Page 86 of Deathless & Divided

“But Mom didn’t!”

Dino grunted out, “Yeah, I know. This is way out of left field for you, Lily. Where is this coming from, anyway?”

“I was over at Eve’s,” Lily replied, hoping that explained it without her needing to go into further details.

“You’ve always been strong-willed and opinionated about our business,” Dino said. “We don’t talk about these things, Lily, because you don’t want to.”

“I want to now.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know what was so different about our mother! I get Dad turned rat, okay. But Mom—”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Dino interrupted softly. “She was in the house with him and it wasn’t supposed to happen. That was all Ben ever said to me, Lily.”

“Doesn’t it make you mad, though? Doesn’t that just … enrage you that she was killed? Both of them, even, Dino. Why doesn’t it piss you off?”

“It does,” her brother replied. “It always has, but sometimes it’s better to bide your time, little one. Not everything is black and white.”

Lily stilled on the sidewalk, taking in her brother’s words and what they might mean.

“Where is all this coming from?” Dino asked.

“I told you, I was at Eve’s place.”

“And all your scars are getting cut open again.”

“Maybe. I don’t know, it’s just … I don’t want to see more people hurt because of what happened to Mia, but at the same time, I think I understand how Eve and her father want some kind of retribution. Doesn’t that make me an awful hypocrite?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re biased.”

“No, not really. I think you’ve got certain people and the Outfit messed up. It’s not the same thing. You’re pissed off at the people who took our mother away—the Outfit didn’t do that, Lily.”

“It’s the same thing!”

“It’s not, in certain ways. I’m the Outfit. Theo is the Outfit. The Rossi family, your friends, and even Damian. We’re the Outfit—la famiglia. Certain people inside the Outfit made decisions that hurt us because of la famiglia. I know it’s hard to understand, but those people don’t make up the Outfit, Lily. It is way more than just a couple of people. It is all the people. It’s a culture, a lifestyle. We don’t choose this life because it’s an easy one; we choose it because we believe in it.”

“Why does it seem like every man is just out for himself, then?” Lily asked.

To her, that was how the Outfit had always felt.

“Because that’s the problem with it. Certain people have forgotten what it’s supposed to be. Don’t blame the Outfit, blame the people.”

“Don’t blame the gun, blame the man,” Lily muttered.

“Exactly.”

“It can’t be that simple, Dino.”

Her brother laughed. “Yeah, it rarely is.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Damian rested on the hood of the Maserati, his gaze staying trained on the figure through the darkness. Down the sidewalk, Lily hung up her phone call, put her hand over her eyes, and shook her head.

She’d been too far away for him to understand most of the conversation, but he had heard her use Dino’s name at least once.