Page 53 of Bad Blood
That’s when I know the next thirty minutes are going to be the longest of my life.
“What thefuckhave you done, Thalia?” Sam roars, leaping away from the wall to slam his hand across the closing doors. “You just took this war to the next level.”
Edier pulls him back again as I shrink against the carriage wall. “Leave it,” he murmurs, authoritative as always. “She’ll explain herself when she’s ready.”
“Damn right, she will.” Taking a step back, Sam flings open my apartment door for me. “Get inside and take that stupid dress off. You look like a clown.”
“A clown, huh?” For a second, I’m so angry, I can’t speak. “Try walking a mile in these, Sam Sanders.” I surge forward to shake my Louboutins in his handsome face. “Believe me when I say you’d break your fucking ankles before you hit the sidewalk.”
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused?”
“Why don’t I take an extra long shower, and then you can tell me all about it?”
His gaze dips to what’s left of my wedding dress again. “You can wash all you want, but you’ll still stink of Carrera.”
“Tell that to your dick after you screwed his sister last year.”
“Cut it out,” Edier snarls at the both of us. “Don’t let that Carrera bastard divide us any more than he has already.”
That’s when it hits me. The weight of this bad blood was always going to drown us, but standing here in this hallway with two boys I used to steal cars with, for the first time I can feel our heads slipping under.
We’re all connected now, whether we want to be or not—Santi, me, Edier, Ella, Sam, Lola… It’s a generational fuck-up, like a computer glitch in our matrix. We’re programmed to hate each other for as long as our fathers tell us to, no matter the pain, the anguish, the violence…
I glance down at my wedding ring, and catch Sam doing the same.
Cursing under his breath, he stalks off down the hallway, and for a fleeting moment I wonder if he knows that Lola was shot the other day. I don’t know the details of what went down between them, but it was enough to turn the most popular boy on Rutgers campus into a killing machine.
“Are you going to take aim at me, too?” I ask Edier warily.
He regards me for a moment, all six-foot-two inches of cool self-assurance. No one else would dare provoke him like this and expect to get away with it.
Ella and I have special decompensation, though. Or Ella does... I think my status got revoked a couple of hours ago.
“Jesus, Thalia, why did you do it?” he says, shaking his head at me. “You have a problem in this city, you come to me?”
The disappointment in his voice kills me more than his words.
Shame turns to accusation.
“Did you guys shoot up Legado last night?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Even Sam stops and turns at this.
“He told me, Edier.”
“And you believed him?”
“Just tell me it isn’t true...”
“You heard what he wanted you to hear.” He catches Sam’s eye over my shoulder and mouths a name at him, but he says it so fast I don’t have a chance to lip read.
“So, you’re saying youdidn’torder it?”
“I’m saying that Santi Carrera has an agenda, and it doesn’t include giving a damn about you, whatever you might think.” Edier jerks his head toward the open door. “Time to face the music. He’s been waiting up most of the night for you.”
I bet he has.
