Page 64 of Devious Lies

“Who did he work for?” Luc asks.

But I can see in the way he’s gripping the steering wheel he knows I’m not going to say something like Walmart.

“A drug dealer. Papi was his top enforcer.”

Luc makes a dark, rumbling sound, and I know he is not happy.

“I was young, and it was all just normal. Just my everyday life. His odd hours. Having guns in the house. Strangers in and out. My parents were very much in love. Luc, my mother is the best person I know. If she didn’t question it, I wasn’t going to.”

“Why did your father get killed?”

“I don’t know. Everything was fine. Then, suddenly, it wasn’t.”

“And you came back here, to the Den, after six years on the run, for what? To trick us? To use me?” he asks, and it is like a knife through my heart.

“No! Luc, please! I need you to know I didn’t ever plan this. I didn’t plan us. Mami got sick, and I’ve been sending money. But this time, it’s so much worse, and I had to come back. I’m scared I’ll lose her.”

I sneak a glance at Luc, and his eyes are on the road. If it wasn’t for the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth telling me his jaw is clenched, I would think he had no feelings about this at all.

But he is mad. At me. And it hurts.

I know he has questions. But he bites his tongue.

He must be a phenomenal lawyer.

Unattached.

Steady.

Unemotional.

But it’s killing me to see him so expressionless.

Still, and he knows how to listen. And suddenly it’s like I can’t stop talking.

“I, uh, I was talking to one of his boss’ sons. Just flirting. It was all new. He got killed before my father. His two remaining sons were pissed off, and they blamed him. It was at my father’s funeral that the younger brother decided I was his property.”

Luc exhales, and it is ripe with disgust. I just don’t know who it’s aimed at.

But still, I continue.

All the guilt I feel for hiding and lying won’t let me do anything else.

“He, um, he tried to, you know. So, that night, Mami and I made a plan for me to run. And I did. For six years. It seems stupid, but he scared me. He still drops in on my mother under the pretense of checking in on his father’s old enforcer’s widow. But I know that’s not the reason,” I whisper, even though saying it out loud makes me sound so weak and stupid.

He still doesn’t talk, and we are just a few minutes away now.

“Luc, I know this looks bad,” I say, desperate to explain my side.

“I know you think I was trying to get Nico’s attention?—”

“I don’t want to know if you have feelings for Nico,” he growls, and I see the vein in his forehead throbbing.

“No! I don’t have any feelings for him at all! I mean, I respect him. And Anna is becoming my friend now, so, I like the fact that he’s good to her. But Luc, I never felt like this about him,” I blurt.

“Felt like what?” he asks, and I am trapped once more in his steel gaze.

“You know,” I whisper, but he doesn’t let me off the hook.

---