Pretty Lies, page 20
The air even had that dampness.
“I, I, I, I,” Jennika said, her almost happy, sing-song tone making Della grow cold as they passed the double doors beyond the stairs leading into the room where caskets sat on display in five rows. “It’s always about you, right?”
A familiar clack had Della spinning around. She knew what made the sound before her gaze even landed on the Glock in Jennika’s hand. Terror swelled in her heart, but she did her very best not to show it in that second. She’d been stupid enough to let her emotions get the best of her, and she made a mistake because of it. Without even thinking.
Jennika lifted the gun a little, jerking the barrel to the right. “That one’s black.”
Della didn’t look behind herself; she made that mistake once today and let Jennika get behind her when her back was unprotected and weak. Here they were.
“Silver handles?” she asked. “Ma wanted silver.”
The girl who had been there the night Della had her first period—the same girl who had been the first person she called when she lost her virginity—made a face like something stunk, and a disgusted noise followed. “Really, silver for J? Gold would be better. Or even a pine box. What does it matter, he’s just going to rot.”
Della dragged in a quick breath and ignored the way it caught and tripped going through her throat into her lungs. Was she scared? That goddamn gun was still pointed at her. So, yeah. A little. She didn’t plan on showing it.
She glanced past Jennika to the hallway and the stairwell at the far end. If she shouted loud enough—screamed for all she was worth—then at least she could warn the people upstairs about the danger down below.
The quiet tittering from Jennika had her swallowing the scream when she told Della, “Is that really what you want—for your scream to be the last sound your mother ever hears you make? While she’s here planning the funeral of her son, Della? Really?”
“You don’t care.”
That much was clear.
Jennika smirked. “No, but you do. And I’m not done talking, so give me the chance to do that before I ruin your mother’s life for a second time, hmm?”
What?
She didn’t get the chance to ask the question.
Jennika was already talking again. “He didn’t love me—I didn’t know it until that day in the warehouse, though. I should have because why was I special, right?”
“J said once that he didn’t fuck with you at all. Why would you think he loved you?”
Blazing eyes turned on her.
Then, Jennika laughed.
The sound?
Crazy.
Manic, even.
“Not J,” Jennika said, keeping the gun pointed at Della as she closed the double doors behind her to shut out the hallway and stairwell. Then, she put her attention back to Della as she tossed aside her small purse. Neither of them looked to see where it landed. “Your brother wouldn’t get down with me like that—even though I tried.”
So, J hadn’t lied.
“See, he was just … always trying to look out for me, and sometimes he gave away too much. Thought we were friends, maybe. Like us, you know?”
“Not like us,” Della murmured.
Jennika cocked a brow at that. “Well, yeah. And I meant Luis. He didn’t love me, but I didn’t know until it was too late. Good dick makes us stupid. God, he was fucking everything and anything with a hole just because it benefitted him not even because he wanted to. But I was the only one he said he loved; he only stayed the night with me. I was giving him things they weren’t. I helped his hustle. I was better. That bitch, Dell.”
She swallowed hard.
God.
Things were starting to make sense now.
It was terrifying.
How had she missed this?
Jennika’s eyes, smudged with whatever dark makeup she’d worn the night before, darted back to Della when she said, “Have you figured it out yet?”
“You were fucking Luis when he was with me?”
It was really the only thing that hurt. Not the actual cheating, of course—it’d been what ended their relationship along with Luis’s constant manipulation. And she never let him touch her without wearing a rubber. Still, with her best friend? That was a new low.
“Oh, don’t get sentimental about it. We were fucking long before you met him. A year or so. You were just getting … boring. Still being your daddy’s good girl. Not yet pushing your lines. We got you there, though, right? And then we had an idea. For you. And us.”
Della blinked. “Us?”
“Me and Luis. Keep up.”
That gun waved wildly.
She kept her eyes on the prize.
“Luis just needed to flip his game—get money and go. Start over new. He gave me something to do, I guess.”
“But he lied,” Della said quietly.
She didn’t need Jennika to say it.
It’s who Luis was.
It’s what he did.
Jennika’s jaw tensed, and the anger came back in her steely expression as she leveled it on Della. “You were just a pawn—something he could hustle. I didn’t see what it mattered, or why I should care. I had him, right? I came up with the idea of boosting something from one of the warehouses the Outfit owns. See, I like to listen when the guys are around. You learn a lot. Luis said if we could nab something good, he had the contacts to sell it. We’d bounce before shit even really hit the fan.”
“The warehouse.”
Everything became so painfully clear. Only the barrel of the gun answered her back. It met the middle of Della’s forehead harder than she expected. Jennika went from looking mildly crazy to full out fucking insane in a matter of two seconds. Della didn’t even have time to catch her breath before her friend was screaming in her fucking face.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be inside the damn warehouse! And he still hit it—he knew I was in there, and he still fucking hit the place!”
Jennika stumbled back, one shaking hand pointing the gun at Della while her other pulled at the mess of her hair. “You all could have been a bonus,” she spat, the gun jerking with her words. “A mess we wouldn’t have even needed to fucking worry about. But he didn’t care—he didn’t even answer me back when I said I was inside and to wait a minute. He just … lit it all up.”
“Hurts to know someone you love doesn’t give a shit about you, huh?” Della asked.
Wrong thing to say.
Jennika came at her again. Della’s forehead gave the gun’s barrel a soft spot to land. This time, she wasn’t quite as afraid as she had been moments earlier. She really wished that she didn’t recognize the pain and desperation in Jennika, but she did.
She knew that all too well.
And how much it hurt.
Thing was … Jennika didn’t pull the trigger.
Della counted the seconds.
She had all the time in the world.
Do it.
Just fucking do it.
She was mad—hurt and bitter. It was devastating to realize someone who meant everything to you thought you were nothing. Maybe she blamed Della. Fuck. It was possible her friend was just sick. In her mind. Because all her life, people left her; she never had anyone except herself, and that could really do a number on someone’s sense of self-worth
She didn’t pull the trigger, though.
“Just do it!” Della shouted, vibrating from head to toe.
The gun bit harder into her forehead.
The trigger didn’t click.
Neither girl looked away.
“Because you can’t,” Della said.
Jennika’s arm trembled, and her teeth clenched as a sound escaped that ached. “You don’t fucking know anything. You just—”
“Because what are you going to do after this? Do you think you’re making it out of here?” Della was the one laughing then, the sound bouncing from wall to wall in the room and back again. She was sure that she looked just as fucking crazy as Jennika in that moment, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care, either. “After you killed me, what were you going to do then? Did you even think about that? You never did plan for the follow through very well, Jenn.”
She could see the girl’s finger twitch on the trigger. Della wouldn’t give her the chance to pull it.
“You never planned beyond this,” Della said, her hands coming up fast between them to grab the butt of the gun and Jennika’s wrist at the same time. She bent both the gun and Jennika’s wrist back while the other woman was distracted by her emotions. Those were always a person’s weakest spot. Her finger wrapped around Jennika’s on the trigger, and she fought to pull it back as she shoved the barrel up hard. It found the middle of Jennika’s jaw when the two slammed into the doors. “We’re all you fucking had—he’s gone, we wouldn’t take you back once we knew the truth. Where were you gonna go? You’ve got no one and you knew it. You’re nobody.”
They were all Jennika had. It was worth repeating. She didn’t plan to make it out of here alive.
Except all the thoughts shattered in Della’s mind when she finally pulled the trigger back on the gun. The bang was explosive. In sound, and action. Her ears rang as all at once, Jennika’s body slumped between her and the door. Blood sprayed from the exit wound and dribbled from the spot where it had entered under her chin.
A lot of blood, really.
Della watched the pooling crimson grow as she stepped away from the door. The gun, and Jennika fell to the floor.
In the background, Della could hear shouting.
Familiar voices.
The after spray of the gunshot must have hit her in the face because she tasted blood when she licked her lips. Unmoving, unseeing eyes stared upward from the bleeding heap of what used to be her friend on the floor.
Della was still trying to digest it all.
Process everything.
By the time her father, the undertaker, and Cory got the double doors open, Della had found a spot on the floor a few feet away from her friend’s body. She stayed just out of reach of the puddling blood while she lit a cigarette from the purse Jennika had tossed aside when they first entered the room.
“Holy fuck,” Cory mumbled, stumbling over the body toward her.
“Della!”
“I’m fine, Daddy,” she said.
Too quietly, maybe. They all watched her as though she had been spun from glass and ready to shatter into a million little pieces.
Hell.
She kind of felt like that.
Smoke circled up from her fingers, drawing her attention there. She looked to the undertaker who was currently surveying the mess and the body. She was sure this wasn’t how he planned to spend his workday. Then again, if she was to trust what her dad told her about the man’s business, maybe this was exactly how he planned to spend his day.
“Sorry,” she said to the large, silent man, “I just really needed a smoke.”
Cory coughed out a laugh, and his gaze darted between her and the undertaker as he kneeled. “Babe, nobody’s worried about the cigarette right now.”
Right.
“Everybody’s a fucking liar, Cory,” she whispered. Everybody told lies; some were meant to protect her or even, help her in some way; others were nothing more than beautiful distractions so the snakes could curl in closer around her heart. Those pretty lies had been the ones that hurt the worst. They did the most damage. “Even my best friend.”
He reached for her, then.
She just let him.
“Not me,” he told her.
Not him.
Not him. Not him. Not him.
He’d not proven her otherwise. She still reminded herself of that fact. A part of her wished she didn’t feel like she had to keep doing that at all. Hadn’t he proved his worth to her time and time again in a far shorter period than the people who betrayed her?
Oh, well.
Cory deserved it—he was worth going against what had now seemed to become Della’s instincts when it came to other people. She only wanted to protect herself; build walls as high as the sky. Except with him. He climbed over every single one of them just because he could.
“I left my bag upstairs,” Della said to her father when he came to sit beside her.
Cory sat on the other side, silent.
“With your knife?” her father asked.
“Yeah.”
“Should really consider a full-time guard at this point. It’s non-negotiable. Your mother is probably upstairs; at least she listened to me this damn time to stay… Lord.”
Cory held up a finger. “Agreed. On the guard bit, for the record.”
“Frankie, where am I sending the bill?”
Della glanced up, surprised at the question. The undertaker, who had taken a black satin blanket from a nearby casket to throw over the body on the floor, stared the three of them down. They were all still trying to figure out how this happened.
The undertaker didn’t seem to have that problem.
“Well?” the man asked.
“Just put it on my account,” Frankie said, pushing up from the floor, “and that’ll be the end of it. Now, where the fuck is my wife?”
Della got up, and followed her dad. Cory was right on her heels. She stepped over the body, but she didn’t look down at the heap of bloodstained satin. It would be gone soon, like the bloodstains on the floor and wall, and the memory of Jennika in the Costellos’ lives.
She didn’t mind leaving her feelings about it all behind, too. They could burn those with the body.
Della no longer cared.
NINETEEN
“WHERE ARE YOU right now?”
Two things that never waited—not for anything? Duty and family.
It was just Cory’s luck that the two things intermingled more often than they didn’t. That was the nature of his life when it was so engrained in the mafia. There really wasn’t any way to escape it, so while it annoyed him, he dealt with it. After all, he did choose this.
“Did you hear me?” his father asked again.
“Home,” Cory said. “I’m home.”
Specifically, his own home. Because of all the places Della wanted to go to clean up and spend the night before—all over again—life kept moving forward after theirs almost ended, here was where she chose. How in the hell was he supposed to tell her no after everything?
He was tired.
Nearly fucking lost her today.
The one time he didn’t do his job—his only fucking job to have her back—and look what happened. He wasn’t going to forgive himself for that mistake even if it was nothing more than circumstance and someone else’s crazy plans that hadn’t even worked out in the end. None of it mattered. He fucked up; she almost paid for it.
Cory would have been satisfied with a room at a hotel that he’d used in the past and enjoyed. The place had bomb rooms, good service, and they knew his name. Which was all he really gave a fuck about at the end of the day. When people knew his name, he didn’t even have to try. Everybody else jumped to do shit for him. He could use that right now. Della, too.
But no.
Here they were at his place.
“I’m coming to pick up Mace tomorrow,” Cory said. “Let Mon know so she can get his stuff together.”
“Cory—”
“He’s going to start thinking his home is somewhere else. Maybe I’ll just pay an enforcer to babysit him in the day instead. You know what I mean?”
He was rambling.
Talking about anything.
All things except today.
“Cory, it all ended well,” his father said quietly. “Joe filled me in on all the details. Tommas also called the funeral home—he’ll pick up all bills for Frankie.”
“Costello isn’t worried about the money.”
They all had more than they knew what to do with, honestly.
“It’s more the respect of the matter,” Damian said gruffly. “You know how this business goes. Cory, are you pacing again?”
His walk in the front hallway of his apartment came to an abrupt stop. No, he wanted to say. It partly would have been a lie, but it also would have been the truth. He wasn’t actually pacing—something he did when he was trying to process shit or figure something out—he was just cleaning.
Picking shit up in his place. Thinking of who he knew in the Outfit that would be the right pick to tail Della on a daily basis when he could no longer do it because he had shit to get back to. Cory couldn’t watch her back forever even though the two of them didn’t talk about it. He was also ignoring the fact that the shower down the hall still hadn’t turned on. Despite the fact that it was the first thing Della said she wanted to do an hour ago when they got back was clean up.
“I’m not pacing,” he said.
Damian chuckled; the sound came off familiar to Cory in both good and bad ways. There was something about the Rossi boys’ father that Cory and his brother could never get away from. Their dad just always knew when something was up with one of them. He paid too much attention to things that others overlooked, and he liked to point them out.
“But you are overthinking,” Damian eventually replied.
Cory stared into the dimness of his apartment. The water still wasn’t running for the shower. He missed seeing water and food in Mace’s bowl or hearing the Rottie’s nails click on the floor when he came looking for his master.
He was over sneaky people.
And fuckups.
All of it.
“It ended well,” his father repeated with a tone that was sure and smooth. Cory swallowed hard, knowing his father wouldn’t expect a response because that’s not what Damian was trying to do when he knew his boys as well as he did. “And that’s where you have to land, Cory. Not on what ifs or what-could-have-beens … just what is.”
Right.
“As far as we know, this is over,” Damian continued. “Any drugs from the warehouse are gone—certainly off American soil because we can’t find them. The same with your old friend. Good riddance to trash; if he knows what’s best for him, that fuck will stay gone, too. It is time to get back to normal, Cory. Or whatever version of normal you’re looking at now, son. Hmm?”
