Page 104 of Pretty Lies

So, J hadn’t lied.

“See, he was just … always trying to look out for me, and sometimes he gave away too much. Thought we were friends, maybe. Like us, you know?”

“Not like us,” Della murmured.

Jennika cocked a brow at that. “Well, yeah. And I meant Luis. He didn’t love me, but I didn’t know until it was too late. Good dick makes us stupid. God, he was fucking everything and anything with a hole just because it benefitted him not even because he wanted to. But I was the only one he said he loved; he only stayed the night with me. I was giving him things they weren’t. I helped his hustle. I was better. That bitch, Dell.”

She swallowed hard.

God.

Things were starting to make sense now.

It was terrifying.

How had she missed this?

Jennika’s eyes, smudged with whatever dark makeup she’d worn the night before, darted back to Della when she said, “Have you figured it out yet?”

“You were fucking Luis when he was with me?”

It was really the only thing that hurt. Not the actual cheating, of course—it’d been what ended their relationship along with Luis’s constant manipulation. And she never let him touch her without wearing a rubber. Still, with her best friend? That was a new low.

“Oh, don’t get sentimental about it. We were fucking long before you met him. A year or so. You were just getting … boring. Still being your daddy’s good girl. Not yet pushing your lines. We got you there, though, right? And then we had an idea. For you. And us.”

Della blinked. “Us?”

“Me and Luis. Keep up.”

That gun waved wildly.

She kept her eyes on the prize.

“Luis just needed to flip his game—get money and go. Start over new. He gave me something to do, I guess.”

“But he lied,” Della said quietly.

She didn’t need Jennika to say it.

It’s who Luis was.

It’s what he did.

Jennika’s jaw tensed, and the anger came back in her steely expression as she leveled it on Della. “You were just a pawn—something he could hustle. I didn’t see what it mattered, or why I should care. I had him, right? I came up with the idea of boosting something from one of the warehouses the Outfit owns. See, I like to listen when the guys are around. You learn a lot. Luis said if we could nab something good, he had the contacts to sell it. We’d bounce before shit even really hit the fan.”

“The warehouse.”

Everything became so painfully clear. Only the barrel of the gun answered her back. It met the middle of Della’s forehead harder than she expected. Jennika went from looking mildly crazy to full out fucking insane in a matter of two seconds. Della didn’t even have time to catch her breath before her friend was screaming in her fucking face.

“I wasn’t even supposed to be inside the damn warehouse! And he still hit it—he knew I was in there, and he still fucking hit the place!”

Jennika stumbled back, one shaking hand pointing the gun at Della while her other pulled at the mess of her hair. “You all could have been a bonus,” she spat, the gun jerking with her words. “A mess we wouldn’t have even needed to fucking worry about. But he didn’t care—he didn’t even answer me back when I said I was inside and to wait a minute. He just … lit it all up.”

“Hurts to know someone you love doesn’t give a shit about you, huh?” Della asked.

Wrong thing to say.

Jennika came at her again. Della’s forehead gave the gun’s barrel a soft spot to land. This time, she wasn’t quite as afraid as she had been moments earlier. She really wished that she didn’t recognize the pain and desperation in Jennika, but she did.