10. Knight
Chapter Ten
KNIGHT
Trixie’s family was everything mine wasn’t, and I’m not talking about organized crime. The level of noise alone was a shock to the senses. An even greater shock was the way Trixie held onto my hand, like she needed me.
I should have told her on the plane when she brought up the twisted wreck. That it was the same wreck she’d pulled me out of, like I should have told all of my employees who were sitting around in my airline’s first class that they should all move to business so I could kiss her properly.
Instead, I was melting into a pile of wreckage similar to the one in my bedroom.
She’d left me for a week while I spiraled, and then after a shove out of a helicopter, we were married, meeting her family, and she’d embossed constellations in her skirt and in the tent.
The blood really made the tent ones pop.
She’d put effort into our wedding. My ring looked like something from a fairytale, with various strands of metal alloys twisted together like tree roots, and blue diamonds embedded in those strands.
It looked rough, but it was all a smooth, silky finish that didn’t seem possible.
Like the way touching her wasn’t possible.
But the way she looked at me was paralyzing.
Love. She loved me. That meant she’d be really hurt when she realized I was a fake.
And it would hurt her worse the longer it took me to tell her.
But losing her for a week and then getting her back…
I couldn’t lose her again so soon. And she needed me to help her deal with her family.
They couldn’t mess up her hard work like that.
I’d had Charles collect all the bullets and had a nice little jar filled with ‘Congratulations to Trix and Horse,’ on my dresser, and I was having the tent and bed cleaned.
I had good people, and it would be pristine enough that we could use it in the future.
Not that we had a future.
A woman to my left almost backhanded me from gesturing so hard. I was sitting on the couch with a plate of carbs and sauce that smelled like guilt.
Trixie was across the room from me, pinned between two women in the same shade of red lipstick. It was set off by their jet-black dyed hair. Also the same shade.
“Trade,” a large guy with a baby said, stealing my plate and replacing it with a live infant.
“He’s nine months old, so he’s at the choking stage.
” He put my plate on a side table and then started following a toddler around with a plate of naked noodles.
“Come on, Gumby. Eat Nan’s noodles, or she’ll hold you on her lap and force-feed you. ”
The kid crawled under the table.
The woman to my left, platinum blonde with gray roots, gave me a bright smile. Same bright red lipstick as the other women. “Isn’t Marco such a good dad? How many kids are you guys going to have? I can see that you just love kids.”
I stared at her and then down at the soft bundle of humanity that looked up at me unblinkingly. “Thanks,” I finally said. Then looked back at Marco, who was chasing toddlers. “Is Marco a cousin?”
She laughed and slapped my knee hard enough to sting. “Marco’s her oldest brother. Your wife. We never thought Trixie would get married. Did you hear about her accident? Not that it seemed like she was ever interested in men. Or women. Just engines. Are you a mechanic?”
I shook my head. “Not really. I just fight.”
She squeezed my arm. “That explains the muscles. You remind me of her father when he was young. So handsome, and strong, and tall. We were all jealous of Ollie for snagging him, but the second he laid eyes on her cannolis, he was a goner. She was the prettiest girl in the city, or so she said.” She laughed like that was the best joke.
Maybe it was. I was still holding the baby and trying to convey to Trix a sense of solidarity in the face of so much chaos and seemingly good intentions.
“Do you like to shoot people?” I asked.
She went quiet, staring at me with a coldness in her eyes that gave me a very good feeling. Or a bad feeling, but I’d been right about her interests.
“It’s just that at our wedding, some of the family dropped in and shot a few of my team members. It could have been an accident. Or…”
She raised her chin, loose skin wagging.
“I’m too old for that sort of nonsense. And Trixie should have invited her family.
And you should have asked permission from her father.
You can’t just go around stealing people’s daughters.
” She stood up, giving me a look, like I’d committed the ultimate faux pas, questioning if she’d shot someone during a family dinner.
Marco threw himself on the couch where she’d been the second the spot was empty, his arm around my shoulders. “I give up. He won’t starve, right? Do you want to sneak out and get some air?”
I handed him the baby. “I’m good. The two of us sneaking would be ridiculous. How tall are you?”
“Six-six, give or take.” He squeezed my shoulders.
Painfully. “I shot Pixel, the idiot with the glow-up. Joey shot Jerome. Our other brother was supposed to shoot your other guy, Charles? But he couldn’t find him.
Guy’s wily. If you don’t want to have a private discussion, I guess we can stay here.
I could stab you in the chest, and no one would say anything.
” His voice was so cheerful, even, without the slightest catch or rise in emotion.
“I think your sister would say something. Also me. I would say a lot of things. For instance, do you think it’s all right to raise children in an environment where violence is inflicted on the unwilling?”
He raised his brows at me. “Are you lecturing me? You are.” He looked down at his baby and bounced him on his knee a few times.
“To be fair, things have been unsettled recently. Ever since Uncle Ni?o retired, and Lucas took over…” He made a face.
“He pushes. Doesn’t respect family. Brought in a lot of fresh blood that tends towards stupid. ”
“Because shooting your new brother-in-law’s team members isn’t stupid.”
He grinned at me. “You can’t have her without paying a price. If you don’t like the price, you can give her up.”
“I don’t have her. She has me. And the price is being paid by her. She feels far worse about my men getting shot than I do. I’m here because she wants me here.”
His smile shifted, turning darker, perhaps vengeful. “Yeah? Has she seen the marriage certificate yet? Your signature?”
I blinked at him. He knew who I was. He probably knew everything I was keeping from her. “You’re diabolical.”
He squeezed my shoulder again. “Naw. I’m just brainless muscle. Our mom’s the diabolical one. And she’s not entirely happy having you in the family. Not with what you are.”
I blinked at him. “What I am? What are you?”
He squeezed me again, making my bones creak and leaving me with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
A very long time ago, my mother died. That’s the person who died.
It didn’t hit me as hard as it might have if she’d been interested in me at all, but at her funeral, I’d heard some people talking about the O’Hara’s being trouble.
In my head, I tied my mother’s death to that name.
When I looked up the name, I saw an O’Hara who ran a kids’ racing camp.
It was fate. My father was unbearable in his grief and anger, weak, self-indulgent, unwilling to do anything. So I’d do something.
Namely, get myself nearly killed. It was my first exposure to life around those who didn’t know or respect my name.
I shoved it down everyone’s throats, my name, my money, looking for the right reaction, recognition, but all I got were fights with kids who hated me for no reason other than my bad personality.
I didn’t realize I had a bad personality until Trixie called me out.
She was terrifying. Scowling. Huge. The kingpin.
They called her stupid, but they did whatever she told them to do. Or she destroyed them.
This was the mafia princess? This fat, buzzed-head, scowling monster? She didn’t hurt me because I was too little and weak. She told me that’s why she saved me. I accused her of saving me because I was handsome and wealthy and she liked me.
She’d laughed. That was embarrassing. I’d said more regrettable things about her family.
She stopped laughing. I was sure she was going to beat me to death, but she just gave me a glare like a punch and stomped away to a car in her uncle’s garage and proceeded to take it apart, the way she didn’t take me apart.
She was terrifying, but there was something so incredibly addictive about her attention. When she looked at you, she wasn’t thinking about anything else. My parents never looked at me like that. They never looked at me at all. When she was angry at you, she was angry with her whole body and soul.
I spent that whole summer trying to make her mad at me.
And she rewarded me by teaching me how to defend myself.
And her attention when she was teaching me to fight was the headiest thing.
It wasn’t attraction, but it was obsession.
I wanted to hire her. To make her whatever would give me the most of her attention.
She could be my trainer. Bodyguard. Personal driver.
Something so that I could see her every day.
But then towards the end of the summer, after I pulled ahead of her during one of the final races, my car seized up and the engine in the back exploded.
Just like that, I was pinned, the suffocating heat making it impossible to breathe.
Everything hurt. I was going to die and lose.
And she’d know I was a loser. That hurt the most.
Instead of winning, she stopped. She ripped through the melted metal, slashed through my seatbelts, and hauled me out. She carried me all the way to the garage, blood running out of her eyebrow, around her face and down her chin.