Page 24 of Protected By the Mafia

Dante’s lips lifted in a chilling grin. “We have three.”

Felicity startled when the line connected. She knew the time difference between New Jersey and California, so she’d expected to be leaving a voicemail.

“This is Taylor.”

Felicity grinned. She answers so politely when she doesn’t know who’s calling. Barely resisting the urge to clear her throat, she said, “Hey, Tay. Sorry I—”

“Holy shit! Felicity? What number is this? Where are you calling me from? Please goddess tell me you’re calling from some SoCal airport, I fucking swear I’ll ditch and drive to whichever one just to come get you.”

Felicity laughed at the barrage. “Well at least I know you’ve been awake long enough to have your coffee. And here I thought I’d be leaving a message.”

“Speaking of which,” Taylor replied, “I’ve sent you like six that you still haven’t even opened. So what the hell, Felicity? I’m super serious. Are you okay?”

Felicity tucked her legs up beside her on the sofa, her gaze wandering around the spacious room. Of course, the living room also had a magnificent city view. And she was in a much better mood to enjoy the overall experience now. Though she did feel bad for the complete lie she was about to drop on her best friend. “I’m okay,” she said into the phone. “I mean, I’m not hurt and I’m doing what I can to pick things up again. I’m okay that way.”

Taylor clicked her tongue. “Nu-uh. No vague skipping over shit nonsense. What. The. Fuck. Happened? Did your crazy-ass brother do something?”

Felicity winced. “No,” she said. The sigh was easy, if not for the wrong reason. “If I dragged Tristán into this … well, somebody would end up dead.”

“That’s not even funny, chica.”

Felicity smiled. Taylor wasn’t the slightest bit Hispanic, and had taken Italian in high school, but she’d added a Spanish I course to her curriculum just so Felicity would have a friend she could sometimes speak it with. Never mind that in California, it wasn’t hard to find someone who spoke Spanish, anyway.

She gave her head a shake, refocusing on what she needed to be saying. “I wish I were joking.” She let Taylor hear her drawing a breath. “Are you sitting down? ‘Cause this is a wild one, even for me. Like, I wouldn’t believe me if I hadn’t been there. And for the love of your future career, step away from the nearest sharp objects!”

“Now you’re scaring me. Fine. I’ll sit down, but I’m not putting down my coffee.”

Firmly reminding herself that this short-term lie was critical in her continued survival, and potentially also in Taylor’s, Felicity dove into the story she and Cristiano had put together. It had to be a little bit of a whopper to explain the absolute silence and her calling from a new number, as well as persuade Taylor to download the more secure app. It just also had to be something less than ‘abducted by aliens for a day’ level crazy. And, of course, it couldn’t be the truth—for both their sakes.

So Felicity explained how her established creepy neighbor had finally crossed the line. Both she and Taylor had been waiting for the day, anyway, which was probably why Felicity didn’t feel bad throwing him under the bus. “I caught him in my apartment when I came out of the bathroom.”

“What?” Taylor screeched.

“I think I made a noise kind of like that, too,” Felicity said. “He was sniffing my sweater. It was like he’d lost track of himself.”

“Inside your apartment. While you were there.”

“Yeah….” Felicity had had more than one nightmare about Matt breaking into her apartment, with the way he leered at her and the way he continuously pushed her boundaries. She plowed ahead with the story. “I shrieked, I’m pretty sure, and he dropped my sweater and stared at me for a second. Then he grabbed up my cell phone from the coffee table and bolted. I’d have been impressed with how fast he moved if I wasn’t so horrified.”

“I’m sorry. Back up. He stole your phone?”

“But he left his pack of cigarettes. He’d set the box down, for whatever damn reason, and when he ran he took the wrong thing. I think.” She sighed, because the story only got harder. It had to. She had to convince Taylor that this outrageous but not unthinkable event had spiraled into one of the most unimaginably terrible days ever.

This involved claiming she’d rushed through getting properly dressed, since the inciting incident had purportedly happened in the morning, and involved her known-to-be-obnoxious landlord. The landlord, as he had in the past, took Matt’s side and Matt dropped an accusation of harassment. This led to her being cautioned that if she didn’t ‘back off’ she’d find herself out on the street. And ultimately, she wasted so much time on her fruitless attempt to retrieve her property and report her intrusive neighbor that she was late to work—where her unreasonable shift manager went off about too many lazy employees and cut her loose. Sending her into a panic about her entire livelihood. She said she was afraid Matt, who still had the phone, had or soon would hack into it and have access to her information.

All of that was the lie, of course. It was also the segue into her request for the new text app.

“Yeah, sure, I can do that. Just tell me the name.” Taylor’s words were slow, like she was still trying to catch up. “But what the hell are you gonna do? No way can you stay at that apartment. Now that that asshole’s gotten away with it once, goddess knows what he’ll try next.”

A smile that felt more bitter than happy lifted Felicity’s lips. “Trust me, I’ve already decided to spend as little time in that apartment as possible. I’m out, or I will be, as soon as I can. I’d stay in a motel but I can’t afford that nonsense, so last night I wedged up a homemade barricade and used my Kindle to try searching for roommate ads or budget apartments or whatever. I can’t say it’s a great situation, but I’ll make it work. As long as I find a new job.”

It struck her, as she spoke, that she was actually telling a fragment of truth. If nothing else, after missing two days of work with no contact, she surely would be fired. She’d been so overwhelmed with memorizing the story and the idea of lying to her best friend that she hadn’t fully processed that her job really was history.

She inadvertently let out a half-laugh. “On the bright side, I hated that job.”

Taylor snorted. “’Cause it was crap. But it was reliable income.”

“I’ll be fine,” Felicity said firmly. “I got myself successfully all the way across the country when I was barely eighteen, didn’t get terribly lost or murdered along the way. So I can definitely handle a few nights’ bad sleep, an urgent job hunt, and a simultaneous new-home hunt.”

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