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“That ain’t no place to be,” he said.

“Look,” I replied, “I don’t have a shitload of patience right now, so here’s how this shit works. You drive me where I say, and I give you cash. Capisce?”

He narrowed his eyes, said he was charging me double, and then made me pay up front before he’d drive us there. Under other circumstances, I would have put a gun to his head and told him to be happy if he got paid at all, but I had Lia with me, and I was doing my best not to scare her.

A pissed-off Lia was definitely preferable to a scared one. As it was, she had completely stopped speaking to me about halfway to where I ditched the car, and she continued to sit next to me, looking out the window with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips smashed tightly together.

I took a long breath and leaned back in the seat to relax a few minutes. I was rushing all of this, and I knew I hadn’t thought through everything. Not telling Lia why we were leaving was part of the problem as she was fighting me the whole way, but there was a lot more to it.

I knew deep down that Trent wasn’t going to just let this shit go. He wouldn’t just come after me; it would end up being a countrywide manhunt. Any chance of having the charges against me dropped would disappear completely, and he’d probably come up with a few others to tack on. At best, we would have to live on the run, leave the country, and change our names.

No doubt about it—I wasn’t thinking straight.

Why?

Because Lia was with me, and I didn’t want her scared or hurt.

Rinaldo had been right—having a chick in your life complicated everything. It wasn’t worth it—not for me or for her. What I really needed to do was just take her to the airport so I could buy her a plane ticket back to her mom’s.

The very thought brought the taste of bile to the back of my throat. If I wasn’t doing my very best thinking now, how much more rattled would I be if I hadn’t slept last night?

Fuck the sleep.

Waking up

with her—that had been worth the world to me.

My eyes squeezed shut, and I shook my head sharply. I couldn’t cope with all this shit. I couldn’t even have named all the conflicting thoughts and emotions going on inside my head, let alone make sense of them. It was too complicated. It was too dangerous for both of us. I should definitely tell the cab driver to head west and buy her a plane ticket.

I didn’t say a word but stared out the opposite window and hoped I’d be able to come up with some way of explaining all of this that didn’t end up with her leaving me.

Chicago has some really beautiful areas to live in. Auburn Gresham isn’t one of them. Though it was one of the roughest places in a city littered with crime, it was exactly what I needed for the moment. Not only would it be difficult for the Feds to follow me around the area, but they'd also have to watch their own backs at the same time.

The cab driver took his own sweet time getting there, and by the time we’d arrived near the address I’d given him, the sky was darkening. He dumped us on the corner, refusing to actually go up the block at night. I was tired of listening to the guy bitch, so I just got out where we were, Lia still in tow.

“Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Lia asked as the cab sped away.

“Not out here on the street,” I replied.

We only had about two blocks to walk, but that’s all it took.

Two dudes with hooded sweatshirts pulled down their foreheads and pants shagged down to show their striped boxers came at us from across the street. I felt Lia tense beside me, but I was nothing but annoyed.

“I got me a damn fine idea,” the guy on the left said as he walked up and blocked our path. I reached out and pushed Lia slightly behind my back. “You give me all yo shit, and maybe my frien’ don’t cut yo bitch.”

He reached down to yank up his pants and glanced over at his younger buddy. The other guy brandished a switchblade, which might have been scary to someone who hadn’t been around much larger knives. The knife-wielder moved his head back and forth like he was listening to some kind of phantom dance music. Other days I might have laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood for stupid gang shit. Moretti and Greco’s outfits had put them in their place plenty of times, and I was happy to do it again.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and centered myself before speaking.

“I’ve got a better idea,” I told him. “You turn around and go back to the slimy cunt you crawled out of, and I won’t blow your dick off and shove it into the sewer. I’m pretty sure this particular sewer flows right up to the river. You know the river, right? It’s where all of us who own your sorry asses work.”

The older guy’s eyes opened wide, but the younger one just looked pissed.

“I think fuckin’ you up would be a lesson you don’t soon forgit!” he sneered.

“Evan,” Lia whispered as her hand gripped my bicep, “just give them what they want. It’s okay.”

“Fuck that,” I spat. “I’ll give them what they fucking deserve.”

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