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“What?” I bark. “I need my heart rate up to feel alive. The thrill of the chase is one of the only times I feel satisfied. It has to be real.”
“But in the card I read…” She waits to see if I’ll flail in anger. “It seemed like sexual play.”
“That was different,” I say.
“But similar,” she tests.
“I don’t want to lay with Gabby, or Anabel, or Jane anytime they try to flee. I just needed to find them. That thrill sated me for some time,” I admit.
“And what about just now, with Pompo and Johnny? Did that do anything for you?” She scratches the back of her neck, drawing my eye to red blotches all over her. Is she…?
“Perhaps I should be asking if it did anything for you?” I narrow my eyes at her, and she turns bashful all of a sudden. Now her cheeks have a hint of rosy in them. That’s interesting… Just how far do your own fantasies stretch I wonder. “You’re turned on, aren’t you?”
She shifts her legs away from me, toward the door.
“It’s because I’m the antithesis to your ex-husband,” I push. “He abandons you in the face of danger, while I… can deliver on my promises.”
She scratches her neck again. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re my captor, remember?”
“Who buys your groceries for you, who protects, who provides. All the things Joey Lucrazi failed to do.”
I notice her swallow hard. I’m hitting on something visceral. “You know my biggest secrets, Alessia. Are you afraid to tell me yours?”
My words linger in the tense air. I’m aroused now, undoubtedly, and I’m almost certain she is too.
“Did Maria ever try to escape?” She changes the subject.
I cackle at her feeble attempt to resist my questioning. “Alright, Alessia. If you’re only comfortable indulging in my idiosyncrasies, fine. We’ll play it your way.”
She curls tighter in her seat, obviously hiding something.
“Maria was catatonic when Nick spilled the beans to her.”
“With a gun to his head,” she adds.
“What better motivation to be truthful?” I arc an eyebrow. “I empathized with her. She truly didn’t know how terrible a man Nick was. He was good at hiding it, and good at picking a workaholic bride. He was able to do as he pleased in the darkness. Too bad he messed with the wrong reaper. And her? She was another unfortunate casualty of circumstance.”
Alessia narrows her eyes at me. “You revere her. Yet you loathe Anabel.”
“For obvious reasons. Maria is useful. Anabel… is insufferable.”
“Why? For having needs? Needs that you stripped from her?” she snaps.
“We, the six of us, are all tethered to a long string of events. They are as unavoidable and true as the arrow of time, Alessia. There was no way in hell Marissa would go unavenged while I had life in me. And as the fates would have it, there is no better hunter than I.”
“Shut up with your high and mighty bullshit.” She scoffs. “Like God made you put us in a cage. You know, you could’ve killed them all out in the mob world, without getting their wives involved. Left us the fuck out of it.”
“You had to know the sins of your partner.”
“Really? I had to know? I had to know so much that the rest of my life has to be suffered in a cage for it?”
I bare my teeth against the rising emotion.
“I don’t know what happens now,” I say honestly. “Had you pulled the trigger, you would’ve been free.”
“No. I would be stuck in a mental prison like you.”
The rest of the ride is tense.
