“That’s why I have Pietro,” I reminded her. “He can subdue and tie the prick up, then we can take turns beating the shit out of him. Come on, C, you know you want to kick him in the balls at least once.”

“He’s not worth the energy,” she said, her laughter fading, but at least her smile lingered. “So, Lis… Sorry, Cali,” she amended. “She’s still not speaking to Garret?”

I accepted the subject change, but my eyes silently told her we would be revisiting her broken heart soon. A wave of guilt hit me, something I’d been feeling since the blowup after Cali’s confession to my brother earlier in the week. “No, and I feel so bad about all this. I convinced her that she should tell him, that he would understand. And when he reacted the way he did, I guess she realized she couldn’t trust him after all. I can’t really blame her. Garret is an idiot.”

“It was his guilt over his past treatment of her that made him react that way,” Ciana defended. She’d always been my brother’s biggest cheerleader. It was why he’d introduced Cali to her before anyone else. Over the years, he’d considered her more of a sister than he had me. “I agree that he was being stupid, but he needed a moment to accept his past fuckups. She should have given him at least a day to come around. I mean, it wasn’t like he exploded and started throwing verbal abuse at her. He just left, because he couldn’t wrap his mind around everything right away.”

“Look at it from her point of view,” I argued. “Every man in her life who she was supposed to trust has continuously let her down. Garret proved to her that he was no different. If anything, this was probably more of a slap in the face for her because she opened her heart to him even when her every instinct was not to trust a word out of his mouth.”

The redhead slumped against the seat. “I get that. Garret told me that her stepbrother abused her. I didn’t realize it was Manuel Ramirez, though. That poor girl. I saw him once, from across the room of a club, and even from that distance, I could tell he was soulless.”

I’d only seen Manuel in pictures, never in person, but even then, I’d noticed the lack of a soul. There was just something about his eyes. They were…dead. “Let’s just pick her up and have a good time tonight. Get her mind off Garret and everything else. Then tomorrow, we will convince her to see him. If he’s smart, he will fall to his knees and beg her to forgive him.”

“What guy would do something like that these days?” she mused to herself as she looked out the window. “Maybe Ryan would for you, I guess. But I don’t know anyone else who would risk their own ego and beg for anything, let alone the woman he supposedly loves to forgive him.”