Authors: Courtney Lane
Her tall frame came into focus, and she held her hands up. Her green eyes shot to mine and her full lips parted in amazement. “Little sis?” She shook her head, awakening out of her shock and glared at Catch. “The family reunion will have to wait. I need to tear into your fiancé.”
Fiancé?
Had they been in contact this whole time?
She squinted at Catch while she continued to move to the counter at a lazy rate. “We made a deal. You wouldn’t tell her what I did, or what I asked you to do for me, and I’d make the video. Not only do you somehow fucking find us after we had to move thanks to you, but you bring her? I told you, you can keep her. What the hell are you doing, Catch?”
She sounded like a pimp who provided her sister to another pimp. Confused, my jumbled thoughts wouldn’t spill from my mouth.
Catch glanced at the scared collection of little girls. “Get whatever belongs to you and leave.”
“You motherfucker!” Deana spat almost coming across the counter.
One of the older ones—maybe sixteen—picked up a pair of keys from the drawer underneath the counter. Casting a look of disgust at my sister, she shook her head. Shuffling the girls down the hall toward the exit, she did as Catch commanded.
Deana’s olive-toned skin reddened as she looked after the girls, and I could scarcely believe it. She was upset they were leaving a horrible place where she kept them against their will.
“Deana…” I stepped forward, my head moving from right to left in awe. “This is where you work?”
She kept her eyes on Catch. “Not fucking now, Simone.”
“Yes, now!” I shouted at her, calling her attention. “You told me it was a brothel, not a place where you kept children and allowed men to abuse them.” Fighting back a sob, my voice shook with each word. “Not you. Anyone but fucking you.”
What little was left of me had begun to break apart. I had one small glimpse of a dream, and before my very eyes, the curtain was pulled away, revealing a dirty, dark scene. My dream was a ruse.
It was as if someone took a wrecking ball to my insides. I could barely breathe. “Please, anyone but you.” The little girl who wanted and never stood a chance at a good life woke up and realized the extent of her naiveté. “Please tell me Michael made you do this.”
“Simone.” Her eyes jittered with tears as they struggled to remain on Catch. “Not now.”
The silence stagnated the air, making it barely breathable. I knew Michael trafficked in drugs and women. I knew he had brothels in places he shouldn’t have during the rare times I was able to hone in on the conversation from one of my bodyguards. The things Catch had said? The rumors I’d heard? It all blared one disgusting fact.
I wanted nothing to do with Michael and his world. I clamored to be a part of Deana’s because she was at the center of it. To know they were the same sides of the same world, my entire fucking world shattered. “Why?” I could barely speak through the thickness forming inside my throat.
She shoved away her tears with the back of one hand. “You wouldn’t have been born if it wasn’t for a place like this. Your mother was one of those girls. Where do you think you were born? He could’ve killed her. He could’ve made sure you never were born. Who the hell knows why he kept her around, but he did. And you can thank your life for it.”
My feet battled to hold up my weight as my sister suddenly added invisible pounds to my shoulders. I never knew how my mother met Michael. To know he abused her like he abused the girls, my detestation grew.
I sniffled, roughly rubbing the moisture from my eyes. “Don’t give me excuses. Tell me why you would do something like this.”
“I don’t have any excuses.” She fought between breaking down and remaining strong. “This was a family business. My way to the top. I never hurt the girls. I made sure they were safe.”
“Safe?” I shrilled, appalled she could state the word and mean it. “You call this safe? They’re just kids—kids you’re allowing to lay down with grown men.”
“We drug the girls to make it easier on them,” she said as though it made everything she did righteous. “I’m helping them.”
“And I thought you were different—” I fought to breathe through my wheezing. “I thought you weren’t like Michael and could be the family I needed.”
“You would’ve done the same if you were me,” she snapped, her shoulders suddenly seizing up. “It’s not like I had a choice to close this place. I took the job to keep them safe. What else do you want from me? You know how the family is? It’s a boy’s club, and they don’t allow women to do much of shit in their organization. Look at how they treated you. ‘Stay in a woman’s place,’ they’d say. If I couldn’t close this place, I had to help these girls. I had to—” Shuddering with tears, she shut her eyes and jammed a hand into her dark brown hair. “Fuck!”
My bottom lip detached from my top, shocked. My head swayed in wonder and disillusionment. I swallowed it back to ask her one last question. “Did you call Michael and tell him what happened at the party? Are you the reason he broke us up? Did you
want
him to do that to us?”
“I thought you fucked Kyle that night,” she replied with a dramatic shake of her head. “I believed that crazy bitch who was in love with me, Jory. I was so…angry at you. I didn’t know the truth until Catch and I had a conversation.”
Her hand fell down to the counter and her posture stiffened. “He promised me he would take care of you. He promised he would keep you away and do what had to be done to get rid of Michael so we could just be. We can still do that. We can be sisters like we were. Michael is dead. The syndicate is broken, and it’ll need me to put it back together again.”
“Was it always about fucking power with you?” Anger found its way back into my mind and pushed out the sadness.
“I wanted to head the Di Stefano family,” she explained, “but fucking Marcin got impatient and ruined it. He…was my boyfriend.” She rolled her eyes and swept her hands roughly across the moisture on her cheeks. “I needed a Trojan horse after Marcin did himself in, and Catch was the perfect man to become one. We had a deal. He’d give me the keys to what he started with the Di Stefano family after everyone who could oppose me in the Leone family was gone, and I’d take over both families.”
“And why would he do that?” I glanced briefly at Catch.
“For you,” she said, partially stupefied by my question as though I should’ve known. “You were my ace in the hole. The thing he wanted a year before he even met you.”
Blinking between Catch and my sister, my words were lost to me.
“None of it matters. We can be together, and you can work for me now. You only have to do one thing.” She slanted her eyes at Catch and I immediately knew her meaning.
Her ruthlessness was revealed to me, and I wondered if despite her words, she planned this the whole time; she wanted me to kill Catch.
“In case you were lost on the matter, your sister would spill blood before anyone ever attempted to kill me.” Catch raised his gun, pointing it at my sister. “You and I had a very bad habit of lying to each other.”
“Jory,” my sister muttered, somehow understanding Catch’s hidden meaning. “So you know the truth about your daughter? So be it. Michael didn’t want the Di Stefanos gone. I lied to you. You wouldn’t work for Michael…whatever. I took your daughter to motivate you to work with me and Jory because you acted like you were too good for the money I offered you. Jory spilled her guts, and I guess you killed her, huh? I’m the last one on your list to kill and finish the job for whoever you really work for, right? ‘Cause I know you aren’t doing this on your own. Someone else wants to wipe the syndicate completely out. They’re idiots, because you can’t make us go away. Someone hungrier will rebuild it."
"You severely underestimate my employer," Catch snarled. “I had an agenda before you schemed your way into my life. You may have skewed it, but you never changed it.”
"You should’ve just worked with me," Deana countered. "Fuck it. Do your worst.”
“No!” I screamed, trying to stand in front of Catch. “You promised me. You said you wouldn’t do this. I hate what she’s done, but she’s still family. My only family. Please, Catch. Let her rot in prison…don’t kill her.” I stepped forward, my hands in prayer position as I supplicated to him.
He faltered, and I wasn’t sure if it was because my words meant something to him. Violet-blue eyes settled on me for only a second.
“I’m your family.” Stretching his arm out in the midst of my sister raising her arm, he moved me away from him.
They said that a bullet traveled faster than a sound. That you could hear the shot after the burn hit your chest. That for a second, even if it was a kill shot, you would’ve thought your life wasn’t in the balance. For my sister, it wasn’t true.
Red quickly spread across her chest, staining her white button-up shirt. Her reaction was saturated in what she knew; she was going to die. The hand she kept busy was revealed; she had a gun and her fingers were laced around the trigger. She dropped it and fell to the ground.
I ran to her, holding her to me, hoping it wasn’t too late.
Deana wasn’t breathing. The life in her eyes was gone, her pupils turned into large beads.
The moment barely resonated as though it was all a dream: She hadn’t tapped into her Leone blood and became an equally monstrous version of Michael. She was never killed by Catch’s dead-on aim at her heart, and I’d wake up to her smiling at me. We’d be the family I always wanted and dreamt about, and all the bad never existed in our world.
When I opened my eyes, the scene hadn’t changed. My worst fears had come to fruition and I had lost the small glimmer of light, leading me toward the future of my daydreams.
My chest caved. I couldn’t find enough air to breathe.
*
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“You fucking promised me!” I woke out of my nightmare, hardly taking in my surroundings. Catch was driving steadily in traffic, away from the scene we encountered. “You promised you wouldn’t kill her.” My shouts flooded the car and sent painful vibrations to my ears. My hand flew out to punch and scratch any piece of flesh I could get my hands on. “You promised!”
He pulled off to the side of the road in a squeal of tires, wrangling my arms, restraining me in my seat.
Touching his neck, he drew back blood from the place where I scratched him. “The cops are on their way. Do you want to get arrested?” His question was snarled.
I calmed, closing my eyes. “I don’t know if you’re my heaven or hell, Catch. Maybe you’re both.” I bit my trembling lip. Tears expelled, expressing anguish over the gutting pain quickly spreading inside of me. “When will you stop breaking my fucking heart?” An innocent whisper immediately captured his attention.
He took off his seatbelt and turned to me, holding my head. His gesture was full of a sweetness I couldn’t comprehend, and his eyes were the most perplexing features. He didn’t care, and I wished he’d stop looking at me and behaving as though he did.
“You’re no longer denying yourself the privilege of feeling the emotions as they come to you.” Taking a deep breath, he spoke soft words in a tone he used to seduce me. “I know you feel like you’ll never overcome any of what you went through.” He slid his hands down and fit his fingers under my chin, angling my head up toward him. “I didn’t break your heart, Simone. I cracked it open and left a scar resembling my name.”
“All I ever hear you talk about is what you think you do to me.” I slid my hands over his wrists as he held me. “What about you, Catch? Do you care even when the things you do make me think you don’t?”
His dense eyelashes fluttered over his eyes for a moment. A small amount of rigidness was removed from his posture. “Words are meaningless when it comes to you. I can only show you what you mean to me.” His admission was so shocking, my jaw unhinged.
Sirens resounded, speeding past us in the opposite direction, rocking the car with the speed at which they passed us.
I blinked up at Catch, puzzled as to how they came so quickly when I never saw him call them. “W-when?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Releasing me, he placed his seatbelt over his body and turned back to the dash. Shifting the car out of park, he pulled back into traffic. “I burned the prior business down and phoned the cops to rescue the girls after I found Brenley. Does it look like it mattered?”
I inhaled my pain and exhaled my sadness.
It mattered when someone was able to hold their little girl again. It mattered that a dozen or so little girls would no longer have to wake up in a hell made by the woman I once called my everything.
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Catch stopped off to allow me to change out of my blood-stained clothes and freshen up in a truck stop bathroom.
When I began to see civilization and an airport, I finally spoke. “Where are you taking me now?” It wasn’t that I had a choice in the matter. Catch was home—a filthy home located on an active fault line with furniture that sometimes disappeared and often had visitors who gave the devil a run for his money. He was the imperfect residence
for my fractured and abused soul.