I felt both terrible and relieved that it was Sienna. How could I have ever thought Robin or Willow were behind it? I got up and headed to the bedroom, returning with a knife in hand. I held it out to Tony. His hands flew up defensively and he stumbled back a few steps.

“I’m not going to stab you, idiota. You know your girlfriend is a psycho? I think this belongs to her. She left it in my tire last night.”

Tony scoffed, then carefully took the knife. “You get what you give, Liliana.” Was he taking the side of his girlfriend of one minute over me, who he’d known for almost twenty years? “God knows how many enemies you’ve made due to your poor choices. You’re a liar and an addict. So before you come at my girlfriend for whatever is going on in your wasted life, how about you get your act together first? And leave me and Sienna alone.”

Wordless. Helpless. Powerless. He left me like that as he stormed out of my apartment and out of my life.

But I couldn’t lose him like this. Not without a fight. Italian women didn’t back down. No, I would win over some skanky-ho puttana. I always did when it came to Tony. Mine. If I couldn’t have him, no one would. Especially not some tire-slashing tramp named Sienna. If the years with Tony had taught me one thing, it was how to get him back into my bed . . . and I knew just what to do to bait him.

Chapter 30

Mackenzie

SATURDAY

Crows are said to be a bad omen, a harbinger of death. If any bird earned that reputation I would think it would be a buzzard. After all, they appear at the first sign of death and feast on it.

Two buzzards picked at a dead squirrel in my front yard. The poor thing had been splattered by a passing car, and some animal lover, hating to see the critter so dishonored, had tossed the bloody carcass into my yard. Thanks, but no thanks.

Today I felt like that squirrel. Smashed beyond recognition.

No one knew this, though. Lily mistook my avoidance for being my usual introverted self. Aria thought maybe I was just anxious. And Owen, well, he was decidedly oblivious to my emotions and moods.

I watched the world from my living room window, while Owen took his post-coital nap in our bedroom. Apparently it was exhausting degrading his wife on top of a Maytag top-loader. Aria had smothered herself in baby oil and was sunbathing in the backyard, which I warned her about. But to my fair-skinned teenage daughter who despised her pale legs in shorts, skin cancer was a fair exchange for a tan. This was what women did, hiding the sorrow behind sun-kissed smiles. I always thought of that riddle: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The answer is no. I was the tree, falling, crashing. Nobody listened or cared.