Page 91 of End It All

"Enough of this emotional shit. What the hell happened at the docks?"

My shoulders tensed thinking about it. I'd replayed it over a thousand times the past few days and still I couldn't piece it together. It didn't help that every time I recalled everything that transpired, I saw Blake, and the fear of him dying came back. I relayed everything that had happened from Daiki pressuring me to meet up with the Russians to the altercation. I left nothing out, even the description of how I caved his head in with my fists. All through it, Harlow listened, taking it all in.

"Okay, I got the gist but what happened with Blake? Why is he with Cesare?"

My stomach knotted just from hearing his name. Going from seeing him every single day, falling asleep in the same bed, to notseeing or hearing from him for the past five days was jarring. "Is he okay?"

Harlow stared at me strangely. "Benito said he's alive but he didn't get to talk to him yet." His lids lowered as he squinted at me. "Are you worried about him?"

I shrugged, not willing to give anything away. I wasn’t certain about my own feelings but missing him sounded about right. "We parted on bad terms."

Harlow opened his mouth. I wasn't ready for the onslaught of questions he no doubt had. He shut it just as quickly, plunging us back into silence. I grabbed my pack of cigarettes. They weren't the kind I normally smoked when I did. They were my mother's favorite. Once upon a time, I'd smoked them to feel closer, thinking I could understand a little about her.

That desire was dead.

"Let's go handle this then," Harlow said, standing up.

I lifted a brow at him.

"I know you hate it here, come on."

He wasn't wrong. Being here was a punishment in itself. I was crawling out of my skin to get away, but going back to my place was a no go. It was too fucking empty, and since living with Blake, I'd kept the trash to a minimum. Which only emphasized the emptiness of the place.

"Where are we going?"

"To deal with Daiki, what else?" Harlow bent over to meet my gaze. "Unless there is another someone you need to confront?"

I ignored the second half, not ready to touch that landmine of emotions. He made confronting Daiki sound matter-of-fact and not the insanity it truly was. "What?" I laughed. "We're going to kill him?"

Harlow shrugged. I knew there was no love lost between him and his half brothers. "As far as I'm concerned, we'd be doing the world a favor." His gaze was heavy. "It doesn't make sense whythe Russians thought you were fucking them over. We're missing pieces, and I bet that shit for brains has them."

It wasn't the first time I'd thought the same. Nothing Isaak Antonov had said made sense.

"Did you start the fire?" Harlow asked as we made our way down.

"No, that was all Blake," I said proudly. "He's nuts."

"Of course he is. You do see who he's related to, right?"

Yeah, but Blake was his own man. He wasn't even raised around the mob. Blake was crazy on his own, a badass in his own right. My stomach twisted again, remembering how he'd taken down the other two Russians without batting an eye. He'd protected me, and I'd rewarded him by lashing out all because I was a pussy.

"Fuck, I really screwed up."

Harlow nodded, not knowing the context. "You usually do, but no one’s better at cleaning up shit than you."

Glancing at him, I nodded. I'd handle this, and the moment I got a chance, I'd figure out what to do from there.

I had to get Blake back.

"Didyou take me away from him?"

"Yes. For you, and for me. Having someone almost kill us just once was enough for me. I had to get away after he left."

"Did he come back for us?"

"Just once.”

The conversation played on a loop in my head. The man that I had thought abandoned me, hadn't. I tried to picture what that was like for him, to have returned to a wife that no longer wanted him around. Not that he was innocent. And she was right, he was dangerous. More dangerous than she probably realized until it was almost too late. But I couldn't stop thinking about the what-ifs. The way life might have turned out if we had stayed one big happy family.