Her pupils don’t dilate in the slightest when she answers, “They die.”
“Uh-huh. Is that what you want to happen to Maio?”
Her eyes lock with Maio’s in the rearview mirror for the quickest second before she shakes her head.
“Then, you need to leave this airstrip before me.”
A smirk begs to notch my lips higher when she once again shakes her head. I should have known she’s too smart to fall for my tricks. She might only be twenty, but she’s lived a harsh life that matured her at double the rate of her peers. It’s the same for me. I’m barely notching twenty-six, but it feels like I’ll be seeking an assisted living facility within the next year or two. That isn’t surprising considering hardly anyone in this industry lives past thirty.
When Roxanne’s knuckles remain white from her death-clutch on the door handle I cuffed her to for our trip, my bad mood gets the better of me. “All right. Then, I guess I may as well shoot Maio now.”
Before Roxanne can blink, I blow Maio’s brains out. He slumps forward, the honk of the horn announcing to the rest of my crew that the trash has been taken out. I didn’t just kill him to scare Roxanne out of my car. His sneaky hands were stirring one too many pots, and don’t get me started on the comments I heard him whispering to my men when I guided Roxanne to his car, or I’ll discharge my entire clip into the space of air his brain should have been taking up.
Respect for Roxanne’s determination whizzes out my nose when she throws open the door she’s been clutching the past ten minutes, slips out, then hightails it away from me. She doesn’t look back my way once, her focus solely on escaping.
I could threaten to shoot her if she doesn’t stop, or chase her down, but why exhaust myself if I don’t need to? She’s running straight toward the marshlands Clover hid in while waiting for us to leave so he could take care of Maio.
She isn’t going anywhere but to New York with me.
After dumping my gun onto the floor of the Range Rover so Clover can clean up my mess—the Petretti run on the ‘no bodies, no time for our crimes’ theory—I return to the private jet.
Rocco eyes me with confusion slashed across his features, shocked I returned without the package I went to collect. His bewilderment is alleviated two seconds later when a kicking and screaming Roxanne is walked into the plane over Clover’s shoulder. She’s fighting him with everything she has, which only doubles the amusement on Clover’s face. He’s so big, I doubt he’s feeling the slightest twinge of pain from her fists whacking him in the back.
“Did someone order a redhead with a slice of feisty?” Clover asks with a chuckle.
As the men around him laugh, my jaw tightens. There are too many hungry eyes watching Roxanne’s every move. It has me itching to kill even more than Maio’s attempt to bite the hand that fed him.
Rocco’s eyes snap to mine as quickly as Roxanne stops pounding the shit out of Clover’s back when I say, “Take her to the bedroom.”
Knowing better than to double-guess my direct order, Clover immediately commences moving Roxanne to the lower half of the jet.
Rocco doesn’t follow his obedient lead. “Dimi—”
I shut him up with a stern sideways glare. “Tell the pilot I want wheels up in no less than five minutes. We’re already behind schedule.”
Too tired to answer the many questions his narrowed eyes are throwing my way, I sidestep him before shadowing Clover’s walk.
I’ve only just entered the compact yet luxurious sleeping quarters at the back of the jet when Roxanne lands on the bed with a thud. She springs back onto her feet in under a second, but my stern grumble telling her to sit stops her bounce off the springy mattress.
“We had an agreement. You have not yet fulfilled your side of our agreement, so you’re not free to go.”
“This wasneverpart of our agreement.” She peers past my shoulder to the men I feel watching her. There’s no doubt they’re interested, but since they’d have to get through me to touch her, she has nothing to worry about.
The pounding of my heart matches the vein working overtime in Roxanne’s neck when I request for Clover to disembark the jet. She watches his exit, her eyes only returning to mine after I’ve fastened the latch on the only bit of safety between her and my thirsty crew.
“If you think I brought you here to fuck you, you’re wrong.” My next set of words are hard to articulate when the late hour has me confusing the flare darting through her eyes as a disappointed one. “If I wanted to fuck you, you’d already be fucked. If I wanted them to fuck you…” I nudge my head to the door I just locked, “… they’d be lining up for round two. But that isn’t what this is about.Noneof this is about you. It’s about Fien, my daughter. I’m trying to protect her as your daddy should have protected you. I’m trying to keep her safe.”
For the first time tonight, the wetness in Roxanne’s eyes isn’t from fear. She’s remorseful, although it has nothing on my guilt when I ask, “Did your father fuck with your head or his druggo friends?”
This isn’t a conversation we should be having now. I doubt it’s even one we should have in the near future, but for the life of me, I can’t hold back my interrogation. The knot in my gut won’t lessen until Roxanne gives me the answers I’m seeking, and even then, I’m certain it’ll take more than words to fully smooth it out.
“What?” I can see how badly she wants to deny my claim, but with her mouth refusing to relinquish another lie, she could only get one word out.
“You have the markings of an abused child, a fascination with the man who watched you get off in an alleyway.” I didn’t just feature in her latest drawings. My rain-soaked, cloaked-by-darkness form is theonlything she has sketched the past year. “The sexual maturity of someone much older and wiser.” I lock my eyes with her watering ones. “And your nipples bud every time you feel threatened or scared.” She can deny my accusations all she likes, but the straining of her nipples against the thick material of her dressing gown is undeniable. “So that leads me to believe your daddy either fiddled with you, or he sold you to his drug-fucked buddies like he did your mother.”
Roxanne’s hands ball as tightly as mine when she shakes her head, denying my accusations. “He never touched me.”
“So, his friends did?”
