Chapter 15 #2
“I hurt people,” he says simply. “That’s my job. Dario points, I swing. Someone needs to disappear, I make it happen. Someone needs to talk, I make them talk.” He doesn’t look away. “That’s what an enforcer does.”
I should be running. Screaming. Crying into my government-issued pillow.
But I just keep looking at his mouth. That’s not a mouth, that’s a war crime waiting to happen between my thighs.
“Does it bother you?” I ask.
“Does what bother me?”
“Hurting people.”
“Sometimes.” He picks at a scratch on the table. “When they don’t deserve it.”
“And when they do?”
“Then no.”
The waitress returns with our shakes and fries. Drops them on the table with the enthusiasm of someone being paid minimum wage to care.
Enzo picks up a fry and dips it in his vanilla shake.
I stare. “Did you just?”
“What?” He does it again. Takes a bite. “Sweet and salty. It’s good.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Don’t knock it till you try it.” He nudges his shake toward me. “Go on. Live dangerously.”
“I broke into a mobster’s house three days ago. I think I’ve met my danger quota.”
“That wasn’t danger. That was aggressive tourism.” He grins. “This is culinary adventure.”
I pick up a fry. Look at it. Look at him.
He’s watching me with an expression that’s half challenge, half something warmer.
I dip the fry in my chocolate shake, take a bite, and pause.
This man just weaponized a fry. I should arrest him. I should marry him.
“Okay that’s actually really good.”
My voice is husky. Why is my voice husky. It’s a fry, not his dick. Get it together.
“Told you.” His grin widens, and it transforms his whole face. Makes him look less like a man who hurts people and more like someone who’d steal the last slice of pizza and not apologize. “You doubted me.”
“I doubt everyone.”
“Smart. Terrible survival instinct in your case.” He gestures at me with a fry. “But generally smart.”
I laugh. And it feels different from laughing with Saul. That was relief, the surprise of being okay. This is easier. Lighter. Like Enzo expects me to laugh, like that’s the whole point.
“My survival instincts are fine,” I protest.
“Sweetheart, you’re having milkshakes with a mob enforcer who followed you to a grocery store. Your survival instincts are on life support.”
“You’re the one who showed up at my grocery store.”
“You’re the one who invited me for milkshakes.”
“You’re the one who said yes.”
“You’re glowing.”
“You’re grinning.”
“You’re,” he starts. “Finishing your fries before I do.”
We’re both grinning now. Both leaning forward slightly without meaning to.
“You’re trouble,” he says. “I knew it the second you offered me cookies instead of crying.”
“What was I supposed to do? You looked sad.”
“I looked threatening. I was actively trying to look threatening.”
“You looked like you hadn’t had anything but vending machine coffee and vengeance in weeks. Of course I offered you cookies.”
He laughs. Rough and surprised and genuine.
“You’re insane,” he says, but it sounds like a compliment.
“I prefer unconventional.”
He steals one of my fries. “So. You want to know why I’m really here?”
What the fuck is it with men and potato theft? Not that I should judge. I wonder what I’ll steal from Enzo?
“I assume Dario sent you.”
“He did.” Enzo dips my stolen fry in his shake. “He’s worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Because you keep showing up at his restaurant and breaking into his house and leaving cookies like some kind of feral baked goods fairy.”
“I’m not a feral baked goods fairy.”
“You broke into a man’s house, left cookies, and tried on his suit jacket. That’s not quirky. That’s folklore. That’s mobster-hunting forest sprite energy.”
I open my mouth to argue and close it.
He has a point.
“He’s not mad?” I ask quietly.
“Mad?” Enzo looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Which, fair. “Stevie, he left the door unlocked for you. That’s mafia foreplay. That’s mob for consent.”
“What?”
“You think a man like Dario just forgets to lock his door? He wanted you to be able to get in.” Enzo shakes his head. “He probably didn’t expect you to try on his clothes, but here we are.”
“Oh my God.”
“He was pretty entertained by that part.”
“Please stop talking.”
“Especially the cologne. He said you really went for it.”
I drop my head onto the table. “I want to die.”
“No you don’t. You want fries and a firm hand on your throat.” He slides the basket over like a peace offering between feral creatures. “Eat. You look like you haven’t had a real meal in days.”
“I eat.”
“Coffee and anxiety don’t count.”
I raise my head. “You sound like Saul.”
Annoyance flickers across his face. “Your marshal?”
“He’s not my marshal. He’s just assigned to me.”
“Uh huh.” Enzo’s expression is unreadable. “He brings you stuff. Blankets. Coffee. Baking supplies.”
“How do you know that?”
“I told you. It’s my job to know.” He picks at his fries. “He cares about you. More than the job requires.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“And you?” I ask instead. “Is this more than the job requires?”
He looks at me for a long moment.
“Dario asked me to make sure you’re safe. That’s the job.” He pauses. “Sitting here eating fries with you... that’s not the job.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
Please say it’s because you want to fuck me into a goddamn new identity. Please say that.
“That night. At your apartment. I showed up to intimidate you. Scare you into keeping your mouth shut.” His voice is quieter now. “And you looked at me like I was a person. Offered me cookies. Asked if I wanted milk.”
“You looked hungry.”
“I looked like a threat. That’s what I’m supposed to look like.” He meets my eyes. “But you didn’t see that. You saw someone who might want cookies. Who might just be tired.”
“You were tired,” I say softly.
“I’m always tired.” He almost smiles. “But no one notices that.” He looks down at his hands. Those scarred knuckles. “You saw something else.”
My brain, a traitorous bitch, supplies: I’d also like to see you shirtless. Possibly on top of me.
Focus, Stevie.
“I see you now too.”
His head comes up. “Yeah?” There’s something vulnerable in his voice. Something young. “What do you see?”
“Someone who dips fries in milkshakes.” I smile. “Who showed up at my grocery store to check on me. Who’s keeping me safe even when I’m being catastrophically stupid.”
“You’re extremely catastrophically stupid.”
“I know.” I wrap my hands around my shake. “But you’re here anyway.”
“Yeah.” He holds my gaze. “I am.”
The moment stretches. Charged.
Neither of us moves.
Then Enzo clears his throat. Leans back. Puts distance between us that wasn’t there a second ago.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he says. “Coming back. Breaking into houses. Leaving cookies everywhere.”
“I know.”
“Every time you show up, you risk someone recognizing you. Someone from the family. Someone who wants revenge.”
“I know.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“I know.” I stir my shake. “But staying away is killing me. Being Beth Taylor, disappearing, pretending I’m fine. It’s killing me. And when I’m there, when I’m near him, I feel like.” I stop. Can’t finish.
“Like you exist,” Enzo finishes quietly.
I nod. Eyes stinging.
“Yeah.” His voice is rough. “I get that.”
We sit in silence. Both staring at our half-finished shakes.
“I’m not going to stop you,” he says finally. “Can’t, probably. You’re too stubborn.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s an observation.” He almost smiles. “But if you’re going to keep being an idiot, at least let me help.”
“Help?”
“Keep you safe. Make sure you don’t get killed doing something stupid.” He shrugs. “That’s what Dario wants. It’s what I want too.”
“Why?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You hum when you bake. Off-key, always the same half-song over and over like your brain’s stuck in a loop and baking’s the only thing keeping it from catching fire.
” He’s not looking at me. Looking at his hands.
“I know because I’ve been watching. Making sure you’re okay.
And you talk to yourself when you’re anxious and you tuck your hair behind your ear when you’re nervous. ”
My hand is at my ear. I drop it. “You watch me that closely?”
Jesus Christ, my clit just did a backflip. I need to be escorted from this diner immediately.
“That’s my job.”
“Is it?”
He looks up. Meets my eyes. “Maybe not all of it,” he admits.
It hits me low and dirty, like the first sip of tequila or a text from an ex with good dick. The kind of feeling that ends with someone getting railed against a jukebox.
My entire reproductive system just filed a group petition for him to continue talking.
Dario is the before.
Saul is the after.
Enzo is the sideways.
The part of me that didn’t die, didn’t survive, just got weird and dangerous and hungry for something just... easy. Like breathing. Like sitting in a shabby diner eating fries dipped in milkshakes with someone who’s seen the worst of you and finds it entertaining instead of alarming.
“I should go,” I say, even though I don’t want to.
“Yeah.” He doesn’t move. “Probably.”
Neither of us gets up.
I’m one blink away from licking the whipped cream off his shake straw and calling that foreplay. I think if he touched me right now, I’d combust like an unattended toaster oven.
“I’m going to keep coming back,” I tell him. “You know that, right? I can’t stop.”
“I know.”
“And you’re going to keep watching me.”
“Yeah.” He almost smiles. “That’s the plan.”
“This is insane.”
“Sweetheart, we passed insane at the first cookie drop-off. We’re halfway to feral, detouring through public indecency.”
I laugh. Can’t help it.
He grins back.
And I think: Oh no. Oh no no no. Enzo looks at me like I’m chaos worth watching.
We split the check despite his protests. Walk out into the afternoon sun.
His car is a few spaces from mine. Black. Nondescript. The kind of car someone drives when they don’t want to be remembered.
“See you around, Stevie,” he says. “And hey, for what it’s worth?”
Here it comes. Brace for ovary combustion.
“You looked better in the tie than he ever has.”
My uterus is filing a change-of-address form to his lap.
I flip him off.
He blows me a kiss.
And then he’s gone.
I stand there, freshly blasted by that compliment, heart trying to start shit with my better judgment. Again. My better judgment has already walked into traffic.
I get in my car. Drive back to my beige apartment. Walk inside.
The teal blanket is on the couch. Saul’s blanket.
The tie and the pen are in my bedroom. Dario’s things.
And now, lodged in the same part of my brain as that one time I accidentally moaned during yoga: Enzo. That goddamn smirk. Those hands. That laugh that sounds like sin having a smoke break. He looked at me like I was a problem he wanted to solve with his mouth.
I sink onto the couch. Pull the blanket around me.
I’m not spiraling. I’m orbiting three different gravitational disasters, and every one of them is pulling me in.
Saul.
Dario.
Enzo.
And I don’t want to escape.
I want to crawl inside all three of them like a horny matryoshka doll and never come out.