Chapter Nine
“We rarely see ourselves for who we truly are, instead we rely on others to tell us what we’re afraid to face, most ignore that too, until it’s too late, until, in our work, the blood… tells all.” —King Campisi
Ivan
I compared the car ride home to the coldest day I’d ever seen in Chicago, where it got down to negative twenty and I wanted to sit on a campfire just so my ass wouldn’t fall off.
That was Bella right now.
Her mouth was doing that thing, the thing it did when she was mad and afraid to speak. Sometimes she did, and it came out more as a verbal attack than a conversation, other times like now, she was trying like hell to keep that full mouth closed.
It would be so much easier if she wasn’t pretty to look at, I could at least have every single reason to despise her, instead now I felt bad, because I saw the way she was wringing her hands together, the way she was hunched over in the seat. The seatbelt was digging into her neck while she continued to clench her teeth and stare straight ahead.
“Hey.” My voice sounded weak, raspy. “I know I’m an asshole, but this would be a perfect time to just punch me or yell, it makes me more uncomfortable when you’re quiet.”
“I know.”
Hell. This girl was her father’s daughter. Manipulative to the core. I had to remember that.
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever.”
She shrugged like it didn’t matter, but I took it like I didn’t matter, I always did. I would always be left wanting and she would always be in her tower looking down, no matter what shit I said to her.
I hit the accelerator.
She said nothing.
I pressed it down to the floor, thank fun that someone had swapped out my bike with one of the Maseratis, which they often did if it was supposed to rain, I didn’t even have to text them, I’d just go to my normal parking spot and there would either be the motorcycle I drove or a random car from the Family with a man in a black suit standing and reading the newspaper. He’d hand me the keys and walk off.
Literally, it was the dude’s only job; he was called ‘the guy.’
The guy.
Basically, he was the car guy, the getaway guy, the driver, the one that just appeared and disappeared without a trace. He never spoke, just handed the keys to me and I always said. “Good?”
“Good,” was always his response.
In all my years of dealing with him when he got hired, which was at least six, I’d never seen his eyes, and I’d never said more than that one word to him.
Same for him.
Her hands dropped, her right went to the door handle and clung on.
I smirked and stared back at the road. “What’s wrong? Too fast?”
“Too slow,” she grated out, her voice sounded more hoarse than mine. Had I made her cry?
I shifted and got past one twenty, there was a curve straight ahead, followed by another, it was dangerous. And I thought it. They would miss us, I knew they would, but did it even matter?
What were we living for anymore?
Our only job was to, what? Kill? Be killed? Serve the Family? Sure as hell, nobody was ever going to love me, and really, did love even exist? I saw it in some of the bosses with their kids, with Bella and her dad, I felt it at times with Phoenix… he tried, he really did.
But I had no control.
Over anything.
Maybe I should have been the one that died, instead of my fourteen-year-old cousin. He would have been a better recruit, stronger, for the Abandonato and Nicolasi thrones.
Killing. Killing. Killing.
Money. So much money.
My breaths came out in fast bursts, just like the acceleration, until a soft hand touched my arm. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul, to take.”
It was the only thing I truly remembered my dad saying to me, over and over again, and the Lord, he did take his soul, by way of Nixon and Chase Abandonato’s bullets.
I released the accelerator and slowed down and pulled to the side of the road, dust from the gravel flew up around the car.
My heart thudded in an adrenaline kicked rhythm against my chest. Bella’s soft fingertips were still pressed against my clenched hand.
She dropped her hand the minute I wanted it to stay a bit longer and whispered, “Sometimes, monsters need to stick together, feel better?”
I nodded. “Maybe.”
The sound of rain pelting against the windshield was the only thing I focused on, along with my breathing and hers. We stayed there maybe ten minutes before her phone went off.
I rolled my eyes. “Are you ever going to change your ring tone away from Jack Harlow? It was bad enough when it was Ateez.”
“Are you ever going to stop obsessing over Tate McRay?”
“Low blow.”
“You wish.” She snorted. “Hey, Serena!” She frowned and stared at me in a way that gave me more chills than our almost accident. “No, um, we’ll be right there, we got caught in the rain.”
I rolled my eyes again. Nice. Both of us, so amazing at lies.
“Yeah.” Her face paled. “Yup, totally spaced it, what’s his bedtime again?”
Alarm bells rang, not just rang, they clamored in my head like cymbals as nausea washed over me, I vaguely remembered Junior asking me to babysit for date night.
“NO!” I mouthed it. “No! We got in an accident.” I sure as hell enunciated every single syllable like a champ. “NO!”
“Yeah, he’s right here.”
I flipped her off with both thumbs, then both down, then both middle fingers and slammed my hands against the steering wheel like the child we were about to just be watching.
There was no worse hell.
Trust me.
“’Kay,”she said weakly. “See you in a few minutes.”
I lunged across the consul the minute she hung up. “All you had to do was tell them we were getting arrested, the FBI caught us, you hit a cat, helped a turtle across the road, went into anaphylactic shock over a peanut! It’s not that hard, Bella!”
In a rush, I’d unbuckled my seat belt and was almost straddling her.
She smacked me on the cheek. ”You’re the asshole who agreed to it!”
My jaw dropped because, damn, it actually hurt. I pressed my knee between her thighs and pinned her arms to the seat. “I said sure, as in, sure I’ll think about it. He never even gave me a date!”
“You got Juniored!” She tried to lift her legs and fight me, which just meant my knee rubbed between them.
A soft flush lit up her cheeks. That was… interesting. “Is that all I have to do to get you to get quiet? Get you off with my knee?”
“You are crushing me with both your knee and body weight, you shithead!”
Her voice was shaky.
I stared at her mouth. “Fine, just admit my kiss wasn’t terrible.”
“Your nickname is Ivan the Terrible.”
“I thought that was a compliment.”
“Do you even read books? Can you even read? At this point, I have my concerns.”
I rubbed my knee harder.
She jerked against me. “Stop, seriously.”
I stopped immediately and leaned down until I could almost taste her on my mouth. “Maybe one day it will happen, I’ll give you all the angry sex you so desperately need, little prude.”
She reached between my legs and grabbed my cock. “Or maybe I just give a little tug and baby bird goes flying out of the nest?”
It hurt, but I still had to admit I liked it. “Doesn’t feel like this bird is anywhere near a baby, don’t make it weird and let me go before you get it confused. All he sees is tits, ass, girl. He doesn’t see the trauma of Satan possessing him from behind long eyelashes.”
She gasped and released me immediately.
Weird.
I got back into my seat. “So now, now, after a shit day, we go home and watch Satan’s child.”
“Bam-Bam,” she mumbled and banged her head against the passenger’s side window. “Hey, maybe he’s in a good mood today.”
I almost told her not to give the universe a chance.
I was right.
Because the first sight we walked up to after opening the door was Bam-Bam sitting in a pull up with chocolate all over his face and hands, bawling… only to have Junior give us a guilty look and whisper in a low voice, “That’s not chocolate.”