Chapter One

WYATT

I’m flat on my back, and Mira’s riding me. Somehow, she got my jeans down and my dick out, and she’s riding me on the playground suspension bridge we used to play on when we were kids.

“Mira,”

I pant. “Baby, we have to stop.” We really do, and it’s going to kill me.

“No,”

she whines, grinding the seam of her sweatpants against my cock.

It chafes like hell, but I don’t care about that. “Someone will see.”

“It’s three o’clock in the morning.”

She braces her palms on my chest, closes her eyes, bites her lip, and tosses her long blonde hair. She looks like an angel. A slutty angel. “Move,” she orders, so bossy, so perfect.

I can’t. If I do, I’ll come. “I’m not giving Vinnie a show.”

She giggles and opens her big brown eyes. “His name is Tony. And he would never look.”

“Of course he would.”

Mira’s shirt is pushed up to her neck, and her front clasp bra is unhooked. Her glorious tits sway every time she rocks her hips and the bridge swings. If I hadn’t given Vinnie or Tony or whoever a fifty to give us some space and whistle if anyone comes by—and angled Mira away from where he’s leaning against an oak tree across the way—he’d totally be looking.

He can still hear us. Mira, at least. She has no concept of adjusting her volume for a given situation. The thought of being overheard doesn’t faze me—or my dick—in the slightest. Years ago, I got used to the fact that being with Mira means never being alone.

Her dad is a mafia boss. At least that’s the rumor around the neighborhood. My parents joke about it with their friends down at the country club. They don’t actually believe it. They think he’s some kind of eccentric financial genius, paranoid about personal protection, who just so happens to be Italian American.

I’m not so sure. Mira has never said, and I’ve never asked, ’cause what am I going to do if he’s some big-time mobster? It’s already hard enough that I’m going to Wharton in the fall, and she’s staying home. It’s only a three-hour drive, but even thinking about it makes my chest tight. She’s been down the street my whole life. We didn’t talk for most of that time—I don’t talk much at all—but she was there. I could see her.

Even when she thought I was a gross, annoying, stupid boy, she’d wait for me to pass with my mutt Sheldon and come running with her Frenchie named Eustace, and we’d walk them together, mostly in silence. I’d take care of Eustace’s business for her, and Mira would smile at me prettily, sashay ahead, and pretend not to notice me staring at her perfect, sweetheart ass.

Mira hasn’t scooped a single poop in her life. Is she gonna ask Tony and Vinnie to do it when I’m gone?

“Hey,”

she says softly, and I realize I’ve tensed, and she’s stopped rocking. The eyebrows that she spends so much time on pinch together. “Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere. I’m here.”

She fakes a frown and tickles my bare sides. She’s pushed my shirt up to my chin, too. I pretend to squirm. I’m not ticklish, but I’ll never discourage her from touching me any way she wants. Back when we were sophomores, and she was starting to see me the way I’ve always seen her, that’s how she showed me she wanted to be more than friends. Tickles and play punches and trying to give me flat tires, which usually ended with her failing and tripping herself instead.

“No, you’re not.”

She frowns for real. “You’re thinking about college.”

“Maybe.”

“It’s only three hours away.”

She’s reassuring herself. I hate that. It makes me think she’s worried, and that makes me worried.

I stroke her soft back. When she’s unhappy, my stomach hurts.

“You’ll be back for Thanksgiving, and then it’s less than a month until winter break,” she says.

“That’s right. And then we’ll have a whole six weeks together before second semester.”

I wrap my arms around her and draw her to my chest.

She rests her cheek on my pec. Her hair smells like lemon blossom and lychee. At least that’s what she said the smell was when I asked. I didn’t know lemons had blossoms, and I’ve never seen a lychee. I nuzzle my nose into her silky waves, and it’s the best smell in the world.

“Think about me,”

she says, snaking her arm between us so she can wrap her soft fingers around my dick. “Don’t think about college.”

“Baby,”

I groan, drawing her hand away and tucking it under my arm to pin it there. “Calm down.”

“I don’t wanna.”

She spreads her knees, pressing her inner thighs against my hips so she can grind her pussy on my boner. She’s soaking through her sweats.

“Please, baby,”

I beg as I buck my hips, my dick trying to punch a hole through the cotton of her pants. “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

she grumbles. “Everyone’s asleep.”

Not Tony. If I turn my head, I’ll be able to see his face clear as day, lit up by his phone as he scrolls. Huge turn-on. “Our first time isn’t going to be outside for anyone to see.”

“You did it with Layla in the back seat of her car.”

She says Layla’s name in a teasing way, but I hear the hurt in her voice.

Layla was before the tickles and teasing smacks and flat tires, when I thought Mira and I were never going to happen. I was a sophomore. Layla was a senior. She offered. I accepted. I’d regret it a hundred percent, except it was Layla dropping me off at home after school that made Mira finally look at me as more than a friend.

“Your daddy would never let me get you into the back seat of a car,” I say.

She peers up and scrunches her nose. “Who’s gonna ask him?”

I catch her lips with mine, and immediately, her saltiness disappears in a sigh. She widens her split so that my cock rests in the notch where her panties bunch between her pussy lips, and she pulses her hips faster, chasing that orgasm. I look over at the trees and focus on Tony’s ugly face, praying to God I don’t come before she does.

We finally figured out how to get her off a few months ago, and she’s been insatiable ever since. It’s killing me, but I’m not popping her cherry on a jungle gym or the ground behind a bush or in some shed. I’ve got a room booked at the Fairmont for after prom, and I’m going to lose Vinnie or Tony or whoever, and we’re going to do it right.

I’m marrying this woman one day. I’m not brushing her off after I fuck her and sending her home.

Prom is only three weeks away. I can wait. And based on how her breath is coming in short, sharp bursts, I’ve only got a minute or two before this torture ends, and I can go bang my head on the metal fireman’s pole or something to put myself out of my misery.

“It’s so close, but it won’t come,”

she whines.

“I got you,”

I say and slip a hand past the elastic waistband of her pants.

“Yes,”

she moans, lifting her hips to guide me where she wants me. I work my fingers under her wet panties and find her hard, swollen clit. It’s never been hard to find; it’s always hanging out of its little hood like the tip of a tongue even when she isn’t turned on. Now what to do with it? That’s the tricky part.

You can’t touch the bullseye, not until the very end. You’ve got to circle the nub, and then brush across it, and she’ll always try to rush things by humping into your hand, but she doesn’t know what she wants.

Touch it straight on too soon, and it scares her orgasm away. You have to listen for her tell. It’s an almost imperceptible hitch in her breath. When I hear that, it’s go time. I press my thumb on her like a button and rub, quickly chasing down her mouth to swallow her scream.

She seizes up, her back arching, her arms jerking and her legs quivering like she got electrocuted. After a few seconds, she turns into a noodle. Then she smiles dopily down at me, her brown eyes fuzzy and shining with love, and I soak it in like dead grass in a rainstorm.

She’s the only one who’s ever looked at me like this—like I’m not a fuck-up. Like I’m not the other Foster kid.

I was the kid my family could have done without. My oldest brother is the high achiever, valedictorian, pre-med at Cornell. Greg is the fencing phenom. Third ranked in the world. Training for his second Olympics and favored to medal. My younger sister is the one with personality. She dabbles in everything, has a hundred best friends, hundreds of thousands of followers on social media profiles that she deletes when she gets bored. She’s who my mom wishes she’d been.

I’ve always been mid in every way. Absolutely nothing special. My parents red-shirted me in kindergarten. That’s the only reason Mira and I are in the same grade. I’m a year older than her. I was junior varsity until senior year, and I fought for that C average. I only got into Wharton because I’m a legacy, and Dad’s on the board.

I’m an afterthought in my family, the surprise sour grape in the bunch to my parents, teachers, coaches, and the kids who try to make friends with me to get close to my sister. But to Mira—I have always hung the moon. I have no idea why or how I got so lucky, and there’s no way I’m asking her. I don’t want her to actually think it through and realize she’s been wrong. I just bask in that love and wish I didn’t have to go away to figure out life so I can take care of her.

“Who’s got you?”

I whisper as she collapses back onto my chest.

“Wyatt Foster.”

“That’s right. Who loves you?”

“Wyatt Foster.”

I can feel her smile against my bare chest. The gritty panels of the suspension bridge scrape my back, and my blue balls hurt like hell, but I never want to move from this spot.

“Who loves you back?”

she whispers in her sweet, husky post-orgasm voice.

“Mira Volpe.”

“Forever,” she says.

“F—”

A gunshot splits the night. Then another. More.

Rat-a-tat-a-tat-tat-tat.

“Down!”

Tony shouts from the trees.

I roll to cover Mira, but she’s already on her feet.

“Get down!”

I shout, swiping for her, but she’s already running back across the bridge, leaping down into the mulch.

“Mira, get back here!”

I stand, trip over my jeans, scramble to pull them over my ass. The gunfire just keeps going.

The shots are coming from her place, the first property as you enter our cul-de-sac. The iron gates are wide open, and two cars have their brights aimed at the door, lighting the front of the house like a stage. Rifle muzzles poke from windows, the glass busted out. Stucco explodes as bullets pockmark the wall.

“Mira, stop,”

I bellow, hopping over the bridge railing, knees slamming to the ground before I scramble up and after her.

We race down the middle of the street—Mira, Tony, and me—the houses to our left and right lighting as we go. Somehow, Mira’s in the lead. She’s running into a gunfight.

I pump my arms harder, forcing my stride to lengthen, running faster than I ever have before.

Tony has a pistol drawn, trying to brace his forearm and aim as he sprints. “Range is hot, Mira,”

he shouts. “Range is hot!”

She glances over her shoulder, slowing for a second. It’s all I need. I launch myself into the air and tackle her.

I try to twist her, protect her from the asphalt, but I have too much momentum and not enough skill. I slam her face down into the street. Her chin hits it with a crack. She screams in pain. The sound plunges into my heart, serrated, brutal.

“No, Mira, no. Stop. For fuck’s sake, stop!”

I gasp for air, hooking my elbow around her neck, pressing my whole weight into her back to keep her trapped while she scrabbles and flails, fighting with all she has to throw me off and crawl forward. Warm blood dribbles from her chin onto my forearm.

“Don’t let her go,”

Tony barks at me and stops in the middle of the street. He steadies his grip, inhales, aims, exhales, and shoots. Once, twice, three times. Yards away, men in black, crouched behind the open doors of their nondescript sedans, crumple and fall to the ground.

The silence is as sudden as a slap.

“Keep her there,”

Tony orders.

Men stream from Mira’s front door and around from the back of the house. I absorb her kicks and the impact of her butting head as I watch her father’s men do a set change in her circular drive. They hoist bodies and carry them off. One struggles, still alive. I watch Ray, the guard who’s like a grandfather to Mira, put the cars in neutral and steer as other guys silently push them into Mr. Volpe’s windowless, six car garage. Another man, Vinnie by his height, hoses down the asphalt.

It all happens before the first neighbor gets the balls to poke his nose out of his house. Unsurprisingly, it’s not my father. He’s an expert at not being interested in shit that’s not going to benefit him.

Tony walks over to us. There’s no sign of his weapon, but he smells like gunpowder. “Let her up,”

he says quietly, and I realize I’ve still got Mira pinned. She’s not fighting anymore. She’s crying.

My stomach clenches. I hurt her. I hop up, and she staggers to her feet.

“Fuck you, Wyatt,”

she says, slapping away the hand I’d offered to help her up. She stumbles and then jogs for her house, snotty tears running down her face.

I stand in the middle of Rocking Horse Circle, my ears ringing, completely lost.

“No worries,”

Tony calls out to old Mr. Benowitz, the only neighbor brave enough to come out to his porch. “Just kids setting off fireworks.”

Tony slings his arm around my shoulder and propels me toward Mira’s house. I numbly follow where he leads. Up ahead, Mrs. Volpe rushes outside, and Mira rushes into her arms. Mr. Volpe comes to stand beside them, and he glares at me with his cold fish eyes every step I take up his drive.

A fresh wave of adrenaline floods my system, screaming at me that I’m walking in the wrong direction, but Mira’s there, and that’s where I need to be.

As I come to the bottom of the stone steps leading up to the house, Mrs. Volpe peels Mira away and examines her face. “You’ve got a cut on your chin.”

“Wyatt tackled me,”

Mira says through her easing sobs. “He wouldn’t let me go.”

Mr. Volpe’s glare takes on a different quality, his eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. I get the sense he’s changed his mind about something.

“Posy, take her inside,”

he says to his wife. “Get her cleaned up while I have a word with Mr. Foster here.”

Mira glances over, finally seeming to notice me. She immediately tries to come for me, but her mother has her by the arm.

“Daddy, he didn’t mean to hurt me. He was trying to stop me from getting hurt. He didn’t see anything. It was dark.”

She’s pleading, her voice turning childlike as it rises with fear.

She’s begging for my life. My heart punches harder and harder in my chest. There is no way out. Tony’s arm is still slung around my shoulder. Mr. Volpe’s men surround me. I hear a creak as the iron gate behind me closes.

“Why don’t you come in, too, Mr. Foster?”

Mr. Volpe says.

“Dario…”

his wife warns.

“We’ll talk about your role in all of this later, wife. I see you and Mira have been playing your own games under my nose. Go clean up and then check on our boy. He’s probably tearing up the safe room.”

He gestures for his wife to go ahead, and she casts him, and then me, a worried look. My guts cramp.

She escorts Mira inside, hurrying her toward the kitchen. Tony urges me after them, Ray joining him at my back.

I’ve only been invited past the foyer once before when I was a little. Some kids had messed with Mira on the playground, and I’d beaten the shit out of them. Mira’s parents brought me home for ice cream, and then Mr. Volpe gave me a ride home in his Porsche 911 with the top down. That was a long time ago.

“This way, Mr. Foster,”

Mr. Volpe says, opening a door that looks to lead down to the basement.

I don’t want to go down there. Every instinct I have is screaming don’t go, but Mira’s upstairs and hurt and maybe still mad at me. I can’t leave her. I don’t think her parents would ever hurt her—honestly, she’s spoiled rotten—but I need to make sure she’s okay.

It’s not like I really have a choice with the way Ray and Tony crowd me down the stairs. At the bottom, the room opens to a huge gym. There’s a mat in the middle of the floor that looks to be regulation boxing ring size. Mira has mentioned that her dad boxes.

There’s all the other typical equipment, too—punching bags, free weights, machines, tractor tires and ropes for HIIT—everything you could want. The walls are mirrored. There are no windows and no obvious second exit—the perfect murder room.

My pulse races like crazy. It reeks like copper down here. Probably from the polished concrete.

God, let it be from the concrete.

Mr. Volpe nods to Ray, and he fetches two metal folding chairs from a stack, setting them up side by side, facing the mat.

Mr. Volpe sits, crosses his legs, and gestures for me to take a seat, too. When I do, I realize my jeans are zipped, but they’re not buttoned. My cheeks burn. Thankfully, Mr. Volpe isn’t looking at my face. He’s not big on eye contact, except for when he’s fucking with you.

“I see you were out with my daughter,”

he starts, smoothing his slacks. Somehow, they’re still immaculately pressed and creased.

I cough to clear my throat. “Yes, sir.”

I’m not going to apologize. Mira is eighteen, we’re together, and one day, she’s going to be my wife. I’m terrified of this man, but only in my body. Not in my head. Not in my heart.

“I assume this isn’t the first time,” he says.

I nod. I didn’t figure he knew, but she’s an adult, and she can make her own choices. At least that’s what she’s always telling me.

His jaw tightens, and he’s silent for a moment until he seems to come to a decision. “Do you know what I do for a living, young man?” he asks.

Well, shit. He’s pretty clearly some kind of mobster, but I’m not about to say that. “You’re, ah, in business?”

He chuckles. Once. “Yes. I’m a businessman.”

He glances over, his lips still curved in amusement. “And we hear you’re going to Wharton in the fall.”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose you plan to go into business, too, eh?”

I nod. I don’t know what he’s getting at or why we’re sitting side by side in an empty room in front of a wrestling mat, but I do know I’m in over my head. The gunshots and falling bodies echo in my head on repeat, and I’m sweating balls.

“Where’s Mira?” I ask.

Mr. Volpe leans back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. “Upstairs with her mother. Getting patched up.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her, sir,”

I rush to say. “She was running for the house.”

“I understand.”

He flashes me a quick, cold smile. “Mira is impulsive. Just like her mother. They both let their emotions make their decisions.”

It’s not a lie. Mira is this weird combination of ditzy girly-girl and pure analytical brilliance. You’d never guess unless you saw her in action, but I’ve been to every one of her Odyssey of the Mind and Math Olympiad practices, and I’ve seen the video of the competitions.

“I wanted to tell you,”

I say, just to be clear. “Mira wanted to keep it between us.” It’s basically the only thing we argue about.

“I don’t doubt that.”

Mr. Volpe sighs. “She knows I wouldn’t approve.”

I straighten my spine. “I haven’t disrespected her. I’m serious about her, sir. I’m going to marry her. After I finish school and get a job. We’ve got a plan.”

He nods again, very slowly. “A plan, eh?”

“Yes.”

My voice doesn’t shake, but my hands would be if I hadn’t shoved them under my thighs.

Mr. Volpe draws in a breath, takes his phone from his pocket, and makes a call. “Bring him into the gym.”

I hear Vinnie say, “Yes, boss.”

“I suppose Mira hasn’t told you much about my business?”

he turns and asks.

I shake my head.

“It’s what you’d call a family business. I was born into it. So was Mira’s mother. So was Mira.”

My guts slither into a knot. I’ve seen too many Scorsese movies to misunderstand him.

“Her mother and I will go to any length to make Mira happy, but there are certain choices she just doesn’t get to make. She didn’t get to choose her blood, and I think you’ve known her long enough to know that she’d never willingly turn her back on her family.”

I do know that. I can’t wait to leave my parents’ house, but Mira never even considered leaving town for school.

A scuffle sounds from behind a door I’d assumed led to the bathroom. It flies open, and Vinnie wrangles a struggling man with white-blond hair, wearing head-to-toe black, into the room. Tony helps force the man to his knees in the middle of the mat.

The man sees Mr. Volpe and spits, swearing a blue streak in a foreign language that sounds like Russian.

Mr. Volpe rises to his feet, smirking. He answers the man in his own language, and the man falls quiet, his already pale face blanching gray.

“Do you love my daughter?”

Mr. Volpe asks without turning his head to look at me.

“Yes, sir.”

“This man came to kill her. And her mother and me and everyone else she cares about. You saw that for yourself.”

My stomach twists tighter and tighter. “Yes, sir,”

I mutter when I can’t take the silence any longer.

“He’s not the first to come after us. And he won’t be the last.”

Mr. Volpe exhales. “I can’t say he didn’t have good cause. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, eh, Mr. Foster?”

I grunt. My dad says that when he steals a deal out from under one of the other VPs at work or cuts someone off in a zipper merge. I’ve never known what the fuck it’s supposed to mean. Dogs don’t eat each other.

“Eat or be eaten.”

He sighs again and reaches behind his back, slips his hand under his jacket, and pulls out a gun.

I don’t know guns. My dad’s a Republican, but he’s the golf kind, not the hunting kind.

The gun is matte black, but otherwise, it looks like a toy. I think I still have one just like it in the back of my closet, but it’s bright orange and shoots little blue foam bullets that get everywhere and drive my mom nuts.

It’s not a toy. Not with the way the man on the mat just got very, very still.

Mr. Volpe aims the gun at the man’s head. The man squeezes his eyes shut. My stomach lurches, acid burning my throat.

How do I stop this?

Instinct screams at my body to run, but at the same time, it paralyzes me.

“Sir,”

I say, and I don’t know if it’s a plea or a question or what.

Mr. Volpe sighs a final time and somehow flips the gun so he’s offering it to me. “You know what you have to do,”

he says to me, those cold fish eyes boring into me.

“Sir?”

“This man attacked us. If Mira had been home, and she got caught in the crossfire, she’d be dead right now. If they caught her, they’d make her wish she was before they put a bullet in her brain. Without hesitation. Do you understand that?”

I don’t know how I got here. Before Mira snuck out to meet me, I was hanging in my room, playing Madden online and shit-talking some kid who lives on the other side of the world while I ate Funyuns with my dog passed out and snoring on my feet.

“You’re going to marry my daughter, right?”

He offers me the gun again. “You love her. If this man lives, he would kill her the first chance he gets.”

Blood roars in my ears. Everyone is standing around like this is nothing new, staring at me. Everyone except the man kneeling on the floor has a gun like Mr. Volpe’s and knows how to use it. They watch expectantly, and I can read the secondhand embarrassment on each of their faces. They know I don’t know how to shoot. They know I don’t have the balls.

Shame and fear clutches at my throat, tightens my asshole, ripping who I thought I was to shreds.

“Mr. Foster?”

Mr. Volpe raises an eyebrow.

I don’t move.

He steps toward me, and I flinch. He grabs my hand and wraps my fingers around the metal. It’s warm from his hand.

He lifts my arm so I’m pointing the gun at the blond man. Like I’m a puppet.

The man breaks his silence in a sudden rush of Russian. He’s speaking to me. Begging. I don’t know a word of what he says, but the meaning in crystal clear. You don’t want to do this. You don’t have to. Please.

“Boy?”

Mr. Volpe prompts. “He would’ve killed the woman you love. You’re going to let him live?”

He knows I am. I can hear the pity in his voice. The utter lack of surprise.

“I c-can’t.”

My eyes burn.

The man begs louder. He’s not much older than me. He could be any kid from school. Any kid I play Madden with online.

“Sir,” I plead.

Mr. Volpe sighs one last time, and then so fast that I don’t even realize what he’s doing, he wraps his hand around mine and presses my finger to the trigger.

The blond man’s head explodes. Chunks splatter across the blue plastic mat. Someone screams.

It’s me.

The blond man slumps over like someone let the air out of him.

I guess they did.

I did.

I killed him.

No, it wasn’t me. It was Mr. Volpe, but it’s my finger on the trigger, even now, my shaking arm raised, aiming at the lifeless body crumpled on the basement floor.

Gently, Mr. Volpe presses my arm down and peels the gun from my weak grip. He clicks a button. The safety? And then he slides it into his back holster.

“Here’s what you’re gonna do, kid. You’re going to go home, take a shower, and get a good night’s sleep. And tomorrow, when my daughter texts you or calls or whatever, you’re gonna tell her that it’s over. It’s not her, it’s you. You’re going away to college, right? You need space to figure out who you are. Experience life. Whatever. Or ghost her. I don’t care. You disappear, and so does this body and gun with your prints all over it.”

He leans to speak directly into my ear, his breath hot on my neck. “I think we both know you’re not the man for her.”

He claps me on the back and guides me up the stairs and out the front doors.

The neighborhood is dark and quiet except for a single squad car pulled over down the street, its red and blue lights lighting up a scene. An officer has two young men in hoodies lined up against the hood of his patrol car while his partner rummages through a backpack on the ground.

“Kids and their fireworks.”

Mr. Volpe smirks and shakes his head. “Get home safe, now,” he says, urging me down the stairs with a hand to my back.

I take the first few steps like a zombie, and then I run like the devil is chasing after me.

He’s not.

He’s chuckling to himself as he goes back into his house and turns out the porchlight.

*

Wyatt

Pick up

Why won’t you pick up?

WYATT

Dad won’t let me leave the house

WYATT!!!

Hey

Where have you been?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Listen

…

…

…

I cant do this anymore

Wut?!?!?!?

Pick up the phone!!!

WYATT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its not your fault. Its me

no shit

I’m not fucking around wyatt. Pick up the phone now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t want to do long distance

This is just too much drama ok

WYATT

Just take care of yourself ok

WYATT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wyatt

You asshole

Ill never forgive you if you don’t PICK UP RIGHT NOW

Did you block me?

Unblock me motherfucker

Wyatt

Wyatt

Wyatt