Chapter 29
GAbrIEL
“UNTIE ME,” I SAY.
“No. We’re not done yet.” She crosses her arms.
“Scarlett—”
“Do they know who I really am?” she asks.
I blink at her. “What do you mean?”
“I’m Carla’s sister.”
My breath catches and my whole body goes rigid. “What?!”
“I came here to destroy you because I thought she killed herself because of you. I found your texts and thought you were in a relationship.”
Carla’s sister? Scarlett’s been here this whole time, thinking I drove her sister to suicide, and I never realized or put it together? Fuck.
“No,” I say. “We weren’t in a relationship. She was just a girl they picked for certain tasks, and we had to do some things together.”
“Like what?”
“She was studying journalism and writing for the college magazine and social media. She was writing about the hockey team and some reports about the games that would be sent out to all the other interested media outlets. She had to manipulate people’s opinions, like cover up anything suspicious or make people think some player is going to play or perform in a certain way.
So she had to meet with me so she’d know more about hockey and about my teammates and everything. ”
Scarlett stares at me. “Do they know I’m not a writer? What other task do they think I could do for them?”
“Well, as my girlfriend, you help keep my popularity. But they probably want control over what you photograph and post since you can basically change narratives too with a few carefully snapped photos or some mild retouching that no one will notice. Or maybe they want you to create some scandals out of nothing. They have a whole gambling network that they want to spread, and they have to keep things interesting for their big players because those people won’t care about college hockey just like that. ”
She’s quiet for a moment. “And you meet with the mafia boss?”
“No. He’s some underboss or something because it’s a powerful and big organization. He always wears a hat and sunglasses so I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know his name. I just know he has a fancy walking cane that hurts like hell when he hits me with it.”
She stares at me in shock, and I know it’s a lot to take in. But I have a question of my own.
“You said you came here to destroy me,” I say. “That audio that ended up online... Was that you?”
She nods. “I followed you around and tried to figure out how to make you pay for my sister’s death. But let’s focus on more important things now. How do we get out of this mess? I don’t want to work for the mafia.”
“I have no idea. I guess you could run and go back home since they don’t have anything on you that I know of.”
“But Carla agreed, so they had something on her.”
“They probably just threatened her whole family. Your family.”
“So they know who I really am?”
“I don’t know. But they can sometimes threaten families without a lot of info. Like, they can just read Mom and Dad’s names off college records and say we’ll kill them. So maybe they don’t.”
“What if my sister didn’t jump off a cliff? What if she refused to do something, or if she did something wrong and they killed her?”
“She was terrified when we last met, but I think she completed her task. I can’t know if she had any other since we weren’t exactly friends, but the mafia rarely leaves bodies around to find.”
“How many students and people they might be controlling?”
“No clue.”
She goes quiet and sits down on the bed.
Her face is pale, her hands clasped in her lap.
I can see the confusion and fear in her eyes.
The rope cuts into my wrists, but I barely feel it.
All I can think about is how she came here hating me, and how every smile, every touch, and every moment between us was part of her plan to destroy me.
And I fell for it.
I fell for her.
Now I feel like I’ve lost her, but I probably never even had her.
With her by my side, I didn’t feel totally alone. Telling her the truth helped me in a way, because I finally have someone who might understand. And even if she doesn’t, the truth is out there.
But I can’t stop thinking about how she was playing me. And I was playing her. Was anything between us real from her side? Because from mine, it is.
She actually destroyed me without even knowing it. For a second, I felt like I had someone in my life and thought that I might be happy, despite the circumstances.
And now that’s all gone.
My throat tightens. I want tell Scarlett that I didn’t hurt her sister, that I’m sorry, and that I never wanted any of this. But the words won’t come out. Because what’s the point? She’s not going to believe me or forgive me. And I don’t blame her.
I just wish things were different and that we could’ve met some other way. Maybe in some parallel universe, I’m not tied to the mafia and she’s not trying to hunting me down for something I didn’t do.
But that’s not the life I have, and it never will be.
Maybe I should tell Scarlett she won, because she’s managed to break my heart.