39
Logan
“I’m not here to kill her.”
Okay.
I know that’s bullshit, but I relax my hold just slightly on my gun, reading into those words the semi-reassuring promise that he’s not going to kill her yet.
He’s sitting on the bed, and she’s sitting in front of him. Even though he’s not touching her, the fact that he’s sitting so close to her, on our bed, is enough to make me see red. But I take a few steady breaths, willing myself to calm down.
Then I seek out Lia’s eyes, but she’s got them fixed on the hands she’s twisting in her lap. She doesn’t dare look at me. The realization that our last moments together were spent with me hurting her is nearly enough to drive me to my knees in anguish.
But not quite enough, because I have to stay strong. As long as there’s still hope, I need to remain strong.
“Okay.” This time I say the word out loud. “What are you here to do, then?”
Coltello’s lips split into a wide grin, revealing two rows of yellow teeth. “I’m here to pay my debt.”
“Right. You’ve got a funny way of paying it.”
“Well, you did tell me you don’t do debts.
And it turns out I am a big boy, so I did figure it out.
” His grin grows wider, deforming his features.
“This gun is just my way of making sure you play nice when you collect. Okay?” He removes the gun from her temple and she lets out a breath, growing just limp enough that I have to bite down on the urge to rush to her and prop her up.
“Come on.” He pats the space on the bed in front of Lia. “Sit down. I won’t bite. Take your girl in your lap. I like seeing her in your lap a lot better than I liked seeing her in Carmelo’s. Go ahead.”
I can’t decide if I’m angry or confused, or some overwhelming mix of both. Still, I seize the chance to hold her, and even though it means following his condescending orders, I sit down right where he told me to, and drag her to me.
“On your lap. Put her on your lap.”
I stare at him, a suspicious edge to my confusion that makes my back stiffen.
Still, I do what he says, because I do want her in my lap.
I gently press her head to my chest, but she doesn’t need my encouragement.
She nestles into me, quiet sobs making her back shake.
I can safely say I’ve never felt less hard as I take in Coltello’s leery grin, the way his eyes drag over her, his tongue actually pushing out of his mouth to lick his upper lip.
It takes everything I have to restrain myself from killing him then and there. But he’s a fast shot, and I realize with a sickening suddenness that Lia’s… my shield.
I don’t know what would be worse, that he’s a pervert whose intentions with Lia are filthy, or that he’s just forced me into turning the girl I love into the one thing that stands between us.
It’s starting to feel like some fucked up combination of both.
“Why don’t you put down your gun,” he drawls, cocking his own gun at her. “Go on, man. Do it.”
I slowly lower it, putting it on the mattress beside me. What choice do I have?
Weak, weak, weak.
Damien would be able to figure it out. Damien would know how to get out of this situation.
Or maybe Damien would sacrifice Lia, because when did Damien ever give a shit about anyone?
That is, apart from me.
“Ya know,” says Coltello, “I’ve been dreaming about how you smacked her ass that day in the diner. Every night before I go to sleep, I close my eyes and think about it as I rub one out. Did you know that, fratello?”
Lia stiffens in my arms, and I run a soothing hand over her back.
“Well, I know it now.”
He seems to find my comment very amusing, letting out a bark of laughter.
You’re dead. You’re fucking dead.
I suck in short spurts of breath, willing myself to relax for Lia, willing myself to stay focused. I can’t let myself get affected by his taunting.
“I’ve been wondering what that ass of hers looks like these days. And those tits—man. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen them.”
Fuck.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I growl. My arms tremble from the way I’m trying to keep them around Lia so I don’t reach for my gun. She whimpers, and I know I’m squeezing too hard, but all that realization does is make me squeeze even harder.
So much for staying focused.
“You’d better fucking tell me right—”
“He didn’t do anything!” she chokes out. “I swear!”
“Don’t fucking talk, Lia. Shut your fucking mouth.”
I spit the cruel words out through gritted teeth, and she lets out another whimper, before I feel her back tremble, and know she’s crying again.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
“Relax, man.” Coltello chuckles again. “I never did a thing with her. Or to her. I just saw the tape.”
“The… tape?”
“Yeah. The sex tape.”
I tense again, and Lia lets out a choked cough, but this time, it’s not because I’m squeezing too hard. I tear my eyes away from the barrel of his gun just long enough to glance down. She’s as white as a ghost.
“What sex tape?” I ask quietly.
“The sex tape with Carmelo, man. Cazzo! That was fucking hot. He always showed it to the guys when we were kicking back with a bottle of beer. In one part, she was lying on the mattress with her ass up, and he was just pounding into her—fucking hot. In the other part, she was on her back, and I could see her tits. Well, see is a big word, given how she didn’t have any at the time.
I got a glance of them when I went to the hospital after she gave birth, and they got a bit rounder.
More the way I like them. You know I was the first man to hold her kid?
I should get an award for not snapping the baby’s neck right then and there. It would’ve made life so much easier.”
Lia lets out another choked sound, but I’m too busy reeling from the rest to be able to react at all.
“I didn’t get a good look at Lia’s cunt in the tape, though, seeing as Carmelo’s cock was in it pretty much the whole time. I was thinking maybe you’d let me take a look at it. Maybe even cop a feel.”
I readjust my hand on Lia’s waist, and she lets out a muffled sob, as if she thinks I actually intend to do it.
How cruel have I been to her that she thinks I’d be capable of such a thing?
I want to die.
I don’t know how I manage to stay seated, my hands around her, as Coltello sullies her with his words. The words I speak to him sound like distant sludge that have been forced out of another man’s mouth. “You can go now, Coltello. You’ve paid your debt.”
I know, of course, he’s not here about any debt. But I’m desperate enough to offer him a way out.
Leave, no one gets hurt. Take your gun, and go. I’ll let you live. You should already be dead for having spoken those words. But I’ll let you live if you leave now.
Lia’s trembling furiously in my arms, but I can’t bring myself to soothe her.
I know she had sex with Carmelo. Of course I know that.
But hearing it described in such cruel terms—hearing they made a sex tape—it hurts.
I’m sure she didn’t want him to show it.
Maybe she didn’t even know he’d made it.
She’s been victimized and yet, the old wound in my chest has been ripped open again, and it festers in my heart.
I can tell she feels it, and her shaking grows more violent.
“No, I don’t think I have paid my debt,” says Coltello, his face twisting into a smile so ugly it looks like a grimace.
“See, I brought you the tape.” He takes out a CD and waves it in front of me.
“It’s yours. There’s no other copy. No one else ever needs to see your wife naked with a cock inside her. That’s me paying the debt.”
He offers it to me, and I stare at it, then at him. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch at all.” His grin looks positively devilish.
“I just want you on my side, Logan. You might not know it, given how you’ve been hiding like—well, no offense, man, but like a coward—for the past two years.
But it’s war. Moretti’s dead, his son is a weak son-of-a-bitch, and your best friend has decided he actually stands a chance against us.
He’s going around calling his crew Devil, and he seems pretty certain you’ll join it.
It’s an acronym of all your names: isn’t it cute?
Damien, Everest, Vale, Igor and you. Well, anyway, I don’t give a fuck about that corny bullshit. I’m pretty sure you’ll join me.”
“Oh, yeah?” It’s a terrible idea, now that he seems to be offering me a way out, but loyalty to Damien prevents me from keeping my mouth shut. “Damien can count on me.”
“I’m not so sure about that. See, he’s known about this tape for five years.”
I keep my eyes glued on the tape so Coltello doesn’t see what a punch to the gut that information is.
I don’t know why it should be; I don’t know why it stinks of betrayal.
Why would Damien have told me? Again, it’s not like I don’t know Lia and Carmelo had sex.
He just didn’t want to reopen that wound. Why the hell would he have told me?
“I’m with Damien,” I say again. “With—Devil.” I guess nothing has changed. Damien still gives his crew new names on a weekly basis.
“Yeah.” Coltello chuckles yet again, as if he’s got an inside joke with himself. “Pretty sure you’ll change your mind when you see that tape.”
By now, Lia’s shivering so hard that I just have to bring my hand to her back, running my fingers up and down her spine to reassure her, even though the old pain makes me feel pretty damn distant to her.
“I have no intention of seeing the tape,” I force out, my voice thick. “So why don’t you tell me what could possibly make me change my mind?”
“No,” I hear Lia moan against my chest. “No, no, no…”
“Well…” Coltello stands up and smiles down at us. “I forgot to mention one thing. You know, when she was lying on her back and her tits were up?”
I swallow painfully.