Page 81 of Sinful Bargains

Everything else failed to exist. It was us against the world. It always has been. It always would be.

Because lying in Joey Romano’s arms, I was safe. I was his. He was mine. And nothing in the world could take this from us.

ANTONIO

Ihad been lying about being sick for a week now. Well, partly lying. I had been sick—just not in the way Ma thought.

The nausea wasn’t from a virus. It was from the memory that refused to let go of me, sinking its claws into my mind like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. The gunshots still rang in my ears, forcing me to wake up in cold sweats. My stomach twisted every time I thought about it, every time I saw his face, his hands—so steady, so sure of what he was doing—pulling the trigger like it meant absolutely nothing.

I had followed Joey back to the warehouse, convinced he might need saving. But he didn’t. He hadn’t come here to fight for his life—he had come here to end someone else’s.

The man I had spentmonthsbelieving my mother had killed.

I should have looked away. I should have shut my eyes, turned, and run. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. My body was frozen, and all I could do was watch as Joey used him for target practice.

I wasn’t sad that he was dead. In my mind, he had been dead for months. But what unsettled me, what made mystomach twist and caused me to vomit, was knowing my mother had never killed him in the first place. She had known he was alive all this time. And she had sent Joey to finish the job.

And the worst part of it all was that I remembered something. When Giovanni threw that baseball at me. He had said something that didn’t sit right, something my gut had told me was important. Something my insides kept screaming to dig deeper into. I had ignored it. Refused to acknowledge it. But now, the pieces had finally fallen into place. And I had no choice but to confront it.

“What? You’ll tell your daddy?” he teased. “Oh, wait—your dad’s dead, too, isn’t he?Or is he?”

I had cornered Giovanni in the boys’ locker room. “What the fuck do you want, paperboy?” he growled, changing out of his baseball jersey.

“How’d you know?” I asked.

He scowled, looking at me like I had five heads. “Know what? How’d I know what? That you’re a fucking moron? That’s pretty easy. Anyone with a single brain cell could figure that out.”

“No, you asshole. I’m talking about—” I paused, checking to see if anyone was listening. The coast was clear. “I’m talking about how you knew what my mother did.”

He stared past me before letting out a single chuckle, his eyes locking onto mine. “Because, as it turns out, we’re both just lurking in the shadows. We’re both just watching. Listening. To a lot of shit we shouldn’t be.”

My body nearly went limp. The last thing I wanted was to have anything in common with Giovanni Accetta. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He sighed. “You’re the idiot who thought it would be wise to work for my grandfather. He’s my own flesh and blood, and you couldn’t pay me enough to work for him.”

“I don’t work for him,” I said. “Work isn’t the word I would choose. It’s more like blackmail. Manipulation.”

He chuckled again. “I could have told you that was bound to happen. But then again, I suspected someone like you would tie yourself to someone like my grandfather. What I didn’t expect was that you’d spy on Joey. Once I figured that out, I couldn’t believe it. I heard him say Adriana was in trouble. He said she thought she’d killed your father, but it turns out she didn’t, and now he was coming to finish what she started. But we both know Joey—both sides of him—don’t we?” His eyes tested me, looking straight through me.

My jaw clenched tighter than tight, nearly grinding my teeth down. “He finished the job,” I told him.

He shook his head. “I’m no fucking fortune teller, but I could have told you he was going to finish the jobmonthsago. I’m surprised it took him this long.”

We sat in silence, just sizing each other up.

“What do you want from me?” he asked. “You wanted to know how I knew all this? Because that’s all. And if that’s all you wanted, could you move along and never speak to me again?”

“That’s not all I wanted,” I breathed out. I tossed my backpack around to my chest, dug my hand through it, and pulled out the same revolver my mother had used when she thought she’d killed him. The same revolver she’d forgotten all about because she was trapped in Joey’s spell. Giovanni backed up, his hands flying up as his back pressed against the lockers. “I wanted your help.”

“Well, put the fuckin’ gun down, you moron!” he shouted.

I put it back in the backpack. “I think we’ve got something in common.”

“What the hell would that be?” he spat.

“Joey hurt your mother. And now mine is unrecognizable since he came into our lives. I thought it was for the good. I thought Joey was the best thing to happen to us. But my motheremployed him to kill for her. She’s not that kind of person. He’s fooled me into believing he’s two different people. I think he’s fooled her, too,” I told him.

“So you want my help with killing Joey?” Giovanni muttered.

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