Page 106 of Because I Need You
Meanwhile, I was in the process of selling my place in Chicago so that I could move to New York for good. We’d already sold our family home, so this was the next step. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Chicago. Hell, I definitely preferred it to New York, but Isabel was in New York. Yes, I let her go. Yes, I was keeping my distance, and I would continue to do so. I wouldn’t even intervene if she met a good guy she liked. I wouldn’t even intervene if she wanted to marry him. The thought of that made my stomach hurt. I fucking hoped she didn’t get any ideas. I let her go, but that didn’t mean I liked the thought of either of us moving on. She hadn’t called, though. I didn’t know why I’d expected her to, or why I’d expected it not to hurt as much as it did. She knew I wouldn’t call her, but she hadn’t called either, and that was what told me she must have been trying to move on.
I was still staring at the sidewalk when I caught William Hamilton walking into her building and felt my heart clench. My hand closed over the door handle. I gripped it hard, ready to jump out of the car, but I made myself close my eyes and breathed through it though. Change is hard. Change is necessary. Change is good. Change hurts like a motherfucker. I sighed and signaled at Nico to drive past her building and head to the warehouse. The five of us — Dean, myself, Lorenzo, Dominic, and Rocco — were it now. Not exactly the way we’d planned to form this group, but it happened, nonetheless. Lorenzo, of course, still had his dad in his ear, but now that he’d officially taken over the import-export thing, things would definitely run much smoother. I’d take over construction, instead. I liked it. It was something else that would keep me busy. After we talked about what was on our agenda for the week, we moved on to the case of the vault. We still couldn’t figure out what happened or who took the stuff or what was done with it. Mike was on it, though, and he was serious about it since he wanted to make sure no one dragged his name. We wouldn’t. Well, I wouldn’t. I knew Mike better than to think he would rob us. And even if someone argued that I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did, I knew for a fact he didn’t want to die.
The briefcase was another situation all together. The fucking briefcase. We discussed it every single time we got together. So many people died because of it and as far as we could tell, it was full of trinkets and diamonds. Maybe it had been the diamonds they were after. We just couldn’t figure out why. There was a code to Charles’ vault in it, too, but there was nothing that particularly stood out. The slabs of gold and the diamonds, sure, but we all had valuable things in ours. It didn’t make any sense. According to what Isabel told Nadia and Petra, my mother had been involved in human trafficking. That was the only thing I could think of. Maybe Charles somehow had access to something, a container or something, that would fuck up their operation. Fuck if we knew, though. At least, not yet. Thinking about the human trafficking alone made me feel sick. It also made me understand why my mother was okay with my father handing me around all those years ago. To her, a body was just another weapon to wield and control. Sometimes, when I shut my eyes, I could still see the look on her face when she realized I’d been the one to shoot her. It haunted me. Her eyes wide in surprise, as if she didn’t think I had it in me. That was the thing about actions, though. You never think you have it in you until you’re put in a situation that pushes you to find out. It didn’t mean I was proud of it. It didn’t mean it didn’t feel like a fucking knife was wedged between my ribs when I relived it. I pushed all thoughts of my mother away when I heard Loren call out my name from across the table.
“Shit. I spaced out.” I did that a lot these days.
“The sanitation workers are talking about going on strike,” Loren said.
“No wonder it reeks every time I step out of my building.” I scrunched my nose at the thought. “What do they want?”
“Better pension. More money.”
“Shit, good for them.” I shrugged a shoulder. “What’s that got to do with us?”
“The city’s looking to hire someone to do the job in the meantime.”
