“You don’t have any empathy,” Mia finishes.
“Any empathy?” I don’t even know where to begin to try and understand her point. I’ve shown her more fucking empathy than I’ve shown anyone else, combined. There are too many eyes on me. My brother is waiting by the door, I turn to him, but he’s no help—he just shrugs at me. “Take care of our friend inside, I’ll be in soon,” I tell Huxley. I walk towards Mia and grab her arm. Mia shrinks her body, tears streaming down her face and the surrounding crowd starts to murmur their disdain toward me. I lean real close, so only Mia can hear me.
“Whatever this is, this little stunt you’re trying to pull here, it ain’t working. Why do you give a shit what happens to that guy? He’s shown disrespect and paid the price.”
I lean back and notice her face tighten, her eyes narrowing at me.
“Or maybe it’s something else, perhaps all this bullshit about empathy and feelings is just to hide the fact that you’re jealous that somebody stole my attention away from you. You’re like a cat who’s pissed at their owner because they stopped stroking them. And I do own you” —she leans back, our eyes connected— “and your father. So you will do good to remember your fucking place and shut the fuck up. Unless that is, you want this arrangement of ours to come to an abrupt end.”
That’s all I can think to say right now. In my confusion about what the fuck she’s actually angry about, that’s the only thing I can think of. That she was enjoying the date, the romance, thinking that for once we were normal people, sitting at a normal restaurant. She’s intelligent enough to know that’s not the case. She said so herself at the table.
I tighten my grip around her arm, she doesn’t try to struggle as I call over my driver. “Get in the car, we’re getting out of here.”
* * *
I’m sitting nextto Mia in the back of the town car. The silence thickens the air around us to a point that you can feel it with every breath you take. I rub at my knuckles. I must have dislocated the one in my middle finger because there’s a pain waving in and out of my hand. Looking over at Mia, it’s obvious how pissed she is by the way she has distanced herself as much as physically possible.
I guess this is why in my line of work, men don’t have lasting relationships. At some point, the woman will feel second best to the job, and that’s just how it is. If we were to go soft and let a man like this fucking Joey cunt walk, just because our girl wants our attention, people would die. Our people would die. Mia would do well to understand that she was playing with fucking fire tonight.
There’s really no place for someone who’s going to be questioning your actions. It just can’t work like that—you’re either in line with the business, or you’re not, and if you’re not, then there’s no place for you. There’s just one problem with that. If she continues to act how she did just now, out on the street, then I’ll have no choice but to end any courtesy I’ve shown so far toward her father’s debt. She doesn’t realize that lives are at stake here, hers included.
I look over at Mia, and even if she looks hot as shit in that dress, this whole situation is pissing me off. Let’s not forget that she entered this fucked-up relationship knowing full well what kind of man I am. I mean, it couldn’t have been clearer when we first met, and I held a gun to her face.
The way she acted tonight brings me crashing down to reality. I thought before this evening that she was feisty, strong, and able to take the hits thrown her way. Hell, she handled me from day one, never backing down or cowering away. I thought that meant something extraordinary, that maybe I’d finally found a woman who interested me in and out of bed. That maybe she could stand by my side the way my mother did for my father before she fell ill. Now, as we sit in dark silence, I’m realizing that it was just a hopeless dream.