AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“For the love of God, Bastian!” she cried. “You aren’t like that anymore!”
“I might not act on it,” I growled, “but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it. I can only control so much!”
Every word out of my mouth was compounding the situation and speeding up the hurricane rotation inside my head. It was already bad, but if you want to make the worst of a bad situation, I’m the guy to invite.
“Apparently, you can’t.” She glared at me. “So did Landon get you drunk after telling you all this? Is that why you were trashed when I got home?”
“No, he didn’t,” I said. My anger faded slightly as sheepishness seeped in. It would have been nice, in retrospect, to have been able to blame it on Landon. I should have thought about that before I said anything. She probably would have believed it, too. “I did that on my own, after he left.”
“Jesus,” she muttered. She put her face in her hands and dropped back to the edge of the couch. “You can’t do this. Not again.”
“I have to.”
“No.”
“Goddammit, Raine!” I snapped. “If I don’t fight, they’re just going to walk in here and kill us both! What do you think is going to happen to my kid then, huh? If they decide to let him live, he’ll end up a fucking crime boss someday!”
“They can’t just walk in here,” Raine argued. “We’re in a secure building. There’s a guard downstairs!”
“Seriously?” I snarled. “Do you seriously think you can sit up here and be safe from people like that? Are you that fucking stupid?”
I regretted the word immediately, but I couldn’t take it back.
Open mouth, insert entire leg. Throw a hipbone and maybe an arm in there, too.
“Is that really what you think of me?”
“Fuck…no, of course not,” I grumbled as I tried to backpedal, “but when you say shit like that…well, it’s just not how it works. They can do whatever they want. That’s kind of the point. Besides, one of them has already been here.”
“What do you mean? Who’s been here?”
Ah shit. That wasn’t supposed to come out.
I tried to brush it off, but she wasn’t having any of that. I finally told her about the other day when I had the feeling someone had been there. Seeing the fear in her eyes centered me, calmed me, and I remembered how much focus I was going to have to maintain for any of this to come out well in the end.
If I lost focus, I was going to lose her.
“I don’t know who,” I told her, “but considering what Landon said, any doubts I had are gone. It could have been anyone from Franks’ group or even one of the other tournament players from the other mob organizations.”
“You really mean it,” Raine said. She wrapped her arms around herself and curled up into the corner of the couch as if that would somehow protect her from what was going on. “You’re really going to do this.”
I shoved myself off the couch and onto the floor. I knelt in front of her and placed my hands over her thighs. I hated seeing her so frightened, and though I needed her to understand there wasn’t a choice, I also needed her to know she was safe as long as she was with me and I followed every order they gave me.
“I have to do it,” I said for the hundredth time. “I don’t want to, baby—I have to. Nothing fucking matters more to me than you, and I’m not risking you.”
Her eyes grew wider as she stared at me.
“We could run away,” she suggested.
I didn’t have to respond. I could tell she didn’t believe it even as she said it. She was grasping—trying to find something to hold on to, something I might not have considered already, but there was nothing. I shook my head slowly.
“There’s nowhere to run.”
“There has to be another way.”
“There’s no other way, baby. I have to keep you safe, and if that means I have to fight, then I’m going to fight. I’ve done it plenty of times before. It’ll be simple.”
“Wait until you actually complete the task before you evaluate its simplicity,” Raine muttered.
