Becoming the Street Boss - Hayley Faiman Page 0,90

can’t get upset, you’ll reinjure yourself,” she rasps.

Lifting my eyes to hers, I shake my head. “Why? Lenora. Why has all of this happened to me? Am I that bad of a person? I know I’m selfish, I used Massimo for safety and money. I don’t do anything to give back to the community with my time. I didn’t even cry when my aunt died, I was glad. Is this what I deserve? Is this what I’ve earned?” I ramble.

I don’t realize that Lenora’s hands are moving around, but I watch as she turns her head and whispers something that I can’t make out.

A nurse appears next to me, she lifts my IV with a needle in her hand before I can say another word, calmness rushes over me and my eyelids become extremely heavy. She put something in my drip. She drugged me.

It’s been two months since I was shot. Two months of being in pain. Two months of taking painkillers and isolating myself from the rest of the world, all except the nurse who helped me the first few weeks.

Now I’m completely alone. I’m used to the solitude, to the quiet, but what I’m not used to is the fear. I’m scared, terrified. I feel like someone is watching my every move.

How I didn’t know that the prison guard was watching me for who knows how long, I’ll never know. Sitting in my bed, in the dark, my legs straight out in front of me, my back resting against the headboard, I close my eyes and let out a sigh.

Reaching for the glass of wine on my nightstand with my good arm, I lift it to my lips. Wine. Drugs and wine have been the only things I’ve ingested in weeks. I’ve lost ten pounds, inching closer to fifteen.

I’m just so tired.

My phone rings and I stare at it, knowing exactly who it is. Nobody else calls me. I’ve ignored their texts and calls for so long that they have given up. It’s better that way. Nobody needs someone like me, someone that karma has found and is expending her complete shit on.

“Hello,” I slur, unable to hear that fucking ringtone a second longer.

The operator asks me if I would like to accept the call and I let out a groan before I follow the prompts, not sure that I want to have a conversation with Massimo right now, but also knowing that it is unavoidable.

“Dolcezza,” Massimo’s voice purrs.

I snort, taking another healthy swig of my wine. I’m not his dolcezza, I never really was. His property? Yes. His fucktoy? Also, yes. His breeder? Possibly. His dolcezza? Absolutely not.

“That’s what you keep calling me,” I snap.

“You’re drunk,” he mutters.

I giggle, but it’s not a real laugh, it’s as bitter as I am. “I am, and a little high.”

“On what?” he yells.

Smiling to the empty room, I bite the inside of my cheek. “Whatever painkillers they’ve prescribed, but I’m running low and I have a feeling as quickly as I’ve gone through this last bottle, I won’t get another,” I stupidly admit.

“Pippa,” he sighs.

“What?”

“I want to be there for you, to take care of you.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

I hesitate a moment, thinking, trying to come up with the words that I want to say, what I want to ask of him. I don’t, my mind is too jumbled, too lost to the booze and painkillers. I lose all of my weak inhibitions.

“Why do you want to take care of me? I’m nothing but a liability to you, Massimo. I’m nothing but bad luck and bad karma. You need to just toss me out on my ass and be done with me,” I whisper before the blackness takes over and I pass out.

I don’t hear Massimo’s next words and I doubt that he wants me to hear them anyway.

“Because I love you, Pippa.”

MASSIMO

Freedom.

It’s not something that I ever really thought about until I was locked away and it was stripped from me. The guards hand me my shit, which isn’t much. My wallet and clothes, Salvatore took my phone along with my car keys so that Pippa could have access to it while I was gone.

My friendly guard is standing just at the exit to the facility. He dips his chin as I approach.

“I’ll miss you, but I’m glad that you’ll be going home to your wife and your life,” he says.

“Same. I’ll see you again, yeah?”

He chuckles. “Definitely.”

Walking out of the room and into the sunshine, I stop, taking in a deep