Page 161 of Mafia and Gold Digger

“Could ask you the same thing. I have to say, Emerald, you really find the best places to hang out at.”

She slings her legs over the edge of the bench, sitting up. “Are you here to rub it in or bail me out?”

“Neither.”

“So, you’re just leaving me in here?” Her voice splutters in disbelief.

“I didn’t say that now, did I?”

She swallows back. And that’s when I see it. A crack in the strong Emerald I’ve come to see over the last few months. I lean further into the bars.

“Is this you telling me I told you so?” Her voice breaks, and my heart squeezes.

“No. It’s not that.”

“Then what? Why are you here, Saint?”

I stare at her. Her arms are wrapped around her chest, and she clenches her jaw like she’s trying so hard not to fall apart. Always the strong and confident Emerald. Always putting on a front that she doesn’t need anyone. “Because you’ve been gone for days, and I just found out you got thrown in jail for shoplifting. I needed to see you to believe it.”

“So, itisan I told you so.”

I shake my head, letting out a sigh. “No, Em. It’s not. It’s an ‘I’ve been up every night, tearing apart the city looking for you, and I’ve been worried about you for goddamn days, thinking God knows what’s happened to you and thinking we’re going find your body floating in the river, courtesy of Carmine.”

She just stares at me.

I turn from the bars, trying hard to hold onto that calm indifferent mask. “Why didn’t you call me? I could have bailed you out days ago. You’re lucky one of the officers works for the Imperiosi, or you’d have been shipped off to county lock up to wait for a trial. I mean, who did you call if it wasn’t me?”

“My mom.”

I step closer to the bars. “Why, Em? Did you really think she was going to help?”

She sniffs. “No. But I hoped she’d tell someone who could.”

I sigh, resting my head against the bars as my eyes close. “Why’d you call her over me?”

“Because I…didn’t think you cared, Saint.”

It’s like a stab to my heart, and I bite the inside of my cheek to stop making a sound. I deserve the blow. I deserve everything she’s about to hurl at me. But I just want her to lean on me. To know she can trust me to catch her when she falls. It hurts more than I care to admit to see her like this. To know she chose her deadbeat of a mother over me.

“You don’t get it, do you, Saint?”

“Get what, Em?”

“That you hurt me. The whole fake fiancée stuff was bad enough. Because until you proposed, I thought you didn’t consider me good enough to be…yourrealfiancée.” Her voice cracks. “And then after the proposal, after you never told meyou loved me, what was I supposed to think?” Her voice is a whisper now. “What am I still supposed to think? Everyone else thinks I’m unworthy. And it hurts that you think the same.It hurts that you still don’t think I’m good enough to fall in love with.”

I shake my head. “Do you know what it was like to think that I was too late? To think that the image of you in a body bag was going to become real?” My hand curls around the bar. “To think that the only person I’velovedsince I was five might be dead and I was helpless to stop it? Helpless to stop it again?”

There’s the slightest tremble in her bottom lip, and the swiftest swipe at her eyes. And I see that hard thick shell she’s built around herself crumbling.

And that’s when I see the real Emerald.

The one she hides from the world.

Scared of being alone.

Scared of being seen as less.

Scared of being herself.

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