Chapter 5 #2
A second later, maybe three, I can’t be sure, the sound of a gun with a silencer clicks in my left ear, wetness splatters on my face, and Jackson’s body falls over with a thud on the floor to the side of me.
I open my eyes, not realizing I closed them.
“Carmine.” That voice. I can’t quite process it. The room still seems dark and empty. I still can’t move. My pants are down to my thighs, and my hands are at my sides. One of them becoming increasingly more wet. My eyes burn.
“Carmine, are you okay?”
I shadow lingers over me. I feel a touch on my face.
“Carmine. Look at me.”
I try to. Everything feels far away.
“Breath. In and out. Come on.”
I do as he says. I take a breath in and a breath out. Then again.
“Good. Let’s sit you up.”
Soren.
It’s Soren. I realize that at the last second. The room fades back in a little bit at a time. The shadows first, then the light, then everything inside of the room, and finally him.
One of his hands rests on my back as I sit up, the other still touches my face. His hands seem so cold compared to me. I feel like I’m a thousand degrees. Sweat drips down my neck to my collar bones and gathers in my hairline.
“Oh, fuck. Carmine,” Marko’s voice comes from the doorway.
“Where the fuck were you?” It’s not me who asks, but Soren.
“We decided to do a shift change because it was getting so late, and Carmine—Mr. Dresvanni—didn’t seem to be going home anytime soon. Tony and Greg needed to leave,” the other guard, apparently, whose name suddenly escapes me, replied.
As quickly as I can manage, I pull myself together.
“You should have told me,” I say. My voice feels a bit unsteady, but I ignore it. I cannot let them think anything is wrong with me. Nothing is, right? I was simply overpowered. I was drunk. I’m drunk. That’s all. That’s the only reason I’m feeling what I’m feeling.
“What is he doing here?” Marko asks. “We didn’t see him come in.”
My eyes haven’t left Soren for a second. He’s kneeling down in front of me. His hand has shifted from my face to my shoulder, and his eyes are locked on mine.
For some reason, I can’t break his gaze right away. It takes me a second or two.
“Just get this cleaned up,” I demand. “None of this would have happened if you’d been here doing your job.” Marko doesn’t react to me snapping at him. Not from what I can tell. All he does is pull out his phone and step to the side.
I look back to Soren. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask him.
His brow furrows. “I just saved you and that’s all you have to say?” he asks.
My eyes scan his face. Then I look down toward Jackson’s dead body. His blood is everywhere. It pools on the floor starting at his head and slowly travels downwards in the grooves of the tile. It smells just like my father’s.
I make myself keep looking, as much as I don’t want to. I make myself take a deep breath. The iron and alcohol flood my nose. It makes me sick to my stomach.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Soren insists.
He grabs my arm, and I stand up, letting him help me.
I’m wobbly on my legs. My entire body feels like it could go limp at any moment, but I don’t let it.
I will myself to stay upright, to not let the tears burning at my waterline drip out.
I swallow down the bile. I pull my slacks back up.
It’s stupid, it’s ridiculous. I’ve been around dead bodies and blood before. I’ve been stuck with a rotting corpse right next to me for hours.
Yet, ever since seeing my father dead on the floor, the sight and scent of blood make me feel dizzy.
I pull my arm away from him.
“Why did you come here?” I ask him. “Surely you didn’t just come here to shoot Jackson in the head.”
I look down at his body again. He looks so small and useless now that he’s dead. His body no longer tense and bulked up with anger.
Soren killed him.
Soren killed him for me.
He saved me.
But why?
When I look at Soren again, his stormy eyes are somehow filled with even more angst. His gun has been tucked back into his jeans, and he steps closer to me.
“I’ve been trailing you,” he admits.
“What?” I ask. I look toward the door. Marko is still to the side of the door; I hear him talking to someone. One of the cleaners. “I knew you were up to something, you little dick.”
Soren scoffs. “Yeah, protecting your little ass.” He waves a hand toward Jackson. “You had no idea that Jackson was out for blood, did you?”
“He was talking some bullshit about his wife, Victoria. That I did something with her at the club the other night. I don’t even remember her being there,” I tell him. I’m starting to feel steadier. Having Soren to focus on makes it easier somehow.
“Exactly. You had a run in with Victoria that night, she tried to start some shit. I broke it up and got you home. Or don’t you remember any of that?” he asks me, looking at me incredulously. The way his eyes stare at me intently and his jaw shifts every now and then makes my stomach hot.
After what just happened with Jackson, it’s the last thing I want to think about, but I can’t control it.
As he steps even closer, the scent of his skin and hair surrounding me, I don’t find myself locking up or freezing like with Jackson. I don’t step away from him.
I don’t want to.
“I remember you. I remember getting home, and I remember waking up feeling like shit,” I mumble.
“See. That’s why I’ve been watching your back. You’re a fucking mess right now, Carmine. If I wasn’t watching out, you’d—well, you know what would’ve happened.” Soren’s face falls darker.
My own teeth clench and I look away from him. “I could’ve handled myself.”
“No, you couldn’t. He had a gun to your head and his hand in your pants. Your own guards who were supposed to be here watching out, let him stroll right in the fuckin’ place.”
I close my eyes for a second. “Okay, fine. I believe you. So, you’ve been getting your creeper on and stalking me to keep me safe from myself, okay. What exactly do you want, Soren?” I ask him, voice low and fingers twitching at my sides.
He smells so fucking good. Better than the tourist, better than the stranger, better than Sasha. Better than anyone ever.
“Let me help you,” he says.
I open my eyes to look at him in confusion. “Huh?”
“You need more than someone just watching your back. You need someone who’s actually paying attention to what’s going on. You need protection,” Soren tells me.
“What, you wanna be my personal guard?” I ask, a short laugh escaping me. “Be for-fucking-real, Soren.”
“I’m serious,” he insists. “This isn’t a game. The Carvels could’ve been the ones who took out Michaelis.”
“I highly doubt it,” I reply, rolling my eyes.
No longer feeling as anxious or shaky. Simply exhausted and unamused with Jackson’s stunt that’s left him ready for a pine box.
“These guys?” I wave at him. “They’re maybe number five on the list of people I’m worried about, and that’s only because the Montellos are in Siberia now. ”
“Number five still makes them a danger, and you a target,” Soren reminds me. He folds his arms and narrows his eyes at me. “I didn’t save your life just to have you walk back out there and get killed.”
I eye him. The way he says that, the tone of his voice being so much more serious than I even understand, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
He stands there, broad shouldered and dark shaggy hair hanging over his forehead, and my cock throbs.
The presence of Jackson’s body should dispel that, but it doesn’t. Knowing that the fucker is dead after what he tried—and that Soren killed him for me—only turns me on more.
Even his blood becomes less of a vile smell and more of a sickly sweet one.
“I don’t know,” I say simply. “How do I really know I can trust you? Trust this whole thing that Eivor has you putting on? Giving us guards, putting your men in our club, trailing me for protection… Do you really think I’m that messed up that I don’t see how this could all fuck me over?”
Soren nods slowly. “You’re right. It could. I can’t even say that it won’t,” he admits. “But it won’t be because of me.”
I look at him and he looks back at me in silence for a moment.
Marko steps back in. “Sorry to… interrupt whatever’s going on here, but the cleaners will be here in twenty, Boss.”
“Good. Call in Tony and Greg. I want them mopping up the blood,” I order.
“They called us in for the shift—”
“I don’t give a fuck. They didn’t tell me, so this shit happened. They get here in twenty minutes and they mop up the fucking blood or I spill theirs,” I snap at him.
“Got it.”
He disappears again, and I hear him cursing my name, but I’m too exhausted to bother chasing him down and kicking his shit in.
Soren is still looking at me.
“So?” I ask him.
“If you don’t wanna make a decision now…at least let me take you somewhere safe. Somewhere to get cleaned up,” he suggests.
I sigh and look to the side, not at Jackson’s body, but the bookcase nearby. It’s splattered in blood too.
None of this should have happened. My guards should’ve been there. I should’ve been able to handle my own. I should have had my gun on me.
They didn’t, and I didn’t.
Instead, someone outside of the family had to save my ass.
My chest feels tight as I start thinking about it again.
Not the prospect of dying, no… that I’ve been familiar with for years.
But the way Jackson had touched me. How hilarious he thought it was. How serious he was.
The memories. Buried deep in my subconscious. They had crawled their way to the surface and were wriggling inside my brain like dark little worms.
Those flickers and flashes of a dimly lit room where I couldn’t escape no matter how badly I had wanted to.
This time, I did escape—because of Soren.
“Fine,” I tell him as I look back over. “Get me out of here.”