Page 65 of Bombshell

Of course, she remembers that tiny detail Luca spilled at the gala. I’m not sure why he even brought it up. It was never a night I wanted to remember-—until now.

“I was there for a stopover on my way to final training in Afghanistan,” I confess. “A lot of it’s a blur. The night ended with whiskey and tattoos.” I gesture to the brotherhood tattoo she asked about earlier.

“When was that?” Adair asks, and I can see her eyes flit back and forth like she’s reviewing memories of her time there trying to figure out if one of them has me somewhere in the background. But she won’t find it.

I’m the one who had a chance to fix things, not her. “December.”

“Ellie was born in November,” she murmurs. I feel like I’ve pulled a block out of her carefully constructed reality as realization after realization comes crashing down on her. She shakes her, forcing herself to smile through the obvious pain. “It’s not like you knew we were there.”

“That’s just it,” I say, feeling sick to my stomach. “I think I did.”

Winter five years ago

For the first time in nearly a year, I’m finally out of the South. I’d expected my first trip from Camp Lejeune might be a trip to New York. After the way I left things with Francie, I owe her that, even if she’s forgiven me. Instead, I’ve found myself on my way to the final phase of training before I’m giving a permanent assignment. I’d been told to prepare to leave the country when I enlisted, but I hadn’t expected that to happen for a lot longer. I also hadn’t expected to find myself in London.

“Wait, is this the first time you’ve been out of the country?” Luca asks, and I bristle. He shoots Jack an incredulous look, but he shrugs.

“Don’t look at me, man. I haven’t either.” Jack’s cool response stops me from overreacting.

“Really?” Luca repeats. “Never?”

“I grew up in foster care,” I remind him.

“Single mom,” Jack says. “We didn’t exactly go on vacation.”

In the last few months, we’ve gotten to know each other better, each of us skirting around whatever sad stories sent us signing up for the Marines. During the first three phases of special ops training, we’d stuck together. Unlike some of the other recruits neither Jack nor Luca joined to prove anything. We just didn’t have a lot of options. It made it harder to relate to some of the more ride or die types training alongside us, many of whom had washed out and headed back to their Marine units. Luca liked to say that we were a sort of suicide squad and that made us stronger than some of the others. It’s pretty damn easy to say you’ll fight for someone else and then fail to live up to that promise, it turns out. But when all you’ve got is the fight, there’s a certain glee to going balls to the wall. Plus, we’d discovered that we all had our own particular set of skills.

I’d always been good at numbers with an interest in literature, which meant I’d taken to code cracking and a few of the foreign languages we’d been introduced to. Jack’s talent lay in his steady hands, trained from years of teaching himself instruments. He ranked at the top of every marksmanship test. He could even slow down his heart enough to get a shot off at a record-breaking distance, a feat which meant he’d been flagged for extra training as a sniper. It was something we were all expected to do to some extent, but Jack? He’s the one they’ll call in when they want to take out a high-level target from a helicopter. Luca’s particular skills don’t fall into a training category. He’s just fucking insane. If an ounce of him fears death, he’s never shown it. He walks into every training scenario with a sort of jubilant nihilism. I can never decide if he’s going to be the one that saves the entire unit or gets us all killed.

“Look, we need to celebrate,” Luca says. “We’ve got one night in London before they send us to the ninth circle of hell. We should make it count.”

“You’re going to get us discharged before we even get assigned to active duty,” Jack says.

“What? No! I know London. I have family here,” he says as we brush past a few other trainees in the hall on our way to the stairs.

Jack lifts his eyebrow behind Luca’s back. We’ve pieced together enough about Luca’s family from things he’s said to know he’s not talking about a typical family. I’d guessed but Jack was the one to look it up and discover that the DeAngelos were a well-established, far-reaching criminal organization. Of the three of us, Luca’s been the most tight-lipped about why he joined up. I can’t help thinking his chaos in a bottle routine is hiding something darker. I just can’t figure out if he’s running from his past, his family, or himself.

“Are we going to their house for family dinner?” Jack says dryly.

“Believe me, you don’t want to hang out with my family. Not when you have a city like this at your disposal.” He snaps his fingers and whips around, continuing to walk backwards. Somehow he manages to not knock into anyone, but, probably, because everyone moves out of his way. “I’ve got it. I know what we’re doing tonight.”

I brace myself. I can only imagine the trouble he could get us in a city this size.

“Does it involve a felony?” Jack asks.

“Stealing ah a horse isn’t a felony—”

“It actually is in North Carolina,” Jack says.

“—if you’re only borrowing it,” Luca continues. “I was never going to keep the horse, so it would have only been a misdemeanor. No big deal.”

“I still don’t understand why you took the fucking horse.” He shoots me a look, and I correct myself with a sigh. “I mean, why you borrowed the horse.”

The only time we’d left base at Camp Lejeune for a night out had involved said borrowed horse, a police chase, and some serious sweet talking. Thankfully, the officer had a soft spot for Italians, and Luca had flirted our way out of trouble before it got back to any of our commanding officers. Jack and I hadn’t agreed to a night out since.

“Hey, where are you heading?” A deep voice calls when we reach the lobby. We pause to find the last member of our usual group standing with a few ranking officers. Noah Porter tips his head toward the men he’s talking to before making his way to us.

“I’m taking them out for the night. Want to come?”