And don’t even get me started on Ash and Annie. The hate and the love were almost equal and yet it worked, you know, after he got over blaming her for his fianceé’s death.
I groaned.
See?
I had no reason for the baggage.
No reason for comparing my story to my cousins’—comparing my suffering.
And yet, there the baggage sat, unchecked, dangling from my arms and legs.
Izzy was quiet for way too long.
Had I been in my head—yup, I had been because her crystal-blue eyes stared at me in comfort and support, through my reflection in the mirror.
“What do you see?” I asked, crossing my arms across my black Nike crop top. It left a few inches of skin visible before meeting my white, high-waisted leggings and blue Jordan high-tops.
“Welllll…” Izzy winked. “I think you look hot. But what’s more than that…” Her face sobered briefly. “I think…no matter what you look like, you’ll always feel lost.”
Her eyes flickered away while mine turned down to my feet, to my brand-new expensive shoes, something that anyone nearly nineteen would kill for. And they were just shoes, footwear that hid something that was dying inside me.
Something that needed to be set free.
Something I couldn’t identify.
Couldn’t save.
“Look…” Izzy was suddenly behind me, her chin resting on my shoulder. “I love you, no matter what, Tiny. But I know something happened. I wish you’d trust me enough to tell me. The point in all of this is to find something that truly makes you happy. That makes…” Her eyes darted away and then back. “That makes you want to live. Do you think…you have that something?”
“You’re just a little girl!”
“Am not!” I stomped on Tank’s foot and then stormed off.
With a grin I hadn’t felt in a year, I looked up into the mirror and smirked. “I think I know what would make me happy.”
“Me?”
“No.”
“Good, because that smile was starting to make me feel like I needed a security detail and an AK-47.”
I laughed even harder. “He’ll be fine.”
“He?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, wait, we’re torturing someone?”
Now, she gets excited? Poor Maksim.
I rolled my eyes. “Not really. I’ll just torture him for one lame day and get back to my life. But the fact that I can even get a rise out of him brings me joy, and you did say…what makes me happy?”
Her gorgeous, wide smile beamed as her jet-black hair bounced down to her ass like a friggin’ Kardashian. “Absolutely.”
“Good talk, Iz.”
She blew a kiss toward me. “Good talk, Tiny.”
I turned back to the mirror with an evil grin. If I couldn’t be happy. Content. If I couldn’t sleep. Why let him? After all, he was the one who’d gotten away, who didn’t save me. Not that he’d heard me screaming, but I’d always imagined him coming in on a white horse.
Instead…
He’d done nothing.
Which was worse than rejecting me.
So, I’d make him pay, just a little. For his flirting and his constant attention before the incident—before the change.
I would make his life a living Hell.
Twenty-four hours.
Ha, strap up, princess, because Tiny is hella coming for Tank!
Chapter Three
Tank
I knocked on Director Thompsons’ door.
“Come in.” He didn’t look up from his desk.
He was in his late fifties with salt and pepper hair and a constant scowl on his face as if the world couldn’t help but disappoint him on a daily basis. Then again, if people saw what we did…
Lived how we did at the bureau, well…it was hard to find the light in things—the happy when everything seemed so dark and tragic.
“Yes.” His brown eyes crinkled at the corners as he scanned me intently from the black folder he was holding. “This true?”
Shit.
“Well, that depends on what it says.” I knew what those black folders meant. Had they finally forced my hand? Finally sent the FBI something that meant this would be my last day?
My badge burned in my pocket as I crossed my arms.
“Sit.” He pointed to the cold metal chair.
I stalked over to it, trying to fit my giant frame into a tiny seat was hellishly uncomfortable. Maybe a few years ago, I would have been able to, but not since working out with Ash.
I’d thought Quantico was rough.
Ha, they should just send in Ash, Junior, King, Maksim, and Valerian. That would be tough.
They bled like they liked it.
They were grumpy when they weren’t injured.
And I rarely saw them smile without at least some blood on their person.
I’d been forced to fight. Forced to lift more weights than I’d ever seen in my entire life, forced to live their life in order to survive.
I didn’t feel sorry for myself.
I just felt bad for my sore ass as I moved on the chair and tried to get comfortable.
“You’ve changed,” Thompsons said with a sigh. “I’d believe it with my own eyes even if I hadn’t been sent this folder this morning.”
“I’m assuming this is where you ask me to turn in my badge, gun, and—”
He held up his hand. “I just need to know if it’s true.”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
“Are you made?” He leaned forward, clasping his hands together so tightly, his skin turned a palish white.
Shit.
He didn’t know, then?
He’d seen the bruises on my face.
He’d seen the limps as I walked into the office.
He knew I was undercover.
Everyone assumed that I was working for one side but pretending to work for both.
They were wrong.
Because, somehow, the Five Families had become my family. Somehow, they’d healed me in a way the FBI never would and never could.
I was half De Lange, after all, wasn’t I? Half-blood of the most hated mafia line in the entire universe. Yay.
Maybe that’s why I chose the good guys, only to realize too late that both sides were good—both sides justified the spilling of blood.
But only one side was loyal to the death.
And it wasn’t the one with the badge.
“Yes,” I finally said. “I’ve been made.”
His sigh was long and drawn out. “What the hell do you want me to do with this information, Tank?”
“Burn it?” I offered.
The lines on his forehead deepened. “So that’s it, then? You go undercover too young, and now I lose you forever?”
“You have other informants. I’m easily replaceable.”
He flinched. “How do you know that?”
“Because you would never just lay all your cards out on the table. Quite honestly, I think you have someone else in the Family, I just don’t know who would be desperate enough to work with you the way I was.”
He pounded his fist onto his desk. “I saved you!”
“I know,” I said softly. “You saved a lot of us. You gave us purpose. You gave us a life. But now it’s time for me to make my own choices.”