Mafia Wars

Chapter 1 - Birthday, Blue Lights, and Bad Luck

If you've ever had your mother stand over, you with that I'm-not-mad-I'm-disappointed stare - and you tried to melt her heart using your biggest puppy eyes and a trembling "please I'll never do it again" face - then you already know what Sam was attempting right now.

Attempting... and failing gloriously.

I stared at her over the rim of my coffee mug and sighed the kind of sigh that comes from ten years of being best friends with a hurricane in human form.

"Sam," I said slowly, "don't give me that face."

She widened her baby-blue eyes anyway. Her mouth dipped into a tragic pout. She even clasped her hands like she was praying for my soul.

"Please, Scar," she begged, voice syrupy. "Just this once. It's your birthday. You can't sit here alone like a sad Victorian widow."

"I'm not a widow. I'm twenty-five."

"Exactly," she said brightly. "Quarter of a century. Ancient. We have to celebrate."

I gave her a flat look.

She grinned, unapologetic. "What? It's not every day someone turns twenty-five. I won't pester you next year. Probably."

"Probably," I repeated, deadpan.

Sam scooted closer on my couch and pressed her shoulder against mine. "Come on. I heard that new club is rocking. Like, celebrity-level rocking and also, this is your birthday, so I want to do something for you. You deserve it after the week you've had."

The week I'd had was the kind of week that made you want to curl into a nest of blankets and never speak to society again. I had been dreaming all day about my couch, my fuzzy blanket, and a romance movie I could ugly cry to without judgment.

But Sam had a point.

Birthdays alone were... not my favourite tradition.

Last year's birthday had ended with six bottles of vodka, a missing shoe, and Sam calling me at 2 p.m. the next day asking, "Do you remember how we got home?"

I did not.

I stared at my coffee like it might offer wisdom.

Sam kept going, steamrolling my hesitation the way she always did.

"It'll be fun. I swear it won't be all night. Just a couple hours. We dance. We drink. We flirt with questionable men. We leave before anything turns into a crime scene."

"That last part is not reassuring."

"It's honest," she chirped. "And I love you. Please?"

She hit me with her brightest smile - the one that made strangers forgive her parking tickets and waiters give her extra dessert.

I felt my resistance crumbling.

"Okay," I muttered. "Fine."

Sam shrieked like a kettle exploding. She jumped up, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "YES! Thank you!"

"First of all," I said, holding up a finger, "did you just call me old?"

Sam tilted her head, angelic. "Never."

"One more thing," I added, already standing. "If I end up dead in an alley because of you tonight, I'm haunting you."

She saluted. "Fair."

I changed fast.

Not because I was excited - I wasn't going to let Sam win that easily - but because once she got a plan in her head, she became a human countdown timer.