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That promise feels like a hug around my heart. A hug that squeezes too tight when I realize the Portuguese Mob can end it all with a bullet. “Are you going to go try and get your packages back?”
“Are you worried about me?” He rubs my arm and puts one hand behind his head to prop it up.
I lift my chin from his chest and glance up. With a firm tone, I say, “Yes.”
I worried about him before I opened the door that night, when he was dying in my arms, when I thought he died, when his ashes came—Well, Lloyd’s ashes. Now I worry because he’s alive, because he somehow made me care for him, and it’s not at all soothing.
“Thank you,” he answers softly and reaches for my chin, trapping it between his fingers. “It feels nice to be cared for, Snow.”
I swallow. It’s also terrifying.
“And no, I’m not in any condition to attack an army by myself. And I have no weapon.” He goes silent for a moment. “We’re leaving tonight before the mob figures out I’m not really dead, or bodies start popping up and the police trace it back to us.”
“Bodies?” I shift myself into a sitting position and search for my shirt on the ground. Leaving means I have to get ready, have stuff to do around the shop, and things to explain to him.
He finds my shirt and hands it to me. “What you sold, for what, 50k?”
“Thirty.”
He scowls and rubs at his jaw. “Is worth thirty million.”
I freeze with my shirt halfway on. I may be dead from the shock.
He reaches underneath the material and tips my jaw up, closing my mouth. “You got lowballed, even for cocaine.” He slides the shirt over my breasts and pinches my nipples, bringing the sensation back to my body. “We’ll revisit that subject later.”
My cheeks flare, but now is the time for action, not satisfaction. “What do you mean by dead bodies?”
“Hydrolyzed scorpion venom, mixed with a few additives, including cocaine. That’s what was in those packages. When tested, it will turn blue, but it has to be cut. That supply is pure stock and when diluted it’s like a speed ball. But when not...” His fingers release in the air, flicking over and over in different spots, as if “dropping” little bombs around us.
Gravity bursts my bubble.
They’re going to sell the venom like coke. “People are going to die.” Panic erupts inside and gravity takes hold of my conscience, yanking it straight from my mind all the way toward my heels. It tears, leaves holes in my vital organs—heart, lungs, gut… throb painfully. My lips mouth the words but it takes a gentle touch, a brush of his fingers against my naked elbow, for the voice to come through. “I’m going to be responsible for a mass murder, Styx.”
“No,” he shakes his head, “the mob is—”
I cut him off and get on my feet. “I should tell Officer Beyer that I sold the drugs. If they sell that by the gram, that’s… that’s…t-h….” Math is useless. One is too many. “A shit-ton of people are going to die. I can’t let that happen.”
Styx rolls his eyes at me. “I survived.”
“Because you nearly bled out. Because I intervened! Because you went to the hospital, because—how is this even a debate?”
“I’m not arguing with you, Snow.”
Cocking my head to the side, I rerun our last few lines to confirm. “So, we go to Beyer.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Maybe not we, but I am.”
Firmly, fingers curl around my upper arm and bolster me in place. “You’re not going to go anywhere. Or warn anybody.”
“I won’t be responsible for more death. That’s not who I am, Styx.”
“I don’t give a shit how many people die. We leave tonight.”
“You’d let innocent people die to save yourself?”
“You really want me to answer that?” He finds my panties and holds them out so I can step into them.
