Page 6 of Heir of Fire
“You can always stay here.”
“No, no, no,” Valerio said, shaking his head.
“The offer’s out and everyone heard it,” Gianna said, jumping off the bed. “And I will be taking advantage of it.”
“How did you get in?” he asked. “You never answered that question.”
“And I never will.” She had a way of sneaking in and out of houses, not that she would ever tell any of them about it.
“You might as well help yourself to one of the guest rooms. It’s too early to be awake,” Luna told her.
She shook her head. “No, I’ll go home.”
“Let me have someone drop you off. It’s still dark outside and I don’t want you walking alone,” Valerio said, picking up his phone.
“One of these days I’m going to wake you up like this,” Luna promised her.
Gianna could only laugh, leaving the bedroom and going downstairs where a car waited for her. Her impromptu trip had answered some questions for her, enough to let her know that Finn truly had dropped to new depths and that there was no way she could force her best friend to deal with him right now.
So, she was stuck with him. Just her luck.
FIVE
FINN
The same routinegot boring enough after a week. Finn couldn’t deny that he missed the wildness and danger of his life from before. Now, he was occupied with working out and sitting on the couch.
He didn’t want to go back to school. To be honest, he never did anything while he was there in the first place. His degree was mostly a pass to let him have some fun before he was supposed to seriously start training to take over his father’s role as Don, but clearly that never happened.
To say he was bored out of his fucking mind was an understatement. He scrolled through channels on the TV once again, feeling his brain rotting by the minute.
He heard footsteps entering the living room. Immediately, his mind jumped to the possibility of it being a certain blonde that glared whenever she saw him, but instead it was another one of his sister’s friends: Cecilia.
She gave him a small nod and smile, which he returned. She didn’t say anything, but that was fine by him.
Cecilia went to grab her book from the coffee table when it struck him that she was the one person who might know where Augustus was. He hadn’t been answering any phone calls ortexts and hadn’t been by the house. It stung considering they used to be partners in crime, but things changed.
Still, Augustus was obsessed with her. Their relationship was confusing as fuck, but if anyone would know where he was, it had to be her.
“Hey, has Augustus changed his number or something?” Finn asked, standing. “He hasn’t been answering my calls, so I figured you might know.”
The small smile slipped off her face instantly and was replaced with narrowed eyes that seemed to hold fire inside of them. “I’m not his secretary.”
“Well, do you know where he is these days?”
“Why would I?” she asked, tucking the book under her arm.
“Because you guys have something going on,” he said.
Her eyes twitched in irritation, and she clenched her jaw. “No, we don’t.”
“Listen, I don’t give a shit about what you two do. I just need to talk to him. Can you tell him to call me?”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m going to say something, and this isn’t to be repeated to anyone, and I mean anyone. You left him, just disappeared. He was your best friend. You betrayed him after he was there for you through everything. You can’t just come back and want to rekindle things. That’s not how you treat the people you care about. So no, I’m not going to tell him anything because you don’t deserve the loyalty of a friend like him.”
The words hit him like a truck, nearly knocking him over. She walked away without another word, leaving him in the silence of his own consequences. He had pushed everyone away. He had left everything and everyone behind. They moved on without him and he was left playing catch up now.
His airway felt suffocatingly tight, a lump of emotion making it hard to get anything through. On the inside, he wanted to clawand rip through his own body to destroy himself and the person he had become. On the outside, there wasn’t a single indication of what he was going through. His face remained stoic, but internally it felt like he was on fire.
