“What news do you have, girl?”
Angelo was actually letting her take the lead, which was as much as shock to her as it was to Bobby.
“I’ve sent Willow a signal only known to the two of us. I think we can safely assume that she will not come alone. And it’s also possible that sending this signal will have alerted the Organization. Basically, I just showed up on the radar again, a big fucking blip, so you better make the best of it.”
“Telling me what to do, girl?” Angelo’s tone was dangerous.
“I’m just saying. This is a one-shot sort of deal. This is the only time you will have any kind of chance to get ahead. Also, I might get shot. Again. And I don’t know how many more times I can be shot before being dead becomes a permanent thing for me.”
“We are not going to let you get hurt again,” he assured her. “The location has been carefully surveilled and counter-surveilled. If Willow comes, she will be doing so alone, as per the terms of your contact.”
“Yes, because if there’s one thing we know about Willow, it’s that she plays fair and always does as expected.”
Her sarcasm went unremarked upon.
“We have to try,” Angelo said.
“Yes,” Gemma agreed. “We do.”
“Fuck this,” Bobby added, very unhappy.
In the middle of the woods and in the dead of night, the trap was set. The die was cast. Alea Jacta Est, and all that. Gemma paced nervously back and forth, back and forth. Had this been a good idea? She hoped that with Willow back in the House of Vitali, she would not be so alone. They could all have adventures together. She, and Willow, and Bobby and Angelo. Two boys. Two girls. As nature intended, right?
The meeting time came and then passed. Gemma felt cruel disappointment through her belly. If Willow didn’t come to the signal, that meant their alliance and friendship no longer existed. She knew the message had been received. But if Willow did not come…
“Gem!” Someone hissed her name. Gemma swung around one way, and then the other until she saw a tall, noble figure making her way through the trees.
“Willow!” Gemma ran to her friend and was wrapped in her arms. God, she had missed Willow. The smell of her. The feel of her. The way Willow made her feel fucking bulletproof and above everything.
“Gem… I can’t believe you survived.”
“Me neither,” Gemma said ruefully.
“All the intel suggested you were dead. I saw you die….”
There had been a lot of fakery in the past, but the embrace they were in was real. Gemma didn’t realize how much she’d thoroughly and deeply missed Willow until this very moment.
“I am so sorry Digby hurt you,” she said. “That was never part of my plan.”
Gemma flashed back to that day, to the conversation she’d overheard before she was shot. Willow had told her brother that her friends were disposable. Her friend, in that conversation, being Gemma.
Willow had always said what she needed to say in order to get what she wanted. Maybe that was partially where Gemma had gotten her own dishonest streak from. Being raised in a boarding school meant being separated from any real parenting. They’d raised each other, in some sense. Maybe neither of them knew how to be honest.
“I missed you.”
That, at least, was not a lie.
At that moment, they were just two friends. The friends they’d been in the beginning. The schoolgirls who had gotten into trouble together, and grown-up together, and tried to make their way in the world only to find that the world had made its way into them the whole time and they’d never had a chance. They’d never been themselves. They hadn’t had selves to be. They were like fancy apples, grown inside square jars so they could be stacked later on…
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t let this just happen.
“You have to go,” Gemma hissed urgently under her breath. “It’s a trap.”
“I know,” Willow said. She did not seem sad or upset. She seemed resigned and maybe even a little bit relieved.
“Run, Willow!”
But it was too late for Willow to run. She was surrounded and captured and trapped and completely overrun, and there was nothing she could do about it. No amount of excellent breeding could stop the reality of the male strength of the Vitali men brought to bear as they appeared out of the woods, Angelo and Bobby flanked by others. Faceless and masked, unknown allies who made her a captive.
“You betrayed me.” Willow made the statement without emotion.
“I’m sorry, Willow, I really am.” Gemma’s tears made her vision misty. “I didn’t want this for either of us.”
“Some things are inevitable, my dear.”
“On your knees, woman,” Angelo ordered.
Willow did as she was told, kneeling on the forest floor. Even in this most desperate of situations she was composed, still clutching her umbrella in both hands. Gemma was jealous with admiration. She would have lost her shit if she was Willow.