Chapter 31
31
CELIA
L uca was in and out of consciousness for the next few hours. But when I needed him to move, I was able to rouse him into motion. He did what I asked to the best of his stumbling ability.
I worried about him, but at the same time, obedient-Luca-who-did-his-best-to-complete-whatever-request-and-then-fell-back-into-innocent-sleep was probably my favorite version of Luca.
Now, he was in the back seat of the car I’d gotten my hands on, drowsing half sitting up against the door.
When his phone started to ring, I jumped like it had personally attacked me, then let out a curse. What if there was some way they could find him by his phone? It hadn’t occurred to me to search his clothes for anything but the gun, which I had tucked into the console by my elbow.
He woke up slowly with a groan. He reached sleepily for his phone before I snapped, “Don’t answer that.”
He paused, his hand flattening out on his still damp shirt. When he shifted, the emergency blanket I’d found in the trunk slid down his lap. “Why? And where are we?”
“We’re in a car, driving.” I drummed my fingernails on the steering wheel and hoped he wouldn’t ask me where.
We were headed toward the safe house. But I didn’t trust Moriah’s safe house not to be compromised, given she seemed to be having quite the rough week herself. I wondered how Kara and Natalie were doing. Hopefully they weren’t in trouble just because Moriah and I were.
“How did we end up in a car?”
“I stole it.”
“Did you hijack it?” His voice was slightly slurred with sleep, but his undisguised interest was charming.
“No, of course not.” I said it as if I were offended. “That would be reported to the police too soon. I hotwired this car in a commuter lot and switched the plates. We should have until rush hour tonight before the owner thinks about calling the police and longer than that before there’s a good APB out for the car with the stolen plates.”
“I knew I liked you,” he said, still sounding hazy with sleep and far more likable than usual. “How did you learn to hotwire a car?”
“A friend taught me.” It had been one of the things that Moriah wanted to learn. It was Kara who had convinced her parents to indulge her interest in working on cars. She taught us all the skill.
“You girls are dangerous,” he said approvingly. “I am intrigued.”
Anxiety squeezed my chest. “How did you know it was a girl?”
“Your dad wouldn’t let you have any male friends. He couldn’t handle the one you had before, so he killed him.”
My heart sank. “You’ve heard that story.”
“Everyone’s heard that story. People think that’s why your dad treats you like shit.”
A rush of intermingled humiliation and gratification rushed through me. I wanted people to know the way my father treated me wasn’t my fault, that it wasn’t caused by some inherent defect in my personality that made me so unlovable.
But I also knew that newcomers to our lives see the way we’ve already been treated and use it as a judgment of our worth. It’s just a dark part of human nature. We see someone that other people don’t value, and we see them the same way.
My life was easier to bear once I understood that terrible fact. I was nothing to the people who were supposed to love me, and so I became nothing to the world.
But that didn’t mean I’d always be nothing.
His phone started to ring again.
He reached into his pocket and pulled it out.
“Don’t answer it. You don’t know who it is, and you’re not in any shape to talk to?—”
“Dante?”
“Is it Dante?” I dared take my eyes off the road to look at him in the rearview mirror. I was so desperate to talk to Dante and know that he was okay.
He was listening intently to someone.
Well, I was certainly learning a lot about how to take care of the next mafia man with a serious head injury. Always confiscate their phones.
“Is it Dante?” I whispered again, even though I knew better. How could it be Dante?
In response, he held up the phone and put it on speakerphone. I held my breath. I already knew it wouldn’t be Dante’s voice that I heard from the other end of the line. It wasn’t as if he could talk to me.
“Do you want to see Dante again?”
Gabriel’s deep voice sent a rush through me.
“Yes,” Luca said, his voice still slightly slurred.
“Are you drunk?” Gabriel demanded.
I wasn’t sure that Luca was up to talking to Gabriel right now. I reached back and mouthed, “Give me the phone.”
“I’m not drunk,” Luca said with a careful dignity that usually belongs only to the drunk. But apparently, victims of serious head injury could be the same.
“Let me talk to that motherfucker.” The voice was distant, but it still froze my stomach in a chill.
Royal .
“If you insist.” Gabriel’s voice was cold.
He must have handed the phone over, because Royal’s voice came on, louder than before. “I’ll let Dante live if you bring us back the girl.”
I’d always been annoyed to be defined as nothing but my father’s daughter, Royal’s sister, and someday, someone’s wife. But I still felt like it was a downgrade to just be “the girl.”
“There is absolutely no reason for him to believe you,” Gabriel said in the distance. “But he’ll know that he can trust my word.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’ve always valued being a man of my word. I usually promise people that they will regret having crossed me, but in this case, I’m willing to guarantee the safety of all three of them. Luca, Dante, and Celia.”
“You’ve got Dante?” Luca asked suddenly, as if he were just catching up with the conversation.
“Obviously.” Gabriel sounded exasperated in the distance. He’d always given off a vibe he found everyone else around him to be an idiot.
Luca leaned toward me, resting one arm lightly on the back of the driver’s seat. Carefully, he attempted to mouth, “Slow down.”
But it came out really loudly.
“Where are you?” Royal asked.
“Where is Dante?” Luca countered.
I really wished I had the phone.
“You can have Dante back when I have my sister back,” Royal snapped.
“And what are you going to do to her?” Luca asked at last.
“Nothing,” Royal said impatiently. “But if you don’t meet us outside the Obsidian Club at sundown, Dante is a dead man.”
Luca frowned. It was the intense expression of focus that always made it seem as if he had a plan, and I almost relaxed before he said, “At sundown? What are we now, cowboys?”
“Fuck off,” Royal said.
“At sundown. I’ll have to open my weather app. Do you even know when that is? Come on, we’ll just say a time. What if our apps don’t say the same thing—if they have different predictions on when sundown is.”
“Please give me the phone,” I whispered.
“I hung up,” Luca announced. “Or maybe Royal hung up? Either way. Dante wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself for him. And you can’t trust Gabriel.”
“I can’t trust Royal, either.”
“Obviously. Royal is your brother, but he’s scum.”
I wasn’t going to argue. “Are you implying that Gabriel is not? How did Gabriel even get mixed up in this, anyway?”
“Your father’s been trying to make him into an ally.”
“But why would he be trying to find me? Do you think he’s still trying to marry me off to Gabriel?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he’d hurt me?”
“I think if you marry him, Gabriel won’t be able to help but hurt you.”
With that terrifying thought delivered, Luca leaned back against the door, falling back into the unconscious state through which he had spent so much time.
Apparently, I was on my own to come up with a plan to save Dante…and ourselves.