A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family #1)

10. Nate

10

NATE

Nine days have passed since what I have been not-so fondly referring to as The Incident. I don’t know who to talk to about this, so I have been writing in my journal.

Journaling is a practice I usually only turn to about once per quarter, and even then just a few paragraphs here and there, waxing poetic until I get bored. This week alone I’ve filled more than two dozen pages in my free time after school and during my prep periods.

I’ve been journaling about whatever comes to mind, but what has come to mind most recently, is in depth explorations of the lives those men might have lived if they hadn’t attacked us. If Vanessa hadn’t murdered them right in front of me before spitting on and kicking their still-warm corpses.

This usually turns into me thinking about how my life would’ve been different too, if I didn’t see any of that.

Other times, I just write song lyrics or practice my cursive. Keeps the mind active.

I’ve been keeping the book with me because not only am I stressed, I’m also paranoid. I am certain that my apartment isn’t safe, my dog isn’t safe, and while we are at it, I am in fact not safe.

I have no security.

I’m thinking about moving, but I moved in nine years ago and my contract says the landlord can only raise the rent up to fifty dollars a year, and the first couple years they didn’t even think about it. Thus, my rent is ludicrously cheap and I would be remiss to let that go.

I’d have to sell half of my belongings to move, and my belongings really aren’t worth much to begin with.

Jenna has been hounding me about the date, saying that I wasn’t texting her very much which either meant I was too distracted having hot sex with my wedding date, or I was spiraling into a deep depression. I told her it was a secret third thing that I could not talk about and she shouldn’t ask, and because Jenna respects boundaries more than I think a best friend ought, she didn’t ask.

Well, she didn’t until I missed the kickboxing-dance fusion class we go to and now she knows something is really wrong and she’s come directly to the source. She doesn’t even knock after I buzz her up, just uses the spare key she keeps and walks right in.

She drops her gym bag on my kitchen table and stares wide-eyed around my room: the cave-like atmosphere with my blinds and curtains shut tight, the jigsaw puzzle to which I have been giving a half-hearted attempt. Then she spots the journal and snatches it before I can grab it.

“Oh, my god, you’re journaling.” Jenna holds the book in one hand while strong-arming me away from her with the other. “If you don’t tell me what happened, I will call your mother.”

And I know that she will, so I stop fighting her and let my shoulders droop.

“You cannot laugh,” I warn. “This is very serious.”

Jenna mimes an oath.

I’m not positive that Jenna will not be in danger by learning this, and in fact, I am pretty sure that she will be, but the journal is a soulless receptacle for my anxieties, and Jenna is my closest friend and greatest confidant.

“I think Vanessa is in the mafia,” I say, because this is the conclusion I’ve come to after days of googling and rewatching The Godfather (1 and 2) and The Sopranos .

Jenna, bless her, doesn’t laugh.

“Tell me more about this,” she says.

So I do. I tell her about walking home and about the things Vanessa said about family and taking over her father’s company, things that I didn’t think were weird at the time, but now think were suspicious. I tell her about the make-out (she screams, high-fives me, asks for details which I do not give because there are more important things about this story), and then I tell her about the men, the one who knocked me on my ass who I watched die, how I watched him die, and the way Vanessa quickly handled the other man as if he wasn’t four times her size.

Other than saying, “No fucking way” every sixteen seconds, she doesn’t stop me.

“And then she. . . spit on him?” Jenna says.

“Stop looking impressed, that is not impressive, Jenna. She’s probably a sociopath.”

“Yeah, no, sure, you’re right, go on.”

I tell her about the efficient clean-up like they’d done it a million times before, the team of tattooed and scary men that reported to her and were there minutes after she called, and the conversation afterward.

“What did they do with the bodies?” Jenna asks, not nearly alarmed enough about the fact that there were any dead bodies to begin with.

I shrug because really it is anybody’s guess, but if I did have to guess (which I have, many times, in my journal), there was a boat or a meat grinder involved. I can hardly think about it without getting pukey.

“Could she be a spy?”

“She all but admitted to being a criminal,” I say. “All the guys called her ‘boss’ and she runs that big company, and she told me not to call the police and, Jenna, I think I’m going to be a target of the mafia for the rest of my short life.”

“Okay, now hold on,” Jenna says. “You’re being dramatic again.”

“Jenna, I watched two men be murdered. I think you could afford to be more dramatic right now.” I’m whisper-shouting again, though it would be difficult for any of my neighbors to hear me with the music so loud upstairs.

“Did you see the guy in the red Corolla outside?” I ask, whispering like he also might hear us from the curb.

Jenna’s eyebrows furrow and she gets up to peek out of my window, the metal blinds clinking as she moves a slat. I swear Ranger’s tail thumps at the slash of sunlight on the floor; the blinds have been drawn round the clock, all of my plants are in crisis.

“Who is he?”

“Tony,” I say. “He was the one who got the blood out of my shirt. He sits out there and makes sure nobody comes back.”

“Is he nice?”

I loath to admit that Tony is exceptionally nice. He nods at me when I leave my house, has knocked on my door and offered to walk Ranger multiple times, and even brought me a burrito once. Tony has the kind of face that could either be thirty-five or nineteen depending on the light, and he acts like I’m part of his family. Really, he called me ‘Cousin’ yesterday.

“You think she’s his boss? Or like, the boss?”

“I guess, maybe,” I say, though yes, I do think that. “Both.”

“Holy shit,” Jenna breathes, absently scratching behind Ranger’s ears. “Did you throw up? When you saw the dead guys.”

“After she left.” I am known to have somewhat of a light stomach.

“But crime is like. . . a man’s world, no? Godfather shit?”

“I will not pretend to know the intricacies and workings of the mafia, Jenna. Maybe they’ve entered the 21st century.”

She takes a moment to process all of this, bending one of the metal blinds again to get another look at Tony and chewing on her bottom lip. She’s still in her gym clothes and the baby hairs on her forehead have dried against her skin. Ranger licks at her leg until she picks him up and gives him a kiss on the head.

“Well, if she’s got a guy posted out of your house, you’re under her protection, right?”

“Sure, but for how long? When Tony goes away, then what?”

“You know how to fight, what about the self-defense classes?”

“Did you not hear the part where I floundered on the ground while Vanessa literally killed them?”

“You could get a gun?” she says and scrunches her nose up at the thought. “Could become a real gun nut.”

I had thought about that too, but the thought made my skin itchy.

Jenna quickly pulls away from the window, but then returns and waves stiffly, presumably to Tony.

Jenna deposits Ranger back on the ground before punching my shoulder, not lightly. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she demands.

I hold my now injured arm and stare blankly, letting myself blink three times before responding.

“Did you not hear the mafia part of all of this?”

She throws the foam football from my shelf at me, and I dodge it before it can hit my face. Next is a pillow, which I don’t dodge in time. “You have to tell me things!”

“I tell you everything!” I defend. “I didn’t want you to be in danger too.”

When there’s nothing else soft for her to throw at me, she seems to realize that now is not the time for her indignation. She makes the face I recognize as an apology, and I make one back.

We sit on the couch and stare at my covered windows while Ranger settles on the floor between our feet.

“I think you should call her,” Jenna says after a sigh.

“What?”

“Tell her you’re freaking out and you need to know you’ll be safe.”

I’ve considered this and promptly dismissed the idea over a dozen times now. I’m pissed, obviously, but what really gets me is how much I enjoyed myself with her before the night turned sour. Vanessa was charming and funny and hot in a way that distracts me when I think about it for too long. If I call her, she might unintentionally remind me of these things, and what I need is to remember that she is dangerous and any affiliation with her is likely to get me killed or thrown into prison, or both.

But then I think about that kiss and how it was, without any doubt, the most affecting kiss of my existence, the one I will be comparing all kisses to going forward. What I need to do is forget all about Vanessa and that stupid kiss that I have angrily jacked off thinking about every day this week. She’s a criminal for Christ’s sake. I do not need to be thinking about her in any way, especially not in a horny way.

“Do you want to stay at my place for a few days?”

“Laura would love that,” I say. Her roommate, Laura, has long since tried to convince Jenna that I was not worthy of her friendship, and by being friends with me, she was perpetuating a series of things that I am not nearly online enough to understand, according to Jenna.

Laura tolerates me, and that is a trial for her. I can’t imagine how she would react if I was there for longer than twenty-four hours.

“She’d get over it.”

“It’s okay,” I say, and then stalk over to the window to look at Tony. She follows and peers over my shoulder as Tony eats a huge sub and bops his head to music we can’t hear. “I’ve got him.”