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Chapter 34
I have halfa mind to chase after her.
Do for Elena what no other has ever done for me.
But it’s all for naught if I don’t figure my shit out here first.
So, even though it feels like returning to Hell when I walk out to the courtyard, I push through the anger bleating against my skull and walk to my end of the table. Palming the back of the padded chair, I stare down for a moment at the uneaten pasta, the glass Elena left behind, smudged with pink lip gloss.
Rafe’s disappeared, probably off to light another cigar, leaving just me and his wife. Carmen slurps at her wine, clearly beyond incapacitated, and giggles. “Trouble in paradise, amore mio?”
Clenching my jaw, I raise my eyes, zeroing in on the suckling sound, letting it fan the flames inside of me, stretching them beyond belief, until I can feel my skin buzzing with the need for violence.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t gut you right here, right now,” I say in a low voice, careful not to reveal just how angry she’s made me. If they know you’re bothered, they use it against you.
Which makes all of this my fucking fault.
“Dio mio, you never were any good at flirting.” She sets her glass down, reaching to adjust the strap of her red dress when it slips down her shoulder. Her fingers curl around it, then pause, and she drops her hand as if suddenly thinking better of it.
Bedroom eyes turn up at mine, and she shifts, tilting her bronzed shoulder as if she’s trying to entice me.
Gripping the chair until my fingernails start to split from the pressure, I resist the urge to laugh in the bitch’s face, knowing that’ll only feed her antics.
“One reason, Carmen.” Reaching for the waistband of my pants, I slide my hand around, dislodging the gun tucked in the back. Smoothing my fingers over the cool metal barrel, I unlock the safety and cock it, pointing at her with the mouth. “Doesn’t even have to be a good one, necessarily. But you’d better think real fucking fast before I make the decision for you.”
She doesn’t even flinch, as if unaware that none of my threats are ever hollow. Fixing her strap with a sharp snap against her skin, she sits up straighter, giving me a bland look.
“You’re not going to kill me, Kallum. If you were, you would’ve done it the second you found me in bed with someone else.”
My side throbs spastically, like my flesh is being carved open all over again after finding myself on the other end of an ambush. In my own home.
It was a rival family member, someone from Southie; if I’d been expecting either one of them to be in my bed, he wouldn’t have had the upper hand.
But you don’t expect the people you care about to betray you right under your nose.
I remember the searing pain where the knife went in, thinking that would be the end of it; at that point, I hadn’t been doing lethal hits all that long, and torture certainly wasn’t something I even thought of when doing Ricci jobs, so when the knife went in, stayed in, and began to move, I remember the shock absorbing the brunt of the initial torment.
I remember waking up mid-surgery; I’d been flown to a nearby hospital after an anonymous tip alerted the cops to my state, and they’d been so concerned with the loss of blood and possible abrasions to my liver and spleen, that no one bothered to clean the wound or try to free some of the broken muscle that would eventually produce the mass of scar tissue on my side.
I remember the pain after the surgery; they called it phantom pains. Said I’d probably feel them the rest of my life, long after everything else healed.
They said I was lucky. That a guardian angel must have been watching over me, because the damage to my spleen had been pretty significant, but they’d managed to repair the rupture.
It was my nineteenth birthday.
I never felt lucky.
Not one time in my life, even with the countless brushes with death, did I feel lucky.
Until Elena.
The chair creaks beneath the weight of my grip, the wood hidden beneath the soft fabric bending at my whim. I school my features, gritting my teeth against the fury building like a cyclone in my chest, spiraling out of control.
Raising my arm, I point the pistol right at her forehead. “We can remedy that mistake now. I certainly don’t want to make the same one twice.”
She swallows, watching me with those glassy eyes. “Elena will never forgive you for killing her mother. She’s hurt now, but she knows who’s always been there for her. She’ll always choose this family over a stranger.”
Releasing my hold on the chair, I begin to slowly creep around the table, keeping the gun trained on her. “You took her away from me, so that little fear tactic doesn’t really apply anymore, does it? What do I care if she forgives me, if she’s not going to be warming my bed and cock at night?”
