Claude

CHAPTER NINE

Nina texted me to meet her downstairs in 20 minutes. It's been 30 and she's still not here.

I have to admit that finding out she was working for the mafia hit me hard. Because I was excited to make a new friend and Nina had been a good friend, if only for a little while. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to fully wrap my head around the situation I was in.

Just as I was thinking about taking my lunch break by myself, Nina comes rushing over out of breath.

"I am so sorry that I'm late. There was a line at the bathroom," she explains and I dismiss her explanation with a wave of my hand.

"Don't worry about it. Where do you want to go?" I ask and she smiles.

She takes me to a little café a couple of blocks over and with a coffee in my hand, I rest my cheek in my hand and wait for her to speak.

"I know what you must be thinking, Diana. And you have every right to be mad at me. But I swear that we were already friends before Mr. Angelis found those emails. I only reported back to him because he asked me to. You weren't supposed to get caught up in any of this," she says earnestly. "You weren't even supposed to know about the Mafia."

"How am I supposed to know that you aren't just going to report everything I say to Mr. Angelis? How am I supposed to trust any of you?"

She hangs her head. "I know it's hard. And I know that you have a lot of questions. Trust me when I say that I barely know more than you. You can trust me, Diana. I swear."

I can't trust her. Just like I can't trust Claude or Opium or Raphael. Like I can't trust any of the workers in this building. Or the cashier at the corner store. Or that nice yoga instructor I had in college. This has shaken me to my core and I can never - will never - trust anyone ever again if I can help it.

So where does that leave me? If I can't trust anyone, where the fuck does that leave me? I look at Nina, with her hands tangled anxiously on the table in front of her. I don't trust her but I like her. I decided that that's enough.

"I like you, Nina. I made a mistake that has changed my life. I don't want to make another one," I smile at her and the relief visibly washes over her like a wave. She grasps my hands and grins.

"Thank fuck. You're the first person I've wanted to be friends with for a long time. I was so upset when you found out."

"Believe me, so was I. Do you think...do you think we could not talk about the mafia when we are together?" I ask slowly hoping that I'm using the right words. "I don't want it to completely rule my life, you know?"

She nods quickly. "Oh my God, of course. I can't even imagine what you're going through right now."

"You didn't react this way when you found out?"

She laughs softly. "My own family is in the mafia. My father, may God grant him peace, worked for Mr. Angelis since he was a boy."

"Oh." That was all I was able to say. Imagine being surrounded by all of this death and destruction since you were a child.

We talked for the rest of our lunch break about what we had been up to over the past few days. It was nice not to lie to Nina anymore, not that I had much to tell her anyway. I really spent my days doing what I would have done before all of this anyway - laying in bed and reading with the occasional scrolling through my phone.

Nina was the opposite. We hadn't hung out in a couple of days but she'd already done more than I do in a week. She'd gotten into another fight with her ex boyfriend Marco and the electricity in her apartment had cut out. Not to mention that she'd met a cute guy in the coffee shop this morning.