She was sweet to me.

It shouldn’t matter at all, but it does.

This girl who’s trembling beside me in the passenger seat of my car while I drive away from her safe little suburb was fucking sweet to me, all those years ago. She was never cruel. She was a real friend, a genuine friend, and that’s my hang-up.

It shouldn’t be a hang-up, but it is.

Functioning on autopilot, I clear the suburb's darkened streets and head toward Washington Groves, the school we attended all those years ago. It’s a fifteen-minute drive away, and she doesn’t say a word the whole time I’m driving.

I need time to think.

The school is bordered on three sides by open fields, a mistake in zoning or planning or some shit that gifted it with space it shouldn’t have had. At the back of one of those fields is an access road. This was part of the plan all along—this access road. Who the hell ever comes back here? Nobody. It’s the perfect place to carry out my mission.

I pull onto the gravel road and throw the car into park.

This close to the school, its hulking shape intermittently visible through the trees, it’s hard to shut off the memories. And there are lots of memories. Those stupid Valentine’s flowers, made of candy, the ones they used to sell all week leading up to the holiday. Sia always sent me one, and I always sent her one, too. We weren’t dating. That shit was beyond what I ever thought possible, back when I was either ridiculed or feared, depending on who I was looking at. But not Sia. She wasn’t afraid of my dark eyes, the way I stared too pointedly when my thoughts ran away with me. She’d only tap my forehead and say, "Gio, come back."

Fuck. This was supposed to be my entry into the family, and the thought of telling my father that I wasn’t man enough to destroy the last of the Riccis makes me sick.

But so does killing Sia Andrews.

She’s not looking at me.

She’s looking out her window. The high school is lit up twenty-four hours a day, and between the trees, there are slices of the bricked, prison-shaped building in sight. I can even make out a corner of the bleachers that stand behind the school. More memories sweep over me. The way her hair shone in the thin lines of light that fell between the seats. The spritzed perfume scent of her skin floating in the warm air. The way she wore soft hoodies, always a soft hoodie, and took it off as the day grew warmer. By the time she caught the bus home, it would always be shoved into her backpack.

“Do you remember that day?” Her voice is soft, casual, none of the fight left in it. Her tone sounds like I drove her back here to fuck, away from our parents. Jesus, I daydreamed about that so many times. Driving her somewhere and letting her wrap herself around me in the front seat of my car. We wouldn’t have any room. We wouldn’t need any room.

“Which day?”

I shouldn’t entertain this kind of discussion. It’s only making it harder to carry out the plan. But I spent so many days with Sia Andrews that I can’t let it go.

“That first day we sat under the bleachers.” Sia—Alessia, I remind myself sternly—reaches up to brush a lock of hair away from her face. “It was a standoff at first, because I guess we both thought it was going to be our space, but then you said—”

“—that I’d let you sit with me if you didn’t turn out to be a stuck-up bitch.” I almost—almost—laugh at the memory of saying that to her. I’d been fucking terrified of how beautiful she was. “And then you said—”

“—I’d only sit with you if you didn’t turn out to be a raging asshole. And to never call me a bitch again.” Sia sounds wondering, as if middle school was yesterday instead of seven years ago.

I’d kept one of those promises.

I never called her a bitch.

The gun digs into my back, uncomfortable and obnoxious, and I shift in my seat. Alessia turns to look at me as I pull the gun out of its holster. The faraway expression falls away from her face and her eyes go wide, but only for an instant. She squeezes them shut tightly, her heart-shaped lips moving in a silent prayer.

It’s another punch to the gut. It would be different if she was the Ricci hellcat my father had made her out to be. If she’d clawed at my face, dragged me down with her. But this? The fear? The resignation? Fuck it.

“Oh, stop,” I tell her and reach in front of her. Her eyes fly open and she gasps, a little inhale, when she sees my arm, but I’m only opening the glovebox. The light inside turns on, highlighting the neat stack of papers I have tucked there.

Sia takes a long, deep breath and lets it out. “Why would a murderer buy car insurance?”

“I’m not a murderer.” I check the safety on the gun one last time and set it carefully in the glovebox. “Yet.”

I dig the glovebox key out of my pocket, lock it, and shift the car in reverse.

We’re getting the hell out of here.