have.
My mother was unimportant.
Just a simple woman who loved an abusive man that drove her to take her own life.
I’m not so dumb to think that she was innocent. She was an addict and an alcoholic, but she loved her children and the man who did everything in his power to tear her apart.
“Did she…” I swallow. “Did she buy drugs from Seven Quad?” That has to be the only logical explanation. Though I’m still not sure what would make my mother stick out to the gang if she was just a regular buyer.
I’m sure people who buy from them drop dead all the time, whether from their drugs or other causes.
Diamond plucks the toothpick from his mouth, his gaze lazy as he watches me. “Like I said, it’s best we sit down and talk about this.”
Again, he pats the table before pointing at the seat across from him. The way he pops the toothpick back into his mouth, leaning back in his seat, lets me know that he won’t be saying another word until I sit down.
I don’t think about it any longer, plopping down in the seat across from him.
I made my peace with my mother’s death around the same time that I started trying to take myself out in similar ways. The cuts, the pills, they’d made me feel closer to her someway. Because I’d finally understood why she did it, understood why even her kids weren’t enough to keep her on this plane.
But now… knowing that she may not have actually died by suicide, it makes my stomach turn. Nausea moves through me and I press a hand to my mouth as I will myself not to throw up. I can’t wait a second longer to find out what happened, hell I may die from anticipation if I don’t find out soon.
“Did she buy drugs from Seven Quad?” I ask once again, going with the most logical thing.
“Nah,” he shakes his head. His lips twist to the side. “She was an old friend of my father’s, they grew up together. They grew apart, but eventually they found their way back to each other.”
“They were…” The words won’t even come out as I think of my mother with the mysterious man I met. Dox, Diamond’s father, always gives me creepy, sneaky vibes every time I’m around him and I can’t imagine my mother with him.
“No,” Diamond shakes his head. “They weren’t like that.” His nose wrinkles slightly before he taps a finger on the table in a sharp, even rhythm.
“What does any of this have to do with her death?” I ask him, trying to push down the annoyance rising in me.
For someone who was so keen to get me to sit down so he could tell me what happened, he doesn’t seem to be in a rush to get to the truth. And I have to wonder what his endgame is with all of this in the first place. What does he think is going to happen when he tells me the truth?
I rub my thigh, watching him suspiciously as regret starts to move through me.
Why did I sit down for this?
I’ve never been able to decide quite how I feel about Diamond. The first time I met him, I thought he was going to try to kill me. But every time after that… he hasn’t been so bad. If anything, he’s seemed to be on my side, whatever that entails. He even has told me so many times. And when he saved me just some odd days back, he proved he hadn't been lying.
But there has to be some sort of angle for him to be speaking to me about my mother.
“Are you listening to me?” he asks and I realize somehow I’ve allowed myself to be caught up in my thoughts.
I shake my head, pinching my thumb and pointer finger together. “I’m sorry,” I apologize. “What were you saying?”
“I was asking if you knew anything about the war that went down between Seven Quad and the Costas?”
I’d heard the Costas speaking about it before but they’d never gone into great detail and I’ve never really been able to follow along with most of their conversations anyway. It always feels like they’re speaking in code and any time I feel like I’m catching on to something, they send me out of the room or quit speaking completely.
One time, I’d heard Vito and Giovanni speaking about Seven Quad and when it became clear I was listening, they’d thrown me right out of the room.