“No. But I have someone who knows where she is.”
This is not what I wanted to hear from him. Not even close. I grip hold of the phone, doing my best not to snap and throw the fucking thing. “Who?”
“Some chick who’s hiding her. Bro, have you got the bodyguard under control?”
“Yeah.” The door to the kitchen opens and Alfie backs out into the hallway, dragging Sammy’s dead body behind him. Alfie grunts at me, trips, and drops Sammy. His head hits the floor hard, cracking against the tiles. Fuuuuuck. “I gotta go,” I say into the receiver. “Answer your fucking phone next time.” I kill the connection, backing away down the hallway. I need to get the hell out of here right fucking now. Roberto said he wanted us back here in one hour. That’s blatantly not going to happen since Sal doesn’t have Kaitlin, so the best thing I can do is get my ass as far away from Cucina Diavolo as possible. Until we have that Irish princess, this is seriously not a safe place to be.
ELEVEN
SCARLETT
It’s sad, you know, that the thing that spurs me on to get out isn’t the fact that I’m scared for my life.
Because I’m not scared, not really.
I honestly don’t really give a fuck what happens to me.
And that realization is almost freeing.
The problem, though, is that even though I don’t care, my body does. Very much so. Those little white pills that get me through the day are in my purse, and my purse is back at the diner. And I’m suddenly not feeling very good. I’m dizzy, I’m sweating, and I’m fairly sure if I don’t get to a bathroom soon, I’m going to throw up all over Sal’s plush carpet.
He’s busy fussing with the sheets. He rips everything off the bed and disappears, his feet thudding down the stairs and back up again.
When he returns, he’s got fresh sheets that he tosses on the bare mattress. He turns to me and frowns, as though he’s deciding whether to go ahead and make the bed, or start going to town on me with a rusty screwdriver until I talk.
“Don’t stop on my account,” I say, a little slower than I would have liked. My mouth is so dry, and my heart is pounding. Fuck. I knew I should have taken one of those tablets before I started my shift, but usually the alcohol gives me enough of a buzz until mid-morning when I take my first pill.
Timing is everything when you’re keeping yourself doped to the eyeballs day and night.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” I mumble.
He shrugs. “Guess you’ll just have to wait, sweetheart.”
I glare at him. “You really want two chicks pissing in your room today?”
He clenches his jaw, looking unimpressed. He leaves me for a moment, going into his bathroom, and when he comes out, he’s holding a large, very sharp cut-throat razor.
My eyes must wig out, because he smirks at me, placing the razor on top of the doorframe, where I’ll never be able to reach it.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not going to use it.”
He closes the space between us, untying my wrists. “Two minutes,” he says.
I massage my wrists. They feel tender from where he tied the rope, but he didn’t tie it very tight. It’s just that my skin is so fucking sensitive right now, it’s like paper-thin glass, ready to shatter into a million pieces and leave me a bleeding mess. At least, that’s what it feels like when I can’t get my pills and booze when I need it.
I nod, because I don’t even have the energy to speak anymore. Sal raises an eyebrow, giving me a strange look, but I need to be sick. Now.
I’ve only gone through withdrawals once before. It was back when I’d just gotten here and my doctor back in LA had prescribed the Oxy to keep me functioning through the worst of the court shit. I guess he didn’t want me jumping off a building like I kept threatening. The drugs numbed me, gave me some artificial sense of calm, a buzz in my stomach that I became rapidly obsessed with maintaining at all times.
Then he cut me off.
Fucker said I’d become too dependent on them and refused to prescribe them anymore. I’d been in New York three weeks by then, and I was tripping out.
Until I found Taylor, selling the shit at the AA meeting I’d been instructed to go to as part of my parole.
After that, it was just a matter of juggling enough tips to get my hands on a couple of the pills each day. Ideally I’d get more, but they were expensive, so I compensated by spacing out my doses and filling the voids with cheap alcohol. It’s worked pretty well for the past seven months that I’ve been existing out here.
I lock the bathroom door behind me, holding my hair back as I retch over the toilet bowl. God, it’s disgusting. I haven’t eaten since last night, and all that comes up is coffee and the burning vodka I consumed earlier.