CHAPTER THIRTY
“Let’s just say I didn’t care.”
I JUST WITNESSED A murder.
The murder of someone I once thought of as a friend. Someone I once shared a bed with, meals with, jokes with.
Dead. In the blink of an eye. Just like that.
I’ve also just begged for a life to be spared. Someone who will have to live with a missing limb as a regrettable reminder to never again make the mistake of making decisions with his dick, but have his life, nonetheless.
None of it feels real. Like I’m in an awful dream or having an out of body experience.
“Talk to me, Lexi,” Trent pleads.
We’re in his jeep, speeding back to LA. Tripp is sprawled out in the backseat, maybe asleep, maybe not. Last I heard of him, he was dirty-talking to someone on the phone and asking for nudes.
For some reason, I haven’t been able to get a word out for over an hour now. What happened in Vegas is the most horrifying thing I’ve ever experienced and it’s hard to come to terms with it.
One could say I’m in shock.
One side of me is gut-wrenched that Ellie is motherfreaking dead. While the other side keeps reminding me that, five days ago, that same gun was pointed at my head.
Out of greed, Ellie had set me up. Me. Someone who’s only ever been kind to her. A friend to her. Looked out for her. Saved her when she landed herself in shit. Without a care or thought for me, she’d rolled the carpet of death toward me only for it to roll right back to her.
And only because I’m lucky enough to have people who genuinely care for me—the Garzas, who I spent years shutting out. I don’t deserve them, don’t deserve their loyalty.
“I…” I start, then stop to clear my throat, my voice hoarse from being quiet for so long. “I guess I’m just trying to process—”
“You don’t process shit like that,” Tripp’s gruff voice comes at me from the backseat. “You try to ‘process’ that and it’ll swell and grow in your head like a fucking tumor. Creep into the corners of your mind and fuck you up. Depression, anxiety, paranoia. Dump you into a swamp of insanity,” he goes on. “You gotta kick and punch that shit out of your head, give it no room to breathe. Shut that shit down immediately and fight like hell for your sanity. Tell yourself whatever you need to justify what you saw tonight. But don’t ‘process.’ Never ‘process.’”
My head falls back against the headrest, and I close my eyes. Seconds later, beyond my control, a tear rolls down my cheek. And then another.
All of what Tripp just said sounds like madness. But maybe madness is what I’ll need to prevent myself from going mad.
There’s no way to undo any of what happened tonight. But I can fight like hell to make sure it doesn’t ruin me.
A large, warm hand covers mine on my thigh, and even in the wake of a nightmare the butterflies still flutter. Making me feel things. Sweet things. Things other than sorrow and fear and remorse.
Smiling through my tears, I turn my hand over, lace my fingers with his, and squeeze. Hanging on to him like my every breath depends on it.
Maybe it does.
I love him.
God, I love him.
~
THE SUN IS bright in the sky by the time we get back to L.A. Trent drops Tripp off in Venice then takes me straight to his Santa Monica home instead of Pasadena.
Now he’s huddled in the driveway with True and the big dude, talking in serious, quiet tones while I wait with my hands wrapped around myself.
Out of patience, I walk up to the huddle and pry the house keys from his hand. He lets me, mumbling that he’ll be in soon.
I let myself inside the house. It smells of him. Like patience, reliability, and consistency.
After helping myself to a glass of OJ from the fridge, I head upstairs to the master bathroom and run the shower to heat.
As I peel out of my clothes, I make a mental reminder to dump them, along with the duffel bag of expensive clothes I brought back from Vegas, into the garbage ASAP. Whatever it takes to rid myself of the horridness of the last couple of days.
While the shower heats, I clean my teeth at the vanity, and once the mirror starts fogging up, I know the shower temperature is just right—piping hot.
I climb in, welcoming the sting on my skin. Wrapping my arms around myself, I close my eyes and let it beat down on my head, washing away my tears, guilt, and regret.
I see Ellie’s lifeless body in the darkness behind my lids, but I fight the stabbing urge to open them and run from it. I face it. Because I know that the moment I start giving in to being afraid of closing my eyes, it will gain power over me. Control me. And what will follow is insomnia and sleeping pills and depression and therapy sessions.
So I squeeze my eyes even tighter and let that image remain until it slowly distorts and breaks away, piece by piece, until there’s only darkness.
Plain darkness.
I don’t hear him come in. I only feel his arms wrap around me. Pulling me to him. And I let him, pressing my face to his chest, eyes still closed.
“You’re tense,” I say after a long, long moment of quietude.
“I’m holding in a lot,” he admits.
“Tell me.”
“Not at you, baby.” His arms squeeze around me. “More at myself…my cousins…that stupid bitch.”
“Did you…” I swallow. “Did you know he was going to…do that?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t care,” he replies sharply.
“That’s a life, Trent.” I lift my head and look up at him under the stream of steaming water. “Taken. Without mercy. Without a thought.”
“She was a vile human being.” He’s unmoved. “Did she care about your life when she set you up like she did? Believe me when I tell you, I don’t care. And you shouldn’t either. If the Castellos didn’t need us as much as they do, that would’ve been you, girlfriend or not, family or not. They’d have shot you first then called me after.”
“Why do they need you so much?” I ask.
He sighs, as though this is the last thing he wants to be talking about. “Certain services that we’re able to provide them.”
I take a breath before asking, “Bad stuff? Crime stuff? Like…” I can’t even think it. I don’t want to believe the boys I grew up with are capable of being cold-blooded murderers. Not Monica’s boys. No. I refuse to believe it.
Water clumps his long, dark lashes together as he shakes his head. “Let’s just say there are certain important, high-placed people…and, uh, organizations that can’t—for obvious reasons—communicate directly with organized criminals. So a clandestine mediator for safe, secure, and untraceable communication is needed. Red Cage was chosen by the, um… ‘highest head’ to be that mediator.”
“Oh.”
I only understand maybe half what he just said. Though at the pace at which he spoke, taking great care to choose his words wisely, it feels like a safe, dumb-downed version of what they really do. And even so, just a fraction.
Taking my face in his hands, he stares into my eyes and tells me, “I’ve witnessed a lot of terrible things over the years... But I promise you, I’ve never killed anyone. Ever. And unless someone fucks with you, Mom, or Tillie, then nor will I ever. I’ve got a mean streak at times, yeah, but I’m not anything like my soulless, psychotic cousins.”
I believe you.
Closing my eyes, I press my face to his chest again. “I can’t believe you all are related to them.”
“Neither can we.” He rests his chin on top of my head. “Don’t worry. Our familial ties aren’t common knowledge. And those who do know have been made to believe there’s bad blood between us—we’ve made sure of it. So none of their shit ever touches us.”
Well, that makes me feel better at least. Considering I’ve decided I want to spend my life with this man. Have his babies. Be his and only his.
After a stretch of silence, I ask, “What was that reparation bit all about?”
He groans at this, but he should have known I’d ask at some point. “Lorenzo called and told me Slim hit you.”
“So?”
“What do you mean ‘so?’” Anger edges into his voice. “He kidnapped you, drugged you, and on top of it had the gall to put his fucking hands on you? I said I’m not a killer, Lexi, I didn’t say I’m a fucking saint. Wasn’t gonna let that go. He had a choice: lose all the fingers on the hand he hit you with or pay 100k for each of them.”
Eyes snapping open, I jerk my head up to look at him. “He gave you half a million dollars?”
Trent shakes his head. “He gave you half a million dollars.”
Oh. My. God.
“How does threatening to cut someone’s fingers off not make you any different?”
“What did I just say, Lexi? My psycho doesn’t come out to play unless anyone fucks with…?”
Exhaling a defeated breath, I say, “Monica, Tillie, or me.”
All of this is so…much. The last couple of hours feels like a dream. But it’s not. I’m here in the flesh. I’ve never known this side of the Garzas. Never seen this side of him. And they might not be as bad as the Castellos, but if they have Castello blood in them, how far from the edge of darkness can they be?
Trent releases me to get the loofah and body wash, then he begins to bathe me. Slow and gentle, almost caressingly. I close my eyes and breathe, because it is everything I didn’t know I needed. Yet, somehow, he did.
And it’s because of this, because he can make me feel like this—safe, appreciated, cared for, loved—why I’m willing to overlook his flaws. I’m uncomfortable with his relation to the Castellos, and I’m worried about what level of darkness lives within him, but none of it is enough to change how I feel about him or what I want from him.
I love him.
The boy next door who used to get under my skin like no one else. The Garza who, even though he’d irritated me to no end, I’d spent more time at his side, in his presence, than any of the others. I think…I think I’ve loved him all this time and just didn’t know it.
~
WE’VE JUST STEPPED out of the shower, Trent wrapping a towel around me, when the doorbell echoes downstairs.
“Be right back,” he murmurs, leaving a kiss on my forehead.
I towel off and pad to the bedroom. Although it’s been less than a week since I’ve been here, in this room, clinging to him and gasping his name, it feels like eons ago. Now, however, it feels different. Not like I’m just sleeping over at his place. But…like home. Like where I’m supposed to be. Where I belong. The familiarity of it envelopes me and offers me warmth and comfort.
I’m seated at the end of the bed moisturizing my skin with body oil when Trent returns with a tray of food.
“Scratch’s wife sent over breakfast,” he says.
As he deposits the tray in the little nook of the room with two armchairs and a small table, I frown and ask, “Who?”
“Oh, Scratch’s the one who rode with True. He heads our Denver branch,” he says as he walks over to me. “He flew in to help. They’re staying at True’s, and his wife…well, she can’t help being a host, even when she’s the guest.”
“That’s nice of her.”
He pries the body oil from my hand and takes over, squeezing oil into his palm before massaging it into my skin.
“Where did he keep you?” he asks me after several beats of silence.
Assuming he’s referring to Stefano, I answer, “With him. Wherever he went, there I was.”
“You slept in his bed?”
His gaze is cast downward, focused on his ministrations, and I’m getting the feeling he already knows the answer. “Yes… But he didn’t touch me or anything.”
“He wouldn’t,” he says, voice tight. “Stefano’s a nightmare, but he has his limits. He cares about two things: money and family. In that order. Mess with either and the devil comes out.”
“He said it’s because—”
“Lorenzo?”
“He told you?”
A shake of his head. “Picked up on it once he called me to tell me Slim hit you—considering Stefano didn’t. But I also saw him with you last night. He likes you, and Lorenzo likes next to no one.”
I watch his hands, slick with oil, as they glide up and down my leg. At this point it’s a massage, or a caress, because I’m already as moisturized as I can get. “Did you really go to Turks and Caicos?”
He nods. “Hauled them right out of a beach house.” An angry noise reverberates in his throat. “They were so cozy. Thought they’d gotten away with it?”
“Wow,” I say, “You guys really are good.”
“Only took us as long as it did ‘cause we were deliberately misled,” he adds. “You begged for Alvin’s life, but with the cunning steps that were taken to throw us off, there’s no way it was all just Ellie’s idea. We’ve found nothing on him—squeaky clean background, but I know without a doubt that he’s not as innocent as he pretends. He knows how to dance.”
I don’t imagine someone who would steal from their boss and run off to the tropics is any kind of innocent, but it’s a life. Though this explains why none of them helped me when I was pleading for his life. “Did you want Stefano to shoot him?”
Trent snaps the cap on the body oil closed and stands. “You don’t really want the answer to that question, Lexi.”
As I watch him walk over to the nook, lowering down into one of the armchairs and picking up a piece of fruit, I decide he is right. I don’t want to know.
When he looks up and gestures for me to come join him, I tighten the towel around me and do just that.