Chapter 3 #2
Nico clears his throat and gestures toward the door. “Boss? You want me to—”
“No.” I straighten, smoothing down my jacket. “Let him go.”
Nico nods and retreats, closing the door behind him.
I pick up my phone and open the feed. Mina’s apartment is quiet. Leon must be asleep. I can hear her moving through the small rooms, the soft sounds of her evening, and I close my eyes and wait for it to work its calming magic on me.
It doesn’t. Not entirely. Silas Cross’s voice is still there underneath hers, relentless and immovable.
When the Sokolis come north—and they will—whose side are you on?
I’ve been choosing Mina’s side since I was eight years old. Everything else has always had to arrange itself around that fact.
It’s just that the everything else keeps getting harder to ignore.
Nine years earlier
The bus drops me two blocks from North Malus High, giving me exactly five minutes to reach the gates before Mina gets out of school.
I walk fast. I always walk fast on this route, even though there’s no reason to rush. She’ll wait for me if I’m late. She always does. But the thought of her standing there alone, scanning the crowd, wondering where I am—
I walk faster.
The other boys from St. Peter’s are headed to football practice or piano lessons or whatever it is that boys like us are supposed to do with our afternoons.
I got on a bus to Mina’s school with my blazer and tie stuffed inside my schoolbag, because nothing is more important than walking her home.
School has kept me away from her all day, and I won’t wait a moment longer than necessary to see her.
The gates of North Malus High come into view, and I take my position against the brick pillar where I always wait. Students stream past in their ordinary clothes, laughing and shoving and shouting to each other across the courtyard.
I check my watch. She should be here by now.
Girls linger near the gates, the same ones who’ve been circling me for weeks. They don’t know my name. They don’t know anything about me except that I show up here every afternoon from St Peter’s and wait for Mina, and apparently being from a private boys’ school is enough to make me interesting.
My face is arranged into the blank mask that keeps everyone at a comfortable distance, yet one of them approaches, the bold one with the blonde hair and the too-bright smile. She’s holding a bag of candy, offering it in hopes of tempting me.
“Hey.” She tilts her head, trying to catch my eye, but I’m looking past her. “Want one? They’re sour watermelon. Really good.”
“No.”
“Come on.” She shakes the bag. “You’re always so serious. Don’t you ever smile?”
Her friends giggle behind her and whisper behind their hands. I hear fragments.
“So mysterious.”
“Mina dating a boy from St. Peter’s? I don’t believe it.”
“Ask him his name.”
“We’ve been trying to figure you out,” the blonde says, toying with the bag of candy. “You show up every day at the same time. You never talk to anyone. You just…wait for Mina. Why? She’s not even that pretty.”
Not pretty. This shallow girl with her cheap candy and forgettable existence has the audacity to stand there and say that my Mina isn’t pretty.
First of all, Mina is the most beautiful girl in Malus and only gets more lovely to look at with every day that passes.
Second of all, as if Mina has nothing to offer beyond her looks.
As if this little idiot has any right to judge her or could ever compare.
I glance at the girl, just once, letting her see exactly how little she matters to me. How she could disappear from the face of the earth, and I wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t care.
Her smile wavers, the first crack in her confidence.
I go back to watching the gates, scanning every face that emerges. Dark hair, dark hair, blonde, red, dark hair.
“At least tell us your name.” She’s pouting now, trying to be cute. “It’s only fair. I’m Elaine. This is Amber and Trina.”
Dark hair, dark hair, too tall, too short.
“Hello?” Elaine waves a hand in front of my face. “Are you even listening?”
Amber and Trina exchange glances, caught between embarrassment and fascination.
“You’re kind of rude,” Elaine says, but there’s no real heat in it. If anything, she seems more intrigued. “Most guys would kill for three girls to pay attention to them.”
Then most guys can have them. They can have every girl in the world but one.
Elaine opens her mouth to say something else, but I’m already moving, pushing past her without a second glance.
Because there she is, finally, dark hair a shining waterfall over her shoulders, her backpack thumping with each step as she weaves between slower students, her face flushed with exertion.
Mina.
Muffled gray drains out of the world as color and sound flood back in. The green of the trees around her, rustling in the breeze. The blue of the sky over her head. The warm brown of her eyes as she spots me and breaks into a run.
“Cristiano!” She skids to a stop in front of me, breathless and laughing.
“I was about to send a search party,” I say, holding up my wrist to show her the time on my watch.
“I know, I know.” She presses a hand to her chest, catching her breath. “My lab partner wanted to go over our joint assignment.”
She has no idea that the minutes I spent waiting for her were agony. I watched every face in the crowd and felt my heart drop each time it wasn’t her. The girl with the candy said she wasn’t pretty, and I wanted to destroy her for it.
“You should have told them you had somewhere to be. I was worried.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “I can’t control the forces of the universe conspiring to keep me from you.”
She says it like a joke, but she’s described exactly how it feels every day for me. Like the whole universe is keeping us apart. I won’t stop feeling that way until she’s mine.
“Besides, you’re always worried,” she points out.
“Because you’re always late,” I tease, but the tight snarl of dread in my chest hasn’t dissipated yet.
“True,” she agrees cheerfully.
There’s a smudge of ink on her jaw. She must have been chewing on her pen again. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks pink, her lips curved in that playful smile that makes my chest ache.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I sling my arm around her shoulders and squeeze her, whispering against her temple, “But I forgive you.”
As I draw away, I unhook her backpack from her shoulders and slip it down her arms.
“I can carry—” she starts to say, and then laughs as I hold it out of her reach. “One day I’ll carry my own bag home.”
“Not today.” I swing it over my own shoulder, adding its weight to mine. It’s heavier than it should be. Too many textbooks, because she never leaves anything in her locker in case she needs it.
I know this about her. I know everything about her.
She organizes her notes by color and hums to herself when she’s thinking.
She tucks her hair behind her left ear when she’s nervous, but never her right.
Her favorite food is her mother’s pretzel pigs in blankets dipped in ketchup.
I know the exact pitch of her laugh. Her real laugh, not the polite one she uses with strangers.
I know the way she smells after she’s been in the garden, like grass and sunshine and something sweet that’s just her.
I know her better than I know myself.
I like her better than I like myself.
How could I not? She’s perfect.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go before it gets late.”
We fall into step together, her short legs taking two steps for every one of mine, but I make sure I’m not walking too fast for her.
“So,” she says, bouncing a little as she walks. She’s always bouncing, always moving, her body unable to contain all the energy inside her. “How was your day? Any news from the hallowed halls of St. Peter’s?”
I shrug. “The same.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s an accurate answer. Nothing changed. Nothing happened.” I got through class and did what I needed to do until I could see Mina.
“You’re impossible. Something must have happened. Did you have classes? Tests? Did anyone say anything interesting? Did you finally agree to have coffee with Ashley Ricci?”
Ashley Ricci is from St. Agatha’s, the sister school to St. Peters.
It’s where my sister Adora goes with her best friend, Lucy Barone, and a whole load of Malus’s prissy, spoiled rich girls who bore the hell out of me.
Mrs. Santoro, Mina’s mother and our housekeeper, couldn’t dream of sending her daughter to St. Agatha’s, as just one semester of school fees is her entire salary.
I once asked Dad to cover Mina’s education because Mrs. Santoro works so hard for us, and Dad laughed.
No, first he asked who Mina was, and then he laughed.
“Why would I get coffee with Ashley Ricci?”
“Because she’s pretty.”
I give a humorless laugh. “No, she’s not.”
“Cristiano, please. She’s gorgeous. And rich. And her family is almost as important as yours.” Mina ticks the points off on her fingers. “She’s perfect for you. You should say yes next time.”
My jaw tightens. There it is. The thing she does that drives me mad. Pushing me toward other girls. As if I could ever want Ashley Ricci. As if I could ever consider anyone but Mina.
“I’m not interested,” I say flatly.
Mina sighs dramatically. “My heart breaks for all those St. Agatha’s girls who are dying to date you.”
“Then they can perish.”
Mina laughs, delighted by my coldness. She thinks I’m being funny. She thinks I’m playing a character, the aloof, unapproachable heir to the Montoni empire.
I’m not playing anything. I don’t want Ashley Ricci. I don’t want any of the girls who ply me with candy and giggle when I walk past and stare at me like I’m something to be won.
I want her.
Only her.
But I can’t say that.