Chapter 19 Zarina
ZARINA
My feet carry me to my room to change, to pick up the three things I’ll need.
They slip into shoes and rush down the stairs.
They step into the garage then into the car Pat’s standing beside.
I don’t feel it, the shudder of each footfall or the slip of fabric over my skin or the hum of the engine as Pat drives us through town. I feel none of it.
Andrea Maria Tamayo is a fucking crow.
She’s circled for a decade or more, picking off the pieces, feasting on the death caused by my family’s mistakes.
Each property my parents sold to cover our debts, she snatched up.
Each shell company she created to cover her tracks, to keep my parents from realizing who they were selling to, what it meant for them.
For her. Slowly but surely, she devoured us from our toes to our navels to our still-beating hearts.
My still-beating heart.
“She didn’t even deny it,” I mutter. Pat and I sit in a too-large corner booth at a wine bar in her territory.
The stem of my glass is smooth between my fingers, the deep red merlot as full as it was when the server delivered it.
I have no idea what clothes I’m wearing, where I am on a map, what the people who work here look like. All I know is I’m not in her house.
And may never go back.
“Didn’t deny what?” Pat’s feet are up on the booth’s seat, their ankles crossed as they munch on a plate of cheese and crackers. They scan the bar like someone might jump out from under a table and attack us.
I twirl my glass and watch the wine slide back down. “She was using me. To hurt the family.”
Pat nudges the plate of cheese toward me without saying a word. I ignore it. They brush off their palms, crumbs littering the tabletop, and lower their feet to the floor to turn and level an unamused look, their blue eyes as unyielding as arctic ice. “Enough wallowing. Tell me.”
The wine is so red it’s almost purple. I wonder if my blood would match; if it was poured into a glass like this, would someone mistake it for a full-bodied merlot.
I’m already bleeding, heart sliced so many times it’s flowing internally, bloating my body.
All it would take is a spigot slammed into my chest to tap the crimson flood.
“Zarina,” Pat prompts.
I raise the rim to my lips, breathe in the scent through my nose. And then set it back down. “I traded three secrets,” I begin.
Pat listens as I tell them the story in starts and stops, between shuddering breaths, through a thick throat.
I lay out everything I know. The bad investments, the selling of property to cover them, the map with the swarm of grayish-black—crows in my mind, now—devouring the red, and the thread of revenge woven through all of it.
Crows keep grudges, I remember. They recall human faces of those who wronged them. They attack them, play tricks on them. Too proud of their intelligence to have a fear of man, a fear of god. Just like her.
“Fuck.” Pat frowns at the table as they digest the information that already threatens to bury me under its weight.
“Yeah.” I finally lift my glass and take my first sip of wine. It’s dry on my tongue. And while I’m sure there are hints of blackberry and chocolate, all I register is that it’s warm. Down my throat, in my belly.
“What does this mean?” they ask.
I watch the legs run down the glass. “I don’t know.”
“You have until we leave this bar to figure it out, Z.”
“I don’t fucking know, Pat,” I snap.
They rub their top lip, considering the bartender as they unload a rack of newly washed dishes. “Well, let’s start with where we’re staying tonight.”
“Not there.”
“Then where?” Their frustration frays their voice at its edges. “We can’t go home. We’re not protected outside her territory. And we’re far less protected outside her house.”
“I can’t go back there.” The thought of seeing her now drains the blood already heavy in my rib cage down to my feet, anchors me to the spot.
If I see her tonight, tomorrow, I might slam a knife into her chest, carve it wide open in search of her heart.
Or I might collapse into tears and scream myself hoarse. I refuse to do either. “I can’t.”
“Okay. A hotel?” Pat suggests.
“Fine.”
“I’ll ask Darius—”
“No.” I ball my fist around the stem of my glass.
Pat releases a sigh that seems to originate from the depths of the Earth, full of impatient patience. “Zarina.”
“No.” I shoot them a stern look. “I don’t want any of them to know where we are.”
They lean back against the booth, swirling the wine in their glass and staring at the newcomers seated at a table across the dining room. They narrow their eyes, like the pair are more than colleagues grabbing a drink after work. Maybe they are. I don’t know. I don’t care.
Pat disregards them, so they must not be a threat. “We have our phones on us. We’re driving their car. They’ll know anyway.”
I wrinkle my nose. If they want to be logical about it, fine. “Then we leave them here and call a cab using the bar’s phone.”
“It doesn’t matter, Z. We’re in her territory. Wherever we go, she’ll know.” Pat nods toward the pair across the room, and the implication is clear: Those are Tamayo’s people. And if she doesn’t know where I am yet, she will soon enough. Goddamnit.
Pat settles back into the booth, too at ease while I’m experiencing internal bleeding and extensive organ failure. They clock the server greeting the new table. “No use in throwing out perfectly good tech.”
I press a hand against my chest, maybe adding pressure will slow the bleeding. My eyes travel without my permission, narrowing into a scowl when I find one of her people staring directly back at me.
“I should have run that night,” I mutter. “Actually run. Out of Louredo, out of the country. Changed my name and got lost in Nice or Monaco then over to Hong Kong. Get out and never come back.”
“You know why you didn’t.” Pat stares at me until I meet their gaze. It’s so full of understanding, like they see to the bottom of the deep, dark abyss inside me. A place even I don’t allow myself to comprehend. But they do.
“You care,” they say. “Even when they fucked up so bad, you care.”
They’re right. That little girl hidden in the black inside me does care. She cares so much, she wishes someone returned the favor, someone considered her before cutting life-altering deals. But here I am, abandoned and left to pick up the pieces everyone else broke.
“Why?” I frown, blinking at my fingers as they unclench, one by one, from the stem of my glass. “Why do I care when they don’t?”
Pat cocks their head, watching my hand tremble before I pull it off the table. “Because they’re your parents. And there’s more to the family than them.”
“And I wanted to prove I could be a don, too.” I shove my hands between my thighs and shake my head.
I thought I could fix it, save myself and my family and fix it.
What a fucking idiot. I don’t have the power to keep the Gallos afloat or stop the merger without sentencing us all to hang. And I thought I could.
What hubris. My ego is at least as big as Father’s, Mother’s, even hers. I’m not a don. I’m barely a mafia princess. I have no solutions to offer and still refuse to marry Marcus Accardi. That’s one compromise I won’t make. I can’t.
All for petty fucking revenge.
“Goddamnit, I hate this.” I drain the rest of my wine and slam the glass on the table. “I hate her.”
Pat glances to the others and then back to me, lowering their voice. “Did you love her?”
An unamused, ironic laugh jumps out of my mouth and grows until I can feel a scratch at the back of my throat. I have no idea. Did I? Could I? I don’t think I can ever know, ever allow myself to admit anything other than attraction. Not anymore.
“There’s no love without trust.” I twist my wine glass and wish I had more.
“You did trust her,” Pat says.
I purse my lips and glare at the real ruby set into my fake engagement ring.
Pat’s probably right, but I don’t want to examine it.
Not when the idea of actually thinking about it threatens to unleash enough pain to fell a two-ton whale.
Not when I knew it was fake with an end date.
Not when yes is already on the tip of my tongue, threatening to gag me when I swallow it down.
“I was stupid,” I mutter. “A stupid, foolish girl.”
Pat studies me again, and something like pity crosses their face. I choose to ignore it. They’re seeing too much, too deep, and if I acknowledge that look on their face, it will make all of it too real.
They turn and signal for another round. “I’m getting you drunk.”
“Finally”—I heave a sigh—“a plan I’m on board with.”
Pat slides their glass over to me, and I down half of it before the server arrives. Pat orders a bottle this time, and I slump into the booth, wine in one hand and a furrow between my brows.
I can’t look away from the ruby on my finger. I should take it off. The Gallo ruby around my neck, too. Both sit heavy on my bones, each carrying the metaphorical weight of betrayal. But removing them means admitting something worse—that I’m alone.
No one is coming to save me, to help me. The trust I placed in my parents, in her, was misplaced. And here I am, pouring glass after glass of wine like it wasn’t my own ego that created this opportunity to hurt me so effectively, I don’t know if I’ll be able to rise up again.
Stupid, foolish girl, indeed.
The server delivers a second bottle, rounding me up to a buzz nearing on drunk, when my phone finally rings.
I don’t look at it, unwilling to see the one name that has the power to make this night worse.
I don’t understand why she’d call. She must know where we are with her lackeys sitting in the fucking corner.
So I let it ring until it stops, not bothering to take it out of my bag.
And then it rings again.