บททั้งหมดของ Indebted to the Mafia King: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

DanteMy bullet pings off a metal shelf as Luca Lombardi ducks at the last moment, dragging El down with him. She yelps and tries to disentangle his fingers from her hair. My vision narrows to her, half-dressed on this filthy warehouse floor. She looks so vulnerable, nothing like the iron woman who tried to stand up to him moments ago. How dare he expose her like that, how dare he grope her with his fucking gun like a piece of meat, how dare he threaten—Tony drags me down behind a table I didn’t realize he flipped over for cover. “Head in the game, asshole.”“Fuck off.” I reload my gun. I don’t want to miss my shot on Luca because I emptied a chamber into a fucking shelf.Tony slams me against the table. “Head in the game, or I’m dragging your ass outside and chaining you to the car until it’s over.”I grit my teeth and try to swallow down enough of the white-hot anger that filled me and made me fire that first shot. I can’t save El if I’m dead. There’s no life to share with her if I

EleniI stare out of the wide window in the bedroom I used to share with Mama over the Narrows. The setting sun glints off the water, and my heartbeat pounds slowly in my ears. I don’t remember coming back to Staten Island. I don’t know if someone drove me, or I drove myself, or if I walked. I changed at some point into a soft dress. Dante’s blood remains on my hands. Other than that, all I know is this view, my heartbeat in my ears, and the uncertain sense that everything has changed.Dante is in a hospital somewhere. I think. Or he’s dead in the back of an ambulance or the doctor’s car. That knowledge washes over me numbly. An hour ago—a day ago, it would have rocked me to my core. Torn me apart. There’s a real chance I’ll never look into Dante’s dark eyes and see love looking back at me again. I am alone in America. But in the wake of what he said, I can’t shake the feeling I was alone in America already.Christos is dead. That does ache. As much as I thought Luca killed him, part

EleniI pull into the complex of warehouses on the docks in the bright-blue sedan Dante bought me. It arrived a couple days after our run-in with Luca. At first, I was going to ignore it, like the tracking necklace I took off after that first meeting and haven’t moved from my nightstand since, but it turns out running a syndicate requires a lot of driving.Gianna turns up the radio. “Well, I think you’re crazy.”I expected her to be furious with me after I shot John. Still, I refused to let Tony give her the news, after all she’s done for me. When she hugged me and said it was a long time coming, I asked her to be my right hand. No matter what he said, Tony was still Dante’s. And I didn’t want anything of Dante’s around to make me think of him, even after I found out he was recuperating in hiding.“No one takes me seriously when I pull up in this thing,” I complain. “It’s like a neon sign, begging them to treat me like a little girl.”“It’s your favorite color!” She leans back against

DanteI slump against the passenger’s seat, fighting for breath as Tony drives us back through the city streets. Standing up for a few minutes felt like running a goddamn marathon, and I can’t forget the burning in my chest anymore. Tony glances at me in the rearview mirror but doesn’t say anything. He said enough on the ride over.As soon as he told me Eleni shot Uncle John, I was on my feet. When he told me it was the same day everything went down with Luca, I put together a picture in my head. I expected her to be grieving, just trying to hold the pieces together. Instead, she doubled her kill count in a single day. The Eleni I met in The Greek Corner, the one who glowed while telling me about the after-hours gyros, would’ve broken down. That’s the Eleni I was racing for when I hurried out of Domino’s apartment while his wife yelled for me to lay back down.But as we drove to the house for a change of clothes and then where Eleni was “working,” a new story took shape. A hardened,

DanteI wake up in a third-string guest bedroom already pissed. The sun is coming in at an angle that tells me I’ve already slept later than I meant to, but my alarm clock is in my fucking room, which was too covered in crap to sleep in. Today is the day Eleni’s leaving. She made it very clear she doesn’t want anything else to do with me, and I’m inclined to give her that. The woman who marched out of my bedroom last night was someone I’d never seen before. I thought, for a split second, that I could still find Eleni underneath, but I think she died with Luca at that warehouse.Domino’s wife told me I should still spend most of my days resting, but if I lay around anymore, I’m going to get bedsores. I shuffle out of bed, gritting my teeth against the nearly overwhelming pain in my chest, and head down the hall toward my bedroom. I couldn’t carry more than one set of clothes last night, and like an idiot, I picked pajamas.I pass the door to Eleni’s bedroom. Slightly ajar. A little of