AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, Enzo, wait-”
He ignores me and stops at Elio’s side.
“Boss?”
Brian is still conscious, but his movements are getting weaker. Slower.
“Don’t kill him!” I whisper-cry in reply to Enzo, even though I know he didn’t ask me for direction on what to do next.
Elio doesn’t answer Enzo or me. He’s still speaking to Brian in that silky-smooth, deceptively calm voice.
“You’re lucky my Songbird has such a tender heart, or you’d be nothing but a stain on the sidewalk right about now.”
I swallow hard and wonder if Elio knows. If he somehow knows why I ended things with Brian. If he knows what Brian tried to do that night. This reaction seems over the top, even for Elio.
“Make sure he’s never on campus at the same time as Deirdre,” he mutters to Enzo, finally letting Brian go. Brian sags back against the wall, gasping and clutching his neck before sliding down to sit in the slush.
“Got it,” Enzo says instantly. He pulls his hand out of his jacket, sans gun, thank God. My eyes dart up and down the small street. The poutine guy is staring at us. He pulls his tuque further down over his ears. Hear no evil.
“Didn’t see nothin’, Ma’am. Nothin’ at all. Hey, you or your man want some poutine? On the house.”
I shake my head weakly at him.
My man.
He’s not my man. He’s my disaster.
Enzo passes Elio the keys and Elio puts his arm around me once again, steering me towards the car.
He doesn’t say anything, and neither do I.
But Brian does, because he really is the biggest fucking fool in the world right about now. His voice is weak and croaky, but the words are unmistakeable.
“What the hell, Red? You didn’t want to be with me and now you’re fucking some forty-year-old psycho?”
Uh oh.
Enzo grabs Brian and instantly hauls him upwards, pinning Brian’s back against his front by locking his elbows under Brian’s arms.
Elio turns slowly back to Brian, who’s now fighting fiercely to get out of Enzo’s hold to no avail.
“I’m thirty-four, actually,” Elio says. “And her nickname isn’t Red, it’s Songbird.”
When Elio’s fist connects with Brian’s face, I know his nose breaks, because I hear it. A crackling, crunching sound. Like a boot going through too-thin ice.
This time, Brian doesn’t say a word as Elio trundles me into the car.
Chapter 36
Elio
I’m still annoyed that all I did was break that fucker’s nose as we drive home. I stew on it, replaying the entire interaction, almost wishing Deirdre hadn’t been there so I could have ripped that idiot’s tongue out the way I’d wanted to. Red? What the hell kind of nickname is that? Reducing her down to something as basic and obvious as her hair colour. No fucking imagination, no art, no homage to the trilling melody of her soul. Red. Red Red Red Red. Cristo Santo, I hate it even more than usual now. The only good thing that word’s got going for it is that it rhymes with dead which is what that spineless little law student should be right about now. But Deirdre’s terrified voice is still there in the back of my head. Please don’t kill him!
She’s too sweet. Too soft. She probably would have blamed his death on herself, and I don’t want her wasting a single second of emotion, guilt or grief, on him.
We’re nearing the gate to the house when she finally lets out a shaky breath and says, “So, that was a lot.”
Not nearly enough.
