Chapter 24

GIOVANNI

T wice in my life I wanted to rip someone’s heart out with my bare hands. When I found out Atlas was murdered and right now. Ironically both of those involved a Ford. The difference was that this time I didn’t want to kill, said Ford, I wanted to kill for her.

I swallowed back the last mouthful of Gin and tonic in my glass and looked down at the photo displayed on Nova’s phone.

Someone was outside her trailer that day. And they took a picture.

My jaw clenched as I stared down at the graphic photo.

The picture itself didn’t bother me. Hell, I could even let go of the fact that someone was spying on us. What pissed me off was the text that came with it.

The Cheating Whore: Meet me behind the diner at 4 pm tomorrow, or this goes viral.

Motherfucking Simon. I was gonna kill that slimy weasel.

When I cloned Nova’s sim card, this was not what I was expecting. The contact name threw me off for a second, but a quick scroll through the conversation history confirmed my suspicions that The Cheating Whore was in fact Simon.

Why the fuck Nova didn’t have his number blocked was beyond me. She didn’t need to be talking to any other guys. That was a conversation we were definitely going to have in the morning. I’d also like to know why she had so many dick pics on her phone. They weren’t ones she had taken or that were sent to her. Nova downloaded them, which was a good thing for her. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.

Foregoing the tonic this time, I grabbed the bottle of Gin and poured myself three fingers. Maybe something stiffer would burn away enough of my rage so I could pass out.

Simon fucking Fisher had some balls on him. I knew exactly what he was thinking. She would take his threat seriously, I would fucking kill him. That’s why he sent it to her and not me. Unfortunately for him his plan backfired.

Nova was currently upstairs asleep. She would never know about this. I already erased the text from the cheap ass flip phone she was using. If Simon wanted to pass around a picture of me railing some bitch, go ahead. But not her. Nova’s dignity I would protect. And what was more, I wanted to protect it.

“Motherfucker,” I grumbled while lifting my glass.

“Hey.”

I paused with the glass against my lips and turned my head to see Darry walking in the room. What was he doing here? “I thought you left?”

“I did.” He walked over and nodded at the bottle on the table next to me. “You broke out the gin. Must be something bad?”

I drank back the contents of my glass and grumbled, “just a slimy weasel looking for a beat down.”

“Simon?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d he do this time?” Darry asked while plopping down in the armchair across from me.

I tossed him the phone and poured myself another drink.

“Shit.” Darry shook his head. “What are you gonna do?”

“What do you think I’m gonna do?” I was going to kill the fucker.

“You seem to be forgetting something.”

“What?”

“Our omtreá is tomorrow afternoon.”

Fuck. The oath was exactly something I could reschedule.

Darry placed the phone on the table and sat back. “Convenient timing if you ask me.”

I stopped and cocked a brow his way. “You think he knew?”

“It’s worth looking into.” Darry shrugged.

He had a point. I didn’t believe in coincidences and if Simon knew about the oath, then someone told him. Someone within the family.

“You could send Romeo to find out.”

Ugh, I didn’t like the idea of handing shit over to my brother, but if we did have a rat, he would find out. My brother was an asshole, but he got shit done. Besides, I didn’t really have a choice. I couldn’t miss the omtreá and I sure as hell wasn’t letting Nova deal with this.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’ll talk to him in the morning. What are you doing here so late anyway?”

It was past midnight. Unless it was a party or some girl he decided to fuck with, Darry was usually in bed by now.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

The time wasn’t what I found strange. Darry knew that nightmares kept me up most nights. It was the I want to talk part. Darry wasn’t a conversation starter. He preferred to not have a conversation at all. Whatever he came for must be important.

“Is everything okay?”

“Gio,” he sighed. “I know.”

“You know what?”

“I know about you and my mom.”

It felt like I just got slapped in the face. I couldn’t breathe, I just sat there staring at him while a ball of guilt welled up in my gut. He knew. And I wasn’t the one who told him. All the shit we’d been through, the times he had my back and pulled me out of the hole Atlas’s death sucked me in, and how did I repay him? I fucked his mom.

“Who told you?” Was it Atlee?

“I figured it out about a year ago.”

A year? And he didn’t say anything? I didn’t know how to respond to that.

After a few seconds of silence Darry shifted his eyes over to the gin. “Can I have some of that?”

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat and poured him a glass.

The clock ticked on the wall as I watched Darry sit back and sip his drink. I kept waiting for him to yell, or hit me, or shoot me. He didn’t do any of that. He didn’t even look mad. Darry just sat there looking normal. My guilt ate away at me with each tick ringing through the room. Until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Darry, I should’ve told you…”

He held up his hand, cutting me off. “I’m not mad at you Gio.”

That somehow made it worse.

“I’m mad at her.” His fingers tightened around the glass in his hand. “I fucking hate her. Tell Nova good job on kicking her ass. She really fucked her up.”

Well, at least he wasn’t mad about that.

“You’re not the first person she’s done this to.”

Was he talking about Romeo? Did he know about that too?

“There was a time when I thought Ezra was mine…”

I stopped cold. “What?”

If he thought his brother was his then… “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait a minute… Ezra is eight.” Darry’s birthday was in two months. He was only seventeen. “You were nine?”

“The first time,” his eyes locked on mine. “I was the same age as Ezra.”

I suddenly understood why Darry was always with his brother. He was protecting him from their mother. Nova was right. Carissa was a sick bitch. I wanted to throw up knowing that I touched her.

“Does anyone else know?” His father would’ve killed her.

Darry shook his head, “no.”

I could understand that. It wasn’t exactly something anyone would want people to know. The fact that Darry had to go through this all alone… I knew what that was like.

“Why did you tell me?”

“Because you’re like my brother. And if anyone could understand, it’s you.”

“I don’t know. My situation is a lot different than yours.” I was a willing participant. He was not. That much I was positive about.

“How old were you when it started?” Darry asked.

“Fourteen, but it wasn’t like that.”

“Yes it was.” He said. “She just made you think it wasn’t.”

Could he be right? Did Carissa manipulate me? She didn’t lure me into the park, or corner me in the hall. Hell, she didn’t try to entice me at all. I was over at Darry’s and accidentally walked in on her in the shower. Things went from there.

“Don’t underestimate my mother, Gio. She’s more conniving than you think.”

“If you told your dad, she wouldn’t be a problem anymore.” Dom would slit her throat and drag her body through the streets.

“Death is too easy.” A dark look washed over Darry’s face. “I’m going to destroy everything she cares about, and when she thinks she doesn’t have anything left to lose, I’ll put her out of her misery. You want in?”

Fuck yeah I did. “Where do we start?”

“With Atlee.”

“You want to bring Atlee in on this?”

He nodded. “Yup.”

If this was because Carissa had been fucking Atlee for years, I could understand. But she hadn’t. The first time Atlee had anything to do with her, was at the basketball game. Darry had something specific in mind.

“Why Atlee?”

“Because, no one else hates Sutton Barlow as much as him.”

What the fuck did Sutton have to do with this?