Chapter 4 #3
She lets out a disgusted-sounding shriek.
My eyes are dragged back to her. She’s still staring at me, blinking now, though, as she wipes his fetid bodily fluid from her cheek with the back of her hand.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I just took out the don’s son. A useless prick with shit for brains, but still a Falcone. And for what? To save a lying, scheming bitch I once used to fuck. One who’s probably going to rat me out to Carmine the second she gets a chance to.
Which means I can’t give her a chance to.
My tongue drags over my teeth and tastes blood. I must have bitten through my cheek when I pulled the trigger.
Fuck!
“Enzo?” Her voice cuts through the deafening silence.
So many memories, painful and humiliating, swim into my consciousness, dragging themselves up from the dark mire where I buried them. They’re enough to have blistering rage simmering beneath my skin. “Don’t fucking speak to me.”
I need time to think, and I need it without her annoyingly soft lilting voice inside my head. It’s like nails on a fucking chalkboard.
“W-what happens now? Can I go?” she asks, ignoring my command. Of course she fucking does.
“No, you can’t fucking go. You just watched me shoot Vinny Falcone.”
She blinks, confused. “So?”
“So, he’s the don’s fucking son, Rayne.” Saying her name for the first time hits harder than it should.
One word, and every buried memory claws its way up from the dark.
Her skin. Her mouth. Her touch. The way she used to look at me like I was everything.
I press my knuckles to my forehead and force air into my lungs. Focus. Think. Fucking think.
“Again. So? Just let me go and I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”
And now a little of that rage pours out. “You really expect me to believe that? Soon as I let you out of here I’m fucked.”
“Why the hell would I tell anyone? You just saved my life.”
I snarl. “Yeah, and if you weren’t a lying, conniving bitch, that might count for something. But you are.” I twist my neck from side to side. “So…”
“Oh, go to hell, Enzo!”
“Already there, sweetheart. And don’t fucking call me Enzo.”
“It’s your name.”
“My name is King.”
She snorts a laugh. “I am not calling you King.”
“Yeah, well you lost the right to call me by my family name the day you fucking betrayed me.”
She has the audacity to roll her eyes, like I’m the unreasonable one here—the guy whose heart she tore out, shredded to pieces and then set on goddamn fire. The same one who just saved her life, and in doing so has royally fucked up his own.
I grab her wrist. “We’re going.”
She gasps, tries to wrench free but has no hope of doing so. “What? Where?”
“Until I can fix this fucking mess, you’re coming with me.”
“The hell I am,” she screeches.
“You think I’m going to let you out of my sight for a single fucking second?”
She stops dead, puts her free hand on her hip, nostrils flaring, her entire being made up of nothing but attitude and defiance. “And what exactly are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting nothing. I would rather dip my balls in a vat of acid than have you anywhere fucking near me, but as we’ve established, you are not to be trusted.
So you’re coming home with me until I can figure out a way to fix this clusterfuck of a mess you’ve created.
And you will either walk to my car, or I will fucking carry you to it. Your choice.”
Her eyes dart toward the door, jaw working, mind ticking over a million miles per minute.
She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, and she’s trying to work out a way out of this shitshow.
I wish there were one—one that didn’t involve this lying, cheating bitch having to spend a single second under my roof.
Of course, there is a much simpler way to end all of this, and isn’t it something I’ve dreamed of doing since the day I found out she was a deceitful, hateful puttana?
I point a gun at her head. “Or maybe I should just fucking put us both out of our misery, huh? One bullet and this all goes away. You go away, Rayne. For good this time.”
Her eyes flicker to the gun. Of all people, she knows what I’m capable of, but this woman never backs down. She doesn’t have it in her. “You don’t have the balls.”
I cock the trigger, and the clicking sound makes her flinch. “No?”
Her dark eyes narrow to thin slits. “Just let me go, Enzo. I would never—”
“Don’t, Rayne. I have zero interest in anything you have to say. Now, just walk to my fucking car, or I can leave you here for the cops to find.”
Her lower lip wobbles. She knows she’s beaten. Knows there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell I’m letting her walk out of here and rat me out to the don. “Take your hand off me and I’ll come with you,” she says quietly.
Take my hand off her? There was a time she begged for my fucking hands on her.
And now I’m hyperaware of her soft skin beneath my fingers, how I used to hold onto her wrists when I fucked her.
I release her from my grip like her skin just caught fire, and she has the fucking audacity to be the one who looks hurt.