Page 18 of Gatsby's Starlet
I stared at her in disbelief. “He sent one of his goons to my shop and threatened to burn the place down, Ruby. He basically told me he’d kill me if I didn’t cooperate.” My voice dropped as I looked back out the windshield at the narrowing road ahead. “And how many times have you shown up at my house with a busted lip or a black eye? I think that counts as knowing him.”
The words settled between us like something heavy.
Ruby’s hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel. “He’s just intense,” she muttered. “He’s under a lot of pressure.”
I shook my head slowly. “No,” I said. “He’s abusive. And clearly unstable.”
I could still see those nights too clearly.
Ruby sitting at my kitchen table with an ice pack pressed to her mouth, mascara smeared beneath her eyes while the coffee between us went cold, trying to explain something she didn’t seem to understand herself.
He was drunk, she’d said, like that explained it, like it softened anything, like it meant he hadn’t meant it at all—but eventually, after another drink and a stretch of silence that dragged too long to ignore, the truth had slipped out anyway, quiet and ugly.
He got angry because I’m not her.
I swallowed now, staring out at the darkening road as the words settled back into place, heavier the second time around. “You told me why he hit you,” I said quietly, and when Ruby didn’t answer, didn’t even shift, I kept going, because stopping felt worse. “You said he kept looking at you like he was trying to see someone else’s face, like you weren’t enough on your own.”
Her jaw tightened, just enough to confirm it.
“You said he kept saying her name,” I added, softer now, like lowering my voice might make it easier to hear.
The silence inside the car thickened, pressing in from all sides, until I finally said it.
“Zeynep.”
The name landed between us like something fragile and breakable, something that shouldn’t have been touched at all, and Ruby’s expression hardened instantly. “I hate that name.”
“You never even knew her.”
“I don’t have to,” she snapped, the words sharp enough to cut. “She’s dead and he still loves her.”
And there it was—jealousy, raw and bitter, sitting just under the surface where it had probably been all along, impossible to ignore once it finally had a voice.
My chest tightened. “He doesn’t love you,” I said gently.
Ruby shot me a glare. “You don’t know that.”
“Ruby… he locked a woman in a room,” I said, my voice low now, because saying it out loud still made the whole thing sound unbelievable. “A woman he claimed to love, and he ordered his own men to burn the entire clubhouse to the ground with her inside if he didn’t come back.”
“That’s not what happened,” she muttered.
“It is,” I said quietly. “And you know it.”
The car rolled deeper into the woods, the road narrowing even more as the trees leaned in overhead.
“He loved her,” Ruby said after a moment.
I turned to look at her. “That’s what you call love?”
Her mouth tightened, and for a second she said nothing at all.
“He hit you because you aren’t her.”
The words came out softer than I meant them to, but they still landed hard enough that the only sound in the car for several seconds was the low hum of the engine and gravel snapping beneath the tires.
Finally she spoke again. “He’s said he’s going to make me his ol’ lady one day.”
I stared at her. “And you think that means he loves you?”
