“Just think, if that girl is in good shape when she gets free of that fuck, she’s gonna want to be waiting on you hand and foot for trying to save her,” I said, giving him a nod as hope rose in his eyes for the first time.
“The fuck is with you and wanting to be waited on?” Emilio asked.
“You’re just jealous that you haven’t been sick or hurt in a decade, so no one is waiting on your ass,” I said.
“Yeah, that must be it. So you said you were hit-and-run on?” he asked, since there was nothing else we could do but just talk and wait to hear some news.
“Yeah. I don’t really remember. It’s all fuzzy. I mostly remember coming to and some chick was calling the ambulance for me and she said there was paint on my hood. And the cops said something about glass on the road. But there was no car. What? You think it wasn’t random?”
“You never fucking know with our Family,” he said, reaching for his phone and dialing, I imagined, Lorenzo. “Enz. Ant was hit-and-run on tonight. Yeah. Looks like a broken foot. I know, right?” he asked, and I could just imagine there was some joke at my expense. “Yeah. No. I’ll tell my mom so she doesn’t have an aneurism. Okay. Keep us posted.”
“Everything alright?” I asked.
“Yeah. Are you?” he asked, losing some of the bravado, becoming just my brother. My worried big brother.
“Still running on adrenaline. Bet I’m gonna feel like shit when that wears off. And my car…”
“Fuck your car. I’ll find you a new one. Sit your ass down for a minute,” he demanded, grabbing a chair and moving it toward me.
“Salvatore is gonna fucking kill me,” I said, sighing.
“If you were out back getting your dick sucked, maybe. But you were in a fucking accident, kid. You couldn’t help that shit.”
Maybe that was true.
But if something had happened to Whit on my watch, even if Salvatore forgave me, I wasn’t ever going to forgive myself…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Whitney
Panic, fresh and electric, sparked through my system.
Because something within me told me that this wasn’t like every other time Josh had possession of my sister.
First, because she’d run away from him, had stayed away from him. That distance had clearly been eating away at him for a long time. Enough so that he’s been willing to put his hands on me after breaking into my apartment.
Second, though, he’d seen Wren with another man.
I mean, objectively, the two of them were probably just walking side-by-side, not doing anything romantic. But to a possessive, abusive, narcissist like Josh, that was unacceptable. That was “his” woman trying to step out on him. That was some other man trying to take her from him.
I knew as I threw myself into a cab that this was it. This was going to be the “big one.”
There were so many times in the past where I thought that things had gotten as bad as they could get with Josh. Times when my sister was more seriously injured than before, more emotionally beaten down, and even sickeningly thinner than ever.
And while he wouldn’t have the time to emotionally manipulate her, to make her starve herself until she lost most of her weight, he could have the time to absolutely batter her, maybe even permanently, fatally.
“Please, please go faster,” I begged the cabbie. His gaze looked up at me from the rearview, taking in the desperation in my gaze, then gently tapping the gas with a little more force.
He didn’t have a huge head start.
I was going to get to her in time, damnit.
And Josh was going to want to rant and rave for a while. Scream. Strike.
As much as my heart crushed in my chest at the idea of Wren being at his utter lack of mercy for even five minutes, at least if he was raging and hitting, he wasn’t strangling her or something like that.
Even at just the thought, it felt like a hand was closing around my throat, squeezing, cutting off my air, making me gasp, causing my head to go fuzzy.