4. Chloe
4
CHLOE
B etween the sharp, stabbing pain at the back of my head and the lighter taps on my cheek, I woke up with a nasty headache. Bile rose. Dizziness rattled my bearings, and as I squinted my eyes closed tighter to avoid facing what awaited me, a low groan rolled through my chest.
Pain took over my body. After the rush from last night and at least a decade of skimping and saving to the point that I was chronically malnourished and low on energy, I didn’t want to get up. I needed more rest. I wanted to sleep. I had to have five more minutes to let my body recharge.
“Get up.”
I winced, more aware of the facial movement I made. The man who ordered me was firm but not mean.
Unlike the other ones who… Who…
I frowned, still lacking the energy to open my eyes. Thoughts floated out of my reach. On the edge of my conscious awareness, memories threatened to come back.
Unlike who? I was scared before I passed out, but then again, I was always terrified. How couldn’t I be with the life I led, with the consequences I had to suffer from the horrible choices I’d made?
I’d been running. Again, nothing new. But this time, it was different. I couldn’t run too far or too hard because I had a job. I had bosses who’d expect me to show up at my new job now.
Manny and Suzie. I worked for them. I thought I did. But as I caught on to their names, more memories rushed back in. They were dead. Shot at that deli shop. The men who killed them chased me too.
More recent, hazy images flitted through my mind’s eye. I saw myself driving the A&J van. Seeing Winonna at the motel check-in desk. Hiding in the bed but falling to the carpet to hide under the bed. Then those men bursting through the door.
All the ideas seemed so far away and loose, like I was on the outside looking in. Like I was floating, untethered.
Am I dying? This numb sense of pain and weightlessness didn’t make sense. I’d driven myself to the point of exhaustion before. Moving to New York and starting a new job was stressful, but to witness murders on top of it all?
Am I dead?
“Wake up,” the man ordered again. His hand patted at both of my cheeks, and the slight impact jarred me again. I couldn’t take solace in the darkness of unconsciousness any longer. Not with how determined he was to wake me up and jostle me.
“I…” My mouth was too dry. My throat felt tight, but as I woke up more, my lungs couldn’t fill fast enough.
“Slowly,” the man encouraged. “Hey,” he said. “Are you all right?” His voice shifted, like he’d moved his head and spoken to someone else. If he had been asking me that question, I wouldn’t have been able to confirm whether I was. This emptiness and lack of willpower worried me.
Am I dead?
I only had to open my eyes, but it was such a struggle to do so. Everything was a struggle, but I always powered through. I had to, if not for myself, then for my son.
Wrenching my eyes open was too sudden of a shift. Light penetrated and caused tears to well up. Blinking faster, I tested out more of a range of facial movements to combat my eyes tearing up at the brightness.
And once I cleared my vision to focus on the people leaning over me, I felt more confident than ever that I was dead.
I had to be.
Because the man standing to the left was none other than my biggest regret.
It can’t be. It can’t be him.
The man who looked like Franco was a cruel reminder of the mistake I would never be able to apologize for. He wasn’t my regret. I hated how I’d left him and rejected his life.
I was just thinking of him, clinging to the disappointment that I would never be able to fix things between us. Those men were coming into the room to kill me, and in the clarity of the moment before my death, as my life proverbially flashed before my mind’s eye, I had thought of him. I’d missed him one last time. I mourned the loss of him in my life for just one more moment.
He couldn’t be here. It wasn’t him. There was no way.
Unless I’m dead. And he is? And we’re seeing each other in another plane of existence? Or nonexistence? My thoughts grew jumbled as I tried to latch on to what—or who—I was looking at.
“Chloe.”
Oh, God. He spoke my name just like I remembered. The sound of those syllables rolling off his tongue took me back to over ten years ago. When he begged me to understand how much he loved me. That he’d never stop loving me.
“I…” I cleared my throat and tried to swallow. Where I had been parched and dry a moment ago, I was now overwhelmed with pending tears. Forcing my mouth to work, I fought past the lump of emotions clogging my throat. Speaking had to be proof that I lived. I couldn’t be talking in my death. Or capable of sight.
“Franco?” I asked, still croaky but able to speak. “Is it really you?”
I felt so dumb, so bewildered, but confused.
“Fuck.” He shook his head, raising his brows to complete the rest of his expression of complete shock. Looking as surprised as I felt, he made no move. He didn’t budge, standing so still and staring at me intensely that I wondered if he was holding his breath in suspense.
“Oh, my God.”
Too many things clicked in my mind. Fear of those men trying to kill me. Franco showing up in the wake of such grisly violence. And now, him staring down at me as I still struggled with the need to run and hide somewhere safe.
Franco. The main reason that motivated me to run from him ten years ago came back clearly. He wasn’t only an ex-lover, the one man I thought I’d cherish forever.
He was a Mafia man. A killer. A ruthless individual capable of unspeakable violence.
I didn’t summon him here by thinking of him as my life flashed before my eyes as I neared death. I wasn’t dead and entering a phase of the afterlife.
Franco was likely here because he was connected to the deli being shot up.
Oh, my God. I feared moving to the city in case I could run into him. But the Big Apple was huge, so large that I could hide among the crowds. That was my first mistake—ever coming back close enough to where the Constella Family ran its businesses.
God, I’m so stupid. I’ve been so damn dumb. I had been so eager to escape and start over with a new life for me and my son, I hadn’t considered how crappy the odds could be for me to see Franco or anyone from his organization.
“I… I can’t do this.” I struggled to get up, helped by the other man frowning at me as he held my elbow and assisted me in getting off the floor.
Dizziness swamped my mind. I blinked, lightheaded and off-kilter from being knocked out. I was hazy, but I saw how my shaky words impacted Franco.
His furrowed brow straightened. Lines dipped on his face as he shifted into scowling. That almost-stoic glower hit me hard, and as I thought back to the little I’d said, I realized what I’d done.
I told him that line before. I said those same words before I ran away from him, from Beckson.
I can’t do this.
I was a strong woman. I had to be as a single mother caught in a twisted role of being a victim of something worse.
But I couldn’t do this. I really couldn’t. I refused to face Franco and suffer through the guilt and heartache of how we’d split. I couldn’t stomach the gut-wrenching pain of knowing I’d hurt him all that time ago.
I broke his heart once. I shattered my own in doing so, and I could not let him get close enough to it again. I hadn’t even picked up all the pieces and stitched them back together. I would need his forgiveness to come close to gluing my soul into one again.
“I can’t…”
“No. Fuck that, Chloe,” Franco growled.
“Do you…” The blond man volleyed his stern gaze between us. “Do you know her?”
“I can’t.” I shook my head, frantic to get up and bolt out of here. I ran from him once, and I had to again—now more than ever if he was involved with the shooting at my new workplace. My new former workplace.
“You’re coming with us,” Franco demanded, not moving out of my way.
Clumsy and shaken from all the fear, then being knocked out so suddenly, my attempt to get away was too weak to be effective. I slumped to the carpet, grimacing at the jolt of pain up my body from the drop. Stinky odors crept too close for comfort, and I scrambled to get on my hands and knees again.
“Get her, Liam,” he ordered the other man.
“No. Please.” I resisted Liam from grabbing my arms, but he was gentle. He guided me to stand and didn’t release me as we left the nasty motel room. If he hadn’t held onto my arms, I would’ve fallen. And if he’d taken his hands off me, I would’ve tried to escape anyway.
I couldn’t trust Franco. Not with my heart, nor to know where he intended to take me.
I was on my own—again—but I could hang on to the fact that Caleb, my son, was safe. He would always be safe as long as he was far from Franco and everything he represented. But I couldn’t assume the same for myself.
I would never repeat the mistake of thinking I could ever be safe with Franco again.