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What the hell is wrong with her? It seems the more I try to make her comfortable — to make our awful weekend together more tolerable — the more frustrated she becomes. I don't remember her being this unreasonable.
"That's even more absurd than your first idea. What if someone sees? What if someone from the housekeeping staff notices that my supposed boyfriend — the boyfriend that I like enough to invite to this opulent wedding — is someone that I force to sleep on the floor like a dog?"
"Who cares?" I say. "Do you think I give a fuck what some maid thinks?"
"You'd better. They'll gossip, then word will get to someone in the Vertucci family, then they'll start asking questions, and then we'll wind up dead. Is that what you want?"
I look around, my eyes longingly resting on the door out of here for a moment, before surveying the rest of the room; there aren't any other places to sleep — the furniture in here is nice, fancy, expensive, but it's all antique, wooden furniture, and if I tried to sleep on it, I'd end up with a hand carved crucifix up my butt in the middle of the night.
"Fine," I say. "What am I supposed to do? Sleep in the hall? Not sleep at all? Because I will do both if that's what it takes. Hell, I'll do them standing on my head, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, if that's what I have to do to get you to stop whining because they only gave us one bed. A bed that is so gigantic, by the way, that you could literally fit an entire platoon of Marines on it."
"I'll tell you what you should do," she says, eyes going to the window, searching. As she looks out there, it's like her frustration amplifies, grows, her body tightens like she's about to throw a punch, and she looks back to me with an incredible amount of fury in her eyes. What is she thinking about? What has her so angry? Beds can't be that important. "You should leave. Just go."
"You know I can't do that, Dani. I owe Smokey..."
"I'll handle my brother. Don't worry about him. Listen, Owen, you're not needed here. Not needed, not wanted, and if you stay, this is just going to turn into hell for both of us. This is just a wedding, and I'm just a bridesmaid. I know the Vertuccis have a terrible reputation, but me being a bridesmaid means that I'm protected. I'll be fine. All that you'd be doing if you stayed is getting in my way. If you stay, you’ll be bored out of your mind, and maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get to watch me do something so thrilling as catch a bouquet — " her voice falters, a glimmer of hope among the venom, and she stops, suddenly, shakes her head, sending her blond hair bobbing. "Just go. Go before you make this nightmare any worse than it is."
I hesitate.
It's a tempting offer. One that traps me between loyalty and common sense. I owe Smokey, but there's no way he could've known the extent of what he's asking. And the idea of spending an entire weekend with Danielle, while having to keep my distance from her despite the fact that my heart and my body is crying out for me to throw her into that bed and turn her shouted objections into moans of pleasure, is my idea of pure hell.
"Well, Owen?"
I turn away for a moment, torn.
Do I stay out of loyalty to my closest friend?
Or do I escape the pure torture of sleeping in the same bedroom with the woman who makes my body feel like I'm about to parachute into an active firefight, who also is completely untouchable because she's my best friend’s little sister?
"I need to take a walk."
I'm out the door before Dani can even muster a response. Let her wait. I need to clear my head.
I leave our palatial room and stalk down the stairs of the villa until I'm outside. The central courtyard looms in front of me; the manicured gardens, the wide and wild expanse of back property — a large, semi-forested field — that they use for fox hunting or polo or whatever the fuck rich people do to pass the time; all of it beckons me.
I walk randomly, my heart and my brain working overtime to figure things out.
Why has Dani changed so suddenly?
I know her feelings for me. I remember the look in her eyes when I showed up at her open house and asked her to take me as her date to the wedding. That woman is a far cry from the woman I just left in our suite. What’s happened?
Maybe she finally came to her senses.
Maybe she realized this mission is one of Smokey's more insane ideas and we have to find a way out.
As I walk around the property, I try to tell myself that's it. That this wedding, even though it's for a Mafia boss, is nothing more than an asshole and an unlucky woman hitching their lives together for as long as it takes common sense to penetrate their skulls.
It’s nothing more terrible than spending a weekend around self-obsessed Sicilian dimwits. Which is a version of hell, true, but it’s not a dangerous one — unless you have an allergy to male body spray.
My mind settles on a decision: I should go. It's safe enough here. The men at the front gates were just security, nothing more than the MPs posted at every military base to keep the troops in line. The same goes for the few men I see on my walk around the property who are obviously sporting pistols in shoulder holsters. They’re just bodyguards. Basic security. Nothing to worry about.
It'll be fine for me to leave Dani here on her own. I can spend the time that I would be stuck playing babysitter and use it instead to have a few beers and finish rebuilding the transmission on the bike that’s back at Reid’s Repairs.
It makes sense. It’s the right call.
Until it isn’t.
Until a wrong turn takes me past a shed in the back reaches of the property, and I spy something I can't ignore: a man with a piece of German hardware that sports a name that sounds like you have a fishbone stuck in your throat: the HK33; an assault rifle manufactured by Heckler & Koch, a selective fire rifle shooting 5.56 mm rounds, sporting up to a 40 round magazine, and quite popular with armed forces from Germany and Greece to Mexico and Malaysia, as well as readily available to any mercenary with a modest amount of scratch and common sense. It’s a reliable, modular, and deadly tool that can be readily adapted for all your killing needs.
