Page 95 of Enzo DeLuca

Chapter Twenty-Two

Eve

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She’d fallen asleepin the car.

After arriving home, she and Enzo showered in the main house because that’s where the new set of night shift guards were awaiting them. In the shower, Enzo checked every inch of her body to make sure she wasn’t hurt anywhere. She did the same to him. Long after they’d finished showering, they remained under the lukewarm spray of water, holding each other.

He didn’t speak, and neither did she. They simply held on to each other. Sometimes, words weren’t needed. After their shower, Giorgio checked in via phone and let them know he was alright. He wanted to make sure the house was guarded. Enzo assured him that it was. Once she and Enzo got into bed, she rested her head on her don’s chest and listened to his heartbeat.

“Are you ready to tell me now?” he asked.

There was no point in asking him what he was talking about. She already knew.

“Yes,” Eve whispered. Ready or not, it was time. She took a deep breath and then told him about her past. “My real name is Eden,” she confessed.

“Eden? Where does Eve come from?”

“It’s my twin sister’s name. She passed away a couple of weeks before your grandfather did. She was the firefighter, not me. She’d gotten tired of seeing so much destruction and death while at work. She decided to leave it all behind and came up with the idea to start a travel blog for black women. Her goal was to visit foreign places and write reviews on the best hotels and showcase the best restaurants. Oh, and to let travelers know where they could find black hair care products in any country. She wanted to let black women know that it was safe for us to step outside of our comfort zone and see the world. This is our planet too. We can roam it like anyone else. But, she never got to live that dream, all because of me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I should probably start from the beginning. My sister and I didn’t know our real parents. Our mom put us up for adoption when we were infants. We were adopted by a family in Illinois. But, my sister was sickly. The family didn’t want a sickly child, so she was put back up for adoption. That was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to her. Because my adopted parents were abusive as fuck. As I grew up, they didn’t even tell me I had a twin sister. There were no pictures of us in the house. Nothing. When my adopted mother passed away from a drug overdose, my adoptive dad began looking at me funny. I was fifteen at the time. I was young, but I understood that look. It’s sad, but most young girls understand that look. We see it often from grown-ass men who have no business looking at us. I ended up running away before things could get really bad. I was taken in by a lady who sold drugs. Everyone in the hood called her Ms. Maureen. But, Ms. Maureen didn’t only sell drugs, she also worked for the Dark Net.”

“I’ve heard of the Dark Net. Hitmen for hire. Right?”

“And women. Maureen had me run drugs for her for a while. In return, I was able to live in the basement of her home with another teenager who was two years older than me. When I turned eighteen, Maureen told me I was becoming more expensive to clothe and feed. She gave me two options. To pay her back, I could either start working the streets as a streetwalker, or I could work for the Dark Net like my roommate was doing.”

“So, you chose to kill people?”

“Don’t judge me,” Eve whispered.She’d already judged herself enough.

“Trust me,” Enzo told her. “I’m not judging you. How could I?”

“It wasn’t an easy decision. But my roommate, Sienna, made it look easy. She and Maureen trained me. And I became an official hit woman by the age of nineteen. By twenty-one, I had twenty hits under my belt. Sienna and I quickly became Maureen's go-to people for jobs. A few years later, I was working a job in Chicago. I started a fire to cover up my crime. As I was fleeing the scene, I got blocked in by nosy ass onlookers who were trying to get a look at the fire, and I ended up coming face to face with a firefighter who looked exactly like me. Not a little bit, but exactly like me. It was like time stood still, and she and I just stared at each other. After that, I began looking into her. I found out which firehouse she worked at. I checked her background. I learned she was adopted, like me. She had the same birth date as me. She was born to the same woman as me. She was my sister.”

Eve chuckled.

“What’s funny?” Enzo asked.

“It’s crazy but, the moment I saw her, I fell in love with her. Notthatkind of love.”

Enzo smiled. “I know what you mean.”

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