Page 49 of Ice-Cold Obsession

“I have no idea. I guess you could run and go back home since they don’t have anything on you that I know of.”

“But Carla agreed, so they had something on her.”

“They probably just threatened her whole family. Your family.”

“So they know who I really am?”

“I don’t know. But they can sometimes threaten families without a lot of info. Like, they can just read Mom and Dad’s names off college records and saywe’ll kill them. So maybe they don’t.”

“What if my sister didn’t jump off a cliff? What if she refused to do something, or if she did something wrong and they killed her?”

“She was terrified when we last met, but I think she completed her task. I can’t know if she had any other since we weren’t exactly friends, but the mafia rarely leaves bodies around to find.”

“How many students and people they might be controlling?”

“No clue.”

She goes quiet and sits down on the bed. Her face is pale, her hands clasped in her lap. I can see the confusion and fear in her eyes. The rope cuts into my wrists, but I barely feel it. All I can think about is how she came here hating me, and how every smile, every touch, and every moment between us was part of her plan to destroy me.

And I fell for it.

I fell for her.

Now I feel like I’ve lost her, but I probably never even had her.

With her by my side, I didn’t feel totally alone. Telling her the truth helped me in a way, because I finally have someone who might understand. And even if she doesn’t, the truth is out there.

But I can’t stop thinking about how she was playing me. And I was playing her. Was anything between us real from her side? Because from mine, it is.

She actually destroyed me without even knowing it. For a second, I felt like I had someone in my life and thought that I might be happy, despite the circumstances.

And now that’s all gone.

My throat tightens. I want tell Scarlett that I didn’t hurt her sister, that I’m sorry, and that I never wanted any of this. But the words won’t come out. Because what’s the point? She’s not going to believe me or forgive me. And I don’t blame her.

I just wish things were different and that we could’ve met some other way. Maybe in some parallel universe, I’m not tied to the mafia and she’s not trying to hunting me down for something I didn’t do.

But that’s not the life I have, and it never will be.

Maybe I should tell Scarlett she won, because she’s managed to break my heart.

Chapter 30

SCARLETT

MY PULSE RACES AS Itry to make sense of what Gabriel just told me. Carla wasn’t his girlfriend. She was being controlled, just like he is, and just like I’m about to be.

“Come on, untie me now,” Gabriel says.

“No. You’re pretty like this. Let me think.”

He actually laughs, and the sound breaks some of the tension in the room.

“We need to do something to make those people pay,” I say. “The campus needs to be freed from them.”

“That will be hard to achieve since we have no resources or anything to fight the actual mafia. And I can’t lose my mom and dad too.”

“So what then? We just give up?”