“Why are you so obsessed with this idea of making me stoop down to your level? Why are you so insistent on making me degrade myself for you?” He opens his mouth to speak but I can’t help myself and I roll right over him. “You keep saying I’m so uptight and really I have this wild freak deep inside of me or something equally stupid, but if that’s true then why aren’t I just living my best life and doing all this crazy sex stuff with you? I think you just hate me and you’re having fun pushing my buttons, and honestly, Carmine, I’m getting sick of it, sick to goddamn death.”
I’m breathing hard, feeling flushed and hot and too confined in the back of the limo, and all I want to do is throw the door open and go stomping off. Carmine’s eyebrows are way up and he’s smiling at me like he won a contest, and god, I wish I could slap that smug grin off his face right now.
He says, “You just cursed.”
“Excuse me? That’s what you want to respond to?”
“You never curse. You’ve got the cleanest mouth I’ve ever seen. A lovely little mouth too. One that feels extremely good wrapped around the tip of my cock.”
I throw up my hands. “You’re infuriating. Who cares if I curse?”
“The only other time I’ve ever heard you say a dirty word was yesterday when you were begging me to fuck you.”
“You’re repulsive. You really are.”
He turns away as the limo stops at a light. “I know you think that, but we’re exactly the same, you and me, except you’re still held hostage by years and years of repression and conditioning, by your family’s expectations and demands. Do you really think your father and your grandfather have your best interests at heart, or is all of this just a way of them to keep their own power? You saw your real self yesterday, filthy girl, and now I’m tempted to make you suck me off here in this limo, come on the seat, and make you lick it clean while I eat your dripping pussy from behind.”
“God, Carmine, you’re horrible,” I whisper as a thrill runs down my spine at the thought of doing something so intensely sexual and wild and dirty, and fear bubbles up from my core, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe he’s right, if maybe I really am as depraved as he thinks I am, but before I can say anything more, an enormous truck pulls up beside us and revs its engine loudly.
The windows roll down and two gun barrels held by men wearing surgical masks point directly at the side of our car, and it’s like my world goes still. I open my mouth to scream or say something but nothing comes out, and it’s like I’m stuck in the mud, frozen in place, and I can’t make my body react. Those are guns,bigguns, and they’re pointed right at us—
Carmine reacts as the world explodes into propulsive fury. It feels like the sky is breaking into tiny pieces and showering down around us like concussion bombs, but it’s just the glass shattering and the guns going off. Carmine throws himself at me, his seatbelt clicking off, and covers my body with his, curling around me like a shield. Glass flies around the cabin and shards rip through the air, catching on the fabric seats, slicing through my clothes.
Pain flares on my hands and arms as pieces tear my exposed skin, and bullets punch into the side of the limo with loud thumps and violent rocking as the guards sitting up front return fire.
Carmine unclips my seatbelt and then we’re falling down onto the floor, landing with a crunch on more shattered glass.
I hit hard and he lies on top of me, arms pinning me down, his breathing fast and ragged, and everything is heat and screaming gunfire so loud I feel like my eardrums might explode. It feels like we’re down on the floor forever and the world is only noise and pain and Carmine until all at once it abruptly stops.
Vaguely, like I’m standing at the far side of a tunnel, I hear tires peeling out over blacktop. It smells like fresh ozone or like an old growth forest burning after a thunderstorm, and Carmine’s not moving. I can’t feel him breathing but I can’t feel much of anything pinned down on the floor except for a chunk of glass digging into my back and the little nicks and scratches all down my arms and across my face. “Carmine,” I say but it sounds muffled and distant. “Carmine, can you hear me? Carmine!” I’m squeezing him, yelling, trembling, and my adrenaline spikes harder as he groans and slowly lifts his head.
He blinks down at me, eyes filled with such a fury I can barely understand it, and then he’s moving. He pulls back and lifts me off the floor, kicks the door open, and deposits me back down on the pavement. His hands check every inch of me, making sure there are no serious wounds or at least that’s what I think he’s doing, and he keeps saying over and over how he’ll kill all of them, kill every single one, if they spilled so much as a drop of my blood. I tell him I’m fine, but I can barely hear anything and I’m mostly reading his lips, and he isn’t listening as he brushes glass from my hair and my skin. “Carmine, I’m okay, I’m not hurt, thanks to you,” I say, squeezing his shoulders to get his attention. “The driver. Check on the driver.”
He gets up grimly and stalks to the limo. I’m sitting on the street, dizzy and disoriented, but even I can see all the blood dripping from the front seats. The driver is dead and the guard beside him is still like driftwood, and Carmine’s checking their pulses but he isn’t moving with any urgency, and it’s obvious they’re gone.
Sirens scream in the distance and Carmine’s pulling me to my feet. “We’ve gotta go,” he says and he drags me away from the wreckage of our car.
“But the cops will help,” I say dully, not thinking straight, but Carmine’s grip is iron on my arm. I stagger once and he scoops me up into his arms like a child, walking faster, into the trees lining the highway. I stare up into his face and wonder how the hell he’s doing this, how he’s carrying me, how he’s running away. “Won’t they know it’s your limo?”
“Not in my name,” he says and keeps pushing aside branches. We walk for a while until the trees turn into a suburban subdivision, and I wonder what these people thought of all the gunfire. Probably not much, it’s Texas after all. He puts me down on a corner and makes a phone call. When that’s done, he pulls me against him and hugs me tight.
“What are we going to do?” I whisper, still in shock, and it hits me how absurd the question is.
Those men tried to murder us.
I don’t know who they were—if it was the Greeks or one of Carmine’s other enemies—but all I know is, they pulled up alongside the limo and didn’t hesitate to open fire. They must’ve been following us for a while then, watching our every move, and I’m so freaked out I can barely stand it. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in my world, angry men with guns don’t show up and start shooting, people don’t murder other people in the middle of the day on some random back road in the suburbs of Dallas.This isn’t supposed to happen to me.
But my neat little life is over. I can see it now. It’s left behind in the wreckage of that car, and any illusions I might’ve still harbored about being the girl I thought I’d always be are shattered worse than that limo’s glass. I always thought I’d have a safe life, relatively comfortable, quiet by the standards of my class, a rich girl living a rich girl’s existence, maybe a nice family, maybe a few vacations every year, maybe some minor travel, but I never for a second thought I’d end up in a limo with a gangster getting shot at.
It breaks me. I sit there on the curb and I put my face in my hands and cry so hard it feels like I might be sick. My stomach aches and the muscles in my neck and arms and back strain as I sob like I’m trying to get something out. Arms wrap around me and it’s Carmine hugging me tight, and I lean against him for comfort but I’m also intensely aware that he’s the reason for all this, or maybe my father’s the reason for all this, or I don’t even know anymore and reasons don’t matter, because I’m in pain and I’m scared, I’m so damn scared.
And somehow, Carmine makes me feel better.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says quietly, stroking my hair. “I’ve got you. I won’t let them hurt you. I won’t let them touch you. God, Brice, I’m going to murder every single Greek in the goddamn country. I’m going to burn them all to the ground. I’m going to hurt them for you, filthy girl, hurt them so fucking badly.”
He goes on and on until another car shows up to take us back to his place, and the sickest part of everything is I want him to do it.
I want him to go on the hunt.