by Naomi West
“I know what I heard,” his face is like a statue. He barely resembles the Dare I’ve come to care for over the last months. He looks exactly like the Dare who worked for my father. The one who didn’t care about my wishes or hopes or dreams. The one who didn’t even recognize my humanity.
Suddenly, I’m overcome with rage. “You know what? This is bullshit!” I scream at him. “I can’t believe that you would treat me this way over a few sentences you think you overheard. You know me better than that. You’ve known me for months!”
He flinches a little bit but doesn’t break. “I don’t think you’re vindictive, Alessia. I think you got caught up in whatever idiotic plan your brothers cooked up and everything got out of hand. I think you probably didn’t think you’d end up fucking me when you agreed to keep me out of the picture, either. So, no. I don’t think you’re evil. I just think you’re a naive, misguided child who went through with some kind of dumb-fuck sting operation that got your father and lot of good, innocent men thrown in jail.”
I step back like he’s slapped me. My mind is shooting in a million directions at once. I can’t believe what he’s saying. I can’t believe that my father has been arrested. I can’t believe that my brothers probably set the whole thing up. I can’t believe that Dante is hurt. I can’t believe Fabi is missing. But most of all, I can’t believe that Dare honestly thinks I am capable of any of this.
“How could you think I’d do this?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t you know me at all?”
My words affect him. I can see it in the way his eyebrows come together, in the tightness around his lips. But he doesn’t crack. “I do know you, Alessia. I know that you’re good at keeping two sides of yourself at all times. I know you’ve spent years tricking your own father into thinking you were one person when you were really another. I know that you have no problem deceiving people when you think it’s for a noble cause. I know that your dearest desire is to have your father out of your life. To prevent him from pulling the puppet strings any longer. I know you love your brothers and you trust them. That you would do pretty much anything they asked you to. Including this.”
I’m so mad at him I can barely see straight, let alone speak. I’ve never been so insulted in all my life.
“How could you have treated me the way you did, yet be so ready to think so little of me?” I ask, my voice small and unrecognizable. But he’s already turned from me, typing something into his phone and striding out of the room.
I go to my room and close the door. When I cross over toward the bed, I notice my phone is still on the ground. I pick it up and the screen lights up with a text. From Fabi.
I know you’ve heard by now. I’m sorry for the way it all turned out, Alessia. But it’s for the best. Mistakes and all. I can’t tell you where I am but I’m safe. Stay with Dare. Whatever you do. Stay with Dare.
I stare at his text and the words echo around my brain
I shiver when I think about the way he just treated me. The look on his face. So cold. So distant. He looked at me like he didn’t know me. Maybe I didn’t know him if he could doubt me so strongly after overhearing a few wrong sentences. I think about what he overheard and wince. I’m sure he thinks that I was in on the plan the whole time and that I was trying to get my father locked up and didn’t care about the collateral damage. And worse yet, he thinks I was planning on ‘distracting him’ from keeping close to my father. That this whole relationship was a ruse designed to trick him.
I fall onto the bed. I watch the light change in the bedroom, but I barely notice it. The shadows lengthen, just like the distance between me and Dare. I think about getting up, leaving my room and going to him. But it seems easier to swim across an ocean. The expression on his face as he looked at me out in the living room flashes across my mind over and over like a nightmare. And maybe it is a nightmare.
Because many hours later I wake up tucked under the covers. My jeans and sweater are pulled off and folded neatly on the nightstand. I’m under the covers in my underwear and camisole. Dare must have put me to bed. I quickly roll over, stretching out my arm. But the bed is cold. For the first night in weeks, Dare doesn’t sleep with me.
The next morning, we see one another in the kitchen. I’m in a robe and slippers and suddenly wish I were wearing more as his gaze slides past me the way a stranger’s might. There’s a chill in the kitchen and it doesn’t have to do with temperature. I pour a cup of coffee for myself and one for him and slide it across the counter.
For a moment, it almost looks like he’s not going to take it, but then his big paw curls around the mug and I find myself inexplicably jealous of pottery.
I turn to him, about to speak, but he sets the coffee cup down with a crack and starts to walk out of the room.
“Get dressed,” he tosses over his shoulder as strides out of the room. “And pack your absolute essentials.”
“Why?” I call to him.
“We’re leaving. We’re going back to Chicago.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Dare
I don’t look at her as she comes out of her room in a bright red sweater and tight jeans. I don’t look at her as she wiggles into her boots and throws a small backpack over her shoulder. I don’t look at her as I take the bag from her to carry. I definitely don’t look at the hopeful expression on her face as she looks up at me, misinterpreting my action as affection. It’s not. It’s security.
I basically drag her to the Tahoe and shove her into the front seat. It was a shitty night. I didn’t sleep for a second of it. All I kept hearing was her words to her brother over and over again in my head. She’d insisted that I’d misunderstood but how many ways could words like those be interpreted?
I don’t know why this whole thing bothers me so much. So, she wasn’t the perfect angel I’d made her out to be. Couldn’t I ignore that and concentrate on all the good things?
I sigh as I realize that I’m probably going to forgive her everything. She calls to me too much to turn away from her for long but I need a little time to lick my wounds and get used to this new version of her.
I pull the Tahoe out of the parking garage and quickly tool through town to get on the highway. To her credit, she doesn’t so much as make a peep as we speed away from her town, her college, her hopes of graduating on time. It gives me a little twinge to realize that all the work she’s done this semester won’t count for anything if she has to drop this semester and start over another time.
I remind myself that none of it will count if we stay where we are and she gets murdered by the Greco’s.
I got in contact with the remains of my security team and they told me what was going on back in Chicago. Patrizzio was most likely going down for the sting. The cops had caught him red handed. They’d been trying to pin something like this on him for too long for him to get away with it now. But the rest of the boys on the security team had a good chance of getting off clean. They just needed a good lawyer. The rest of us needed to stay alive. Now that we knew the Grecos were after Alessia for sure, I knew that we couldn’t stay in Michigan. We were sitting ducks there.
We needed to get back to Chicago to her father’s fortress where she’d be safe, surrounded by my security team and the remains of her father’s empire. Not even the Greco’s would follow her there. All I had to do was get her there.
“What are we going to do about Rett?” Alessia asks me, her voice small.
It takes me a minute for me to even understand what she’s getting at. I realize it’s because Rett has been the last thing on my mind for the last twelve hours.
“I’ll set up a team to look into it when we get back to Chicago.”
I can feel her eyes boring into the side of my face. If she has a problem with that answer, then it’s up to her to swallow it. I’m all out of sugar at the moment.
“Fuck.” The little orange light on the dash blinks at me. “We’re out of gas.”
Alessia says nothing as she wa
tches the gray icy landscape race past us. I don’t want to get off of the highway, but I have to. We pull off in a little town and I follow the signs and then realize as soon I pull up that it's a cash only gas station where you have to pay inside. The pumps are so old they don’t even have credit card swipes on them. Jesus. It's because we're in the middle of nowhere, of course. I debate for one second whether or not we should get back on the highway. I don’t want to leave Alessia in the car to go in to pay but I also don’t want her to leave the safety of the bullet proof car. But we're losing precious seconds and the last thing we need right now is to run out of gas on the side of the highway.
I don’t think we’re being tailed, but I also don’t know what kind of car Greco’s men might be driving and I don’t know what kind of technology they’re using. Greco is famous for the kind of high tech security favored by ex-military. There’s a guy on his team who develops apps that only they can utilize. Stuff that allows them to send secure messages. That kind of thing.
It’s actually kind of brilliant. From a professional point of view, I respect the hustle that his team puts in to protect him. From a security point of view, it’s a son of a bitch to protect against. I hated when Patrizzio insisted on doing business with Greco. I always felt like I was one step behind and protecting him had come down to throwing him behind me and using my bullet proof vest more than once. I had the broken ribs to prove it.
And I hate Greco himself as well. He’s a snake. There’s no honor among thieves, of course. But Greco is especially deceitful. He’s motivated by nothing but anger, the need to dominate. He doesn’t even care about money though he’s got a ton. All he wants is to be top dog. And all that stands in his way is Patrizzio.
Greco heard about the program I developed with the security system at Patrizzio’s house, the same one I adapted to use at Alessia’s condo. A few years back he tried to poach me from Patrizzio’s team but the old man had always treated me fairly and I figured a known evil was better than an unknown one. And he’d rewarded me quite well for my loyalty.
The thought of Greco getting his hands on Alessia makes my blood run cold. I don’t doubt he would torture her. He’d probably let her live just to make her suffer more.
"Stay in the car, Alessia," I growl. She just looks sad. And scared. My heart feels a primal tug to take her in my arms and comfort her but then I’m reminded that I don't even really know who she is. That feeling has me stepping out the car fast. "Keep your head down. Below the window."
She doesn't even look my way. She just silently leans forward and puts her head between her knees. I lock the car and sprint into the gas station, shouldering in front of some guy on his way to the register with a bag of chips in his hand.
"Hey, buddy!" he yells but I completely ignore him.
"Fifty bucks on pump six," I say to the kid behind the register and his eyes go wide at my tone. He just stares at me so I lean forward over the counter, open the money drawer, and jam the fifty in there.
I'm out the door like a shot and my life as I know it ends the second I see what's waiting for me. The passenger side window of the Tahoe is broken and the door is ajar. I hear a scream that's immediately muffled.
Alessia.
A black Hummer is squealing out of the parking lot and I know they have her. I don't think. I don't breathe. I don't even exist. All I do is sprint forward. My legs eat up the pavement and I thank God that the fuckwad driving doesn't know how to drive on icy gravel because their tires spin and they don't go anywhere.
A window goes down in the back seat and I know it's so they can point a gun at me. I don't care.
Let me get shot. All I can think about is Alessia. She's in there. She's screaming.
A shot goes off and I duck, but it doesn't come anywhere near me.
Suddenly I realize it's a man screaming, not Alessia. The car starts to gain traction and pull out of the parking lot, but I'm already at the driver’s side door. I wrench it open and grab the driver by his greasy hair.
I recognize this dickhead. He's one of Greco's men. I grab his neck and drag him out of the car, slamming his face into a fire hydrant for good measure. He’s down for the count like a sack of potatoes, just an inert lump in a suit.
Already there's another lackey climbing into the front seat, pointing a gun at me. I point mine right back and jump forward. I grab the keys out of the ignition at the same time as I turn my gun around and pistol whip the shit out of his mouth. I watch teeth and blood spray out all over the dashboard. I don’t even wait for the pain of the hit to register before I drag him out of the car, too. He joins his buddy on the ground. I climb back into the car and face the back seat. I rip both of their guns out of their hands and disarm them, tossing them in pieces on the ground.
There's just one more man back there. Greco only sent three men to try and disable me? I’m almost offended. The guy in the back seat is big, but obviously scared. His gun shakes as he points it at me. He’s gasping and holding one hand over his leg. Blood is leaking out over his fingers. I remember the gunshot from before. His scream. Either this idiot was dumb enough to shoot himself in the leg, or Alessia knocked the gun away from shooting at me. His eyes are crazy, in pain and squinting. He holds Alessia by the hair.
I'm at once wildly relieved to see her sitting there and horrified. There's my girl, fear in her eyes.
But she's still, too calm. There's duct tape over her mouth and wrapped around her wrists. A black eye is starting to form on her left eye and a line of blood is trickling down from her nose. I feel a rage rise in me that I didn't know I was capable of.
I've never felt this way before. Not when I was in combat as a soldier. Not when I was being shot at trying to protect Patrizzio. But it's there now like another living breathing animal in the car with us.
"I'm going to kill you," I say to the man.
The guy suddenly looks years younger as fear washes through him and I realize he can't be more than eighteen. My hatred turns to Greco for employing children as his paid muscle.
"Or you can get the fuck out of this car right now," I grunt. I don't know why I give him an option, but I do and he takes it. He's out the back door like a flash, dragging his injured leg with him.
The second it slams closed, I'm turning back around in the driver’s seat, jamming the keys into the ignition and peeling out of the parking lot in the Hummer.
I merge onto the highway going in the opposite direction as before. I'm sure they have GPS to track this monstrosity of a car, but I don't have any other choice. All I need is thirty minutes of leeway. Thirty minutes and we can be at the airport. Twenty if I gun it.
I pray that Greco didn't send more than one battalion to collect my girl. Cocky bastard probably thought three guys would be enough to take her from me. He doesn't know that the devil himself couldn't take her from me at this point.
I look in the rear-view mirror and curse.
She's sagging to one side in the back seat. Unbuckled and swaying, the duct tape is still over her mouth and wrists. Her eyes have gone glassy and distant. She looks without seeing. I know she’s in shock right now and that panic and hysteria can’t be far behind. I don’t want her to be visibly freaking out at the airport and drawing attention to us, so I figure I’ve got to move the process along a little.
I swerve around a semi-truck and put the Hummer in cruise control as I reach my hand to the back seat. It lands on her shoulder. Soft and warm and reassuring. She’s alive. I grip her shoulder and try to drag her forward. She seems to get what I’m trying to do because she starts to scrabble up to the front seat, over the center console.
She moves clumsily because her hands are still taped together and her eyes remain glassy but then she’s there, sitting next to me.
I know it’ll hurt, but I need to do something to shock her back to reality. I lean over and rip the duct tape off her mouth. She lets out a little yelp and her bound hands instantly go up to her mouth.
“Alessia, are you okay? A
re you hurt? Alessia!”
She jumps at my sharp tone and turns to look at me, her eyes still a little unfocused. She shakes her head a little. “Yeah. I’m not hurt. Except my head hurts. My eye and nose. He hit me.”
Her voice is so small and it makes me want to turn around and rip the skin off of all those dickheads. I’m distracted by her suddenly clawing at her own hands, trying to rip the duct tape off.
I reach in my pocket and pull out the little Swiss army knife. “Alessia, baby, it’s okay. Let me help you.”
She puts her hands out and I carefully cut the duct tape. She rips it off and balls it up, throwing it on the ground.
“Now buckle up,” I say, “I have to drive really fast and I want to make sure you’re safe.”
The second she does as I say, I put the pedal to the floor and scream down the highway, honking and swerving as I go. Everyone clears the way. We’ll be to the airport in twenty minutes.
