I could sleep for longer. All day. All night.
But I get out of bed and go drowsily down the long, long hallway to the guest room. I notice two things right away. One, the bed is made. I didn't sleep here last night. I slept in Leo’s bed. I slept in his bed.
Which could be related to the second thing that’s different.
The phone on the bedside table.
My phone.
I tiptoe over to it until I catch myself being ridiculous and loom over the phone. It’s...charging. Not plugged in, but charging. I pick it up and it stops. Put it back on the bedside table, and the screen lights up. The table of Leo’s guest room has a built-in charger.
Wow.
I swipe my thumb over the screen, and the phone unlocks. This is really my phone, then. He gave it back. I feel like the human embodiment of a warm, sparkling glow, which is crazy. People don’t glow for Leo Morelli. They run from him, or hurt for him, or—
Or touch him like they want to.
No more thoughts. Only phone calls.
Cash answers on the first ring. “Jesus, Hales.” His voice is pinched. My heart sinks right through Leo’s plush carpeting. “Did they tell you?”
“Tell me what?” I pace around the bed and back. “Cash, did something happen?”
A door shuts in the background of his call. “Aunt Caroline happened. She’s trying to have Dad committed.”
I sit down heavily on the side of the mattress. “What do you mean, committed?”
I know what he means, but only in the vague, horrified sense that it can’t be right. It cannot be right. My dad is too trusting, and he spends too much time working, but that doesn’t mean Caroline can have him put away.
“There’s a hospital upstate.” Despite the obvious strain, Cash keeps his tone level. That’s how I know it’s bad. “An old-fashioned asylum type of place, where they keep people.”
I’m half off the bed. Maybe it’s to throw up. Maybe it’s to run. I’ll run all the way home if I have to. “Tell me he’s not there already. Tell me she didn’t take him.”
“She didn’t take him yet.”
That’s the thing about Caroline Constantine. She could come to my house and take my father. Would she do it personally, with her own two hands? No. She would not. That’s not the Constantine way. The Constantine way is to hire out the dirtiest work so your hands always stay clean. The memory of Leo’s shadowed form pinning that man to the alley wall drills through me. Leo killed those men with his own two hands. With his own knife. He’s a Morelli. He’s not supposed to have more integrity than even the worst Constantines.
And yet.
I push myself off the bed and go to the window. With my forehead pressed against the glass, I do deep breathing and focus on the snowflakes swirling down over Leo’s beautiful backyard. No—grounds. He has grounds. Caroline has her claws in my dad. I have a shirt that belongs to Leo, and a pair of too-big pajama pants more luxurious than anything in my closet back home.
“He’s in the house, Cash? Dad’s home?”
“He’s home for now. I don’t want him to hear—” Cash clears his throat and lowers his voice. “Caroline’s bulldog came to visit. That guy, Ronan. He threatened him. Pushed him around in his workshop. Broke some shit.” A pause that sounds like a struggle.
A guilty ache closes in around my neck, holding on so tight I can’t catch my breath. “Cash,” I try. “I—”
I don’t know what to do. I’m here with Leo, and Cash is in the most dangerous place on earth. Caroline Constantine owns Bishop’s Landing and most of the people in it. If she brought enough of them to our house, they would have all the power.
This is what it must be like to be crumpled up and thrown away. I feel folded in. Caved. Discarded, though I came here on my own.
If Aunt Caroline takes our dad away, then all of this will have been for nothing. I took the strap for Leo. Took his cock down my throat. Bandaged his wounds. It will all be meaningless.
Part of me shrinks away from that thought, disgusted. Those things we did—they meant something. But Leo and I signed a deal, and emotions weren’t part of it. It’s confusing. I don’t know which way is up.
“Are you okay, Hales?”
“Yes,” I squeak, then clap my hand over my mouth to keep in the sobs. I’ve gotten better at keeping them silent while I’m here. It comes in handy right now. I have to let this out some way or another, but it’s not going to be in front of my brother. “I’m going to be fine. What’s our plan?”
I wish Petra was here to swoop in and arrange things with drill-sergeant precision. You never had to worry about finding your place when your sister was in charge. She had the answers to every question. Her word was law.
There’s only one person I know—other than Petra—who always has an answer.
That person is Leo Morelli.
The flush that spreads from my neck down makes me back away from the window. I cannot fantasize about a mortal enemy of our family when he’s the reason Aunt Caroline is after my dad in the first place.
That obnoxious, relentless voice in my head spins up. Leo Morelli didn’t start this.
No. Of course he didn’t. The feud between the Morellis and the Constantines started long before Leo came to my dad with his contract. Leo is making moves in a game that’s older than both of us.
“Hales?” Cash’s voice sounds far away, but my thoughts are too frantic, too loud. Aunt Caroline is the one who’s had a problem all these years. Aunt Caroline is the one who wanted my dad to be different. Leo chose him because Aunt Caroline has always kept him on the outside. She wouldn’t help him, and that left us vulnerable to Leo. I can’t untangle what it means. I can’t find the thread that gets us out of this.
Leo was supposed to be the threat. Not Aunt Caroline.
“I’ll come home. We’ll figure it out. It’ll be better if I—”
“No.” Cash’s voice is so decisive that it shocks me into silence. “I’m handling it. You have to stay there, with him.”
There’s such venom in his voice that it seeps through the phone. “Cash, there has to be something—”
“Stay where you are.” He’s forcing the words through gritted teeth. Cash is never this angry. Never at the mercy of his emotions like this. Of the two of us, he’s the real Constantine. Cool under pressure. Delightful at parties. He doesn’t get pissed and speak to people like this. “Keep Leo Morelli away. That’s all you have to do.”
18
Haley
I’m a mess.
Keeping it together, at least outwardly, is the best and only option. I can’t have a screaming, panicking meltdown. That’s not me. And it won’t get me anywhere. It definitely won’t get Aunt Caroline to leave my dad alone. It won’t help Cash. We’ll still be in trouble.
If it was summer, I would go for a run to clear my head. I would run until the pattern of my footfalls put everything back in order again. But it’s winter. I’m certain Leo has a gym here, but the logistics make me want to go back to bed. Calling Mrs. Page for clothes. Finding it. Running on a treadmill, which I’m certain is a preview of hell.