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“Fuck you.”
So I hit him again. Another love tap. That time I used the butt of my gun and nailed him right in the eye. Fucker stumbled and dropped to his knees.
Roy took a step closer.
“Move again,” I said, “and you’re dead.”
Roy’s eyes burned.
“Fuck you,” Drago said. “Oh, damn it. Fuck you, asshole.”
“Go tell them you’re finished,” I said. “For your daughter’s sake, not for mine. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. Leone’s probably going to try to kill me either way.”
Drago grinned at me. His teeth were bloody. “Good. I hope he pulls it off.”
I stepped closer to Drago and dragged him to his feet. He stared in my eyes and I saw the fear there. He knew what I was capable of.
Roy made his move then. He barreled forward, shoulder dropped, hands at his hip. Probably going for a knife I missed.
I barely moved. I aimed and fired two rounds, hit him once in the neck and once in the head.
He stumbled and crashed through a table.
Drago flinched as blood splattered on our shoes.
I looked at Roy and sighed. He pissed himself down on the floor, the poor bastard.
“That was a shame,” I said then looked at Drago. “Do the right thing.”
I turned and ran.
Drago’s crew spilled out from the back. I sprinted ahead and slammed into the door just as they started shooting. A few rounds almost hit me, slammed into the wood next to my face. I got splinters across the cheeks and mouth, bad enough to draw blood. I threw open the outside door and stumbled into the daylight.
I sprinted away. I heard the guys come out behind me, but Drago shouted them down. I ran like hell, saw the Lexus ahead, dove in the driver’s side.
“Tanner?” Elise looked terrified, her face pale. “Did I hear gunshots?”
“Yep.” I started the car and pulled out. I turned around in the street and drove fast away from the club.
“Are you okay?”
I touched my face. “Just cut a little.”
“Did you kill someone?”
“Sure did.”
“My dad?”
“He’s okay,” I said. “And I think I was convincing enough.”
She stared at me, ghostly pale, and just nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s good.”
I smiled at her in the rearview mirror and drove us back to my apartment.29EliseTanner is on and off the phone for the next three days. And I’m constantly in his bed.
When we’re not losing ourselves in each other, Tanner’s talking to the Leone family, or people associated with them. Or he’s cajoling my father, pushing him into promises and deals. Tanner acted as a go-between, slowly hammering out the details of a potential truce.
I could tell it drove him crazy. He wasn’t built for that kind of work and more than once I had to talk him out of killing someone. He wanted to force a solution on everyone to make things go faster, but I knew that wouldn’t stick.
They all had to agree, or else it wouldn’t ever work.
So he played the politician. He pretended to care and spent hours on the phone. He met with my father in a public park and they went over details of his proposed plan.
After three days, it all began to come together. And on the morning of the fourth, he found me sitting out on the balcony with coffee again.
“They’re sitting down today,” he said.
I sat up straight. “Are you serious?”
“I’m serious.” He turned his face toward the sun and the light bounced off his lovely skin. “I just got the call from your father. I was waiting on him to agree.”
“So you’re telling me it’s going to be over?”
“I’m telling you they’re meeting, and we have a framework for peace in place,” he said. “One that seems to make everyone happy. I don’t know if it’ll last. I don’t know if they’ll try to kill each other. But shit, it might work.”
“You’ll be there,” I said. “They won’t do anything stupid with you there.”
He snorted. “Hell, yeah, they will. They’re dumb motherfuckers. But we’ll both be there.”
My eyebrows went up. “You’ll let me come?”
“I want you to come,” he said. “I want them to see you. I want them to understand.”
I tilted my head and shifted in my seat. “Understand what?”
“That all of this was over you,” he said. “Just an innocent girl. You didn’t deserve any of it. And now there are a few dead bodies because they couldn’t just leave you alone.”
I sipped my coffee and nodded. “Okay. If you think it’ll help.”
He grinned and crouched next to me. He kissed my cheek and cupped my chin. “I have no fuckin’ clue if it’ll help,” he said. “But hey, let’s go for it anyway.”
I smiled, kissed him, bit his lip, then leaned back in my chair. He lingered there and we didn’t speak as the sun rose up over the city, glinted off the windows across the street, and illuminated the people down below as they went about their lives, isolated from all the violence, all the hate, all the death that had followed me around for the past month.
