Diego
This is insane.
There’s no way this is real life.
Yet everyone in this room is accepting these statements as if they’re completely ordinary things to talk about.
Mafia Kings and Queens, a secret branch of the Mafia, preventing every organized criminal from turning New York into a blood bath, and the government is on board because they know they can’t win.
It’s insane and yet, unfortunately, it makes sense.
Some of the things I overheard when I was too high to care suddenly make sense when I factor in that the drugs I bought likely came from a food chain leading to one of these families.
That means Tech is connected too, and Mindy to an extent.
Everyone I’ve ever come across with a needle in their arm or a spoon in their pocket is embroiled in a world we know nothing about, because as long as we have the drugs, nothing else matters.
Nothing at all.
And this is Valentina’s world.
She nearly crushed my fingers three times during this whole meeting, but there’s something new in her eyes each time she glances at me for comfort. Some kind of understanding, as if none of this is new for her.
The pictures and videos they have are undeniable. The way they talk to her and look at her with the same love I know I hold in my own gaze… They deeply care about her, and that kind of love can’t be faked.
The woman I love still exists. She’s sitting right next to me while talking to Cassian about meditation.
She’s right here with her hand in mine, her hair tucked behind one ear and her eyes bright and curious.
This is the woman who woke up in my bed and begged me not to go to the cops, who trusted me to treat her and bathe her, feed her and follow me all over the city in a bid to protect her.
But the woman on the screen? The woman in the photos and in these people’s heads? That’s the woman who leaped into my car and turned her gun on me.
And I don’t know her.
Valentina is every bit as powerful and as dangerous as I thought she’d be, but it’s been amplified beyond my very understanding. If all of this is true, then the work they must do here is grander than anything I could ever come across in my daily life.
Valentina is grander than anyone I could ever meet, or will ever meet again.
Compared to me, an ex-drug addict turned dealer to scrape by, she’s the sun and I’m barely allowed a glance.
“Come with me,” Cassian says to Valentina, dragging me out of my spiraling thoughts. “I have a room just for this.”
“For regaining memory?” Valentina asks, slightly confused.
“No, silly. Meditating.”
“Oh, right.” She turns to me as she lets go of my hand, then she leans down and kisses my cheek. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Good luck.”
As she leaves the room with Cassian, something dark and selfish pulls through my chest. I don’t want her to remember. I don’t want her to unlock that other part of her because then the woman I know, the one I’ve fallen in love with, might cease to exist.
How do I compare in a world like this?
“You look like you could use a drink.” Bradley’s shadow falls over me. “Beer?”
Rejecting him means I’ll have to return to Valentina’s room and wait for the dreaded news that she’s remembered everything. Maybe the sting of alcohol can chase away these unwanted thoughts, so I nod and stand.
“Sure.”
Bradley leads the way out of the room, and I follow him down the long corridor, gaining one last glimpse of Valentina’s gorgeous hair before she vanishes around a corner.
“Preference?” Bradley’s voice drifts through the door, so I hurry into yet another lounge set up with soft couches, a couple of tables littered with card games, and a pool table in the far corner.
“I’m not picky,” I say as I enter and spot Ruslan near the pool table.
“How did she take it?” Ruslan asks, watching Bradley cross the room and hand me my beer.
“Better than expected,” Bradley replies. “We’ve all had knocks to the head before, but this is something else.”
“You know what will happen if she can’t remember.” Ruslan picks up his own beer from where it rests on the side of the pool table.
“We’re not there yet,” Bradley replies.
“What will happen?” I ask, even though it feels like I’m stepping into a conversation I shouldn’t be a part of.
“A vote,” Ruslan replies. “If she can’t remember, she can’t fulfill her duties. She’ll be the first Queen forced to retire and with the shortest reign.”
“Just like that?” For some reason, an itchy heat blooms across my chest. “You’d just abandon her?”
Ruslan’s eyes narrow. “No, we wouldn’t abandon her.
But the world doesn’t stop for her. We still have a duty to carry out, and she can’t do that if she can’t remember all the things that make her good at this.
It’s not something we’d like to do at all, but the longer this goes on, the more real the possibility becomes. ”
“That sounds like abandoning her,” I remark hotly. Ideally, if she leaves here, then there’s a chance the woman I love can come back home with me, but even as I embrace that idea, it doesn’t feel right.
She deserves to know herself.
Regardless of where I stand.
“It sounds harsh,” Bradley agrees as he leans against the pool table and uncaps his beer.
“But Valentina herself would be the first one to tell us not to delay. She wouldn’t want her condition to hamper anything about what we do here.
She’d be the first to kick one of us out too, but it’s not because we don’t care and it wouldn’t be because she doesn’t care.
It’s because she knows how fragile this world is.
The work we do? It could vanish like that.
” He snaps his fingers, then takes a drink.
“All it takes is one family with enough money and enough power to go against us, the government, and every other crime family enjoying the fruits of this agreement. Then war breaks out again.”
“If it’s really that fragile, what’s the point?” I remove the cap from my beer and savor the malty taste as it floods over my tongue. “Why bother?”
“Because we don’t want to die?” Ruslan snorts, then he sighs.
“And it’s not about us. You’re thinking about this all wrong.
What we do isn’t to protect scumbags. I mean…
it is and it isn’t. This isn’t about stopping one rich cunt from tearing into another rich cunt, or whose drugs are higher quality or whatever.
It’s about the people caught in the middle. ”
“Exactly,” Bradley agrees. “It’s about… the people whose entire families get threatened because they were in the wrong place and the wrong time and trip into some twisted grasp of power between families, or the ones who are dragged into hell by their family and are just ordinary criminals but risk execution because one bastard was stupid enough to steal from the Mafia.
It’s about the people who can’t afford medication and education because of the lives they lead, serving one of these families.
The neighborhoods that are kept safe, the rapists and pedophiles we hunt down and put away, the real scum of the earth. ”
“What about the others?” I ask, eyes narrowed. “The teenagers who get addicted to drugs, who get pimped out by assholes older than them, who cause accidents because they’re too high to care?”
“Balance,” Ruslan replies. “The drugs will exist whether we are here or not. We just make sure that the flow is managed and no one’s cutting in something dangerous. For every downside, there’s an upside, and that’s where the balance is.”
“No one here is taking the moral high ground,” Bradley says, draining his beer. “But for every person lost, a person is saved. Without us, nothing good happens.”
“So the ones lost are a necessary evil?” I snap.
“Exactly.” Ruslan smiles. “Kind of like the two men you killed to keep you and Valentina safe. A necessary evil.”
My mouth parts and a protest rises, but I can’t argue back on that. He’s right. I killed those men because, in that moment, what was important to me was survival. This city, this world, faces the same choice every single moment of every day, just on a much grander scale.
“And Valentina?” Bradley sighs. “She knows all of this. Or she knew it. Which is why she would be the first to kick herself out if she was hindering that balance.”
“She didn’t strike me as someone like that,” I say. “She seems so…”
“Cold?” Ruslan remarks with a smirk. “Aloof? Like she’d stab you just for the sake of it?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Not at all. To me she’s warm. Caring. Kind of soft.”
Bradley laughs suddenly. “Y’know, I would describe her the same way but I think we’d have different reasons. I know she’s warm because she’d walk into a burning building to save puppies, but she’d do it with such an angry look on her face and she’d stab you if you praised her.”
“I remember the first night I had Ivy here. Valentina looked at me with such disgust because she was so sure I was fucking everything up for everyone.” Ruslan grins.
“And then she became Ivy’s maid of honor. Who could have seen that coming?” Ruslan groans, then he moves around the table and pulls himself up onto it with his eyes fixed on me. “Were you scared when she got in your car?”
There’s something about Ruslan that’s vaguely intimidating and his words almost sound like an accusation, as if being scared of her reveals some kind of weakness in me. Then again, maybe he’s trying to be friendly.
“Sure,” I admit. “Can’t say I’ve ever been around guns.”
“I’d be scared,” Bradley agrees. “I’ve seen what she can do with an unloaded weapon, never mind one pointed right at me.” Despite being a large man, the shudder that moves through him is surprisingly wiggly.
“Which begs the question…” Ruslan’s brows come together. “What happened to her? We saw how reactionary she was with Diego in the bar. Even if she doesn’t remember, part of her knows what to do. How did someone get the drop on her?”
Bradley turns to Ruslan and points at him with his bottle. “You remember Carmine? That group with the hats and the crazy use of all those psychedelic drugs?”
“That was five years ago, though. Surely, there’s none left?”
“Maybe, but out of everyone she took down, they were definitely the angriest.”
And just like that, it’s like the door closes. There’s nothing I can contribute because I don’t know anything about her beyond what I've learned over the past few weeks. I have no stories, no history, no idea how her life here would result in the injuries I saw on her that night.
I’m adrift without a raft, letting their words wash over me as that deep, selfish knot from earlier solidifies in my gut once more.
I want her to remember. She deserves it.
But will I even have a place in her life anymore if she does?
Will whatever she feels for me just cease to exist?