Prologue I Constantine #2
A couple minutes later, his eyes latched on to something in the distance and didn’t pull away.
I glanced over my shoulder and spotted Isabella, out with some of her friends for a drink. Naturally, my eyes lit up at the sight of her in that little dress with her sexy thighs, and I swooned as always.
But her eyes were on my brother instead of me—and she was white as a ghost.
Her eyes finally made contact with mine and she smiled, but it was strained.
She and her two friends headed over. “Hey, what are you doing here?”
My hand went to her hip, and I pulled her onto my lap. “Get that fine ass over here. Ladies, take a seat.”
The girls occupied the two open chairs. Her friends were cute, so I assumed Edric would be excited by this easy proposition, but he was standoffish to both of them.
“What are you guys up to?” I asked, inching my hand up Isabella’s dress to the point where she had to shove it away before she flashed everyone.
“Just getting drinks and dinner,” she said. “What are you guys doing?”
“Just talking about work.”
She nodded but didn’t say much else.
The three of us used to hang out all the time, have dinner together, and we’d felt like a threesome, but now everything had changed. The air was constantly sucked out of the room. The energy was . . . tense. “Did something happen between you guys?”
Edric’s eyes shifted to my face with lightning speed.
And bumps immediately formed on Isabella’s arms.
“Did you have a fight?” I asked. “Did Edric say some shit to you? Because I’ll throw him down the stairs over there if he did.”
“No,” she blurted. “No . . . everything is fine.”
Edric shifted his eyes elsewhere. “Yeah, we’re good.”
The awkwardness continued, and there was no explanation in sight.
“You think she’s hooking up with Edric?” Antonio asked as we walked to the back of the truck, grabbed the boxes of supplies for the restaurant, and then carried them down the alleyway, into the store, and all the way into the storage room in the back.
Our town was quaint and cozy, a perfect spot for travelers because everything was walkable with no cars, but when it came to deliveries, it was always a bitch. “No.”
He walked back with me to the truck, slightly winded. “Then what else could have happened?”
“I don’t know, but she wouldn’t do that.”
“If he was an ass to her, wouldn’t she have told you?”
“I don’t know,” I said as we passed underneath the Rosticceria Da Cristina sign and headed up the alleyway toward the truck. “Maybe he said something really stupid and she’s afraid I’ll never speak to him again.”
“But why would he do that?”
“I don’t know. Why does Edric do anything?”
“But what if—”
I stopped before we got to the truck. “She would never do that to me. And as much of an asshole as Edric is, he wouldn’t do that either. All right?”
Antonio raised both of his hands and backed off. “All right.”
I let myself inside my mother’s front door and entered the house.
I’d gotten caught up with work, and then I had to help a friend with a shipment for his family’s business, so I’d lost track of time.
I was almost an hour late to dinner, but even if the food was cold, my mom’s cooking was still better than anyone else’s piping-hot food.
Before I entered the kitchen, I turned to the patio. It’d been raining all day, so the party would be held inside, probably in the living room with all the furniture pushed up against the walls. But under the awning, I saw them together.
Isabella and Edric.
They were a solid three feet apart, and her arms were crossed over her chest, but the looks on both of their faces made it clear their conversation was serious. Whatever they spoke about was as grave as death, judging from the paleness of their faces, the hardness in their gazes.
I shouldn’t spy on their conversation, but I couldn’t pull my gaze away.
My heart was beating hard in a way it never had before.
It pounded with dread and anxiety—and I never had anxiety.
Antonio’s words came back to me, an accusation so lethal to my heart I couldn’t even entertain it, and I pushed it away.
I always worked the morning shift at Rosticceria Da Cristina. Prepared everything for the day so the day crew could come in and run the store while I went home and took a nap. Otherwise, I’d be asleep before eight. I got there early, usually before five, so the dough had adequate time to rest.
I’d just finished putting everything in the glass cases when the day crew arrived to run the show. I made small talk with the guys before I left my apron in the break room and headed out.
The second I stepped out the door and turned into the alleyway, I ran straight into Edric. “What are you doing here?” He worked the other location because it was easier having a set of eyes on each place. My sister Beatrice wasn’t quite old enough to be working the way we were.
He started to walk with me back in the direction he’d just come. “Wanted to run something by you.”
“Yeah? What’s up?” I continued up the slight incline until we made it to the road.
Tourists were already out discovering the town because it was almost noon.
I saw a group of them head for the restaurant to order fresh arancini and make a bunch of videos about it for social media.
It didn’t annoy me when people pulled out their phones when they ordered. Free marketing, right?
“Let’s go to your apartment.”
“Why can’t we just talk here?” I asked.
“Because.” That was all he said. “Come on, let’s go.”
My heart started to pound again. That sickening anxiety that I still wasn’t quite familiar with hit me hard. Dread was a sensation I wasn’t all that familiar with either, and now it hit me like a ton of bricks. “This is about Isabella.”
His gaze shifted away to break the contact between our eyes.
That was my confirmation, because my brother was an arrogant son of a bitch who didn’t have an ounce of humility within him—but he looked downright ashamed. “Come on.” This time, he took the lead, forcing me to follow him, down several side streets and for minutes of painful silence.
I felt like I was going to black out from the anticipation.
What the fuck was he about to say?
She wouldn’t hurt me. She wouldn’t lie to me.
She would never betray me.
I couldn’t even remember taking the stairs to my upstairs apartment. Couldn’t remember getting the key in the door. Everything that took place in the last five minutes was immediately scrubbed from my memory.
I stepped into the place that was home, but now it felt like a prisoner’s cell.
I moved to one of the couches but didn’t take a seat. I turned to my brother and waited for him not to say what I was terrified he might say.
He slid his hands into his pockets and released a painful sigh. “Look, I wasn’t gonna say anything, but it’s fucking eating me and . . .”
I couldn’t fucking believe it. It was like he punched me in the throat with a fucking hammer. “Just say it.” My voice came out so calm, it sounded like someone else had said the words. Because I wasn’t the least bit calm.
“It’s a long story . . .”
I stared him down and waited for him to get on with it.
Waited for him to destroy my goddamn world.
To take that hammer he’d put to my throat and use it to shatter my heart.
“Just get on with it, Edric. Otherwise, it’s gonna be even longer before this shit conversation is over.
” I didn’t have a clue how I sounded so calm and rational—when I felt nothing of the sort.
“All right, all right.” He slid his hands into his pockets. “A couple weeks ago, I ran into Isabella in town . . . and I kissed her. I’d been drinking a lot, and I’m not sure what came over me. She thought I was you . . . so she went for it.”
Now my temper roared. “Why the fuck would she think you were me?”
His eyes shifted away again.
“Edric.”
“Because . . . I made it seem like I was you.”
“How?”
“Wore a long-sleeved shirt to hide that I don’t have tattoos . . . did the walk and the talk . . . smiled.”
“So this was completely premeditated.”
“Not really,” he said. “I saw an opportunity, and I just took it.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I told you I’d been drinking . . . and you know I’ve always had a thing for her—”
“I’ve been dating her for over a year, and you still have a thing for her? Or do you still have a thing for her because she is mine and not yours? You always do this shit, Edric. You always go for the same girls, like it’s some kind of sick competition.”
“I swear I don’t. We just have identical taste in women—which makes sense since we’re fucking identical.”
“You’re going to blame this on genetics?” I asked incredulously.
“And like I said, I’d been drinking.”
“Or it’s because you’re a worthless piece of shit. You chase a girl until you get underneath her skirt, and then you find some reason to dump her and chase someone else. Over and over. Doomed to repeat the same mistakes forever because you’re a shit human being, Edric.”
He stared with stoicism, but his throat shifted when he swallowed.
“You will never be happy. And then you’ll be a middle-aged guy bitching about the fact that all women suck, when you’re the one who sucks. Blaming them for the fact that you’re alone, when the reason you’re alone is because you can’t be happy with anyone since you aren’t happy with yourself.”
“Wow. So that’s what you think of me?”
“It is now, yeah,” I snapped. “I point-blank asked what was going on, and you gaslit me. Told me I was paranoid. I’m the one who just got cheated on, and you’re flipping the narrative to make me look like the asshole.
Straight from the narcissist playbook. Well, that shit won’t work on me, Edric.
” My mom always excused his bullshit because he was her son.
I got it. My dad did too. But I saw a lot more that they never witnessed.
“I didn’t have to tell you this, Con. But I wanted to—”