Page 32 of The Woman with the Target on her Back (Grassi Family)

“Are you safe? Are you home?” she asked.

“Yes and no,” I said. “We figured that, for the time being, it might not be smart for me to be at my house.”

“I get that. So long as you’re safe. What about your cameras? Didn’t you catch them?”

To that, I sighed. “No. They were tampered with.”

“Those bastards,” Sheryl grumbled.

“Yeah. I’ll figure it out and get back on my feet, though,” I assured her. I wasn’t exactly rolling in money, but I could get by with the shop being closed for a week or two.

“Of course you will. No one can keep your stubborn ass down.”

“Exactly,” I agreed, but I suddenly had the urge to crawl into bed, and not come out again for several weeks. “You should make other plans for your berries, though,” I told her.

“I hate that, but we can’t let them go to waste.”

“No,” I agreed. “Hey, you be safe out there, okay? These guys… they… you don’t want to fuck with them, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “I promise.”

“If she’d seen or heard anything, she would have mentioned it,” I said, turning my ringer back on in case the hospital called. “So, what’s the plan for today?” I asked, looking between them.

“Depends on you,” August said. “What are some of your local haunts or places you go to talk to people?”

“The farmer’s market, but it’s not open today. Ah, the soup kitchen. The halfway house…”

“Angel, you really are making the rest of us seem like slackers with all the do-gooding,” Aurelio said, shaking his head at me.

“Just doing my part,” I said, shrugging it off.

Though, honestly, I wasn’t just doing my part. I was doing my father’s part too. Some part of me felt guilt about him taking bribes from the very people who were tearing our community apart. I kind of did what I could to try to… undo some of that damage.

“Why don’t you and August hit one of your places?” Aurelio suggested. “I am going to see someone our Family knows about the local crews,” he said. It clearly came as a surprise to August too, judging by the way his brows were pinched.

“Yeah. Let me just change into clean clothes,” I said, getting up, and making my way into the bedroom, knowing the boys wanted to do some super secret mafia dude talking.

Maybe I should have felt left out, but I had to accept that there were parts of their life that I wasn’t going to be able to know about, even if this whole situation had to do with me.

I changed into some yoga pants and a fresh tee, then made my way back out to find Aurelio gone, and August waiting for me.

“Where to first?” he asked.

“The grocery store.”

“The… why?” he asked.

“Because there’s no reason for me to show up at the soup kitchen or the halfway house randomly in the middle of the day unless I am bringing something to drop off.”

“Right. That makes sense,” he agreed, leading me out into the hall and toward the stairwell.

“Can we take the stairs instead?” I asked. I usually had Aurelio to make the request for me, and I felt awkward making it myself.

“Is this a ‘elevators waste energy’ kind of thing?” he asked, but went toward the door for the stairwell without any more fuss.

“It’s a ‘I like to move my body on occasion’ kind of thing.”

“You’ve heard of gyms, right?” he asked as we started down.

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