The Woman in the Trunk - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,53

hadn't.

I knew we hadn't.

I had locked it myself, slid the knob on both the deadbolts my mother insisted we install when there had been a slew of burglaries in the building several months before.

The door had been locked.

And no one had tampered with it.

And my mom sat there staring at it for hours when we got home.

Because she knew.

She knew someone had unlocked it.

And it wasn't either of us.

Maybe she knew more than that too. Maybe she recognized the man who had attacked her. Maybe she knew about the birth-marked man. Maybe she had met him, had shaken hands with him in the past.

Other things came back too.

Like how that month, magically, the cable didn't get shut off. The phone didn't ring off the hook with creditors looking for their minimum payments so they would leave us alone for three weeks.

My father ordered in dinner almost every other night.

He bought a fancy new watch.

He got a new wardrobe full of suits like his mafia friends.

"I wonder how much I was worth," I said to Lorenzo, shaking my head, too numb to feel shocked by the revelation. "I wonder how much he thought my mom's life was worth. I bet it wasn't much," I added, taking a shaky breath. "I always knew I meant little to him. But I guess just... not how little. He'd let someone take something important from me for a full stomach, for a new watch, for fucking chicken parmesan and lobster rolls."

"Gigi—"

"My mom knew. And she just... she couldn't live with that reality. Christ," I said, scoffing. "I don't blame her. I think if I had known too, I would have been out on the steps with her."

"You're not going to kill yourself, Gigi." There was so much conviction in his voice. Like he would take the knife out of my hand if I reached for one. Me. Someone who meant very little to him in the grand scheme of things.

"Oh, why not? Your father is going to have me killed anyway."

"You don't know that. We don't know how this changes things. I can fix this."

"You don't know that."

"I do. I know that. I've been fixing messes with this family for over a decade. I will figure it out. You're not getting killed for this. I'll fucking fix it, Gigi," he added, voice firmer, sensing my disbelief.

My gaze dropped for a second, looking down at my hands, picturing how easily I had reached for that gun, had aimed it, had shot.

"I killed my father."

"The son of a bitch fucking deserved it," Lorenzo said, making my head lift, finding anger simmering in his eyes. For me. For what had been done to me.

It struck me suddenly that since my mother passed, I'd never really had someone on my side. Someone willing to fight for me.

If someone had told me that the person that finally would be on my side would be the underboss of New York's biggest mafia family, I would have had a good, long, much-needed laugh about it.

Yet here we were.

I felt I knew Lorenzo enough at this point to know that look on his face.

Determination.

And that he was a man of his word.

He would do everything in his power to fix this.

If there was a way to do so.

"Hey," he snapped, grabbing my chin again, yanking it up high, like I always did when I was being stubborn. "Don't give up on me now, do you hear me? Where's that hellcat who wanted to bash my brain in with a bottle of whiskey? I need her back. Just for a little while longer. Because I am going to need to leave you here. And I am going to need to go up there and fix this. Don't crumble on me now."

"I don't crumble," I told him, jaw getting tight. I knew he was baiting me. And that I was biting. But I guess that was the point, wasn't it?

"Prove it," he demanded, eyes bright.

I didn't see it coming.

But he leaned forward as his hand slid from my jaw to my cheek, slipping down to the side of my neck where he liked to rest it, and his lips pressed to mine.

But it wasn't hard and demanding, like I expected from him.

No.

This was something I didn't think he would be capable of.

Soft and sweet.

It was like a warm drink to my system, working through me, warming me from the inside out.

It was over far too soon, though, leaving me cold and alone in the basement