On the landing above, Lena was begging me to move. The curtains twisted in the night air, and the temperature plummeted so rapidly my teeth chattered. I gripped the banister, feeling the wood splinter underneath my nails, anchoring myself with the pain.

  Colin never wavered, his grip perfectly steady, his gaze never shifting from the man still pointing the gun at me. The barrel seemed impossibly long, the hole in the center infinitely deep. I wondered if it would be the last thing I ever saw.

  And then he lowered the gun and tapped his partner on the shoulder. Silently, they backed out the door. Colin kept his gun on them the whole time, glass crunching under his feet, edging toward the door to get a better view as they escaped. Across the street, an engine revved, tires squealed, and they were gone.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, curling myself tighter and tighter against the shivers racking me, and then Colin was kneeling on the step below, wrapping me in his arms. “Mo? They left. They’re gone. They didn’t hurt you.” The stubble covering his jaw was the color of wheat, but the skin underneath was pale.

  “They had guns,” I said.

  “I know. It’s okay. You’re okay. Jesus,” he said, blowing out a breath. “You’re okay.”

  Lena appeared at the top of the stairs, phone in hand. “I’m calling 911.”

  “Don’t,” Colin said. “Leave the police out of this.”

  “Dude? Those people just tried to kill us. Of course I’m calling the police.”

  He let go of me and bounded toward her. “No. You’ll make it worse.” Neatly, he plucked the phone from her hand.

  “Hey!” She shoved at him. “Did you miss the part with the guns? It can’t get worse!”

  “It can. If we report this and make her a target, it will.”

  Lena shook her head. “The alarm company will call them anyway.”

  “The alarm only notifies me,” he replied. “No police. There are times they can’t help, and this is one of them.”

  She looked at me. “Are you sure?”

  “No police,” I agreed, pulling myself up. “I’m so sorry, Lena. Are you okay?”

  Her hands shook as she pushed her hair out of her face, but she said, “I’m fine. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We should take you home,” Colin said.

  “Right. Because that won’t raise any red flags, showing up at my house at”—she checked her watch—“four AM. I’ll go home in the morning. Can I have my phone back?”

  He studied her for a moment. “Here.”

  “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “I’ll get something on the windows,” Colin said, pulling out his phone, no doubt calling my uncle.

  “I’ll make tea,” I said, needing something to do. “Meet you upstairs?”

  She hesitated, cutting her eyes toward Colin, then nodded. Picking my way around the glass-strewn living room, I made my way into the kitchen. The rear of the house wasn’t damaged, but the alarm panel was flashing wildly. As I punched in the code, I caught sight of Colin’s truck in the driveway. He must have sent the other guard home and instead stayed to watch over us himself. I refused to wonder what would have happened without him.

  Mechanically, I filled the blue enameled kettle and waited for it to boil. Chamomile, I decided, getting down mugs. I stretched to get the box down from the top shelf, going up on tiptoe, not quite able to reach.

  “Got it.” Colin set it down, then leaned against the counter, arms folded.

  “Thanks.” I placed a tea bag in each cup, arranging the tags just so, keeping my back to him the whole time.

  “You were supposed to go upstairs.”

  “I forgot.” Funny how having a gun aimed at you will do that.

  “Remember, next time.”

  “There’s going to be a next time?” The kettle shrieked and I poured water into the mugs.

  “We need to get you out of town for a little while.”

  “No.” I turned around. “There’s too much going on. School. Magic stuff. I can’t leave.”

  “Screw the magic,” he said. “Your life’s more important.”

  “I’m staying.” This wasn’t the time to explain the two were interconnected. “It’s not your call.”

  His eyes were weary, and the square line of his jaw clenched at my words.

  “When you left for the dance, something was off. I could see it in your face. What am I missing?”

  I steeled myself. “Nothing. You were right, that’s all. We don’t work—not while you’re working for Billy. I don’t see that changing, do you?”

  “Mo—”

  “Billy wins. I’ve had enough, Colin. You trust him, not me, and I can’t fight that.” I picked up the tea. “That’s what I decided today, before the dance. That’s why I was upset. Billy gets you, and I don’t.”

  He covered my hands with his own, chamomile-scented steam curling up between us.

  “Do you know how many times I’ve watched you almost die?” he asked, staring into the mug.

  “Counting tonight? Three.”

  “Too many. I can’t let that happen.”

  “You wouldn’t.” I thought about his family, about the little girl that was his sister, out in the world somewhere, and pulled away. “But you can’t stop all the bad things. You can’t save everyone. Not all the time.”

  “I don’t care about everyone. Only you.”

  I thought about how he was keeping entire parts of his life secret, just to spare me. Keeping me from knowing him, shutting me out with the very noblest of intentions. He was so devoted to protecting me that he would never trust me. We’d never stood a chance.

  I picked up Lena’s tea and left.

  Lena sat on my bed, huddled into an tattered Northwestern sweatshirt. One hand twirled her ponytail, and the other was holding the transcript of my dad’s court case.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, coming to a halt. Hot tea sloshed over the side of the mug and burned my hand, but I ignored it.

  Lena looked up, mouth agape. “Your family is seriously messed up.”

  I shoved the mugs onto the dresser and snatched the file away. “That’s private! What gives you the right to go through my stuff?”

  “You left it on your desk,” she said. “Not very private.”

  I paged through the papers I’d taken from her. “This is the just the trial transcript,” I mumbled, shoulders dropping in relief. Colin’s file was still safely tucked away in my messenger bag. My family’s secrets were bad enough. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else knowing Colin’s past, especially when I’d only started uncovering it myself.

  “Just the transcript? There’s more? Have you read this?”

  “Not yet.” I set the stack of papers in my top drawer, shoving it closed with both hands. There weren’t enough drawers to hold all my secrets these days, and I was struck with the sickening certainty that nothing I did could keep them all back. Lena’s expression was pitying. “You knew what it was,” I said. “Why did you keep reading?”

  She threw up her hands. “Because people in masks broke in here tonight, threatened us with guns, and your reaction was to avoid the police. Because your bodyguard threatened to go scorched earth on the bad guys and you didn’t flinch. Because I think you are in really, really big trouble, and I’m trying to be a friend.”

  “By snooping?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with you. So I can help. That’s what friends do, unless you’ve forgotten.” She exhaled slowly, staring at the ceiling for a long moment before meeting my eyes. “Are we friends?”

  I hadn’t forgotten the way Lena had covered for me, more than once, without batting an eye. When everyone else had decided I was responsible for Verity’s death, she’d ignored the talk and sat with me during lunch, and without making it seem like she was doing me a favor. Until tonight, she’d let me keep my secrets without a fuss. Not for the first time, I wondered what secrets she held that made her so accepting of mine.

  What kind of friend would I be if she got caught in the crossfire between my uncle and Ekomov? Or attacked by Darklings? There was so much I couldn’t tell her, so many things I couldn’t warn her about. Then again, she could have left tonight, when Colin offered to take her home. Most people would have run screaming out the door. Lena had stayed. Maybe she could handle it. Maybe I could trust her.

  “We are friends. I mean, I hope so. But my family ...”

  “You are not your family. You need to read the file.”

  I toyed with the drawer pull. “I’m familiar with how the story ends.”

  “It’s not the ending,” she said. “Everyone knows the ending. You need to see the beginning.”

  “But ...” I’m scared, I wanted to say, but couldn’t.

  “Those guys tonight could have killed us.” She shuddered and took a sip of tea. “Someone’s after you, and I am way grateful that Colin was here, but you can’t keep living like this. If we find out the truth, we can find a way to fix it.”

  She took the second mug of tea from the dresser, carried them to my bed, and sank down onto the floor.

  “Read the file, Mo. I’ll keep you company.”

  I opened the drawer and took out the stack of papers. If my world was going to explode, better that it happen with a friend at my side.

  CHAPTER 29

  I paged through the stack of documents. Languages weren’t my strong suit, and legalese was no different. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

  “A little farther back,” she said, pointing. “There.”

  “A plea agreement? He didn’t sign it. Why does this matter?”

  “Read,” Lena instructed.

  I scanned the tiny print three times. “Still lost.”

  “The DA offered your dad a reduced sentence. Five years with the possibility of parole. He would have been out by the time you turned ten. All he had to do was talk.”

  “Talk about Billy,” I mused. “And all the things they did, like launder money through Morgan’s and The Slice.”

  “It makes sense,” Lena said, pursing her lips. “You can’t make a ton of money illegally and deposit it at your bank, because it gets reported to the government, and they investigate. Money launderers find a business that will report the cash as income, pay taxes, and give it back clean.”

  “How do you know this stuff?” I asked.

  “Econ class,” she said blandly. “The Slice doesn’t take credit cards, right? It would be easy for your dad to make the books look like you’d taken in more money than you actually made. But they’d have to be careful. The Slice does okay, but they couldn’t funnel tons of money through. They couldn’t get greedy.”

  Colin’s words floated back to me. Billy’s survived as long as he has because he’s smart—he doesn’t get greedy, he doesn’t overreach.

  “Billy owns a lot of businesses. It’s not just Morgan’s and the construction company. There are others, too. He owned The Slice, before my mom took it over.” He’d had a dozen opportunities to make Mob money look squeaky clean. When my dad was the accountant, it would have been even easier to hide the trail. “But my mom would never agree to it. They must have done it without her knowing.”

  Lena stared at the paper in front of us. “Why didn’t your dad take the deal? He must have had a reason. Five years with parole is a lot less than twelve.”

  “I don’t know.” I scanned through the prosecution’s cross-examination of my dad. No matter how they’d put the question, Dad was adamant—no, he didn’t have help. No, he didn’t work for someone else. No, there had never been any suggestion of favors for his family. No, he’d never had any dealings with Marco Forelli or anyone else in the Forelli family. Jack Fitzgerald had acted alone, and no amount of hounding, threatening, or leading by the prosecution was going to change his story.

  “He was the fall guy,” I said.

  “The Outfit must have had leverage,” Lena said, eyes troubled. “Something to keep your dad in line.”

  I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the window downstairs. “Us. My mom and me. And if my uncle went free ...”

  “He was in on it.”

  I nodded mutely, thumbing through the rest of the pages. And then I stopped, because at the end, after the transcripts of the closing arguments and the sentencing hearing, was a single piece of paper, separate from the legal documents. It was the deed to The Slice, transferring ownership from Billy to my mom. It was dated the day after my father’s sentencing.

  “Lena,” I said, unwilling to actually touch it. “Not just leverage. A bribe.”

  She took the deed and read through it, hand covering her mouth. My dad wasn’t the only person cutting deals before he went to prison. Mom had made one of her own. Her neat, rounded signature was right there. I’d never noticed before how similar our handwriting was. “Holy hell,” she said softly.

  Something moved inside me, a slow and painful grinding. I leaned my head back against the bed and let the ground shift beneath me, wondering when it would stop, wondering if there’d be anything recognizable left in the end.

  CHAPTER 30

  Lena cleared out early the next morning, irritated by Colin’s insistence that one of Billy’s guys follow her home. “Sorry,” I mouthed as she left, staring daggers at Colin.

  “Was that really necessary?” I asked him.

  “Yes.” He met my frown with cool indifference and went back to chiseling old putty out of the window frame. A few feet away, replacement panes of glass leaned against the bookshelf. “What’s the plan for today?”

  I thought about the file sitting in my dresser. Then I looked around my ruined living room, at the guy who would take a bullet for me.

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “Billy’s pretty upset,” he said over his shoulder, intent on his work. “He wants you out of town, at least for a while.”

  “Right. You know how much he hates it when people threaten me.”

  Slowly, he set the chisel down and turned to face me. “Something you want to get off your chest?”

  “No.” It was the truth. “How about you?”

  “You’re angry,” he said.

  I pulled the sleeves of my sweater over my hands. “I was scared.”

  Colin tugged at his work gloves and watched me closely. “Now you’re angry. There’s a difference.”

  I lifted a shoulder. “I have a right to be, don’t you think?” “Yeah. Promise you won’t do something stupid and reckless,” he said.

  “Never. You know me.”

  He snorted and went back to work. I went upstairs and scrutinized my dad’s files again, but everything read the same as it did last night. My anger mounted, but with no clear target, I felt jittery and useless. I needed to do something, and so I fished out the lone address from Colin’s file and Googled it.

  I don’t know what I’d expected to find, but a nursing home definitely wasn’t it. I zoomed in on the map, trying to figure out what combination of buses and trains would get me there fastest. There wasn’t time to finish, though, because a minute later, my mom came home. My temper had found its target.

  “Mo?” Her footsteps were quick taps on the stairs, and then she was in my room, all fluttering hands and ineffective bustle. She gathered me up in a hug, but I didn’t let myself relax against her. “I should never have left you here alone! Billy should have called me the minute it happened. You must have been so scared. And your friend was here! I can only imagine what she’s going to tell people. Thank God for Colin.” She paused for breath, finally noticed my silence. “Are you hurt, honey? Colin said no one was hurt. Are you okay?”

  “How’s Dad?” I asked, barely recognizing my own voice.

  “He’s fine, sweetie. Excited to come home. He can’t wait to see you.” She toyed with the buttons at her sleeve. “Billy’s going to fix this. Just watch.”

  “I’ve watched enough.” I straightened the stack of papers in front of me. “Tell me about Dad’s trial.”

  Her mouth thinned, lines radiating outward in disapproval. “Daddy’s coming home soon. Why focus on the past?”

  “Uncle Billy was charged, too.”

  “It was a witch hunt.” She began straightening the books on my bookshelf, making sure the spines lined up perfectly. “The district attorney was out to get him. Daddy, too. They dismissed the charges.”

  “Billy’s. But not Dad’s.”

  “No. Daddy wanted to give us a better life. He went about it the wrong way, and he’s so, so sorry, honey. But he’s repented, served his time. It’s over now.”

  “You can’t believe that. People broke into our house last night. With guns. Does that seem over to you?”

  “I don’t like your tone. I told you, your uncle will take care of it.”

  “Right. And he takes care of everything because why, exactly?”

  “We’re family,” she said tightly, twisting her wedding band around her finger. “That’s what we do. Take care of each other.”

  “The DA offered Dad a deal. He could have been out years ago. Why didn’t he take it?”

  “Where is this coming from?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We got through it. You and me, the Fitzgerald Girls. It wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Billy leaned on Dad, right? Did they threaten you? Me?”

  “Billy would never threaten us. How do you think we’ve managed all this time? Your father was going to jail. There was no escaping that. There were records, tax returns. They had proof. If Billy had gone to jail, we would have been on our own. The restaurant wouldn’t have been enough to support the two of us, to give you the life we wanted for you. And there was no one else, no other family to help. Should I have sent my husband and my brother to prison? We would have been alone.”

  “So Dad took the fall.” And Billy signed over The Slice to my mom, like hush money.

  She whirled, color high. “We had you to think of! I tried to tell you before, sweetheart. Sometimes you have to give up the life you want in order to protect the people you love.”

 

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