Page 101 of Savage Roses
“Informant?”
“That’s right. The plan was to take down the Neptune Society and the hold of deplorable crime lords like Leandro Crotone. Then Lucius Mancino. But things did not go the way we hoped they would. I grew complacent in my position. More preoccupied with the optics of fighting crime than actually fighting crime. Besides, I had you, your mother and Marcel to think about.”
My temples throb trying to parse through his many words. “You gave up?”
“I lost sight of things. A joint decision made by Lena and I. She had suffered enough. But it was a foolish, cowardly decision to give up. To grow complacent. An ally Lena and I had turned out to be a traitor. We found out the truth about him and his family background. We didn’t want to risk our lives any longer. I had too much to live for, and Lena hadn’t yet lived at all.”
“And yet you kept this from us. The family you claim you lived for.”
“Your mother knew, Delphi. That’s why she took me back. I told her everything.”
My face clenches as if in pain, trying to make sense of what he’s telling me. More lies, more deception, more pieces of my life revealed to be a false reality. Why would Mom let me believe Dad had cheated on her?
Mom was ultimately in on the lies too…
“Why?” I whisper.
“Because I’m a selfish man,” he answers sadly. A frown comes to his face. “I couldn’t stand Leontine leaving me. So I took the chance and I told her. I let her in on what was going on. She paid the price for it with her life. The Society killed her to punish me for my retirement and dissociation from their club.”
“They killed her in revenge?”
“Yes. Because I refused to let her go. And now they’re after you. They want to take you too.”
“No.”
The feeble word warbles out of me in a pathetic cry. The numbness evaporates like a stage curtain being pulled, and instead a barrage of emotion unloads on me at once. I break apart as if I’m made of the most fragile material known to man, splitting into tiny little fragments of heartbreak and grief.
Over Mom.
Over Salvatore.
Over everything that’s come to be.
I’m inconsolable to the point I make myself lightheaded again as I drown in tears and choke on air. At some point, I crouch forward and bury my face into my lap, unable to bear the pain that’s lancing through me.
The Neptune Society murdered my mother. They took away a beautiful, graceful, loving woman from this world simply to punish a man they viewed as too defiant—and in the process, forever punishing me, her daughter.
Lucius Mancino took away the man who won my heart. The man who loved me with every bit of his own. Torturing his son through childhood wasn’t enough, he sought to destroy his very existence.He made him disappear.
As if Salvatore never existed. As if he didn’t mean the world to me.
And now it’s my turn. I’m next.
My heart constricts trying to beat as normal, but there’s nothing normal about any of this.
“Delphi,” Dad says. “Did you hear me? I’m not going to let them win. Not this time. He’s gotten away with enough.”
My mind barely registers a word of what he’s saying. I’m too disoriented, too checked out.
“We’re here.”
Dad shifts gears into park. We’re in the parking lot of a thirty dollar a night motel, located right off the highway between a gas station and some storage garages.
“We’re biding our time here overnight. As soon as the sun’s up, we’re back on the move.”
Dad checks us in with utmost discretion. You’ve been to one highway motel, you’ve been to them all—the springs dig into your spine when you lay on the mattress and the carpet has cigarette burns. The heater attached to the wall sputters out dusty, lukewarm air and the box TV only has six channels.
I take the bed, exhausted and sick.