Not in a joking way that’s caused arguments in the past. He actually tried to kill me. He dragged me from that car and held a gun to my head like killing me was his ticket to survival.
I blink and tears silently roll down my cheeks. Bradley doesn’t comment on them. He sits beside me with one leg cocked and his attention fixed on my bare ribs. After dragging me from the cliff, shock numbed me so deeply that I can barely recall how I got here, or wherehereeven is. All I remember is Bradleysitting me down on the edge of a bed and ordering me to remove my shirt. I did so without a single word of complaint, merely numbly following his instructions until the first dab of antiseptic against my gunshot wound dragged me right back to reality and suddenly, I was centered in the aftermath of a horrible night.
“It’s just a graze,” Bradley says and his head bobs in my peripheral. “It shouldn’t scar if we keep it clean and let it heal.”
A graze because fucking Harris still tried to shoot me even as Bradley shot him twice in the chest and sent him back into that dark abyss. I hated that man and yet the length he went to actually kill me leaves me sickened. It churns in my gut, and I hiccup as acid rises inside me. Bradley hisses through his teeth, and the pain across my ribs throbs hotly.
“Sorry,” I try to say, but it escapes past my lips more like a strangled gasp. If Bradley hears it, he doesn’t comment, so I try again with something different. “Is he really dead?” Still weak, but at least my words are audible.
“Harris?” Bradley repeats, and I flinch.
“You know his name?”
“I do. And yes. My people are doing what they can to recover the body.”
The body.
Harris is dead.
I’ve dreamt of this moment countless times over the years, played out multiple scenarios in my head, and now that I’m faced with my desire as a reality, it doesn’t seem real. My favorite fantasy was imagining him getting mugged and beaten up so he’d know what it was like to be violated and abandoned, andthen to bleed out slowly enough in an alley that he goes crazy, but not too slowly. Didn’t want anyone to find him.
Instead, he met his fate at the base of a cliff.
“How do you know his name?”
Bradley doesn’t reply. His rough fingertips skim beneath my ribs and a shiver steals across my shoulders, then pain flares once more as he works. The single glimpse I got of my wound before Bradley forced me to look away was an angry red line across my skin that was pouring with blood. Blood that he assured me was making it look worse than it was.
“Was it true?” I ask hoarsely as my sluggish thoughts work backward through everything that happened up on that cliff and back on the road. “What you said on the road?”
“What did I say on the road?” Bradley asks quietly.
“You know.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
A sudden pulse of irritation warms my chest and I side-eye him. “You said stuff about the Mafia. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“It can’t be. The Mafia isn’t real.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I…” Hesitation traps my words and my mouth snaps closed. “They’re a ghost story.”
“A clever disguise,” Bradley replies. “But they are very much real and you pissed a lot of them off.”
I blink again and more tears roll silently down my cheeks. As I breathe, my chest constricts with a chill that trickles down into my stomach and settles there like a weight. “Are you going to kill me?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Okay? What kind of response is that? Another shiver rolls through my shoulders, and this time, once I start shaking, I can’t stop. Tensing my body, I clench my teeth, but it only makes the trembling worse and I’m frozen in place, fearing the next words from Bradley.
But he doesn’t speak. Instead, he moves closer until his thick thigh is pressed up alongside mine, and the side angle he’s taken on the bed with his cocked leg positions me directly between his legs. This close, an overwhelming wave of heat radiates from his body, which only makes my shivering worse, and when I breathe in, a sweet, woodsy scent mixed with something slightly fruity fills my nose.
It would be nice if I weren’t so scared.
