Page 59 of Gambler’s Ruin (Calamity City Mafia #3)

THIRTY-FOUR

SEVEN

Seven days have passed, and I’m still numb.

I know, distantly, that I’m grateful to be home , but I’ve been hiding within myself, closed off and trying to erase everything that had brought me here.

It’s not helping.

One of them is always there, ready to hold me and whisper to me. I listen as Vortex says I’m beautiful and Havoc tells me I’m strong and Caleb calls me his pet. There’s a ferocity to those words that wasn’t there before, and despite everything going on in my head, I wonder if they mean them.

I think they do.

Still, it’s so hard to let them in because I’m not ready for them to talk to me about my decision to go with my mother, to try to save Lori.

I’d do it again if I had to, but I’m not sure they’re ever going to understand.

I blink my eyes open when I feel the bed dip next to me, lifting my head so I can see Caleb sitting next to me. Havoc and Vortex are behind him, and the presence of all three of them at the same time has my nerves spiking.

“It’s time to get up,” Caleb says. “You can’t spend your whole life in bed.”

Abigail thought I could. She thought that was the only place I belonged.

She’s dead now.

I killed her.

I should feel remorse, I think, like I should’ve felt bad for killing Leon.

I don’t.

Maybe I should feel relief, too, that she’s gone — that she’s gone, and even my father is gone.

I don’t feel those things either.

Emily is in custody, but I don’t think she’ll stay there for long. It would be a terrifying thought if it could break through the numbness.

“My back hurts when I move,” I tell him, aware that my voice is flat but unable to put anything more into it.

“I changed your bandages this morning,” Caleb says. “You’re mostly healed. You can’t do hard exercise but you can move around and watch TV. Or better, we can go downstairs and visit with some people—Georgie and Della have both been asking about you. Linda’s worried too.”

“I had to tell my mom you got injured, and she made a bunch of food for me to deliver,” Havoc adds. “It’s keeping warm right now. We should eat while it’s still fresh.”

Something uncertain pools inside of me. Abigail always insisted that I could get up right after and take clients and that I should stop whining before she showed me what she could really do.

I know it’s been a week.

I know they’ve been so patient with me.

But it’s easier to resent them than it is to work through everything that happened, and I know they expect me to talk to them.

“I know it hurts, beautiful,” Vortex says softly, “but it’ll be good for you.”

This is their way of telling me that I don’t have a choice.

“We miss you,” Vortex adds.

I turn away from them anyway, ready to drown myself in my phone again—except Caleb takes it out of my hands.

“Have you been using the gambling apps?” Caleb asks, and his voice is neutral but I know there’s disapproval in it.

I’m not sure whether I’m hurt or offended or tired . “Only the game, and I haven’t spent any money on it.”

Caleb keeps tapping on my phone, and I don’t have the energy to care about what he’s doing.

He’d never actually forbidden me to use the apps, but I’d known how disappointed he’d been when he’d discovered them on my phone in the first place.

That had been the first day, when I’d been desperate for distraction.

His tone is softer when he asks, “Why haven’t you responded to Lori’s text?”

“Why are you going through my phone?” I retort, but there’s no venom in my voice. “I thought you respected my privacy.”

“Lori thinks you hate her.” Caleb sets my phone down next to me. “But from where I’m standing, I think it’s not Lori you hate.”

I flinch. “She’s only twelve,” I mumble. “I think she acted like a twelve-year-old.”

Vortex comes to join us, sitting on the other side of me so he can stroke my hair.

“She did,” Caleb agrees. “And you acted like you would have, given the circumstances. But Seven, if you don’t talk to us now, we can’t help you.

” He leans down and gets his fingers around my hair, tugging just enough that I get a hint of pain.

“So, pet, if you don’t give me a good reason not to, I’ll have Havoc and Vortex carry you out of bed so we can force feed you burritos. ”

“Tamales,” Havoc corrects with a slight cough.

“They’re all the same,” Vortex says

I can’t help but smile, crooked as it is, at the familiar needling between the two of them. “Don’t say that around Sofía,” I say. “She’d never feed you again.”

“They are literally not the same,” Havoc says with an exasperated sigh. “One of them is made by steaming the food wrapped in corn leaves—okay, never mind, are we picking Seven up or is he getting out of bed on his own?”

“He’s getting out of bed on his own,” Vortex says, and he gets up. “C’mon, Seven. Only for a little while.”

I’m not going to win this particular battle, so I take Caleb’s outstretched hand and get up. My back twinges, but they’re right that it’s healed enough for me to move around.

I used to move around more than this, much sooner, too.

Caleb pulls me closer and kisses my forehead. “Good job, pet. Now let’s have these tacos.”

“Tacos now?” Havoc makes another frustrated noise, but he’s smiling too. “You know the difference between all these dishes, right, Seven?”

“Yes,” I tell him, letting Caleb hold me for a moment before going to Havoc so I can hug him. “Sofía even told me she’d show me how to make them.”

Havoc returns the embrace, leaning down to kiss my lips gently. “Which means she really likes you.”

Guilt stabs me in the gut. “I’ll see her soon,” I promise. I realize I haven’t asked about her, or about anyone else. I’ve been so up in my head that I haven’t thought about anyone but myself since… since…

I don’t need to think about that right now.

“Is she okay?” I ask tentatively as we walk out to the main room.

“Yeah. Marcus actually delivered her documentation, so now the lawyer is working on the divorce proceedings.” Havoc scratches the back of her neck.

“And I’m sponsoring her for citizenship, which I should have done ages ago.

I didn’t realize I could do it? Well. Between Marcus, my mom, and me, there’s no way we’d have gotten our shit together enough to get it done right.

Marcus would have sabotaged our attempts anyway. ”

I nod. I still don’t understand the intricacies of immigration and citizenship, but I know that this is progress in the right direction. “I’m glad she got away from him,” I say.

“You had a lot to do with that, Seven,” Vortex says. He wraps an arm around me and squeezes. “You’ve been so strong.”

“I think that’s Havoc’s line,” I say.

He chuckles. “We all agree on your strength, Seven. That’s never been in question.”

The table is already set, and I sit down at my usual spot. I’m not surprised when Nacho rushes over to me from his perch on the cat tree and rubs against my legs. He’s been clingy since I returned, which makes me feel guilty for having left in the first place.

I hadn’t had a choice, though. If I hadn’t done it…

I don’t think Lori would’ve come out in one piece.

The problem is that I don’t think I came out of it in one piece.

“Food, and then we need to talk about a few things,” Caleb says. He walks over to the oven, and I watch in shock as he puts on an oven mitt and pulls something out.

“I thought Sofía cooked,” I say, dumbfounded.

“She did,” Caleb answers. He brings the casserole dish over and sets it in the center of the table. “She also said we had to warm it up in the oven, not the microwave.”

Havoc nods. “It won’t taste right if you use the machine! Those were her words.”

Nacho jumps into my lap, and I pet him. “One of us needs to learn how to cook,” I say. “For real cooking, not ‘throwing someone else’s food in the oven’ cooking.”

“You and I can do it,” Vortex says.

“I think I’d have a better chance of getting it right,” Havoc argues.

Caleb serves me a tamale. “As long as you clean my kitchen up once you’re done, I don’t care which of you cooks.”

I nudge Nacho off of my lap, and while he meows in indignation, he doesn’t jump back up. I scoot my chair in a little closer to the table and start to eat. The banter is good, familiar, and I listen more than I talk.

I’m so afraid they’re going to turn the conversation on to me and what I did.

Vortex is already done with his own tamales, and I realize he’s talking to me. “ —think, Seven?”

I blink at him. “What?”

“When you’re feeling better, we were thinking about going on the hike Havoc keeps trying to talk us into. What do you think?” he asks. “Or a movie. Or anything.” He smiles at me.

Am I finally safe enough to start having a life of my own? The thought strikes me as impossible, but the threats… They’re gone.

Aren’t they?

“What happened to the others?” I ask, even though I’m not entirely sure I want to know the answer to my question. “The other… workers.”

The three of them go quiet, and I brace myself for terrible news.

“There was nobody else in the building,” Caleb says quietly. “Apparently they were in the process of getting that location set up for a bigger operation. Emily wasn’t very forthcoming with information, even after we… Well, we used some creative questioning methods.”

Anything they had done to her, I think she probably deserved a hundred times worse, I think, but I don’t say that aloud.

“I handed her and the information we gleaned to the authorities—well, I talked with Valentín Diamante about it, and he arranged it so everything would land in the hands of relevant parties. This way, nothing can be tied to you, or us, at all. I included what I know about the West Coast compound.” Caleb sighs.

“Unfortunately, I haven’t heard anything else on that front.

It’s possible the FBI is keeping quiet about things so they can reel in some of the clients or other players.

Abigail Lockwood can’t have been working alone.

With any luck, Emily will turn on their co-conspirators. ”