Page 70 of Raziel
She just stared at me. Then, without another word, she yanked her phone out and stabbed a button. She held my defiant gaze as she put it on speaker.
“Priest.” Her voice was clipped. “Your friend. Raziel. Tell her. Tell her exactly who his family is again because she’s hardheaded, and tell her why she can’t keep that goddamn car his father gave her.”
Priest’s gravelly voice filled the air. “He’s old school. Like, Sicilian-mama-stirring-the-gravy-while-he’s-in-the-back-cutting-fingers-off kind of old school. He doesn’t raise his voice. Doesn’t threaten. He decides. He’ll kiss your cheek one day and have you zipped in a suitcase the next.”
He got quiet like he was contemplating his next words.
“Keep the car, Maya. You don’t turn down anything from men like Raffaele Mercier. Because when they give you something, they’re not just being generous. They’re marking you. Saying ‘she’s one of mine.’ And that? That can save your life one day. Especially your life, since you’re always fucking up…”
Miyori was so mad her lips were twitching.
I laughed in her face. “Exactly. His daddy’s on my side. I’m not pissing him off.”
She hung up on him.
“You’re being a fool!”
“Your husband, the mobster—the one who knows facts about this life—told me I’m not,” I countered. I’d had enough of this lecture. I turned, pulled the door open, and slid back into my beautiful, paid-for ride. I rolled down the window. “See you around, Mi.”
“When his fiancée finds out, then what?” she yelled back.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t care who said what. I was keeping my car.
My phone rang. I checked it. It was Matteo. I had texted him a couple of times since the diner and the beach. He had been calling me often, but I was either with Raziel or just didn’t feel like answering. In another life. Maybe.
The high from my new car lasted the whole drive home. But it curdled the second I turned onto my street. A silver BMW was parked in front of my house. And against it was Alessia.
Miyori had jinxed my ass.
My blood went from warm to ice-cold in a second. I parked rough behind her car and got out.
“Why are you at my house?” I said. I kept my voice low and dangerous.
Alessia pushed off the door, a vicious, pretty little smile on her face. She walked over, stopping at the hood of my car. “New car? Raziel buy it?”
She continued before I could get a word in or even say no.
“Don’t bother lying. I know he bought it for you. I know about the bike. I know everything. There are cameras in my father’s house, you stupid bitch. You think you’re so clever? Man-stealing like your sister. He might have called off the engagement, but it won’t last. When he gets bored with you, he’ll be back. You’re his little project, his trashy distraction.”
“What you mean he called off the engagement?” Raziel had been at my house nearly every day for a month and two weeks, and he never mentioned it. When did this happen?
“He did it because you told him to,” she accused.
Before I could even form a retort, she turned. And then the sound came before the realization.
It was a violent, shocking screech of metal tearing through metal.
She dragged her key down the entire length of the driver’s side door.
The sound caused a physical pain in my chest.
“That’s what I think of you!” she spat when she finished, her eyes wild with a triumph that made me see red. “You’re a cheap, ugly Black mark!”
I audibly gasped.
Did this bitch just call my Black ass a Black mark? She may not have meant it like I was thinking, but still—this bitch had scratched my beautiful car.
Something in me broke. Snapped clean in two.
