Page 12 of Mafie Trials

I wipe the tears from my face and finally look at these men. “This is so fucked up, why is Boris here if he isn’t after me?”

I see Alexi flinch out of the corner of my eye, and I brace myself for more. I have a feeling the next few days are going to make my brain feel like it’s in overdrive. But I want to know. I need to know it all so I can figure out what the fuck I’m going to do with my life.

“Just tell me,” I say to him as I lean back into Lev. His arms move lightly around me, careful to avoid the stitches. I relax in his hold. If anyone makes me feel safe, it’s him. So I let myself embrace it.

Alexi sits in front of me, his tired eyes looking so broken and disheveled, so very not… him. “I’ll tell you if you tell us what’s going on. Why are you here?”

I take a deep breath, ready for this to be over. “My uncle sent me to get close to you all. He wanted us to create an alliance so I would be trusted and welcome to come visit you. He wanted me to get close enough to Boris to take him out.”

They must have figured as much because none of them so much as flinch, but I need to tell them everything so we can maybe move past this.

“I was supposed to relay information to him so he could work on weakening the organization from the outside. That way, when I did go after Boris, I didn’t look like the prime suspect. I wanted to tell you, to work with you. In fact, I was coming to tell you everything when…”

I trail off, shaking my head. I can’t change the past any more than I can force myself to grow wings and fly away from all of this.

“Anyways, I told him I planned to bring you guys into the loop and this,” I gesture to my body, “must have been his way of telling me no.”

Now that I think about it, every time I wanted to do something different than him, I ended up suffering in some way. I thought maybe it was just how I had to learn, but now I’m thinking he had more of a hand in it than I realized at the time.

“How did he know where I was?” I ask Havoc.

“I think that’s enough information for one day, E.”

Doc walks into the room then. “I think I can help fill you in there,” he says. “During your surgery, there was a weird object that kept showing up behind your rib cage on images. When we were fixing the wound on your abdomen, I looked around and found this.”

He holds up a small tracker and my blood goes cold. There is only one time that he could have put that in me. I shiver and Lev sits us up, knowing what’s coming. But I’m so fucking done with this feeling of pain and misery, dread and sorrow. I’m just done. I want to not feel for five whole minutes.

I grab the button that gives me pain medication and push it twice, knowing that the dose is enough to knock me out. I just need a minute, and I can’t think of another way to make the world stop spinning so fast.

“Let’s just give her some time,” Lev says. He gestures for everyone to leave, and no one questions him. He turns us so that we are on our sides facing each other.

“Just let it run its course. I’m here, okay? I love you, and I’m not going anywhere.” His hands go to my hair as my eyes start to feel heavy. He makes everything feel so much easier. I let his presence soothe me into sleep.

???

I jolt awake at the sound of the door sliding open, afraid it’s Boris. Alexi never did tell me why he was here. But instead, Laney walks into the room. I smile at my friend as I settle back into the bed. Lev sits up and gives me a kiss on the forehead before getting out of the bed.

“I’ll let you girls talk while I go grab us coffee,” he says, slipping out of the room.

When I look back at Laney, something feels off. “More bad news?” I ask, rolling onto my back and pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “Just get it over with.”

I don’t look at her but I hear her sit on the edge of the bed. “Before we get into this, I need you to know I chose you. Ever since the first day we met, I chose you.”

I remember Havoc saying people here were working for my uncle and dread settles in my stomach over what I’m about to hear. My shoulders feel like bricks are weighing me down and I want to turn away if only to wait and face this on another day. But that’s not an option.

“I had to play his game until my family could go into hiding, or he would have killed them.” She opens her laptop and I watch as she pulls up an encrypted email. “But I want you to see everything I didn’t tell him.”

I’m tempted to read through it all, to know every little detail so that we can find a way to use it against him, but the look on her face tells me she’s being honest with me. I can’t handle another lie, another betrayal right now. I get the feeling that if she could give me any piece of information that might be vital to turning the tides at this moment, then she would.

I know I can trust her. She did come to me after all. She’s fought by my side through all of this. If my uncle was threatening her family, then I get why she would need to play his game.

“I don’t need to read it, I already know this friendship is real.” It doesn’t mean the realization doesn’t hurt like hell, but maybe the information they exchanged can help me figure out what my uncle is up to and why.

“The look on your face alone is enough to tell me how hurt you are by all of this.” I’m hurt too that she felt she couldn’t trust me with this truth before I almost died, but I’m not sure if I can hold any more anger in my heart. “Do I wish you would have told me sooner? Yeah, but we both had walls to break down, and I feel like we learned to do that together.” The look on her face tells me there’s more though.

She takes a deep breath before ruining our relationship for good. “I switched the video. Alexi never put that video in the email. It was me. I tried to find you to try to pull you away, but…” she trails off as my face contorts. It could have been anything. Anything but that and I would have let her walk out of this room, having forgiven her without a second thought.

“You let me believe he did that, you kept swearing it had to be him,” I say, my voice deathly calm while my insides tremble like an earthquake. As if the foundation of my very being is cracking.

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