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“You know why Sal always uses the strip clubs for our overnight safe houses? I’ll let you guess, but here’s a clue— it’s not cause they’re actually safe.”
I stare into the seat in front of me, unable to process what he’s telling me. The whiplash has me sick and reeling, my throat still thick with fear, my heart in a vice.
“Shut up,” I snap, refusing to hear it, pushing the thought away like it might strangle me if it gets a hold of me. “You’re lying.”
“Wouldn’t waste my breath on lying to you. Just figured you’d want to stop embarrassing yourself—”
“What are you talking about? Is Salvatore hurt or not?” I demand, sick of him running his mouth while saying nothing.
“Jesus Christ—no, he’s not hurt. Salvatore Mori doesn’t get hurt. He leaves that to everybody around him.”
There’s no time to feel relieved. A different fear rises up in me.
If Sal isn’t hurt, then what is this? Whose blood is on his shirt? Where is he taking me?
The city drifts by, the ride is leisurely and calm, all of his earlier urgency eerily missing.
I glance down at myself, feeling for the first time how defenseless I am.
“Noctus…”
His wild eyes glance up into the rear-view mirror.
“What is this?” I breathe, the fear tightening in my throat. “What are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer.
My hand closes quietly around the door handle. It doesn’t open. I throw my weight against it again and again, but the door doesn’t budge.
“Knock it off,” he snaps.
I freeze. Noctus steadies the wheel with one hand and grips a pistol in his other. I feel the threat of it like a weight on my chest, the way his finger curls dangerously near the trigger, half-distracted by the road.
“…Just tell me what this is. What do you want?”
“I want you to shut up and sit still. You could even say I’m helping you. I’m doing for you what somebody should have done for me. For Lance. I’m getting you the fuck away from him—”
“No—”
“And then I’m gonna sit back, kick my feet up, and watch him kill himself trying to get you back.”
“Noctus, you don’t want to do this. He’ll kill you. He’ll find out, you know he will.
Please, take me back,” I whisper. “I won’t tell him. I swear. No one will ever know this happened, you have my word—”
My begging is cut short as the car veers into an underground parking garage.
“Your word’s cheap,” he says. “Your body isn’t.”
We’re swallowed by the dark, the headlights beaming through a vast, empty lot. We descend into the dark.
Several stories down, the car rounds into a lit garage, where a single dark SUV sits parked in the middle of the vacant lot. The concrete pillars spaced throughout the garage are flanked by men with dark suits and padded vests, using the pillars as cover and tracking the car’s slow motions with sleek assault rifles.
My family.
“Noctus, no—”
“Shut up.”
