And just like that, he ruined it.

No need to involve my parents, I told him. I asked Aly to be my girlfriend.

Grats! Tyler texted. Wait, she said yes, right?

Yeah. Do you mind if she comes over?

Not a problem, he said. Are you not going to be with her?

No, I told him. I have to take care of something, and then I’ll be back in an hour or two. Her house needs to get fumigated, so she’ll have her cat with her.

Great. That little shit hates me.

My grin returned. I’d never get over how special it made me feel that I was one of only two humans Fred tolerated. How dare you impugn the good name of my son.

Your son?

Yes. Sir Frederick Cappellucci-Hammond, the first of his name.

Tyler texted me an eye roll emoji. Thank fucking god there’s a woman in your life to take some of your weirdness off my hands.

Unlike Aly, Tyler didn’t seem to appreciate my particular brand of humor.

Thanks for this, I said. She’ll be there in a little while. I gave her a key so she could let herself in.

Daaamn. A key already? You went in hard. She know about your dad yet?

My grin slipped as a fresh wave of guilt washed over me. Not yet. She knows my childhood was rough, but not the full extent of it. I plan on telling her when I get home.

Let me know if you want me there to help explain it all, he said.

I think I’ll be okay, but thank you.

I switched back to Aly’s text thread. He’s cool with it.

You sure? she asked. This will sound horrible, but I didn’t even think about how he might feel about us until now.

Ha! I did the same thing. I blame you for it.

Me?! she wrote back. How is this my fault?

Oh, I think you know, I said. And don’t worry. He’s just happy I’m happy.

I’m happy you’re happy, too, she wrote.

The van jerked forward like the driver had stomped on the gas. My phone flew out of my hand, and I had to grab onto the bench to avoid joining it on the floor.

Junior slammed into the guy beside him and glared toward the driver’s seat. “What the fuck, Vinny?”

“The goddamn cops are at Bluhm’s house!” he yelled back.

Junior swore. “Slow down. Speeding past it will look suspicious.”

“I got warrants out on me,” Vinny said, his voice laced with panic.

Junior shot from his seat, pulling a gun from the inside of his fake power company jacket. He kneeled out of sight behind Vinny and pressed the muzzle to the man’s side. The sound of a safety clicking off echoed through the cabin.

“Slow. The fuck. Down,” Junior said.

Vinny eased his foot off the gas, and a chorus of relieved exhales rose around me. Jesus Christ, that was tense.

Junior whipped around and pinned me with a glare. “How the fuck are they here already?”

Every set of eyes in the rear of the van swiveled to me like I had all the answers, but all I could do was shrug. “I have no idea.”

Junior pulled the gun from Vinny’s side and dropped back into the seat across from me. He leaned over, elbows on his knees, and pinned me with his stare. “Start from the beginning and tell me everything that happened again. You guys must have slipped up somewhere.”

I reached for my phone on the floor. “Let me just tell Aly to be careful.”

Junior kicked the phone out of reach and pointed his gun at me. “Aly will be fine. You need to worry about yourself right now. Start talking, pretty boy.”

Oh, fuck.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter 19Aly

Icouldn’t have been awake for more than six hours, and I was already exhausted. I guess having my house broken into, aiding in the kidnapping and killing of a rapist, hauling his body halfway across the state, getting screamed at by a mobster, driving back into the city in full-blown terror that I was being followed, and then waiting for two hours in a cold autobody shop while my boyfriend’s car was repeatedly deep cleaned by a middle-aged black man named Lucius would do that to a woman.

And no, Lucius did not appreciate being asked about his time in Azkaban.

I still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t some kind of wizard. The fact that he’d spent the past hour and a half trying to set me on fire with his eyes was suspicious as hell. Unless he’d heard that joke before, in which case…fair.

A yowl came from the back seat of Josh’s car.

“I know, bud,” I told Fred. “Just hold on a few more minutes. We’re almost to Daddy’s.”

Great, now Josh had me saying it, too.

I checked my rearview for what felt like the hundredth time. I’d ordered Greg not to follow me when we parted ways at my house, but I didn’t trust the little shit not to lie. Josh already owed my uncle a favor for this; the last thing I wanted was to lead Nico straight to Josh’s apartment. Although, if Josh ghosted me for much longer, maybe I’d get mad enough to change my mind.

The light ahead turned red, and I slowed to a stop behind a line of cars, taking the opportunity to check my phone. Again. Still nothing from Josh or any of my male relatives, despite my increasingly threatening texts to the latter. If they hurt my boyfriend, so help me, god, I was going to spend the rest of my life making them regret it. It would be a non-stop campaign of terror. Roadkill left on their cars. Thumbtacks in their shoes. Random pizzas delivered to their house with notes saying they were sent from the feds.

They would never know peace again.

I prayed that I was actually getting ghosted and something horrible hadn’t happened since Josh stopped texting me. The last thing I said to him was that I was happy he was happy. If he were any other man, I would have spiraled, thinking that I’d driven him away by being too romantic, too soon, but this was Josh we were talking about. He gleefully saw my “too soon” and raised me a “we now share a child.”

Which meant something had probably gone wrong. Fuck.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about it. I had Fred with me, and if his increasingly pitiful yowls were anything to go by, he needed to get to a litter box, pronto. Even after I got him set up at Josh’s, it wasn’t like I could leave him there and go back to my uncle’s house. Greg told me to lie low for a while, which meant staying away from my fed-attracting family.

Going to them had clearly been a mistake. Josh and I should have taken our chances, hacked Brad apart ourselves, and dealt with the aftermath in therapy later. Or at least I should have. After Josh’s initial reaction to Brad’s body, jumping straight to dismemberment probably would have been a step too far for him.

The light turned green.

“Just focus,” I told myself, easing my foot off the brake.

Greg gave me a list of instructions I still had to follow, including scouring myself in the shower and scraping underneath my finger and toenails. I’d changed at my house, handing my dirty clothes and shoes over to a guy named Guido, minus the bra and underwear because, ew, no. I wasn’t about to give my unmentionables to some gross old mobster.

The phones Josh and I had been texting on were burners. He’d had a spare for me “just in case,” and yes, I had side-eyed him for that statement. We’d left our real ones at my house, so if our phone records were ever looked into, it would show we’d been there throughout the night. I had them with me now, along with Josh’s laptop and two bags filled with mine and Fred’s things.

Another yowl echoed through the car, louder and longer than before.

“Cross your legs or something,” I told Fred. “We’re almost there.”

A second later, I realized it wasn’t him but a siren.

The leather covering the steering wheel creaked as I death-gripped it. A check in my rearview revealed a cop car screaming up the street behind me, lights flashing. My heart slammed into my ribs as I slowly eased the car toward the side of the road along with everyone else.