LUCA
"Ithink she's innocent." Tristan held the punching bag as I hit it. "Well, not completely innocent. But I've decided I believe what she told you, that she was only snooping around your office because she felt she had no other choice."
I couldn't even feel my hands anymore, my knuckles busted open and bloody even with the tape wrapped around them, but I wouldn't stop. Couldn't stop. Not yet. Because as soon as I did, my recent actions—and the repercussions of those actions—would come crashing down on me again. I'd chased Veda out of the safety of my home. And now I didn't know where she was, or if she was safe. Or if she was even alive. And it was driving me out of my fucking mind.
"I don't wanna fucking talk about it," I growled.
He was silent for a full minute this time before he started in again. "But I think we should. I think we need to.” He stared at me from behind the bag, brown eyes revealing nothing of what he was feeling. But Tristan felt plenty. I knew this, as did Enzo, being the only two people who had ever seen the man behind the mask, if only on seldom occasions.
However, right now, I was too overwhelmed with my own pain to worry about his. With a roar of rage that sounded more like something that would come from a cornered animal, I let everything inside of me explode, punching and kicking the bag so hard Tristan had to dig his feet into the floor to avoid being thrown into the wall behind him. And when I couldn't hit it anymore, I hugged the bag and drove my knee into it, imagining it was my brother's face. And at times, my father's. A few times, it was even Tristan's.
"Are you finished?" he asked me when I finally staggered back away from the bag, my chest heaving and my muscles trembling with fatigue. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and I swiped at them with the back of my forearms. How I wished my mind would become as blessedly numb as my knuckles. Not even the copious amounts of alcohol I was about to drink as soon as I got to my office helped with that. Not completely.
"Luca, we need to figure out where she is."
"No. We don't."
"We need to find her."
I spun around so fast I nearly fell over. "We need to find her?"
He released the bag. "Yes," he answered.
For a long moment, I stared at him like he was out of his fucking mind, then I limped over to the small fridge. Bracing one hand on the top so I wouldn't fall over, I bent down and swiped a water from the shelf inside the door, then slammed it closed and fell into the chair beside it. I studied my friend with eyes that burned from too many sleepless nights. "What the fuck are you trying to do to me, Tristan?" He knew as well as I did what would happen if I found Veda. What I would have to do. I'd have no choice. Not if I wanted to maintain any level of respect with the family.
As far as I knew, right now, the only ones who were aware Veda was no longer under my protection were me, Enzo, and Tristan. Hopefully, it would stay that way long enough for her to get somewhere far away. "And why the fuck do you suddenly care?" It was usually Enzo who rode my ass about stuff. Not this guy. Tristan never said shit about shit. Just followed my orders and was content to be around us.
He held both hands up, stopping my tirade before it started. "I know. I know. I'm the one who wouldn't give her a chance to explain herself before I called you. The only one who believed you did the right thing by sending her away. But I've had men watching your father's house, and Mario's place. She hasn't gone to either of them."
With the clues Veda had given us and a lucky break or two, Enzo had managed to figure out where my brother had held her, though he was no longer in residence. It was an apartment complex in a less populated area northeast of the city. He'd rented out every apartment on the top three floors, which was why no one had heard her scream, if her version of what happened was true. But I was still plagued with doubt. I couldn't get the thought out of my head that maybe she'd been in on it the entire time. That she was the bait my brother needed to fuck me so good he'd never have to worry about me again. Maybe I was meant to find her that day. Exactly where she was outside of her sister's apartment.
A wave of shame and disgust washed over me. Maybe she'd been with him from the start. "She wouldn't need to. There are phones. And from the look of things when I arrived, you got there before she was able to find anything to tell them. But that doesn't mean it was the first time she snooped around my office. It doesn't mean she isn't a rat for Mario."
He got down on the mat and placed the bottom of one foot against the inside of his opposite thigh. Then he reached over his straight leg to stretch his hamstring. "Or maybe she did it because she believed she was saving your life."
I chugged down some water, letting his words soak in. I wanted to believe that. He had no fucking idea how much I wanted to believe that. But goddamn it. This was my life on the line. The lives of my people. I scrubbed my face with my hand and shoved my wet hair back off my forehead, ignoring the pain in my knuckles. As much as it killed me to admit it, my fucking father was right. I couldn't trust my own instincts when it came to Veda. That woman fucked with my head just by smiling at me. And I would tear down this entire fucking house piece by piece with my bare hands just to hear her smart mouth and watch the storms gather in her gray eyes again.
To feel the way she touched me, part innocence, part fire.
"Luca, we don't even know where she is. Anything could’ve happened to her after she got on that bus. She had no time to plan, to get money.”
“Enzo gave her money.”
“And how long will that last her?”
Enough. I couldn't think like this. I had to be smart. "Jesus Christ, Tristan. Would you listen to yourself? I don't want to know where she is. I can't know where she is," I told him. "She fucking betrayed me." I slapped my palm against the center of my sweaty chest, the pain in my voice evident, even to my own ears. The pain I refused to acknowledge except when I was alone with a fifty-dollar bottle of crap whiskey because Lisa said she refused to waste money on anything better when I was just going to gulp it down like water and use it to self-medicate. "I can't bring her back here, Tristan. You know the rules. There's no mercy for a rat. And there are no exceptions. It's bad enough I let her leave this house walking on her own two feet." I paused, my upper lip lifting in a sneer. "Except the rules, apparently, don't exist for my fucking brother. At least, as far as my father is concerned. But you know as well as I do his body parts should be scattered across the desert for the vultures right now. My father is soft where Mario is concerned. And he's also a hypocrite. I can't show Veda the same mercy or he'll belittle me for the same exact fucking thing, and I'll never have a chance to fix everything he broke within this family or keep him from having my psychotic brother take over as boss."
Tristan swapped his position and started stretching out the other leg. He was silent again as he tried to think of a way to convince me. And I knew him well enough to know he wouldn't stop until he had.
I took a drink of my water as I waited, my eyes drawn to the scars on his arms that disappeared beneath the short sleeves of his white T-shirt. Scars he let no one see other than me or Enzo. He never talked about them, and after one attempt that had ended badly and almost cost us both our best friend, we stopped asking about them, figuring he would open up to us eventually.
And yet, I'd known him for most of our lives, and he never had. Not once.
Without taking his eyes from the floor, he said, "As soon as Luigi finds out she's not here, he'll go after her. And we both know that he'll also tell Mario. If your father and brother get to her before we do, she will be dead, Luca." He met my eyes.
"She's a rat," I repeated, though there was no heat behind my words this time. He was right. If my father found her, she was dead. Or worse. He would probably let his men do whatever the hell they wanted with her before they chopped her up into little pieces and sent me pictures. It would be his way of twisting the knife in my back.
My lungs clenched around the rock of ice sitting heavy in the center of my chest as the image of her face came to me, her skin ghostly white, her lips pale blue, the blank stare of death in her eyes.