Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Once we’re in the sky, I lean back and take Kacia’s hand in mine.
“We have one more stop before we head home,” I say quietly as Adrienne, Niccolo, and Tony go over what happened back at the house again. Tony makes a big show of going over every last detail and acting it all out, laughing the whole time. “I should’ve warned you, but honestly, I wasn’t sure we’d make it this far.”
“Wherever you’re taking me, it can’t be worse than that basement.”
I turn to look out the window as the LA lights flash past, grow small, grow distant, and disappear.
Over the hum of the engines, I say, “We’re headed to Greece. We’re headed back to Crete.”
Chapter 29
Kacia
I take a long, hot shower.
I scrub every inch of my body, from my toes to my hair. I wash myself over and over again until my skin is pink and raw—and do it all over again when I notice the caked dark brown blood dried under my fingernails. I have to pick every flaking bit of that dead Russian’s gore from my flesh until I feel like I’m reborn.
But the noise that guard made as we killed him will never wash itself from my mind, no matter how many showers I take.
I curl up in a ball and I cry as the hot water pelts my skin. I sob as the reality of what happened pummels into me and I can’t escape it. I feel the man’s life leaving his body and I want to go back and change things, but there’s no tearing this from my mind.
I sob into my knees. I cry for Adrienne, for her having to go through that hell. I cry for her carrying this same horrible guilt, for having been forced to take a life, even a worthless life like that Russian bastard, and I cry for myself for having to stab a man with a hinge pin over and over in the throat just to keep myself alive.
But most of all, I cry because it felt so fucking good to take my own destiny into my hands and make something happen for myself for once.
No, the blood won’t wash off. It’ll never go away—I’m stained with it.
But that’s not the terrible part.
The terrible part is I want more.
Not more blood. If I never kill another person, I’ll be happy. But I want more action, more autonomy, more opportunities to prove to the world that I’m more than arm candy, more than a way into the Greek mafia. I’m more than my name.
I’m Kacia.
The door opens. Cold air blows away some of the haze. Luca comes into the bathroom and undresses. He reveals his muscular chest, cuts and bruises, scars and tattoos. I don’t speak as he enters the shower with me. I say nothing as he wraps his strong arms around my body and holds me tight.
We’re both naked. His skin feels so warm and good against mine. I’m so slick, and I want him so badly, and I’m not sure what he can do to make this pain go away.
If there’s anything we can do to stop it.
We don’t have sex. It’s not about that right now.
After I’m done crying, he helps me up. He takes the soap and he cleans me one last time. It’s like a ritual, like he knows I’ve already scrubbed a layer of skin away, but he wants to do it himself, like by using his own hands he can absolve me.
I don’t need absolution. I just need him.
When he’s done, I kiss him gently. “You shouldn’t have come for me, Luca,” I whisper.
“I couldn’t leave my wife.”
“This was a deal. It was an arrangement.”
“Arrangements can be real, too.”
“Is it real? Are you sure?”
“Kacia—”
“After everything, what’s changed?” It hurts to say the words but it’s the truth.
“Nothing.”
“Are you sorry you killed Perico?” I look into his handsome eyes and my fingers grip his shoulders. We’re both naked, stripped and bare, and everything is on display, our bodies, our emotions. Water drips down his full lips. It pounds against my shoulder. “Tell me the truth. No more hiding anything.”
“No. I’ll never be sorry for that.”
“How do we move forward?”
He turns off the water and wraps me in a towel.
In the bedroom, I pull on fresh clothes. It feels like heaven. In the room next door, Adrienne’s going through the same thing, but she’s doing it alone. That breaks me, just a little bit. After all this, she’s still alone. Niccolo and Tony have the room next to that, but they’re on guard duty for a while. I want to go check on my friend, but I need to understand first.
“Why, Luca? Because he was a bad man?”
Luca’s shoulders slump. He’s shirtless, his body crisscrossed in scars and covered in tattoos as he stares out the window. We’re in a hotel in Crete, a nice hotel near the water. The salt-heavy air blows the curtains around him like the ghosts we left behind. Like my dead family, my old dead self.