I slip into the back room intent on grabbing my mirror and my makeup bag, but I stop short when I spot Juniper sitting in front of my locker on the bench hunched over something in her lap.
My mouth drops open when I recognize my phone.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She practically jumps ten feet in the air as she leaps to her feet and whirls on me. She’s clutching my phone in her hand and staring at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
“Nothing,” she says, putting my phone behind her back like a toddler.
“You stole my phone.” I march toward her, rage flowing in my veins. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Juniper? Why would you do that?”
She backs off and slowly her surprise turns to a sneer. She holds my phone out, pinching it between two fingers like it’s filthy.
“You want this back?” she asks mockingly, holding it up as high as she can—which isn’t very high, she’s pretty small. “Poor little Gracie. You want your phone?”
“How did you unlock it? Oh my god, you’ve been spying on me.”
“You don’t try to hide it when you put in the passcode.”
I lunge at the phone and Juniper yanks it from my reach. But instead of stopping, I barrel forward and slam my shoulder into her chest as hard as I can, bowling her over. We both slam to the floor, me on top of her, and she starts to flail and shout, but I’m not taking this bullshit from her any more.
I slam my fist into her face once, twice, three times, just the way Riley showed me, and I can practically see my cousin grinning in my head, good job, girlie, real proud of you, burst those fake lips of hers and smash out that filler, girl, so I hit Juniper again, and again, until I rip my phone from her grasp and climb up off her.
She’s bleeding. Her lip’s cracked and her nose is gushing down her face. She looks shocked as she slowly climbs to her feet, using a bench to support some of her weight.
“Vince is going to kill you, you little bitch, I can’t believe you’d hit me like that.” She’s shaking with anger—
And as I stand back, staring at her with an open mouth, she realizes her mistake.
I watch several emotions flit across her face in the span of a second or two, and she finally decides to push herself up and face me with her hands balled into fists.
“That’s right, Vince,” she says, sneering at me as blood drips down her face. “He told me to take your phone. He told me to watch you. And now he’s gonna kill you for hitting me. You went for the wrong brother, Grace, you stupid little bitch.”
She storms out of the room.
I’m left standing there in shock. Juniper is spying for Vince? I knew he was suspicious of me but I had no clue he’d stoop so low. It’s not surprising that Juniper agreed to work with him—she’s been angling for Calvino this whole time, but why not go for the big boss if she can? I doubt the fact that Vince is married would bother her very much.
Which makes me wonder who else is on his payroll?
Juniper isn’t subtle. But what about the others?
I sink down onto the bench slowly and look at my hands. I feel like my world’s shaking and I live on a strip of earth suspended by nothing but a few twigs and some spider silk. At any moment, I might topple down and disappear.
Is this what it’s like to live in a mafia family? Paranoia, danger, violence. There’s nothing solid here, nothing I can depend on beyond my own strength and my own convictions—which explains so much about Calvino.
The fact that there’s anything good left in him at all is a minor miracle.
I fix my face, wipe my knuckles off, adjust my clothes, and straighten up the room. When I’m done, it’s like the fight never happened, though I’m sure I’ll get lots of questions about why Juniper’s looking like someone smashed her with a brick (in retrospect, I wish I had a brick). I head out to the floor and find Diego frowning at the door in confusion.
“Juniper just ran out of here with one hell of a puffy lip,” he says, glancing down at me. “Do you know anything about it?”
“I caught her going through my phone so I punched her in the face a few times.”
His eyebrows slowly raise. “No shit?”
“No shit.” I show him the red marks on my knuckles from where her teeth bit into my skin. “It hurt.”
He nods slowly and looks at me with an appreciative smile. “Hurts like hell, punching someone in the face. You got to pay a price with your own pain if you want someone else to hurt. Just how it goes.” He tilts his head and nods toward a table of customers. “Get back to work. I’ll let Calvino know what happened.”