AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“This is extremely irregular,” I snap as the police officer approaches. “I’m going to call Chief Dawson, and?—”
“You do that.” The officer looks at me, and I see his face clearly. My gut tightens, anger washing over me in a hot wave. It’s Adams, wasting my fucking time and once again putting Mila at risk. It’s all I can do not to throw the door open into him, lunging out, and adding assaulting an officer to my list of crimes for the night.
Goddamn, it would feel good. But it would complicate things, and I have enough to deal with already.
“Last time I talked to Dawson, he said he was going to set you straight.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Dawson and I have an arrangement. It involves not dealing with things like this.”
“Oh, I know.” A cold smile spreads over Adams’ mouth. “I’m not gonna give you a ticket, Campano. I know it wouldn’t do shit except get me written up. But I’m gonna give you a warning, between us men, while I have a chance.”
“A warning.” My voice is bland, unimpressed, but that rage is still churning in my gut. Somewhere on a mental list of men to put in the ground when I have a chance, Adams’ name is being written down.
Luckily for him, I don’t have time tonight.
“A warning,” he repeats. “I can’t do shit about you tonight, or tomorrow. Probably not even the next day, or week, or month. But I’ll keep watching, and soon enough, I’ll find a way. LA needs to be rid of animals like you. And I intend to take care of that problem, one way or another.”
The cold smile on his face doesn’t falter. “Have a good night, Mr. Campano.”
Adams nods to me, and then turns, walking back to his car. A sense of foreboding fills me as he goes, a sense that this will come back to haunt us later—if not Mila and I, then the rest of my family.
But just now, short of shooting him in the back as he walks away—and I’m tempted—there’s nothing I can do about it right now.
“Drive,” I say curtly. “I need to get to Mila’s, as fast as possible.” No one else will stop us, Adams was the only one who would have dared. The anxious feeling in my gut has only worsened, a feeling that while I was held up, something else is coming unraveled.
The moment my driver pulls up to Mila’s apartment building, I’m out of the car before it even fully comes to a stop. I hurry up the stairs, taking them two at a time, the pulse in my throat quickening as that feeling of dread grows.
Something is wrong. There’s a sixth sense, almost, that men in my line of work tend to get—when you’ve been on the wrong end of a gun, when you go into a situation where you know your life might be on the line. A change in the air, a sense of foreboding that something bad has been where you are, a moment ago.
I stop on the landing of Mila’s floor, that dread turning into a sickening certainty.
Her front door is hanging open. And I have a feeling I know exactly who is inside.
Mila
Iwake to darkness and the feeling of a heavy hand covering my mouth.
“Shh, devochka,” the voice croons, hovering above me in the blackness of my room. “Don’t scream, suka. Don’t try to fight. You’ll regret it if you do.”
Dimly, I think that I’m not certain I could fight even if I tried. I can feel the grogginess from the painkiller still dulling my senses, and mingled with the fact that I was asleep a moment ago, I feel as if I’m being dragged awake through a thick fog. I should be afraid, I should be very afraid—but for a moment, I can’t remember why.
And then the voice, and the accent, cuts through the fog, and I realize who it is.
I try to scramble upwards, sucking in a breath to let out a scream. Before I can, I feel the hand momentarily lift, just long enough for hot pain to burst across my cheek as my face is knocked sideways. It takes me a second to realize that I’ve been hit.
The hand covers my mouth again, pushing me back into the pillows. I squirm, kicking, forgetting about my ankle for a moment. That pain rejoins the rest, as my cast hits the bed, and I let out a muffled cry as I try to grab at the man’s—Egor’s—wrist.
“Let me go! Let me go!” I cry out, but it’s muffled, and I hear a whimper from the other side of the room.
Niki. Cold fear shoots through me, making me go suddenly still. I whisper his name behind the palm pressed to my lips, and I hear a dark chuckle from above me.
“Now you begin to understand, devochka.”
I close my eyes, scrunching them tightly shut. I don’t want to see what I know is happening—Niki is here, in this room, and he’s in danger, too. The thing I’ve feared all this time—that the things I’ve done to try to help us have come back to haunt us instead, putting him in danger—has happened.
Where is Lorenzo? I don’t say it aloud, too afraid of the answer, and not wanting to alert the man above me that Lorenzo might come, if he’s not already here. What if he’s dead? Or hurt? Another whimper escapes my lips, my eyes welling with tears. I’m not entirely sure that I didn’t dream everything at the hospital.
He stayed with me. He held my hand. He reassured me. He said he wanted to keep me safe. Me and Niki both. My heart wrenches in my chest at the memory. As terrified as I was, for those few hours, I felt safer than I have in a long time. It solidified everything I’ve thought about him, everything I’ve felt—and I want him. I want to tell him how I feel, because I don’t see a point in ignoring it any longer.
I don’t know if I’m going to get a chance to tell him at all, and the thought makes fresh tears spring to my eyes.
