Page 8 of Ruthless Consequences

My eyes focused on her side of the room. Above her two mattresses, neatly made with Hoffa licking her paws in the center, were tacked up posters she’d printed herself. Various images of the Fausti family stared back at me. She’d find them in articles and then take them to the local print shop and have them blown up. Only her favorites took up spaces on the wall. On her bedside table, she had a box filled with alphabetically organized members of the family—their pictures cut out and laminated, almost like baseball playing cards.

I picked up the last one she’d done. Brando Fausti. All his stats were listed below his name and picture. He was fine—most of them were—but…damn. He was intimidating. He was impossibly gorgeous, but with a dangerous vibe that clearly stated,I dare you to fuck with me.

She was obsessed with them. Totally consumed. It was past scary. It was fucking dangerous.

A sick feeling rolled through my stomach when I thought of her out there, doing her thing, and one day maybe crossing the wrong one. I set the card back where it was, not wanting to disturb her shrine, and plopped down on my bed. It was across from hers.

A cross hung on my side of the wall.

Our room perfectly described us. After our mom left, I had nothing to…cling to, except keeping us together. Ava, on the other hand, clung to me at first. As she got older, it was a dark world in which she seemed to find a crack of light.

“Look,” she’d say, pointing to one of the posters at night. “So ruthless, but what would he do for love? Everything.” She’d get this dreamy sound to her voice, and then she’d fall right asleep.

I dialed her number, and while it rang, I looked at the two pictures on my nightstand. One of the three of us—Sonny looking on in the background. Then one I kept turned down. It was better that way, unless it became unbearable, and I had to glance at it. I didn’t need a reminder of what I’d lost, but of something that had been mine.

“Lucila? Lucila!”

“Ava.”

“What are you doing? Why weren’t you answering my calls?”

I sighed out a heavy breath. “I’m laying here while your psychotic cat looks at me like she’s about to pounce.”

“That’s her way of showing love,” she said. “Why haven’t you been answering?”

“Long night.”

“Did you fall asleep in the bathtub again?”

“You know me so well.”

“You don’t have gills, Luci. One day you might drown.”

“Yeah. Maybe so.”

I heard her take a sip of something, probably coffee. The city was alive in the background. She was probably hustling to get back to the office so she could report on another wave of crime, especially after the blackout we’d had.

“Molly told me,” she said, “how awful Sonny looks. His hair was matted to his head with blood.”

“Pistol-whipped,” I said. “Courtesy of Mo.”

She took another sip. “How much?”

“You’ll laugh, but it won’t be funny.”

“He gets what he deserves—”

“I’m paying it,” I said.

Ava had her own feelings for Sonny Girardi, and call me softhearted, but sometimes I looked at him and couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Not that his behavior was excusable, but I understood how it felt to be…left. Ava got hit, and she learned to hit back even harder. But she’d never been in love. She’d been in infatuation with a bunch of posters on her wall for most of her life. With a bunch of men who stole other men’s hearts while they were still beating, then sent them back to their families. She was infatuated with the villain because he’d sacrifice the entire world for her, not the other way around.

But sometimes villains were just that. Villains. That included being selfish. Yeah, they might take out the entire world for a woman, but I was willing to bet my ass to Mo that there would be something in it for them too. Villains always had an angle—and they’d play it until all the money ran out. Even after that, they’d always go back for more for as long as they could.

“Luci,” she said, and I could tell she’d stopped walking. Probably leaning against a building, fuming at what I’d done. “Why?Whydid you bail him out?”

“Why do you make connections and deal with villains every day?”

“That’s my job!”

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