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“I don’t want your pity.”
“Good. You don’t have it.”
She turns to look at Veda with nothing but rage in her eyes. “You, standing there, not even fighting me. Pathetic!”
Veda, cool as can be, smiles a little. Just enough to let Allegra see the wolf in her. “I’m not fighting you because this isn’t a war. It’s a slaughter. You just don’t know it yet.”
Fuck, I love this woman.
Allegra snaps, “You think you’ve won? Is that it?”
“This isn’t about winning. You keep treating Lupo like a trophy. He’s a person. He makes his own choices, and you refuse to hear him because he didn’t choose you.” She pauses, tilts her head. “I am not the pathetic one in this conversation.”
“Bitch!”
Veda shrugs. “Loser.”
“How can you do this to me?” Allegra asks the sky, and it’s not to me anymore. A shouted prayer to whatever god she believes in this week.
Then she lunges at Veda. It’s fast and ugly and born of unadulterated, primal rage.
Even with all that power behind it, she doesn’t get anywhere near Veda because Mark is already there. He intercepts Allegra mid-motion, catches her, and hoists her over one shoulder in the blink of an eye.
“What the fuck?” she shouts as she dangles.
“That’s enough out of you, Allegra,” he says as he starts walking her back down the hill toward her ruined house.
“Who are you? Put me down!”
“Not happening, psycho.” It’s the last thing we hear as he purposefully bounces her on his shoulder to shut her up.
I wince at the thought—if he did that to me, my stitches would rip.
Veda watches her brother carry a screaming Allegra down the slope, and something in her looks almost like the ghost of a laugh. She catches me watching her catch it, and the almost-laugh vanishes.
It wasn’t for me. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But it was there, and I saw it, and I’ll take the memory with me to the grave.
“She’ll be in custody by tomorrow,” I tell Veda. “Her dossier releases in the morning.”
Her brow furrows for a moment. “You staggered the releases? Why?”
I watch Mark deposit Allegra unceremoniously at the bottom of the hill and dust off his hands, a chore completed. She shouts something unintelligible at this distance, arms flaring outward. To my surprise, he responds, and she takes a step back. He pursues the advantage, barking something at her until he turns his back on her and heads back up the hill.
“I staggered them to let her sweat for one night, knowing it’s coming. And to make sure no editor could pair them and lose one in the other’s noise. Both.” The petty part of me admits, “But it was mostly the sweating.”
That earns Veda’s smile. “And that’s why she tried to come onto you again, isn’t it? Not out of some twisted love story. But to save her own ass.”
“With Allegra, it’s always both. Truth and lies, all stirred up together in the same cocktail.” I spent so much time drowning in that cocktail. “It wasn’t easy, being with someone like that. She makes truth work for lies, and lies support truths… It’s exhausting, to be honest.”
Veda stares me down. “I know.” The pointedness in her tone stabs at me.
“I’d promise to never do that to you again, but you wouldn’t believe me, and you’d be right not to. I’m not sure how to stop being that way, Veda. But for you, I’ll try.”
She shakes her head. “Don’t try for me, Lupo. Try to be a better person for you. Be better because that’s who you want to be.”
Her advice drops straight to the bottom of my core. “Damn.”
“What?”
