Page 8 of Sing For Us

“You. He gave me you, and you are the best thing that has ever happened to me. If I could do it all over again, I would.”

“Oh my God, mama. Why are you saying that?” I ask as I wipe away one tear with my other hand. She smiles at me like she always does.

“Because it’s the truth. You have to learn how to be your own person outside of me, your father, and the Vicious Vipers.”

“I don’t know who I am, mama. I am afraid I will end up like him.”

“You won’t, my darling son. Because you are not only his son, you are mine as well.”

I feel like such a failure. No, I am a failure. I have proven to her that I am just like my father. I let down the only person who has genuinely loved me. It has been years since my mother passed away from her illness, and my heart still hasn’t recovered from it. Even though I was there when she passed, the goodbye I said to her wasn’t enough. How do I say goodbye to someone like her? When I met Lana, I thought that God had finally remembered my address. It’s like my mother ordered Him to send someone for me so I could feel whole again.

I haven’t cried since the day she died; all my tears have been used up. Now there is a hollow space in my heart, and I don’t want to fill it up. I want to be gone.

I grab one of the shards a little too tightly, and I accidentally cut myself. I look at the blood that’s seeping from my cut, and even that reminds me of Lana. It takes me back to when I wrote ‘mine’ across her back with my bloodied hand.

“Say you are mine, little hummingbird.”

She was never mine, and I was never hers. The only thing I have left of her is that fucking knife I preserved. Wait… the knife. I run inside my house, throw away the shards, and bandage my hands. I go to the closet in my bedroom and take out the knife I sliced Lana’s thighs with. The reason I kept this is I thought this shit would be romantic.

I get my phone and call Hana. “Come to my house.”

“Why?” she asks me. I tell her that I have a plan and I need her help. She promises to be here in fifteen minutes, and I wait for her. With a gleam, I look at the knife and smile.

God may have stood me up, but the Devil will always be in my corner.

Chapter four

Noa

Ihold up the knife I had preserved from the last time we were together. Hana squints her eyes while her jaw is slightly loose.

“M, that is fucking disgusting. Why did you store the knife you sliced her with?” My cousin doesn’t even want to come near it, and I respect that. I’m holding the knife at the handle with a pair of gloves because I don’t want to taint any evidence.

“I was in love with her, and I wanted a memento from our time together.” Hana huffs and pinches her eyebrows together in exasperation. When she looks at me again, her expression softens for whatever reason.

“What?” She is getting on my nerves.

“You said that you were in love with her. I think that you still are.” A bullet would have hurt less. But she is wrong; I don’t love Lana anymore. How can you love someone you never actually knew? Whenever I think about her, the words are lodged into my throat. So I don’t.

“Hana.” It’s a warning, and she knows it. People always say that you should count to ten to calm down, or some shit. I tried doing that, but it doesn’t work. Every time I try to forget about Lana, someone mentions her.

“Fine, I’ll stop.” Hana retorts. “What do you want me to do with this knife?”

“We are going to your friend Yasmina and her lab so she can run it for prints.”

“Do you mean Ella?”

“I seriously couldn’t give less of a shit,” I tell her, and Hana rolls her eyes.

“Okay.” Hana types a message to Ella and stands up. “Let’s go. She told us we can come right away.”

***

Ella’s lab is a lot closer than I thought it would be; it’s about thirty minutes from my villa. Hana and I hopped onto our bikes and drove to her friend. Once we arrived, I noticed one thing: the lab looks fucking expensive. It would give any tech-dude an involuntary orgasm because it has all the technological advances you could wish for. From what I have learned from Hana, Ella, or, correctly said, Dr. Ella Hadzic, was a former federal forensic investigator turned something more shady. Now she is a private forensic fixer and shadow investigator for lawyers, politicians, mobsters, and rich families.

“Are you going to keep standing there dicking around or are we going to get down to business?” Ella says to me as she snaps her fingers in my face. Oh, I like this woman. I hold up my hands because I don’t want to piss her off.

“She is amazing, isn’t she?” Hana whispers to me as we follow her further into her lab. Objectively, Ella is a conventionally attractive woman with a sharp side to her. She is tall, has really long blonde curly hair, and the tattoos on her right arm look sick. But her intellect and don’t-fuck-with-me attitude stand out the most. Maybe I should hire her for my team? Ella puts on a white lab coat and sits down before a piece of equipment I know nothing about, while Hana and I are standing.