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She hasn’t lifted her head to look at me yet.
Rather than waiting for her to pull herself together, I stalk over and lift her chin with two fingers. Her eyes are wide, but she’s not out of it. No, she’s fully present and hopefully making progress through the maze of her mind to come to terms with what's happening. And the part she’s played in it all.
She involved herself with a stranger who, I suspect, had not shown up in the club by mistake. Had not inserted herself to sway her hand by mistake. So what did they speak about, and why did it end in a spray of bullets?
“I’m never done talking if it means getting to the bottom of this mess,” I assure her, my tone hard. “Do you have any idea what kind of shit you pulled tonight?”
“Vaguely.”
“How about the repercussions of it, then?”
She drops her eyes, but I refuse to let go of her chin and tug at her until she meets my gaze a second time.
“You never think things through,” I mutter. “It’s really a shame because I wonder what you might accomplish if you actually did instead of simply reacting. If you used your skills to observe rather than jump right in.”
Her brows furrow down into a scowl. “Stop patronizing me.”
“Then stop making it easy for me.” I pinch her chin in warning.
“You think you know everything because you’ve been part of this game for so long, but let me tell you something, Ricardo, it’s in my blood.” She swats at my hand, and I let the blows, halfhearted at best, glance off of me.
“To make things easy for me?”
“To do what my family does,” she replies with a snarl. “What your family does. The only thing you all care about is keeping me on the sidelines, and I’m telling you what. It’s not going to work anymore.”
She’s seething and trying not to make it obvious. I’m surprised she’s not trying to bite my fingers or bursting a blood vessel somewhere.
“If it were in your blood, then you’d understand not to talk to strangers in a neutral setting.”
Her eyes flash. “Me?”
“Did you mark one thing about your newest bestie? I’m going to guess you didn’t.” Except I had; every single inch, from the polished Santoni dress shoes to the slightly long fingernail on the pinky finger of his left hand.
The man had money, more than the average patron gracing the floor of the Inked Den.
“It was dark—” she starts to say.
“Stop it.” Suddenly tired, I drop her chin and walk to the cabinet beside the front windows. I told Uncle Carter we should have put a lock on the thing, but he insisted the shittier the exterior of the building, the less likely we were to be robbed. So no liquor cabinet lock despite the damn expensive whiskeys and scotches inside. Not to mention a bottle of wine that cost me over a thousand dollars.
“What are you doing?”
I lift the bottle over my shoulder to show her the label. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m going to get drunk, so I don’t throttle you within an inch of your life..”
She knows exactly what she did by speaking to the man. And if not the implications of her alliance, then the reasoning behind the action, both of which I wanted to hear from her lips.
Damn it, she needs to just be honest. With herself and with me. Honest about what she’s trying to do, way before tonight, and what she hopes to accomplish from here on out.
My headache has graduated from junior to senior and the throbbing spreads from my temples toward the back of my cranium. Tact be damned. I’m sick of whatever game she thinks she’s playing.
“You were almost hurt tonight because you went out to that place,” I remind her.
“I was absolutely fine until you came over and started acting like an asshole. I can handle myself. I’m an adult. Or have you not seen my tits?”
I resent the hell out of her right then. But a chug directly from the bottle has me stopping the words I really want to say, where I curse at her for being predictable. I have seen her tits, and they’re glorious.
They’re also not the issue here. “You had no idea who that man is,” I say calmly once I’ve swallowed. My throat burns all the way down into my stomach. “Or what he’s capable of doing.”
“Neither do you,” she counters.
