Page 99 of Wicked Tricks

When Antoni walked in behind me, it caught her attention immediately. She inhaled audibly, and stood up from her chair as he ducked into the room.

“Toni,” she exclaimed, plastering a smile on her face.

“What’s all this?” I asked, gesturing towards the almost empty office and bags surrounding the desk.

I already knew the answer, she was making a run for it.

She studied us for a moment, and when she was confident that Antoni was not going to kill her, she sighed, taking off her glasses and throwing them onto the desk.

“I’m retiring, Rome.”

My eyebrows shot up, “running away, you mean?”

She rolled her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose between her eyes, “Antoni, could you give us a moment?”

He looked at me, pursing his lips and rubbing his chin.

I nodded, letting him know that it would be alright.

Really, Diana was lucky that I was with him, because I was not sure that the Santino’s would take the attempted assassination of their Don lightly. Antoni had agreed to keep the secret, for me. Though Sierra had hurt me in many ways, I did not want to see her killed. Plus, I felt that I had gotten my revenge, and revenge on behalf of the girls who would never find out what happened.

He leaned down, kissing me lightly on the forehead before leaving us alone, and closing the door behind him.

Diana was silently smirking at me, leaning against the desk.

“What?” I snapped.

“Nothing,” she laughed, holding her hands up in the air, “I’ve just never seen you like this.”

“Yeah, well,” I shrugged, “I don’t know how to explain it.”

She shook her head, closing the gap between us and holding my shoulders.

“It doesn’t need an explanation, Rome. Love doesn’t need an explanation, or logic, or reason.”

I gave her a tired look, she said that now, but me and every other girl at Lilith’s had gotten the lecture from Diana followed by a smack upside the head for letting a man in.

“What happened to protecting ourselves? What happened to ‘if you let a man control your emotions then you’re the idiot?’”

“Every situation is different,” she said quietly.

“What makes this situation so different?”

“Because it’s you.”

She sighed, going to her cupboard and pouring herself a drink. She sipped at it as I stood where I was, still not caught up with the thoughts going through my head.

“Rome,” she said, sitting back down, “I’ve known you for a long time. All I wanted to do was protect you - and these girls. I know how hard this must be for you. I may have beentootough on all of you, maybe projecting my own fears onto you a bit. You’re like my daughter, all of you are. But,” she said, staring off into the distance, “don’t end up like me.”

“Why not?” I asked, “look at what you’ve built. Without you, I would probably be in a far worse place. Same for the others.”

“That’s not the point. I’m fucking fifty-nine years old, Rome, and still spend every day and night in a nightclub. I have no one to go home to, no one to pick me up when I fall. I will die alone.”

“Don’t say that,” I said softly, stepping towards her.

“It’s true,” she said plainly and shrugged, “I’ve made my peace with that. But, I let fear control me. If I hurt them first, they couldn’t hurt me. It’s what I’ve taught you girls, and some of them, yes - they needed to learn that. But you,” she said, tipping back the rest of her drink, “needed to learn the opposite.”

I was quiet, I had never seen or heard this kind of vulnerability from Diana.

---