Page 16 of Little Nightmare

He nodded. “Just enough to sedate you.”

“Just enough to make me forget what I want to remember,” I whispered. “Let me feel it, all of it Ace. I don’t need the drugs.”

He hesitated then said. “Close your eyes and forget for a few hours—you have a lifetime to remember, Raven.”

6

ACE

The one where all you have are secrets, cigars, whiskey, and blood.

She was throwing attitude again, but this time she was doing it in an exhausted way I couldn’t ignore. She needed sleep more than she needed food or anger, and I’d already gotten a few bites down her.

Without asking permission—not that I thought she would at any point do so—she stared at the stairway and then got up and slowly started walking.

I followed silently behind her.

When we stopped at the door, she rested her head against it. “I don’t need help sleeping, and I don’t like drugs.”

She needed to sleep deeply so she wouldn’t get sick and so she could stay on alert. She didn’t know it and she never would, but she just became my greatest fear and I’d stop at nothing to keep her safe even if it meant I’d be keeping her safe from herself and her own lack of self-preservation.

I opened my mouth but before I got any words out, a throat cleared behind me. “Boss wants you.”

It was Ivan.

I released a rough exhale. “Which one?”

“Did I say boss? I meant all of them, well most of them, we have too many bosses and underbosses to count. Thank God most of them are in Seattle with the Russians for the next month while we monitor things here.”

It really was a true skeleton crew.

The Alfero boss was here.

Serena and Junior were here representing the Abandonatos.

Phoenix was standing watch and communicating with everyone else and keeping a close eye on Ivan while he stepped into his new role, and while we had a lot of men present, that was basically it.

I couldn’t even begin to imagine how crazy it was when the entire Cosa Nostra plus half the Russians and some of the families from Sicily got together.

The only sane reason the FBI looked the other way was because half of the family actively worked for them and kept Fentanyl off the streets and put an end to so much sex trafficking they would get awards—then again they fought fire with fire and took lives in order to do so.

“Yeah,” I rasped. “Coming.”

Raven chose that moment to escape into her room and shut the door in my face.

I turned to Ivan.

He was still in his suit, though his black tie was long gone and the tattoos on his chest were on pure display while he stared at the solid blue door. “She’ll get there, it’s still raw.”

I made a non-committal noise. “She needs to get there faster. Whoever killed Louis is still on the loose, and we both know who did it.”

“We have no proof. Don’t let your past affect your future when you’re finally out of that shit hole.”

Venice wasn’t a shit hole.

It was one of my only good memories of this life.

The five families took me in, they trained me to be the best, then sent me away to help strengthen the De Lange name in Sicily—they were the reason I was in Venice, the reason I finally fell into darkness, mistaking it for light.

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