Dante
Eyeing the door to Frank’s house as if I can summon Layla telepathically, I wait outside, counting seconds and smoking like a chimney. It takes ten minutes before she emerges with a bag hanging over her shoulder. She stops at the top of the concrete steps, half of her face covered with a scarf, the other half hidden under the hood of her jacket. I don’t need to see tears to know they’re there. The way she hugs herself paints the picture.
My instincts kick in before a single rational thought penetrates the growing madness. I shove my hand under my jacket, grabbing the gun. No thinking, no rationalizing. My body flips into battle mode, and my reaction is both natural and worrying simultaneously. I don’t know what happened. Whether Frank had anything to do with her tears, I’m ready to make a sieve out of him regardless.
Layla drops her hands, descending the steps. “I’m fine.”
“Then why were you crying?”
She hides in my arms, inhaling my scent. “We had a fight. Can we go? Please, I don’t want to stay here any longer.”
The plea in her voice stops me from asking another question. I grit my teeth, kiss her head, and give her the helmet. “Put it on. You ever rode a bike?” She shakes her head, watching me mount the Ducati. “Hold on to me. Don’t lean over to the sides.”
“Where are all your cars?”
“This is faster than any car in my garage.”
The engine springs to life, and its roar drowns out my racing thoughts. I look over my shoulder and grab Layla’s thighs to slide her closer to me. She rests against my back, arms around my stomach, cold hands under my jacket.
I miss the adrenaline of speeding through the city at a hundred miles an hour on a bike. With Layla clinging to me like a child, I watch the speed, but I’m eager to get home, so I double the limits a few times.
Layla jumps off when we park in the garage. I take my helmet off and watch her do the same. She turns to go upstairs, but my pulse speeds up faster than the Ducati ever could. Her scarf slides, revealing a crimson trickle of dry blood that marks a line from her mouth down her chin. Seeing the swollen, cut lip freezes my blood.
“It’s nothing,” she says, her eyes red from crying. “Frank’s impulsive, I said too much, and—”
“Stop,” I seethe, reaching for my helmet. “Stop making excuses for him.”
She tears the keys out of my hand, backing away. “Don’t go there. It won’t change anything. You’ll just fight for no reason.”
“No reason?! Give me the fucking keys!”
Her back rests against the wall. I’m right there, towering over her, the muscles on my back like stone, the need to break Frank’s neck so powerful it threatens to bring me to my knees.
Layla hides the hand that holds my keys behind her back. “Please, let it go. I’m fine, really. It’s my fault... I angered him.”
I grip her shoulders. “He hit you. I don’t care what you said or did. He fuckinghityou, Layla. Nothing justifies this.”
I can’t believe the fucker.
He hit his own daughter.
He hitmygirl.
How can any man hurt a woman in the first place? I’d fucking skin him alive if I saw him right now.
A single tear rolls down Layla’s cheek, changing my attitude. I never could handle the sight... I pull her into my arms and kiss her temple. It’s been years since I wanted to kill someone as much as I want to kill Frank, but it has to wait. Layla needs me to calm her down. She needs me to clean her up.
My hands still shake when I search the kitchen cabinets for a first-aid kit.
“I was scared to look in the mirror,” she admits, her cheeks pink. “That’s why I didn’t clean it up.” She cringes when I part her lips with my thumb to clean the cut.
The grimace on her pretty face pushes me to grab a gun and a shovel and bury the fucker, but killing Frank means hurting Layla, and that’s the one thing I refuse to do. I remember when she saw blood on my fingers, and I don’t want to think how scared she must’ve been when she tasted it in her mouth.
“I know, baby. You’re not going back there again.” I throw the towel aside. “You live here.”
“Isn’t this quick? We’ve been dating for—”
“Why? Why does it matter how long we’ve been together? We’re not standard, so don’t expect us to follow some socially acceptable relationship timetable.”