Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Joey
She couldn’t wait fifteen minutes? I died a thousand lifetimes when I came out of the bedroom and heard the elevator close.
No fucking way she would be that stupid.
Was she worried about the dog peeing on the floor?
Marking his territory? That’s what fucking paper towels are for, and the pet store sells a whole aisle of pet stain remover. Nothing was worth her almost dying.
His hand was around her throat, and the other guy had her arms. My mind lists thousands of horrors they would do to her before they killed her.
I took action.
Zero regrets.
Lies.
One regret.
There’s fucking blood splattered all over her face. Too close.
We have a rule. The women never witness the violence of our lives. Never. The women could clean our wounds, but they never saw what we did to the other guy. That’s what makes the system work. And tonight, I broke that one sacred rule. Because she took the dog for a walk.
I can’t believe I was the one who broke the rule. Me. The fucking Heir Apparent to the Four Families.
We have to get out of the city, lay low. The cabin’s the best option because it’s off-grid and most of my enemies aren’t woodsy guys.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
Of course she is, and she should be. But it’s my fault she’s even in this situation to begin with.
I don’t know how to feel. Conflicting emotions swarm around my head and heart. But the biggest one is fear. It’s the what ifs that are killing me. What if I didn’t get there soon enough? What if they killed her? What if they killed the dog?
The fear is too much.
What if she spirals or goes to the cops? What if she betrays me, my family, and brings the entire empire down?
What if she leaves me because I shot someone?
Shit.
The what ifs will drown me.
And none of this would have fucking happened if she had stayed in the house.
I’m busy checking to make sure we weren’t followed, trying to soothe my raw nerves. Enemies are everywhere. Is that really a mom in a minivan? Or is it a hitman sent to eradicate my family.
“Joey?” She says quietly with childlike ache in her voice.
“What?” The word sounds harsher than I intended, and in the corner of my eye, I see her flinch.
“Never mind.” She shrinks down in the seat and twists her fingers into knots, unwinds them, and starts playing with the hem of her shirt.
My fearless cozy girl.
I try the word again, softer. “What do you need?” Nope, I still sound like a dick.
“Nothing.” Her voice is even quieter than before.
“Are you hurt or scared?”
“Emotionally or physically? Self-inflected mental abuse? Or what the shithead did to me?”
My mouth fills with saliva, and the tension in my shoulders might snap me in half. I swallow and roll my shoulders back before saying, “Are you physically injured?”
“My throat hurts a little bit, but it’s nothing compared to what the Narrator Lady is saying to me.”
Narrator Lady?
Jenny shifts and glances out the window. “She’s using the same fuck you voice she uses whenever I screw up.” She mumbles, “I haven’t heard her this aggressive since I was a teenager. Something kinda nostalgic about that.” She’s quiet for a few minutes, but then… “But the fear is new.”
Be nice, be softer. "Those guys won’t bother you again.” Nope, that didn’t work either.
We hit three green lights in a row before she speaks again. “It’s not them. I mean, I’m pretty sure they’re dead. It’s you.”
Fuck. That’s why we don’t let the women see the violence.
They are the lifeblood of our organization.
They keep us levelheaded and grounded. Force us to focus on the bigger picture—jobs are temporary, it's family that’s important.
But all of that dies as soon as they’re afraid of us. Homes should be safe.
“I would never hurt you.” I almost don’t recognize the rawness in my voice, the truth.
“Not physically, no.” She calls Kingston back up onto her lap and buries her face in his fur. “But you’re going to destroy me. Wreck everything I worked so hard to build in myself. You’ll shred every strand of self-confidence I’ve weaved into my psyche.”
I’m not sure if this is one of those moments where I should ask a follow up question or wait until she’s ready to talk about it. So, we drive a few more miles before she speaks again.
“You’ll get tired of me, just like everyone else does.”
“What?”
“All the little things you think are cute and novel about me will become exhausting. Everyone says so. Six half-drunk glasses around the living room, endless streams of failed projects, chaos that only I understand…you won’t want that anymore.”
A searing hot rage builds in my stomach and starts to form words in my throat. I don’t know if I can keep training my voice to keep it even. “Fucking bullshit. Everything you said was bullshit.”
“Thank you for validating my feelings and confirming my hypothesis,” she grumbles and turns away from me to watch the trees race by the window.
“First of all, you don’t get to tell me what’s going to send me running for the hills. You don’t know because I sure as shit don’t. Second, I’m mad that you almost died, not because you left two glasses on the coffee table.”
She whips her head around. “Wait, I did it already?” Her voice breaks. “I was trying to be so good.” She buries her head in Kingston’s fur again.
“Yeah, it was a water you filled with ice and forgot about and an iced tea you mostly drank.”
“See! You noticed it. And this is what, like twenty-four hours in? While you were still in a sex-hazed stupor."
“I notice everything.”
“Except that your grandma owned a dog.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about,” I snap but smirk because she’s right.
All my keen observation skills that have kept me alive still leave some pretty fucking huge blind spots.
“Losing you forever and mild inconveniences are not the same thing. I’m not going to leave you over some clutter and random half-filled glasses.
I’m more worried you won’t feel safe around me because I shot someone. ”
She huffs and waves her hand around. “Oh, that’s what you are concerned about?
I'm super desensitized to violence and my own sense of self-preservation. That barely registered. Now I’m fixated on my liquid consumption, and I’m kinda worried you're going to make me go to one of those water tracking apps because I can’t get fifty-two ounces in a day. ”
“I think it's sixty-four ounces.” I sigh, because this is a useless waste of energy. She’s missing the most important part.
“You think I’m going to leave because it’s been ingrained in you that you’re not enough.
But fuck that. It’s the trash people who were in your life before you met us that’s wrong.
You’re with the Four Families now. If we can love Donny for his massive fuckups, we’ll love you unconditionally too. ”
I’m not sure I’m getting through to her. Time to call in some backup.
I call Izzy and her voice echoes through the car speakers. “What’s wrong?” She has an edge to her voice.
“Jenny thinks I’m going to leave her because she’s a chaos gremlin and I’m going to get tired of it.”
Izzy laughs, but tires screech against the road.
For a second I think it’s my driving, but it’s coming from her end of the line.
“No, Jenny’s awesome. None of us would ever forgive you if that’s why you two broke up.
You should be more worried that she’ll dump you once she discovers your vast collection of eighties and nineties children’s fever dream movies, which are basically snuff films for kids.
” Hmm, I guess a lot of characters did die in those movies, but they came back to life, right? Maybe?
The tires screech again and there's a gunshot in the background. “Hey, we’re kinda in the middle of a car chase right now, I’ll call you later.” And the phone goes dead.
“Do you feel better now?”
“Yeah.” She exhales. “Why are we listening to the Mama Mia soundtrack as we run for our lives?”
The music displays “Dancing Queen” and it’s the original London Cast. Hmm. I hadn’t been really focused on that. “Was that what you wanted to talk about fifteen minutes ago?”
“Yeah. But now I’m kinda invested, and I don’t want you to change it.”
My world is crumbling, my family is in danger, and I can't help but laugh with the woman next to me.
As we turn onto the dirt road for the cabin, I’m in a very different mood from when I first got into the car.
I tell her about the cabin, that it has security, and we’ll be safe here.
I don’t get any follow-up questions. Instead, she says it needs a porch gnome, because I don’t have a garden, and every home needs a tiny man in a hat.
Kingston hops out of the car, runs around and sniffs some plants, pees on them, and then runs to the door.
I open the trunk of the car and pull out the black bag before letting them into the house.
Kingston takes several zoomie laps around the cabin as I lock the door, flip on the surveillance system, and drop the bag on the floor.
“I don’t think you understand what sort of situation you are in, my dear.
” I pull off my jacket and toss it on the couch.
Jenny stands in front of me, blinking. She’s about to speak when I put my finger to my lips.
“Shhh. Take a second to grasp this. You are in a cabin, miles away from any sort of help, with a mob boss and Dom who is very annoyed with your complete lack of self-preservation and that you have the audacity to believe for a second you aren’t worth love or acceptance.
” I kicked the bag. “A Dom who needs to test out some new equipment.” Her eyes grow wide as she blushes.
“Um, sorry?”
I grin. “No, you’re not. But you will be.”