Chapter 3 #3
“She’s a fucking lie!” he spat, fighting against Moose.
Inari inched closer, pausing with about two feet of space between them before she swung.
Her fist connected to his jaw, rocking him into the wall.
Moose snickered, and Kong remained in the doorway, waiting for Danilo to try anything.
Dane’s breathing changed. It was faster, shallower as he jumped to his feet.
“You’re lying. You gotta be. This shit don’t make no sense!”
“It might not make sense to you because you don’t know everything.” Inari faced him, fist still throbbing a bit as she opened and closed it at her side. “I have proof, but I won’t show you. I won’t do that to you.” Her lip quivered. “You shouldn’t have to see what they did to her.”
Looking past her at Danilo’s tight grimace darkening his face, Dane took in a deep breath. His chest ached, like a part of his heart had been cut out. Ayla was dead. His auntie. His Lala. How? Why?
“Tell me she’s lying,” he addressed his father, desperate to make sense of some of this.
Danilo only gaped back at him. A flicker of malice lingered there, and he tried to replace it with a softened glint, but Dane had already caught it.
He didn’t want to believe that his father was the type to do something like this, but the truth was, he didn’t know him.
He didn’t remember him as a child, and their conversations while he was locked up were brief.
Danilo was practically a stranger to him aside from sharing the same DNA.
“I didn’t make that call,” he said.
Final words. It was clear he wasn’t going to take any type of accountability for himself. Bringing his hands to the top of his head in disbelief, Dane backed away from him.
“Ma, she’s really dead?” He spun to Inari, tears clouding his vision.
Briefly closing her eyes, Inari took a breath.
This was the moment. The same one she didn’t want to have with herself, but she had to.
When she opened them again, she wasn’t Dane’s mother.
Not right now. Turning away from her son, she looked at Danilo, lip busted, panting with a menacing scowl.
He’d never stop coming for her if he lived.
Dane would continue to be weaponized against her. Danilo was relentless.
“Kong,” she said.
No other words were spoken, and Danilo knew exactly what it meant. Stepping forward, Kong helped Moose because he knew he was going to put up a fight.
“Wait,” he begged. “Hold up!”
No one stopped what they were doing as they dragged him toward the doorway.
“I can give you something! You want Mira, right?”
Hearing that bitch’s name froze the room, and Inari turned back to him slowly.
“Talk.”
Breathing hard, he tried to keep up with his thoughts, eyes bouncing around his head. He knew this was his only play. As bad as he didn’t want to betray his auntie, he was looking for self-preservation this time around.
“She’s not in the city anymore. She moved her operation months ago in preparation,” Danilo reported.
Outside in the truck, Mozzi could hear everything. Cross referencing what Danilo revealed, he started his search on Mira to see if he could find out where she relocated. She hadn’t gotten as far as she did without knowing how to cover her tracks.
“Where?” Kong demanded.
“I can show you. She running that shit right off a shipping front, rotating locations every few days. I can get you access. She got that shit locked down like a fortress, with underground access and everything.”
“You think we fucking stupid?” Moose snapped, taking the butt of his gun and knocking Danilo upside the back of his head.
“What you mean? I’m giving you what you wanted.”
“No.” Inari shook her head. “You’re trying to stall.”
“You kill me, and you won’t ever get to the truth, Nari,” Danilo growled.
“The only truth I care about right now is making sure my son knows the type of bitch ass nigga his daddy is! You don’t love him.
You can’t. You aren’t capable of it because nobody ever loved you!
Not even Mira. The bitch used you, Danilo, and you played right into it like the wounded ass little boy you are. ”
“You didn’t give us that information for us,” Kong shook his head. “Even if you did know where she was, who’s to say that’s not exactly what she’s expecting? Don’t worry. We’ll find that bitch,” he assured him.
“Yeah.” Moose smirked and tilted his head, watching Danilo accept his fate.
Inari couldn’t watch what came next. She faced her son.
“Dane, grab your stuff.”
With one final glance at his father, Dane grabbed his cell phone off the table and the backpack on the floor beside it. His coat hung near the front door, so he walked with Inari in that direction.
“Dane, I don’t care what she says… I love you. You the only good thing I ever did in this world.” Danilo’s voice cracked, and his son was probably the only one with a drop of empathy for him.
He grabbed his Moncler coat off the hook and slid his beanie on his head. Inari held the door open.
“Goodbye, Danilo,” she said, not bothering to look at him while Kong screwed the silencer on his gun.
Moments later, Kong and Moose emerged. Neither of them said a word when they got inside.
Kong started the car, reached for his seatbelt, and locked it in place, while Moose did the same.
Dane sat on the opposite side of the car in the back section from his mother.
Inari stole peeks at him the entire drive back into the city.
Not even the radio played as they all sat with what had happened.
When Kong whipped his truck into the driveway of her home, he shifted into park and left it running.
“Thanks.” Inari unlatched her seatbelt, and Dane hopped out of the car without a word to anyone, immediately slamming his door shut.
She sighed and brushed her fingertips over her forehead. Dane still had his key, so he let himself into the house. Inari stared at the door, unsure of what to do. Moose half-turned in his seat, studying her, while Kong observed her from his rearview.
“I don’t know what to do now.”
“Plan your sister’s funeral. We’ll take care of it,” Kong insisted.
“I appreciate it.” She peeped his eyes on her in the mirror before hers shifted to Moose. “Both of you.”
“I’m leaving Irv on the house, just to be on the safe side,” Kong told her, noticing his guard’s SUV pull up and park on the curb in front of her house. “If you need anything, call me.”
Nodding, Inari pushed the door open and climbed out.
Her boots hit the fresh snow in her driveway, leaving footprints all the way to the front porch, where she let herself inside.
Shedding her coat and boots at the door, she ran her fingers through her hair, brushing it out of her face.
She paused in the arched entryway to her living room.
The house was still, and then she heard Dane moving around upstairs.
Stepping over to the bar set up in the corner, she grabbed a clean glass and a decanter filled with gin.
She took both over to the sofa and set them on the table before lowering herself into the soft cushions.
The day had damn sure caught up to her, and she knew this was going to be the only thing that helped her sleep tonight.
Slipping into the quiet of his home, Kong paused.
It was too still. No children running through the halls.
No television playing somewhere in the background.
No Kara crying for attention or Kyro ripping through the house like a storm with all his action figures and remote-controlled cars.
It was just an eerie silence. The kind that settled in your bones.
Dropping his keys onto the entry table, exhaustion plagued his face when he looked at himself in the mirror hanging above it.
Not physically; it was much worse. His shirt was wrinkled, his eyes were bloodshot, and his jawline was shadowed with two days of neglect.
He smelled faintly like smoke and rain, sprinkled with a layer of grief he couldn’t shake.
The lights in the sitting room flicked on. Nayelli sat curled on the sofa, wrapped in one of his blankets. It was obvious she’d been waiting for him because she was wide awake with her brows knitted together.
“I was wondering if you were ever going to make your way back here,” she said softly, her chestnut eyes raking over him.
Kong didn’t respond immediately. He loosened his watch on his wrist and tossed it on the table beside his keys before stepping into the sitting room to join her.
“Where are the kids?”
“Finally asleep.” She sighed.
Nayelli didn’t feel like she was doing the best job in the stepmother department.
Kyro and Kara were a handful and very vocal.
Nayelli understood that they were kids, but she couldn’t stand their little asses.
When they weren’t being terrors and running amuck through the house, they were always comparing what she did or how she did something to Ayla. She hated that shit more than anything.
Ever since the Christmas party, she’d been playing scenarios over in her head, finally realizing why Kong moved them out of Audiemar’s home and into their own when they married. It wasn’t for them to be a family in their own place; it was so he could get away from Ayla.
“You missed Kara’s recital,” Nay announced.
She wasn’t going to attend herself, but her mother told her if she didn’t, and Kong was already absent, it would look bad, so the two of them actually went together.
For her to be such a spoiled brat, Kara was talented.
At four years old, she had great composure and posture as a dancer, and Nay thought it wasn’t a bad hour and a half.
Kong didn’t react to the statement, and that irritated her.
Even when she was trying, he never put in any effort.
“You’ve been gone for almost two days, Kong.”
“I know.” His voice was flat.