Page 3 of Devious Lies

I back up.

“Hey! That’s my daughter,” Papi snarls.

I don’t want them to fight, so I rush to do as he asks. Mami is by his side, and she looks scared and frantic.

There’s so much blood, and between the cursing and shouting, I can hardly hear myself think.

I don’t know what’s going on, but I hear words like trap, set up, and went bad. It’s enough for me to know something horrible happened.

“M-Mia,” Carmine stutters my name and blood dribbles down his chin. He’s gurgling and trying to reach for me, but I’m scared, frozen against the wall.

By the time the sun sets on Carmine, it’s dark outside. I feel hollow. Empty.

Maybe it’s shock.

I mean, the man I’d only kissed twice, who I only just started talking to really, is lying dead on my couch.

Sanchez sends a cleaner crew to come collect his dead son and the others who’ve been injured. They’ve been holed up in my parents’ bedroom.

I don’t miss the side-eye Junior gives my father. Or the leer Matteo directs at me when they leave.

I feel scared. And dirty.

My mother is scrubbing frantically at the ruined sofa, and my father pulls her away from her futile task. She sobs and he hugs her to his chest.

I’ve never seen fear in my father’s eyes before, but I see it now. And it’s gutting me.

“Papi?”

“Hush, mija. It will be alright.”

PROLOGUE 2-MIA/MARIA

Afew weeks later.

I’m standing outside in the cold with my mother sobbing beside me. It’s January, the coldest month of the year in the Garden State.

The ground is almost too hard for the machinery to dig a proper grave. I feel numb. Alone. And scared.

My father is dead.

Just another statistic, killed in some random accident.

At least, that’s what they told me and my mother. I can’t help the thoughts in my head.

Enrico Sanchez and his two remaining sons are standing opposite me and my mother. He looks older, this man who has so much power.

Maybe the death of his favorite son is taking its toll.

I don’t know. I am numb today.

They don’t say anything.

Not exactly.

But it’s the way Matteo keeps looking at me that leaves me uneasy.

My father is, was, a well-known man.

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