Now completely awake and aware that he had been hoodwinked, Levi demanded that Ace confess as well.

  They were running around the hotel apartment, and Levi was ready to physically fight him out of pure frustration, the two parasitic twins inside his head negging him on, saying things such as eat him, eat him whole , fuck him, then eat him.

  After ten minutes of immature shouting and running around an apartment, Levi was at his breaking point. He backed Ace into a corner but kept his distance because he knew if he got too close he would blink to another random corner.

  “Why can’t you answer simple questions,” Ace asked.

  “I could ask you the same thing!”

  “She already knows! What are you afraid of?”

  Levi paused, took a deep breath, prepared himself for a lie, but then couldn’t come up with one. There was nothing to lie about because he didn’t know what he was afraid of anymore. There was something before, but now he didn’t know and he wished he did, and that hurt a bit more than his current confusion.

  “I don’t know. I guess...I was afraid of her…”

  “You’re afraid of Mary Jane,” Ace asked.

  “No, I mean, I don’t know. I’m worried that if she knew I was someone else she wouldn’t like me anymore.”

  Ace looked like he swallowed a bag of dirt and Levi tried to crify.

  “I meant a different kind of like . She feels like my sister, not my wife,” Levi mumbled.

  “Who marries their sister, ” Ace groaned.

  “I don’t know. Don’t be jealous, it’s not like that . Besides, you never talk about your family. Why are you lecturing me on mine?”

  Without waiting for a reply, Levi opened a window and starting smoking a cigarette. He looked straight down, watched the stray ashes fly into the wind, and observed the numerous police cruisers zipping throughout town. Another fire spread in the distance and Levi muttered something about this town being the new circle of Hell.

  “I miss her.”

  Relieved to say something out loud that Ace would have a conniption over, Levi sighed, hung his head, and did miss her before they dated, when the world made more sense, everything makes more sense the younger you are. Levi turned his head to look at Ace but his lips were pursed and was avoiding the conversation instead of saying anything.

  “I think you've been acting weird tely because you never talk about your dad. You need to move on. ”

  Once the words came out of his mouth Levi regretted them.

  “You still get to talk to your dead grandpa inside a neckce, I don’t think you get to tell me how I can move on from dead family members.”

  “That’s different.”

  Ace snatched the cigarette out of his hand and chucked it out the window.

  “Are you ten!?!”

  “No, that’s when I was stuck under rubble for three days and lost my brother and mother.”

  “Ace—”

  “Shut up! You have an entire family! So many! I saw them all at that stupid sham wedding of yours,” Ace screamed. “I lost my dad! My wife! My son! And you—”

  Ace stopped himself mid-sentence after he realized he had been caught lying.

  He was a liar as well, but he lied through omission, and Levi had no idea that Ace had a wife, and a son, and the bed he made now might as well have been on fire. Levi wasn’t sure anymore if he made the right choice being with Ace, and that terrified him because for years he chased the high of the one , and now he had him. Like a dog chasing his own tail, once it was caught, the reality was that it was not as exciting as it seemed.

  Levi was so shocked he said nothing. Ace shook his head and walked down the hallway towards the living room. Suddenly a loud band could be heard as the door to the rge hotel suite swung open. Ace ran back down the hallway , shrieking, followed by several masked men, causing Levi to scream which made the walls scream, the floors cry, the air sing, the ceiling mp to dance.

  Everyone stood still, looking around awkwardly, waiting for all the inanimate objects in the room to stop having a panic attack, but they were more afraid of the living than the living were afraid of them.

  “Don’t cry, it's okay,” Levi whispered in fear.

  “Please, excuse us,” one of the criminals said.

  They quickly left, speaking as if they accidentally walked in on someone using the restroom, making sure to shut the door behind them.

  Ace wanted to go with them.

  Rosaline awoke in the middle of the night to a familiar number and answered it with apprehension.

  She quickly got out of bed, and left her bedroom, closing the door quietly, trying not to wake the baby. She answered the phone, flicked on the light switch, and stood on the second floor, leaning over the stairwell railing, telling herself, he called her first, it must be important.

  It was not.

  “Why did you call me,” Nero slurred.

  “You called me,” Rosaline replied.

  “Mm. Mmm yes, I see. Of course, yes. Yes! ”

  He repeated the same phrase, several times, over and over, loud shouts in the background, and then what sounded like the barking of a dog, mixed with someone saying, speak something we can understand.

  “Why did you call me,” Rosaline asked.

  “I got more money. I wanna see ‘im.”

  “I...I guess you can but you can’t ever be alone with him.”

  “Das fine. I dunno’ wat tah do wit ‘im anyway. I jus’ wanna hold ‘im.”

  “Wow, that’s pretty mature considering-”

  “You know, I HAD A DREAM,” Nero screamed into the phone.

  “Stop screaming.”

  Now Nero was speaking so quietly that Rosealine had to put her phone on the highest volume, and was about to hang up.

  “I had a dream that someone took ‘im from me, and I was so scared. So scared. So, so I wanna see ‘im erryday, ya know? Ya know what I’m sayin’?”

  “I get that,” Rosaline nodded. “Sometimes I’m afraid to even-”

  “ Do you feel me? ”

  “Yes, Nero.”

  “No. Do you feel me? You gotta say that YOU CAN FEEL MY HEART-”

  Nero broke out into song, and Rosealine hung up.

  Eating and screaming, kissing and flirting, celebrating their win against the Aecors, a party was thrown at Alto’s estate in the middle of the night once his sister and Nero’s friends returned.

  They were not pleased that they didn’t try very hard to find them.

  They were even more displeased when Nero shrugged and said, well we always make it out alive, somehow.

  The party was held outside by the pool, the night sky lit up by more fires, the criminals proud that most of them were made by their boss.

  Nero took his shirt off, flexing, showing off his tattoo of his son’s name tattooed on his chest, in a fancy script, boasting that he didn’t cry the entire time they did it.

  They all knew it was a lie.

  Rosealine decided to call an old acquaintance in the morning whose number she had saved years ago, tired of worrying every night if Nero would slit her throat in the middle of the night once he started setting the entire town on fire.

  She called Officer Forthright.