Chapter 2: The Fake Girl

Queenie didn't let go.

That was the problem. Her hand was still in his warm, rough, swallowing hers whole.

Viola stood frozen in the balcony doorway, staring at their joined hands.

"Oh," she whispered. And that one word was worse than anything Violet Jones had screamed inside.

Queenie tried to pull away, embarrassment flooding her. Lucifero's grip tightened.

"Viola. Go inside," he said, not looking at his sister.

But Viola wasn't looking at their hands anymore. She was looking at Queenie's face. Really looking.

"Wait," she said slowly. "Wait a second. The way you just bit your lip..."

Queenie froze.

Viola's eyes widened. "Oh my god. Mika?"

The blood drained from Queenie's face.

Lucifero's head snapped toward his sister. "What did you call her?"

Viola laughed, but it was shocking, not cruel. "Mika! Your online girlfriend! The one you paid $500 a week to talk to for like six months three years ago and then she ghosted you and you went insane and had Marco try to trace the IP! Holy shit —"

"Viola, shut up," Queenie whispered, tears instantly springing to her eyes. "Please."

Lucifero went completely still. The kind of still that comes before something violent.

He looked down at Queenie. I really looked at her, the soft yellow dress, the low ponytail, the tote bag, the plus-size girl who everyone in that party thought was invisible.

And he saw her.

Not Queenie, Viola's shy best friend.

Mika.

Three years ago.

When his father had his stroke he had to take over everything the clubs, the shipments, the blood he hadn't slept in months. Viola, worried about him, had hired one of those online girlfriend services as a joke. "Just talk to someone who isn't trying to kill you or marry you for money."

Her name was Mika. Early twenties. I am a college student. I loved books, hated parties, and worked at a library. Her profile picture was a thin, blonde model in a bikini obviously fake, obviously stolen. He knew it was fake from day one. He didn't care.

Because she didn't want anything. She didn't ask about his money, his guns, his last name. She just... talked. She told him about shelving books at the little downtown library. About taking the 7:15 bus because she hated being late. About biting her bottom lip when she was nervous. She said "thank you" too softly. She left voice notes where she was whispering because she was at work.

He fell for a personality attached to a fake picture.

For six months, he paid to talk to Mika every night at 11 PM. Then one day, the account was deleted. Number disconnected. Gone. He had his tech guy Marco trace it and it bounced to a burner, to a library computer. Downtown library. He never found her.

Until she walked through the big doors of his sister's birthday party in a faded yellow sundress.

"You," he said, his voice barely audible. It wasn't a question. It was a realization, dark and devastating. "It was you."

Queenie's tears spilled over. "I — I didn't mean to — Viola needed rent money for her first apartment after college and that site — they paid girls to just chat — I didn't think — I used a fake picture because I didn't want anyone to see me—"

"You used a fake picture," he repeated, his grey eyes burning into her, his hand now crushing hers, not letting her go. "You used someone else's face, but you gave me you. Every word. Every story. The library. The bus. All of it was real, wasn't it?"

She nodded, sobbing now, unable to look at him.

He had been obsessed with Queenie for three years because he thought she was just his sister's quiet friend.

Now he realized he had been obsessed with her for three years longer than that — he had been in love with her voice in the dark for three years, jacking off to a fake blonde's picture while imagining the real girl behind it, a girl he had never met.

And now she was here. Plus-size, soft, flushed, curvy in a way that fake picture could never be. Real.

"Do you know what you did to me?" he whispered, and his voice was shaking now. Not with anger. With something hungrier, more unhinged. "Do you know how many nights I looked for you? How many girls did Marco bring me because they had your laugh?"

"Lucifero," Viola said, stepping back, suddenly scared. "Brother, you're scaring her—"

"Good," he snapped, not taking his eyes off Queenie. "She should be scared. She catfished a Mafia Don. She made me fall for a ghost and then she disappeared and walked into my house three years later like she didn't know me."

He reached up with his free hand and cupped her face, his thumb wiping her tears roughly, possessively. His touch was not gentle.

"You let me fall for you with another woman's face, Queenie," he murmured, so only she could hear, as the music inside abruptly stopped and Violet Jones's voice screeched over the microphone downstairs. "Now you don't get to hide anymore. No more fake pictures. No more running. You understand?"

Inside, Violet was screaming his name over the speakers. "—pictures on his desk! Of Viola's plus-size best friend!"

Lucifero didn't even flinch. He was staring at Queenie like she was finally, truly his — the online girl and the real girl colliding into one.

His phone buzzed violently in his pocket.

He pulled it out one-handed. One message from Marco.

MARCO BOSS, TRACE ON MIKA CAME BACK. IT'S HER. LIBRARY GIRL. IT'S A QUEENIE.

He smiled. It was dark, satisfying, terrifying.

"Too late," he whispered to Queenie, lacing his fingers through hers again and pulling her toward the balcony door, toward the chaos of the party that was now chanting her name. "They all know now. And now everyone in that room knows you belong to me."