Chapter 6
FELIX
“You sure this is the right place?” I ask, climbing the steps two at a time.
“According to the hospital report, yeah,” Reese replies from just behind me. “Alex James, fourteen years old. Lives with his mother. Sustained some bruises and lacerations from the crash as well as a broken arm.”
“Alright. This shouldn’t take long.” Caterina’s demand that I dig into the death of her lover, Tee Rossi, has been a wild goose chase from the start.
This low-level piece of trash barely had enough men under him to even be classed as a crime family, but something about him appealed enough to Caterina that she jumped right into bed with him.
So I’ve spent the past two days chasing down a stolen car that ended up halfway through a storefront window, with the suspected driver tortured and killed in the family-owned restaurant.
Seems to me like the kid they caught knew his time was up and did everything he could to take them with him, but knowing Caterina, she needs me to be thorough.
Double-checking that the other kid in the car had nothing to do with anything means I can give her a full report and be home by midnight.
Reese leans on the railing and gazes back at the car where Toph waits, his head bumping to whatever music he’s turned on to enjoy during his minutes of solitude. I approach the door, knock three times and wait.
Scuffling rises up from behind the door as well as a distant voice from deeper in the apartment, then the lock slides back and the door swings open with a clatter of a chain knocking against the wood.
A woman stands before me dressed in a simple pink t-shirt and light blue jeans.
Stripey sneakers cover her feet with the tongue forcing the hem of each jean leg to bunch up around her ankles.
I lift my gaze and flash her a smile.
The well-practised lie that I spin when facing civilians I need information on rests heavily on my tongue, but it doesn’t make it past my lips because the second I lock eyes with this mysterious woman, everything freezes.
I can’t breathe.
It’s like all of the air has suddenly been sucked out of the space between us and I’m left with nothing at all to breathe.
My heart lurches powerfully into my throat like I’ve been punched in the gut, and begins to beat wildly like I sprinted here all the way from my penthouse deep in the city.
I can’t breathe.
The woman before me freezes in the same half-second I do.
Her beautiful hazel eyes, warm like smoky quartz, glitter with the fire of the setting sun just behind me.
Set against fair, golden skin, they squint ever so slightly as she lifts a hand and tucks a blonde strand behind her perfectly-shaped ear.
Everything moves in slow motion; from her long blink and brush of her dark lashes against her cheek, to the shift of the strands of her warm blonde hair as they settle behind her ear, and the slow, careful shift of her plump, dark lips as they move to form words that don’t even reach me.
My heart is pounding far too loudly in my ears.
Dove.
It’s her.
How the fuck is it her?
A face I know better than my own. A smile I worshiped every day it was given to me.
She’s older now, with a few fine lines around her eyes and the cute curl between her brows that I used to tease her about has deepened.
There’s weight in her eyes now and slight creases around her lips but it’s her.
It’s fucking her.
Dove.
How is she here?
How is this fucking possible?
Pain blooms in my chest like every passing second is fracturing my ribs because my shock has nowhere else to go.
I’m staring at a ghost on the doorstep of an apartment I’ve never been to, in a part of the city that doesn’t belong to me.
But it’s her.
In the next half-second, a collision of emotions in my chest brings time back to life again. Hot anger fights for space with shock and unbelievable pain. The woman I mourned, the woman whose death fueled the last fifteen years of my life, is alive.
“Hi,” she says, and her voice stabs right through me like the slice of a blade. “Can I help you? You’re not the pizza guy, right?”
She’s looking right through me and if I didn’t know her so well, I’d almost think she doesn’t recognize me. That by some insane twist of fate, I’ve found a twin or a doppelganger.
I glance at her hand pressing against the door and fixate on her thumb.
Just above the knuckle lies a small scar, a scar gained from her trying to imitate my trick of opening one beer with the neck of another.
Back then, the bottle slipped, and the cap sliced deep into her thumb.
She panicked that there was some real damage while I held her close, placed her thumb in my mouth, and sucked on it until the bleeding stopped.
It scarred because it was deep enough and that same scar exists right there on this woman’s thumb.
The second she adjusts her thumb out of sight, I know I’m right.
“Give me a minute,” I snap back at Reese, then I shove my hand against Dove’s shoulder and force her back into the apartment with my bulk.
Her eyes widen in alarm as I kick the door closed behind me and something like true fear floods her eyes. “What the hell are you doing?!” she gasps, stumbling away from me as fast as she can. “Who the fuck are you to force your way in here? Get the fuck out!”
“Dove—.”
“Get out before I call the police!”
“Call them,” I snap as we stumble to a stop in the lounge. “Call them, Dove. Call them and I’ll happily tell them who you really are.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Her voice trembles with real fear, terror builds in her eyes as well as the sparkle of tears and a voice screams in my mind that I’ve got this wrong.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about!”
“No, I don’t!” she gasps. “If—If you want to rob us then go ahead, we d-don’t have much. I’ve got maybe fifty bucks in my purse if that’ll do!”
“Drop the act, Dove,” I snap. My words remain tight and clipped as each breath struggles to give me the air I need. The pain is taking up too much space in my chest and the pounding of my heart makes each of her scrambled words sound distant and weak.
“What act?” she gasps. “Who the hell even are you and what the—!”
“Mom!” Another voice calls from deeper in the apartment and Dove freezes.
“Mom?” I repeat the word like I’ve never heard it before in my life.
A second later, a swinging door creaks open and a teenager walks in, his right arm clad in a green cast and several bruises shadowing his young face. Behind him, I glimpse the kitchen and a counter set up with paper plates.
“Mom, is the pizza here or—oh.” The kid stops in the doorway, one hand on the door and one foot still in the kitchen. “Who are you?”
In an instant, Dove changes. The tears vanish from her eyes, the panic melts away from her face and she smiles brightly at the kid. “Alex, pizza’s not here yet. I just have to deal with this, honey, so could you grab some soda for me?”
“Sure,” Alex replies and suspicion warms his eyes as he glances back at me.
It’s a look I’m so familiar with and yet it’s surreal seeing it in the eyes of a teenage boy and not the woman I love.
Alex takes a breath and then vanishes back into the kitchen, leaving me alone with Dove.
She faces me and her arms cross over her chest; the faux-fear and panic on her replaced with a steely look of anger. “What the fuck do you want?”
My heart clenches so painfully I have to fight the gasp that worms up my throat. “It’s really you.”
Every part of me feels weak. Like I’ve wandered into a dream while knowing I’m supposed to be somewhere else in the real world.
“I said what the fuck do you want?”
“How— how the hell are you standing in front of me right now? How the fuck are you alive, Dove?!”
“Keep your voice down,” she hisses, taking a step forward. Her entire body is rigid like a snake poised to strike at the last second.
“Keep my voice down? Why, so your son— oh my fuck, you have a son, Dove?” The anger ignites again and a sharp prick of betrayal sweeps through my heart. “You ran away and had a fucking kid with some other guy? Are you fucking kidding me?!”
“I said keep your voice down!”
“Then tell me what the fuck is going on! You didn’t… you didn’t die that night?”
Her eyes narrow and despite the confusion fogging the anger in my chest, the familiarity of such a look blooms warmth beneath my ribs.
“Obviously I didn’t,” she snaps. “Didn’t you catch on when you didn’t find my body with the others?”
My mouth hangs open. “Dove… there was barely anything left when I— why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t you come and find me? You… what, you ran away with some guy and had a family? Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“Stop,” Dove scolds. “Just stop, okay Felix? Just stop.”
Felix.
After all these years, she says my name the exact same way and it pulls at all the aching strings in my heart.
Dove’s alive.
She’s really alive.
I nearly drunk myself to death mourning her and now, fifteen years later, she stands in front of me looking as glorious as the last day I saw her.
It’s not enough to quell my anger though and the warmth clashes with everything else.
“Don’t you dare tell me to stop,” I hiss, advancing forward.
“I fucking mourned you, okay? I mourned you and I built you a grave and I spent the past fifteen years tearing fire through this city because I was so angry that I lost you, and now you’re here? Like everything is normal?”
“Oh please,” Dove scoffs. “Don’t act like you ever did anything because of me. You’re talking about shit you don’t understand, alright?”
“And your kid… that’s Alex?”
Dove’s eyes narrow as thin as blades. “How do you know his name?”
“He was in the car crash, wasn’t he? Your son was…” There are puzzle pieces here and suddenly the death of Tee doesn’t seem as innocent as it first was. “Dove, what the hell did you do?”
Her weight shifts back and forth, and her cheek indents as if she’s chewing on it. “Not here.”
“I’m not fucking leaving.”
“You have to, Felix.”
“Fuck that. I want answers. I want the truth. You fucking left me, Dove. You left me in pieces because I thought you were dead so you better start talking right this second.”
“Fine!” She throws her hands up and glances over her shoulder at the kitchen door. “Fine, you want to talk then we’ll talk. Just not here.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“And I’m not talking to you here.” The sharpness in her voice cuts right through the anger in my chest and finally, my heart begins to slow.
“Fine. Come to dinner.”
“Where?”
“Our old place.”
“It’s still standing?”
“I bought it. Of course it is.”
She sighs deeply. “When?”
“Midnight.”
“No.” Her chin lifts. “Tomorrow night.”
“Fine.” I press my tongue hard against my teeth. “Tomorrow night. You’d be wise not to stand me up, Dove. I know where you live now.”