Manny panicked and looked a little too long, tripping over an empty shopping cart in the middle of the alley. He rockets through the air in the direction of a large green dumpster, smacking into it, face-first. He falls backward, slamming his head on the concrete.
Shit, this was easy. Half the work is already done for me.
I jump on top of him, pulling out my box cutter as his eyes widen. “You ever hear about the kind of shit I can do with this thing?” I seethe as his head rolls back and forth, sputtering something in Spanish.
“Yeah,” he mumbles. “But I didn’t do nothing. I swear.”
“I saw you clear out our stash from that Honda.” I press my knee into his chest, making him cough. “What’d you do with it?”
“I didn’t—”
“You did something with it, Manny.” I grab his greasy black hair and yank it hard, making him yelp.
“Uncle Philly!” he yells, a tear in his voice.
“You already got your uncle into enough trouble today. Do you really want him to see what comes next?”
Manny writhes against my knee, trying to claw it off of him.
I chuckle, holding the box cutter against his cheek. “Manny, you stole from the Iazettis and you got caught. But what’s even worse is you aren’t admitting it. You’re fucking lying.” I dip my head closer to his and scream at the top of my lungs. “Don’t ever fucking lie to my face!”
I’ve never seen fear like I do in Manny’s eyes right now.
It sends a rush of adrenaline coursing through me and damn, it feels good.
I want more.
“I’m gonna give you one more chance to tell me what you did with my shit.” I drag the blade down the side of his neck. “One little slip of my hand and I’ve got your carotid. You wanna die, Manny? Because I’d much rather keep you alive so I can find the assholes you’re working with. Tell me some names, Manny.”
I’d rather not kill Manny for a couple of reasons.
One, I like Philly.
He’s good people.
Two, I have my suspicions about who Manny is working with and I wanna hear him confirm them for me.
Three, I just don’t feel like dealing with a body in the alley outside one of my family’s businesses. It would cause headaches I just don’t need right now.
Names? Those I do need.
“What else do I have to do to convince you that you’re not leaving in one piece unless you start talking?” I growl. My eyes widen. “Oh, how about this? Does this work?” I jam the box cutter into the top of his hand. “Should I keep going? Slice off a few fingers, you dipshit?” I shake my head. “You never, ever go against the family, do you understand?” I lean my head closer to his mouth as he cries like a little bitch. “No? You still don’t get it?” I swing the blade across his chest, slicing through the cotton t-shirt. A deep red stain spreads over it within seconds and he clutches his chest with the one good hand he has left.
I hover the blade over his face…starting with his eye. Then I drag it down the side of his face toward his mouth and head toward his ear.
“See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.” I smirk. “Those monkeys got nothing on you, Manny. You know something, and if you don’t spill it, I’m gonna make sure you never see, speak, or hear ever again!”
I dig the blade into the area right above his eye. “In about two seconds, this blade is going in!”
I pull back my hand and shove it toward his eyeball, coming to a stop right before I hit my target.
“Okay! I took it and I sold it!”
“To who?” I grab him by the throat. “Who bought it and where’s the money?”
“I’ll get you the money, I swear! I needed some extra cash and I just—”
“Shut up,” I hiss. “Don’t give me any more of your bullshit. Now who was the buyer?”
“He didn’t tell me his name. All I know is that he works for a guy named Moretti!”
I collapse onto the ground and scrub a hand down the front of my face as he writhes around on the ground.
Shit. Moretti’s here. And he’s fucking close if he’s trying to infiltrate our organization.
I let out a deep sigh as I stare at Manny. It’s pretty damn clear he doesn’t have to try that hard.
Looks like I’m gonna have to deal with a body after all…after I get my money back from this cocksucker.
You can consider it a message from us to you, Moretti.
Chapter 13
Charlotte
“I miss you so much,” I sigh to myself, staring at the picture of my brother and me at the first charity ball that I was old enough to attend. His arm is draped over my shoulder, our faces twisted by laughter from a silly joke he told only seconds before. He has been gone for years, but the emptiness in my heart is felt on a daily basis.
Anniversaries are always supposed to be hard.
But sheer torture?
Where was that in the advice my therapist would spit at me session after session?
He was ripped away from this world way too early. A stupid car accident turned into a fatality that unraveled my family.
It hit my mother the hardest. She was supposed to go with her driver to pick Andrew up from football practice, but her massage ran late. Our former butler was sent to get him, instead. He ran a stop sign, and that was all she wrote.
I’ll never forget that day.
It’s seared into my brain.
I set the picture back down on the mantel, heading for the kitchen to get a snack. My stomach rumbles loudly as I pass my father’s office.
Crying breaks through the still air of the hallway.
“Get a damn grip on yourself, Cammy,” my father’s gruff voice is booming as he yells at my mother.
I can’t help it. I freeze in place to eavesdrop on their squabble.
“Don’t talk to me like that!” she bellows at him between sniffles.
“Your guilt is getting the better of you. It’s your fault that Andrew is gone and you fucking know it. That’s why these empty tears are falling.”
“It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t driving that car.”
“That’s the fucking point. If you weren’t off focusing on yourself like a selfish bitch, you would have been there on time to pick him up from practice. My son would still be alive if it wasn’t for you. He was everything! He was supposed to carry on our legacy! Don’t you get it. Everything wrong in our lives is your damn fault!”
“Don’t say that!”
“If you weren’t so doped up on Xanax and all of the other pills your doctor has you on, you might actually see the situation clearly. Wake up, Cammy. We’re knee deep in a shit pile and you’re just flying too high in the clouds to see it.”
My father’s words are like venom. They burn through my veins. I want to throw open the door. I want to tell him to lay off. But I can’t. I would just make everything worse, as usual.
“You know why I take all that damn shit? You. Being married to you has driven me to this.”
“Then go! If you hate your life here so damn much, get the fuck out. There’s the door. I won’t stop you.”
I rush around the corner, terrified that they are going to catch me snooping.
My heart sinks. My instinct after all this time is to call Xander. He always knew exactly what to say when this shit would erupt in the past. We’d go to our spot on the beach and talk for hours as the surf crashed against the rocky cliffs where we’d sit and dangle our feet. My crying would turn into laughter and fond memories of my big brother.
My mother’s heels click on the marble in rapid succession after she slammed the door to my father’s office. “If you want me gone so badly, maybe I will finally leave you!”
My father’s stomping footsteps pound after her. I hold my breath, scared to death to give away my position.
“Don’t tease me, Cammy,” my father howls as his stomps start up their staircase.
I have to get out of here.
I didn’t have
to think about it.
I knew exactly where I needed to go.
My sanctuary.
Our sanctuary.
I doubt he goes there anymore anyway.
I am finally going to be in the one place that no one will bother me. No one will look at me like trash. No one will make me feel worthless.
It doesn’t take long for sand to be crunching under my toes as I listen to the sound of waves crashing on the abandoned shore line. The moon is creeping up into the sky, dancing on the top of the water. A simple love affair of beauty and tranquility. The still night air rushing in right after sunset is perfect. The most amazing calm that I could ask for to soothe my soul.
I sit on the damp sand, trying to steady my mind.
It doesn’t work.
Instantly I am attacked by a memory all too bittersweet. Xander and the day he saved my life in this very spot. In that moment I knew that I loved him. Staring into his irises soaked in concern and relief, I knew that he was everything to me. My best friend. My protector. My heart.
Where did it all go so wrong?
How did we get so off-course?
If you had asked me a few years ago if Xander and I would hate each other now, I would have laughed in your face. I was sure that if nothing else in this world, Xander and I would be close for our entire lives. Something more than just friends, that much was evident.
But then my father ruined it. Ruined us.
Xander blames me, but I didn’t have a say in the matter.
If I could have stayed, I would have. No questions asked. If for nothing else, for him. I would have done anything for him. Just like he risked his life in that water to save mine.
I miss him. I miss my best friend whom I could play football with, who would dance to stupid rap songs to make me laugh, who knew just from looking at me if something was wrong.
Everything in my life feels so jacked up. My parents hate each other and me. My brother is gone. Xander and I hate each other. School sucks. I miss my friends back in London. I don’t have a real home anymore.
What am I supposed to do?
Lost in memories, the hair on the back of my neck prickles until my trance is broken. The sound of sand crunching under someone’s feet is getting louder behind me.
I don’t need to raise my head.
I know exactly who it is.
Or rather, my shattered heart does.
Chapter 14
Xander
“Are you going to tell me the damn beach is off limits now?” Charlotte asks in a flat voice, not bothering to even turn around. “Because I don’t have anywhere else to go. And this is my spot.”
I stop about half a foot behind her, words I want to say caught in the back of my throat, wedged like a thick lump of emotion that’s slowly choking the life out of me.
How the fuck did this even happen?
She left. For good.
I came to terms with that over time.
And now that she’s back, everything I’ve buried for so long is itching at the surface to explode, like a restless volcano on the verge of erupting.
But it isn’t just anger that I want to unleash.
It’s the other stuff…the stuff that made me…makes me…vulnerable.
Vulnerable. Weak. Lost.
It all results in the same end.
Death.
I cannot be fucking weak if I’m gonna survive this life!
But being this close to her again makes the anger dissipate.
The fury coursing through my veins has fizzled, and now I just feel empty.
Alone.
Hopeless.
Deep down, I know she didn’t have a choice. At sixteen, where was she really going without her safety net, a.k.a., Mommy and Daddy? It was insane for me to blame her for leaving and for abiding by her scumbag father’s wishes, but logic and sixteen-year-old-guy brain don’t mix well.
And for a year and a half, beneath all of the forced hatred lay despair.
Because I’d lost my best friend.
The one person I’d given my heart to, and the one person I never expected would throw it back.
Now she’s here, crouched over on the sand, her long blonde hair ruffled by the sea breeze. She sweeps a hand through it and gathers it to one side over her shoulder, leaving the other one bare. I remember my fingers trailing over her bronze skin the night she told me she loved me. It was so soft and smooth. And her lips…so sweet and at the same time salty from the chips she’d been munching.
I thought I’d finally gotten it all and won the game.
Stupid fucking kid.
I square my shoulders. I didn’t come here for a fight. I came here to clear my head, and it’s already a mess again.
Because of her.
Charlotte turns around, mascara streaking the underside of her big blue eyes. The tip of her nose is pink like it always is when she’s been crying. But she still manages to stun me into continued silence with a harsh glare. “There aren’t any walls out here for you to pin me up against.”
I shake my head. “There aren’t.” My voice is barely above a whisper, certainly not the threatening tone I normally use on her.
“Is that how you roll now? And you feel better about yourself when you’re tearing other people down?” Her words drip with malice, sounding very different than the story her expression tells. “Living what you learned, Xander?” She shakes her head and swipes at her puffy eyes. “I guess you finally gave in to the pressure of being an Iazetti, took your place in the family, and became the prick that your brother trained you to be.”
“Interesting how you can be so quick to point fingers away from yourself like you’re Little Miss fucking Perfect.” I fix a steely gaze on her. “You don’t have the goddamn right to judge me.”
“Don’t I, though?” she snaps, now fully swiveled around. My eyes drop to her luscious tits, the ones popping out of the plunging V of her top. I can feel my mouth water as I recall my fingers kneading them…
Aw, Christ. I need to stop this fucking trip down Memory Lane.
“And,” she continues, rising up on her knees. “Let’s not forget who you really are, errand boy. You were Jase’s bitch back then, and I seriously doubt things have changed since you’ve clearly turned into him!”
I fall to my own knees next to her on the sand and grab her wrist. Not to hurt her, but really to save myself since her fist was coming dangerously close to my face.
She lets out a dry laugh. “Oh, so that hit a nerve, huh? How is Jase, anyway? Still making you clean up his messes? You hated being his minion, and now it looks like you’ve got a couple of your own. New recruits?”
My chest tightens at the mention of my brother’s name. “You don’t know anything about me or what my life has become since you left!”
She narrows her eyes. “Well, let’s see. I bet Daddy is doing well judging by your ride, your clothes, and your toys. And how are you helping him do that? Do you just go around muscling people for cash? Is that how you contribute, Xander? Because the guy I used to know wanted none of that. He wanted to make his own way in life. He’d have never settled to be someone he wasn’t. Someone he loathed. But you know what?” she hisses through clenched teeth. “I guess we all end up being the puppet at one time or another.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickle at the hostility in her voice. Char definitely isn’t the same girl she was a couple of years ago. This version is angry, bitter, and sad. The despair doesn’t come through in her biting words, but I can see it clearly in her red-rimmed, crystal blue eyes, even though they’re still spitting fire in my direction.
A pang assaults my heart to think that I’ve contributed to her sorrow.
But fuck me if I let her see how her tears are shredding my heart a little bit at a time.
There’s a very fine line between love and hate, but I’ve spent so much time drowning in the hate that I don’t know if I can ever make it back to the other side.
Tears pool in her ey
es and she swipes them away as I place a hand on her shoulder. I didn’t even think about it. My hand acted completely on its own, shocking the hell out of both of us. She doesn’t speak. She just eyes my hand like it’s a snake slithering across her skin.
“I don’t need any more of your abuse,” she says with a sniffle, shifting so that her back is to me. “If that’s why you’re here, piss off. I don’t need another stalker.”
My brow furrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She waves her hand at me. “Nothing. Forget it. Just leave me the fuck alone.”
“Technically, this is a public place. I have a right to sit here if I want to,” I say, sliding closer to her.
She lets out a snort, still staring at the deep blue water. “Sure, why shouldn’t I get to have control over my personal space? It’s not like I have control over anything else in my freaking life.”
My fury recedes further as she chokes out a sob, slapping a hand over her mouth.
“Lemme guess. Daddy Dearest strikes again?”
Char tilts her head to the side so that she can see my profile. “You gave up your right to ask questions, remember? Right when you decided I wasn’t worth fighting for.”
I let out a deep sigh and drop my head into my hands. “That’s where you’re so wrong, Char. I’d never fought so hard for something in my entire life.”
“It sure seemed easy for you to run when things didn’t go your way.” She shoves my shoulder back. “Did you ever once think of how devastating it was for me to tell you that I loved you, and then watch you cut me out of your life?” The tears flow freely now, but I resist the urge to wrap my arms around her to pull her close.
“Char, there’s so much you don’t know,” I mumble. Yeah, I was selfish, but I’d also been young and stupid. My ego was shot, my dreams of a future with you slashed, my life turned completely upside down.
She’d been my lifeline, and her father severed it with a smug ass grin and a plane ticket.
I’d plunged head-first into darkness without her there to pull me out.
But it wasn’t her job to save me, especially since she herself had been held prisoner for far too long.
Puppet: Ridgeview Prep Book 1 Page 11
