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“How the fuck should I know?” he says, frowning at me.
“You said it once to Ella. Ah, forget it… Good afternoon, gentleman.” I swing back to the cowering dog fighters. “It’s come to my attention that you’re not following my rules in this city.” I fire fast. Two more rounds later, the men are on the ground and bleeding. “I guess you won’t be making that mistake again.”
Sam calls for my orders as I turn to leave.
“You can burn them alongside Franco.”
“What about the dog?”
“Take it to the nearest ASPCA shelter or walk away. I don’t care. There are worse places to be a stray...” I catch sight of the animal. She’s not fighting anymore. She’s lying quietly on the deck, watching me, her long pink tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth as she pants her side of the story.
I can tell she’s a bitch. Men don’t sit that still after being attacked. We’re too busy strutting and raging, not assessing and plotting.
She’s also the ugliest fucking dog I’ve ever seen. Neither a Staffie nor a Collie or Greyhound, but some kind of flea-bitten iron-gray mongrel hybrid with lopsided ears and legs that are too long for her body.She looks like a gazelle who took an unfortunate fall into a meat grinder.
Sam goes to pick up the lead attached to her collar, and she growls threateningly. “Guess I just met your twin sister, Grayson.”
The dog turns and stares at me again, dropping her snarl instantly.
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter, clicking my fingers, and the dog comes straight over and sits at my feet. “I don’t have time for this bullshit.”
“Turns out she doesn’t take no for an answer, just like every other woman I know,” quips Sam as I kneel to remove her collar.
She lets me do it without a single growl, and I run my eyes over her body. She’s not badly hurt as far as I can tell, but she needs a couple of T-bone steaks to fatten her up.
“Maybe you two should go on a date?”
Ignoring him, I start walking toward the ship’s ladder, the dog falling into heel. “I’ll drop her off on the way back to the office. We’ll speak more later.”
Climbing into the Ferrari, I try not to think about the dog’s claws scratching up my leather seats as I punch in the GPS locations for the nearest shelter. This is all Ella’s fault, I reflect grimly. She and her soft heart have infected my world.
Switching on the ignition, I catch the dog staring at me again.
“What?”
She barks once, the noise echoing.
“You’re fucking hideous, you know that?”
She whines in agreement.
“In a gunfight, you’d be the first I’d shoot no matter what side you’re on.”
She curls up into an awkward ball on my heated seat, all legs and sticky up bits of coarse dirty fur and puts her head between her paws.
I watch the rise and fall of her skinny body for a moment, and find it strangely soothing. I’ve been on my own for so long, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to share silences.
“If you shit in my car, I’m sending you straight to China,” I warn, as her eyes start to close. “And I’m not giving you a fucking name, either. You don’t deserve to be humanized when you should be being euthanized. You hear that, Dog?”
She starts grunting in her sleep, and I shake my head at her lack of respect. She’s as bad as Sam, but at least he shoots straight and follows orders.
“Ella would like you,” I murmur, gazing into space.
In the end, I don’t stop at the ASPCA.
I take her to a meeting with the mafia instead.
* * *
