by Bethany-Kris
Beside her in the darkness, Cross stiffened. Yet, the man didn’t speak. This wasn’t about him, after all. He had simply made this meeting possible for her to do with what she wanted.
He’d been right.
She was here to learn how it would end.
The only illumination of the quiet people, dirt road and wheat field came from the moon overhead and the dimmed lights of their vehicle still running twenty paces back. Penny did find solace in the silence and the finality of it all, even as she wished Cree would speak where he stood behind Dare, or that she felt better about the weight now sitting inside her heart.
Instead, she was numb when she told Dare, “I’ll take that deal.”
“PENNY—”
“Do you have a phone?” she interrupted, not giving Cross a chance to say a thing after they had watched the taillights of the SUV disappear down the dirt road.
She didn’t have a reason to believe Dare would return with Cree and their driver to go back on his word and finish the job of killing her early, but ...
“Of course, I have a phone,” Cross replied.
“I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe you hadn’t brought one—no way to track you.”
He rolled his eyes. “You work with too many hackers.”
“Your son is a hacker.”
Sort of.
Point was, if he wanted to state the obvious, then so could she.
Cross scowled, then, muttering, “I know the risk. What do you need a phone for?”
That was a tricky answer, and not particularly one she wanted to give. Yet, as Cross stared at her from the side, waiting for a viable reason that she would want to use his phone at a time like this, she decided to be honest.
“I’d really like to speak to Luca,” she admitted.
It was selfish. She wouldn’t be able to tell Luca anything about what was happening. Not without sending him into a panic that might put him in danger. She wouldn’t do that. He was going to ask, though.
She knew it.
And yet ...
“Could I use your phone?” she asked quietly.
Cross let out a sigh as he dug for the phone that he eventually produced to her. Penny took the device he dangled without comment, but he was quick to ask, “He’s a good man, isn’t he?”
She blinked, not expecting that.
He didn’t give her time to react before he added, “And he wants to be yours—your man, or so I was told. How is he supposed to do that now?”
Truth was power.
But truth was also pain.
Penny hid hers well even as he took the phone without reply to his statements. Instead, she asked, “Where should I call? I don’t think he has a phone and—”
“I heard he’s been staying with my son. I assume you know Nazio’s home phone number. He’s never changed it.”
She did know it.
Penny dialed the number without much thought to what she would say when someone answered the phone. Someone did—it was Roz. Through a painful whisper, she asked for the man who had given her everything to live for more times than he probably knew.
She didn’t know what she would say to him, either. And because of that, when Luca’s dark Penny echoed through the phone’s speaker, she lied.
But she also told the truth.
“I love you, Luca—I’ll see you soon.”
20.
Penny
THE sniffles, soft murmurs, and footsteps followed the sea of the grieving that walked behind a casket made of gold. From the bars the ten pallbearers used to lift the ornate, gaudy casket to the lids that had shut Charles Hatheway into his coffin.
Well ...
Someone who didn’t know the infected, poisonous history of her family ... they might assume she would feel something watching a church full of people follow her grandfather’s casket out to the waiting hearse that would deliver him to the crypt deep within a New Jersey cemetery where the rest of his family rotted together.
As rotten as him.
After all, he learned his vile ways from somewhere—or someone. To her, the abuse seemed like a disease that had chased her family for generations. Spreading and killing and ruining everything that it touched.
Even her.
No, she felt nothing as she watched the casket leave the church. She didn’t even care to look back over her shoulder at the altar where the family and friends of Charles had left a memorial in his body’s wake. The mountains of flowers and framed photographs that had followed her grandfather’s life from boyhood to a senior widower. From an innocent child to ... a monster.
One of many.
Instead, Penny stayed in the pew, pretending to fuss with the purse in her lap as the last few stragglers headed down the aisle after the family. She couldn’t help but hear their conversation as the women passed. Not that they could see her interest—the black, birdcage veil attached to the large-rimmed hat kept her face covered well enough when she had added a handkerchief to the mix just for good measure.
And for show, obviously.
“Gilles wasn’t here, I noticed,” the taller of the two women said to her friend.
The other one snickered. “Oh, I think Allegra can count her marriage over before it even began, Lydia.”
Before the women said anything else, they were already gone. Drifting down the aisle, their voices turning to whispers as they neared other people who might hear their unsavory conversation. Not a soul had dared to say one word about the fact that the senator had not shown up for his fiancée’s father’s funeral.
Statements were being made.
Apparently.
Penny no longer cared about the business or life of Allegra’s fake fiancé. Everything about the senator suggested the man had simply gotten tangled up in a web of lies—nothing more, and nothing less. He certainly wasn’t attached to The Elite or their business beyond his connection to her mother, and that had quickly fallen apart. She was sure the man had gone through a whole education about who exactly Allegra Dunsworth really was over the past few weeks.
She hoped his daughters were safe, now.
But that was all.
All that remained in the church besides the dying flowers on the altar and the scent of incense lingering in the air was Penny and the nuns starting to clean up at the front. There had been a large crowd at the funeral, but she expected that. She wondered if that was purposeful on the part of Allegra—another way to keep herself safe in the mess that she had created—or was it just the influence of a horrible man.
Hell, even tyrants were adored.
Why wouldn’t a monster be loved, too?
At the far end of the church, she heard a man tell one of the women, “Well, we better hurry if we’re going to see them carry him into the crypt.”
Yes.
Penny had to hurry now, too. She had a long-overdue meeting with a woman, and Allegra always did hate to wait.
“I’LL MISS YOU, DADDY.”
How sweet ...
Those were the first words that Penny had heard her mother speak over the course of the day—from a safe distance, of course—that she believed were true. Probably because Allegra was finally alone for the first time since arriving at the funeral in the back of a blacked-out town car with black sunglasses and a matching hat to keep anyone from seeing just how many layers of makeup she had caked on her face.
Was it getting hard to sleep?
Did dreams keep her awake?
Were they nightmares?
Penny wanted to ask as she rounded the final corner from the left-wing of the crypt that would meet the right—it was there that Charles’ golden casket had been left alongside his wife’s, parents’, and siblings’ graves. Instead, she said nothing as she moved like a ghost around the corner to find Allegra moving just a step away from the casket where it sat on a marble pedestal.
She made no sound.
There was no warning.
Like all of her kills before Allegra—each one that led up to he
r—the white ghost swept in with the same grace, danger, and beauty that had accompanied every murder she had ever made. She had never planned to treat her mother with any less respect—and lack of empathy—that she had for any other pedophile that met their end by her hand.
Because the woman wasn’t different.
Pain was pain, and God above knew that Allegra hadn’t been anything to Penny for a long time ... not a mother; nothing but a living, breathing scar she felt forced to wear. Another reminder of a shameful, dirty secret that had left her believing she was broken and unwanted for more than half her life.
Not worthy.
Not good enough.
Used.
There should have been more satisfaction inside Penny’s thundering heart when Allegra turned back slightly—just enough to catch sight of her daughter raising the nine-millimeter with the long end of the silencer pointed directly at her face.
Instead, what she felt was fear.
It clawed through her chest and lungs like a hungry, angry bear woken from its cave before the spring. All of her muscles locked, tensing into hard balls; boils ready to spring, and even her breath caught in her throat with a painful slice right down her windpipe.
The fear was still real.
Still violent.
It was also fleeting; a blip in the raging war of what was Penny’s mind whenever she stared into the eyes of the woman who had both birthed her and took away her will to live. All because she could—because Penny was hers.
Allegra’s piercing, cold stare widened when Penny told her mother, “I thought you might like to die with the only person you ever loved—so die with him.”
Allegra didn’t speak.
Couldn’t.
Not when Penny didn’t give her the chance. Those painted-red lips of her mother’s opened with words that she would never get to say. And what was more beautiful was the fact that Penny didn’t wonder what those words might have been when the bullet from her gun plugged into Allegra’s forehead.
Two seconds later, her mother’s body hit the floor. It was the only noise left in the crypt, the dull thud carrying down the massive corridors, around the corner to where she knew people were waiting fifty feet away for Allegra to come back out.
But there were two wings.
Two ways in.
Not that Penny had time to absorb the impact of her finally ending what had been started far too many years ago. She had to leave—the white ghost left in much the same way that she came—but she did take the chance to glance back as the skirt of her black dress whipped wildly around her legs when she turned back for the left-wing.
Allegra’s dead stare and the blood pooling down between her eyes, ruining the canvas of heavy makeup, stared back.
“Goodbye, Allegra,” she whispered.
She’d done it.
Faced her demon.
Slayed the monster.
It should be over.
Penny should have been happy.
Angry.
Anything.
Right then, she was ... nothing.
Empty.
Alone.
PENNY WAS GRATEFUL for the cobblestone walkway that led up the final hill at the far end of the cemetery. It led to the same entrance she had used that connected to the side of the church. A quick way to the crypt, but not one that the hearse could drive while the hundreds of people followed behind.
Heels and grass were never friends, but at least the cobblestone made things slightly easier for Penny at the end of her trek out of the cemetery. With a little more conscious effort, that was, because nothing about cobblestone and heels were friends, either.
She blamed her distraction with moving fast—but also staying upright—for why she didn’t see the figure waiting on the other side of the hill when she came up over it. Hollers for help had already started to echo for Allegra when Penny first exited the left wing. A siren wailed in the distance—was it for the dead woman who couldn’t be saved?
“Was it like I promised it would be?” he asked.
Penny came to a standstill on the pathway, her skirt billowing from the wind as her head snapped up. She didn’t even react to snatch the hat that blew off her head in the wind that had picked up a lot more since she first arrived at the church that morning.
Cree waited for an answer. A gun rested in his right hand.
Penny rocked against the wind, her slight sway the only thing that moved between her and Cree for more seconds than she cared to count. The scent of ammonia from the boxed, black hair dye that she had ruined her white-blonde locks with the night before danced over her face when strands of her hair whipped against her skin.
She swallowed.
Her words.
The air.
Those few final seconds ...
“Do you remember,” he asked her, “when I made that promise?”
She did.
Two months into her training at The League, swallowed by her fear, with bloodshot eyes, and tears that tasted like salt staining her lips, he promised she would feel nothing when she killed Allegra. Cree had bent over her in the darkness of a room that she never wanted to even smell again and told her she could have the thing she wanted the most—to feel nothing when it was finally the end.
“I was scared,” Penny told him.
Cree dared to smile, as tiny and fast as it was. “And then?”
“She was gone.”
“And you felt—”
“Nothing,” Penny said, her words a rushed ache leaving her lips. “Nothing at all.”
His expression softened even as he raised his weapon. His dark eyes met hers, and she found remorse there—waiting for her, though he wouldn’t offer it in words. That was okay.
“When you killed her, or two weeks—whichever came first,” he reminded her.
“Tell Dare I’m not sorry.”
Cree nodded once. “You shouldn’t be.”
Ever.
She was owed this.
“Dare made me a deal, too,” Cree said, his finger wrapping the trigger. “You only have to die, Penny ... and maybe then you can live.”
He pulled the trigger back. The last thing Penny remembered was coughing and the taste of blood thick in her clogged airpipe as she stared up at a bright blue sky, and rolling white clouds. She heard a click—a digital ding as her heart fought to keep beating.
She felt every single one.
And how they slowed.
Penny would have liked to say that she had no regrets at the moment of her death, but that was a lie.
She regretted not saying goodbye.
21.
Luca
THERE was nothing quite like the streets of New York City, mid-week, at the end of a long workday. Often congested, and yet fast-paced in a blink, driving in that mess could make a normal man insane. He kind of liked it.
Luca could thank his father for demanding he learn how to drive in downtown Manhattan during early Monday morning traffic when he hadn’t even known how to back a vehicle up at that point. And it was one of the only times that he couldn’t focus long enough to think.
At least, not too deep. That was better, lately.
Thinking led him down too many rabbit holes—Luca didn’t enjoy the helpless feeling he was left with every time he was reminded that Penny was ... somewhere.
Somewhere without him.
Luca let those thoughts drift away as he finally rounded onto the block where he had to meet up with a Donati capo. Being the go-between to pick up payments so the capos weren’t forced into the same spot when things in the city were tense was just one way Luca was helping to keep shit steady for Naz and la famiglia.
He didn’t mind.
It kept him busy, too.
And if this was the only way he could help to keep the streets of New York from becoming anymore bloodier than they already were, then this was what he was happy to do. Simple as that.
Before long, Luca was able to pull his car to the side of the street w
here temporary parking allowed him to sit for five minutes or less. He sent off a quick text—a confirmation that he was outside the coffee shop where the capo spent his evenings in a rear office handling paperwork.
Luca didn’t expect the capo to bring out the money—the dues owed to the new, sitting Doanti boss. He was right. A familiar family enforcer stepped out of the alley at the side of the coffee shop, telling Luca he had probably exited the business from a rear door. He didn’t linger at the open window of Luca’s latest buy—a new, two-door Mercedes that was blacked-out from the rims to the front windshield.
Money could make shit move in little time. He figured it was about time that he started spending some dollars. What good was it sitting there doing nothing, anyway?
It was also another way for him to distract himself from the giant hole in his life. A black space that seemed to be sucking all the good energy he had left with every passing second that he tried to pretend it wasn’t there.
He assumed this was what it felt like to be heartbroken—a little empty, lost, and too quiet. Not quite right.
“Thanks,” he told the enforcer when the man passed an envelope into the car. Luca packed it away in a bag on the passenger seat, and was already maneuvering the car out of the parking spot by the time the man had turned to leave. He gave the enforcer a two-fingered wave but didn’t glance the man’s way to see if it was returned.
Just as he pulled the car back onto the road, the Bluetooth in the car connected a call from the newest cell phone he had picked up to keep in contact with the important people who needed him. Or those he was paying to keep him up-to-date on information.
The number on the screen told him he was dealing with the latter.
“Keys,” Luca greeted when he picked up the call. “Tell me the good news, man.”
He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as the car came to a stop behind a white SUV at a red light. Good news was reaching—he mostly expected the same news Keys had been giving him for days when it came to Penny and any possible sightings or word about the white ghost.