“Fuck yes she did. She’s not above aiming for the nuts when she’s backed in a corner. Found her in her room driving a fuckin’ machete into some Acardi goon’s belly,” the man said. He hadn’t spoken a word since securing my feet and wrists and hurling me into the back of his car.
He whipped off my hood. I was in some half-renovated, but, if the computer workstation was any evidence, functional office. How many floors up, I had no idea.
I saw the person who’d asked if I put up a fight. He was a dark-haired man in a suit with tattoos that snaked and swirled out from under the collar and cuffs. I saw a man at the workstation… and then I saw Ryan.
Ryan was sitting in a chair near the window, looking at me like he’d seen a ghost. Pale and showing signs of having been in his own battles tonight, he sat silently.
He looked like he’d been to hell and back, and I probably didn’t look any better with my bleeding nose, bruised neck, black eye and the slow-seeping wound on my calf. I would have thought we were going to be executed together, if the guy hadn’t just mentioned “some Acardi goon.” If these weren’t the Acardis, then who were they?
“What’s happening? Who are you?” I asked.
“Could you guys give us a few minutes?” Ryan asked.
The tattooed man in the suit looked at Ryan and thought for a second. “OK. Not too long, the cars are already arriving thick and fast. Eric, cut her loose and take a break in the stairwell. Austin, take the elevator down and make sure Stefano isn’t lonely, nobody uses it until I call you back up. Dan, let’s get some coffee.”
Eric cut the cable ties around my wrists, as he had done with the ties that had bound my ankles when we arrived in the parking lot. Everybody murmured their compliance and gave me a wide-berth as they left the room, including a big guy by the door I hadn’t seen.
It was deathly quiet when the door clicked shut behind them. I rubbed my wrists and tentatively walked towards Ryan.
Instead of rising to meet me, when I got too near he pushed the chair back and took a step away from me as if repulsed by my closeness. My heart shriveled up like dead fruit on a vine and stopped me cold in my tracks. I dropped my eyes.
“You’re a cop,” he said, simply.
“Yes.”
“Do you know what happened today?”
“No.”
“The Acardis killed my mom.”
My eyes shot back up to him and tears started pouring from swollen and halfway-normal eye alike. My legs threatened to collapse under me for a second, as I brought my hands to my mouth and sobbed, but then I steadied myself and reached out for him.
He stepped back again. “Don’t touch me, Sarina.”
I halted. My arms dropped to my sides uselessly and I hung my head. My hair fell in front of my eyes, and for a moment I felt the ghost memory of those tugs as Diana had braided it.
“What is your real name anyway?” he asked.
“Sarina Beckett. Ryan, I-”
“You…” He held up his finger like somebody making a point, and shook it in the air a few times as he winced, trying to hold back his own tears. “You… they killed her because they found out I let a cop too close to their cash cow. To the F King. Me.”
“You’re…”
“Yes.”
“Ryan, please… I’m so sorry! I didn’t want this to happen!”
He sighed. “How much of it was a lie?”
“A lot less than you think.”
All I wanted to do was to go to him and feel his arms around me, to pour my love and support into him and feel it flow back into my own body, bouncing between us and getting stronger every time. But Diana was dead because of me.
“Just last night I told you I’d love you forever. It was a lifetime ago… do you remember?”
I nodded, feeling the tears running freely down my cheeks.
“I wondered how I could have been so lucky to have you drop into my life. I guess now I know.” He paused. “But, what I felt for you was real. It was real and good. Something perfect in a piece of shit world. You made me dream about taking that perfection and taking it somewhere else where all this bullshit could never touch us.”
“I wanted that too,” I said quietly.
“That can’t happen now.”
My head hung again and I felt as if I was melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.
“But Sarina… I still love you. You’re the only thing left in the world that I love. Do you still love me? Was it real to you? Tell me. Tell me and I’ll believe you.”
I looked up at him, my eyes as wide as the swelling would allow, feeling the spark of hope in the middle of the grief and despair.