Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 75107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
“It’s dark.”
“We slept for twelve hours.”
“Huh,” she said, still a little foggy from sleep.
“I brought food and coffee.”
“Okay,” she said, sliding to the side of the bed and making her way into the bathroom.
“Bring some of the ibuprofen out with you,” I called when the door opened again.
“Great minds,” she said, shaking the bottle as she tiptoed toward the bed.
“How can you hurt everywhere all at once?”
I took the bottle from her hands, opened it, removed the seal, then shook two out into her palm before taking my own.
“Dunno. But this should help a little.”
“Is it infused with magic?” she asked, taking her coffee. “I can’t believe I slept twelve hours. I think the only time I slept twelve hours was when I had a really wicked flu one year. My mom said she was worried I was dying with how much I was sleeping.”
“Think last night was just as taxing on your body as the flu,” I said, passing a bowl toward her when she set her mug back down. “So you need to eat.”
“I need to call Andy and Sammy. They’re probably worried about me. And… God, what if they let themselves into my apartment and see the mess? I need to… wait. Where’s my phone?”
“I don’t know, babe. I don’t think you had it when you were on your knees in the snow. Maybe it fell from your hands when you were running. Your fingers were icy. You might not have even noticed.”
“I guess. But now we have no phone at all.”
“After we eat, I will go and grab a cord. Once I make my calls, if you want to call Andy from it, you can.”
That seemed to calm her down enough to focus on eating, drinking, and caffeinating.
I wasn’t sure if it was the pills, the fluids, or the food, but I was feeling a lot more alive about half an hour later.
“How you feeling?” I asked, taking the empty bowl from her.
“If you can believe this, a little tired,” she admitted with a confused head shake.
“I can believe it. Go back to sleep. Your body wants it, so you need it.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “What happens now? After you call your… coworkers?”
“Shit gets a fuckuva lot easier.”
Incredibly, though, I suddenly wanted to drag my feet in getting that charging cord.
We were safe.
We were recovering.
We were together.
Suddenly, that shit felt more important than talking to my family, resolving the issue, and getting back to our lives.
“Is your boss going to be mad at you?”
“Probably not. Lorenzo doesn’t get mad often. Been a boss for too long. Seen and done it all. He’s gonna have questions, but that’s about it.”
“Is he going to be… mad about me?”
“About you?”
“That I’m, you know, involved now?”
“Hate to break it to you, babe, but you’ve been involved from the jump. You just didn’t know it.”
“Yeah, but now I know who you are. And what you were doing…”
“So did the old director.”
“But he was… on the take. Is that the right wording?”
“Yeah, babe, that’s the right wording,” I said, smiling at her. “Look, if you’re worried something is gonna happen to you, the Costas don’t hurt women. Even if they did, I wouldn’t let them.”
“You can’t choose anyone else over Family,” she said.
“I can do whatever the fuck I want. I’m not a capo. I didn’t make the same vows Made men like that make.”
“Do you like being in this line of work?”
“I’m good at it. It gives me the kind of money I could only dream about as a kid. That shit is important to me.”
“I get that. Once you’ve gone without, you never want to again.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
We had different upbringings, different parents, but we both had similar trauma, similar scars.
“Does it bother you?” I asked, not sure why I was doing so.
“I mean, it bothers me that you lied to me. I don’t really know what I think about everything else.”
That was fair.
It was all new to her.
And since knowing, she’d been terrified, in pain, and recovering. It didn’t leave much time to think about shit.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever been to prison?”
“Prison? No. Jail… a few times when I was younger. Before I got smart. The Costa guys, they’re smart too. Multi-generational gangsters. There are layers upon layers of protection. No one goes to prison anymore.”
“I knew someone who said that the mob doesn’t really exist anymore. Since RICO.”
“Yeah, well, we’re okay with everyone thinking that. Keeps eyes off of us.”
“That makes sense.”
She leaned over, just shy of letting her head rest on my chest. I went ahead and made it easier for her, wrapping an arm around her, then curling her into me.
“Feeling any better?”
“The throbbing has become a dull ache. But I feel no motivation to get off of this bed.”
“Me either,” I agreed.
“Would you be in any more trouble by waiting a couple of hours before calling in?”