Page 50 of Alliance

Her fingers find the charm dangling from her throat and I watch as she delicately brushes her thumb over the metal. “That night…” She trails, her eyes avoiding mine. “Why...why were you there?” As she whispers the question her gaze comes back to mine and I can see the pain that sits there, lingering in her hazel eyes.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to be her. I’ve had this image of her family in my head for years, this idea that money just automatically makes everyone happy and that there were no exceptions. But I can see now how I was. Money hasn’t made Lana happy, it’s only built a cage around her.

I don’t want to answer her question, because I know it won’t solve anything for her. It won’t give her closure or make anything better.

“Lana…” I don’t know how to say the words, my voice breaking as I say her name. I scrub a hand over my face. “I moved her body.” The words feel heavy on my tongue, wrong.

“I never understood,” she whispers, “why everyone thought she was in the Quarter that night.”

“Marcus had me move her, your father didn’t want the police in the house.”

She laughs, a rough sound, not at all the melodic one I’d become used to. “Sounds right,” she says. “Asshole.”

“Lana!” Her mother’s voice is a high-pitched screech, wailing through the room, and suddenly I’m transported to the last time I was in this mansion, to the night her sister jumped off the balcony.

I was with Marcus when he had gotten the call, dropping off a wad of cash. He had sighed heavily in response to the news given over the phone. Then he hung up and his eyes landed on me. “You want to earn your place in this family?” He had asked me in only the way that powerful men do, like there is an option associated with their question when we both know that the only acceptable answer is yes.

So I nodded my head.

The job was a cleanup. The Romanos, despite the fact their daughter had just committed suicide, didn’t want cops at their house. So we moved the body, me and another man from Marcus’s crew. We scrubbed any trace of her from the concrete beneath her balcony and moved her to a club outside of the Quarter, tossing her body from a third floor patio and paying the owner off.

Money in the right hands can make most stories stick and within a week the cops were leaving Damien Romano alone, giving him space to grieve.

What kind of parents do this to their children? Making them so miserable to the point of not wanting to live. And then moving her body so they don’t have to accept any blame for their actions.

There’s a part of me, a naive child, that thinks they’ll call it off. That one death and scare is enough. But then again, I think I know something Lana doesn’t.

That this deal is more than just analliancebetween two powerful families. Underneath the image and connections there’s a business deal that’s been waiting for years to be made.

Damien reaches for the collar of my shirt, pulling me off the bed and away from his daughter. “You,” he growls, the words coated with venom as if I’m the one who hurt his daughter.

He didn’t need any help with that.

“What did you do to her?” he asked, slamming my spine against her bedroom wall. “She was fine until you showed up. Fuckingtrash,”he snarls.

My eyes coat with red, blurring my vision. Compared to him, I’m a fucking angel. A pure, heavenly angel. I’ll never be like him, I would never put my child in the position that he put Lana in. Anger boils in my veins at his words.

I’m not the villain here.

I push back, using my forearm against his chest and spin him around. I shove his back against the wall, pinning my arm to his neck as I push down.

“Me?” I growl. “This was all you, Damien. What did you think would happen when you sold her off to that psychopath? You thought she’d dance off into the sunset?” I press harder on his throat, the anger making me reckless.

The only thing to pull me out of my tunnel vision is Lana’s sad cry from behind me. “Stop.”

I ease my grip on Damien and he uses the advantage, pushing me off him. “Ya little prick.”

“Stop,” Lana yells again. “I’m fine, it’s not his fault.”

Damien doesn’t look happy as he straightens out his shirt. “You better get the fuck out of my house.” He angles his jaw toward the door, his eyes locked on me.

I can’t leave her here. I don’t trust them, and I don’t know where Lana’s head is right now. What will happen if I abandon her with these two?

“It’s okay, Naz,” she says and smiles weakly. “I promise you, I’m fine. I won’t mess up again.” She’s staring at me deeply, trying to convey a message through her eyes. Sayingdon’t worry about me.But the thing is, I can’t stop worrying about her. She’s the only place I’ve felt safe, somewhere I could call home. With her, I could finally breathe. If only for a moment.

And I would do anything to get back to that moment, of happiness andrelief.

I want her eyes to tell me that we’ll get there. That this is just a roadblock in our path together.

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