Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
“Why—” Nico vomited more, eventually managing to ask, “Why does your rave club have bad drugs?”
He promptly started vomiting again.
“Come on, better out than in your lungs. Had that happened, you’d have been dead for sure. Wouldn’t that have been a fucking sight for your little girlfriend to wake up to, huh?”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Neon’s always been safe,” Nico argued through another gag.
“Nothing’s safe here anymore. You’d know that if you came around any, but you haven’t shown your face in my city in a while, Little Nicky.”
“Fuck off!”
The man turned to Frankie, but she refused to look at him, then, saying, “See that, that’s the Narcan. Sometimes they wake up fighting, puking, or they can wake up mean. He doesn’t mean that when he says it.”
“No, I do, Carmine.” Nico coughed himself into a fit, but that didn’t stop him from bitching more when he finished. “I mean all of it, you prick.”
“Mmhmm, you’re gonna need a new room.”
Nico gagged again, but it sounded like more vomit found its way out of his body. Frankie wished when she closed her eyes and covered her ears, it helped. Except closing her eyes meant seeing the night and morning come back in flashes and black and white blips.
They’d had sex.
Right where he almost died. High and laughing together. It only stung a little, for a short while, and she remembered the small bloodstain left behind when it was done. Proof.
It would still be there. Like he was still on her, now, messy between her thighs.
She could still feel his lips at her throat as he urged her on top, promising slow, letting her ride, and then showing how good he would make it feel. And he had.
She would never know fumbling, awkward sex, or a bad lover with him. He’d made that promise, too, and kept it.
She finally snatched the hoodie he’d left on the couch, and shrugged it on, acutely aware of her body and the tale it probably told if someone cared to look. Carmine, looking Nico over as he sat him up straight in the bed, passed her a concerned glance.
The man arched an eyebrow. “Are you gonna puke on me next?”
“No.”
“Leave her alone,” Nico said, sounding better.
Stronger. Alive.
“Oh, don’t worry. Unlike some of us, I know better than to fuck the consigliere’s daughter.”
“I didn’t fuck—”
Frankie’s gaze snapped to Nico’s for the first time since he took that gasping breath back into reality. The look on her face stopped him from saying anything else. She could tell, just by the way his expression dropped.
Her heart sank to the floor. He couldn’t remember.
•••
“You need to call your father,” Carmine Marino told Frankie two hours later.
Nico sat on a couch in a new hotel room, avoiding the conversation and the people having it. He also continued to act like the travel nurse who showed up to give him an IV of fluids wasn’t still checking the bag to see how much remained.
“I don’t need to do anything,” Frankie replied.
“Okay, then here’s the message I have from your father to you,” Carmine said, smiling coldly. “You have until Monday morning to be back at the estate, or he will come and find you.”
At that, Carmine turned to face Nico at the other end of the room. “You also have a message, if you care to hear it.”
“Tell me how you found me, first.”
“Salvatore.”
Nico rolled his eyes. “Real helpful, seriously.”
“No, I’m serious. His man did the legwork overnight, so he made a call to me, and I made a few calls myself. Your cousin didn’t take long to step up with the needed info. And let me say, you’re lucky he did, Nico. She would not have known what do for you, and by the time hotel staff got in here, it would’ve been too late. Is that what you want to tell her father?”
Nico’s jaw snapped shut audibly.
“Didn’t think so,” Carmine murmured. “You know better than to party like that with someone who isn’t even at your level. And by the looks of it, you’ve not been at that level for a while, either. I heard you were doing better, so what the hell, kid?”
“Why were there bad drugs in Neon?” Nico asked right back.
“You’re deflecting instead of accepting. You’re right, the supply in the city is tainted, but that doesn’t absolve you of responsibility here. Are you listening now?”
“Are you going to tell him?” Nico asked.
Frankie cared to hear that answer, too.
“Should I?” Carmine asked back.
Frankie hugged her middle with one arm and rubbed at her cheek. She wanted a shower, something to drink, and food. She only wanted fun, to get Nico out of his head and back to normal, not all of this, too.
“Should I tell Salvatore Gallo that you took his daughter to an illegal club, allowed her to use drugs—”