by Mae Doyle
How long?
I frown and wish that I had access to a calendar or that I’d thought to make scratches somewhere on the wall to keep track of the days that had passed. That thought makes me smile, and I don’t realize that Arlo is off of the sofa and has spotted me in the hall.
“Something funny you want to tell me about, Hannah?” His voice cuts through my thoughts and I turn to him.
Fuck, he’s hot. I don’t know that I’m ever going to get over how damn sexy he is. Now he’s in jeans and a button-up shirt, leaning casually against the doorframe. Every one of his movements is smooth and liquid, and I realize that it was silly of me to think that I could actually sneak up on him without him knowing about it.
“Just trying to figure out how many days I’ve been here,” I tell him. I’m a little nervous to admit that, because I’m not sure how he’ll take the fact that I’ve been trying to count them.
He’s been very careful not to tell me how long I’ve really been here, which is something that makes me a little nervous.
“Everything okay?” His eyes slip up and down my body and I shiver as he looks at me. There’s just something about how he stares at me that makes me feel naked all the time, no matter what I’m wearing.
“I just can’t remember, that’s all. I know that we pushed the wedding back and I wasn’t sure…” My voice trails off. I also know that my period is late, but I don’t know if that’s because I’m pregnant or because my body had the shit beat out of it.
Could be either, honestly.
“Three weeks and five days.”
I’m surprised that he’s so honest with me and I pause for a moment to do the math. It can’t have been that long, can it? In that time, he’s the only person that I’ve seen. Even when Johnny and Roque have stopped by the house to talk to him, I’ve stayed in my room.
It’s like I’m invisible. The ghost in the house.
I liked it at first, but it’s gotten a little old. I want to be out and seeing people. I don’t want to be an invisible person who doesn’t exist to anyone but Arlo.
He grins at me like he’s reading my mine. “We have family dinner tonight,” he tells me. “Sunday night. Everyone will be there, and it’s the first time that you’ve been well enough to go.”
“Family dinner?” I repeat. “Are you sure that they want to see me?”
“Are you kidding? Ma’s been going crazy worried about whether or not I could keep you alive by myself. That’s why she keeps sending Johnny over with leftovers. Tonight’s the night for everyone to get to see you and make sure that you’re alive.”
Thank god my bruises have mostly healed up. Even the cuts on my face are mostly gone, and with a little makeup, I know that I’ll be able to hide any of the bad marks. I just…I just don’t want his family to see me looking like shit.
I mean, they already have. But I want to put that mental image of myself out of my mind, so I do my best to ignore it.
“We’ll get Ma some flowers first,” he tells me, reaching for my hand. I step towards him and he wraps his arms around me, pulling me in close. When I take a deep breath, I’m surrounded by his delicious cologne.
“When do we go?”
“As soon as you get some shoes on. You can wear shoes, right?”
I step back and look down at my feet. “I honestly don’t know. I haven’t tried and my feet still hurt really badly.”
“Fine.” He shrugs. “You can wait in the care while I get the flowers and I’ll just carry you to the car and the house. No big deal.”
No big deal? “No,” I tell him, backpedaling as quickly as I can, “I think shoes will be fine. I don’t want your family to see me helpless like that.”
“They already have. Don’t argue, Hannah,” he tells me, and then, before I can say anything, he grabs me and picks me up, pulling me close to his chest, one arm under my knees, the other around my shoulders.
I could fight him, but instead I snuggle in closer.
Fine. If this is how he wants it to be, I’ll play along. But the next time we see his family, I swear I’m going to wear shoes.
***
Arlo had told me to wait in the car while he went in to get flowers, but he’d taken the keys with him, so it’s starting to get a little hot in here. Without thinking about it, I open the door, cracking it just enough to get a bit of a breeze in the hot car.
It feels really good to stretch my feet out, even though they’re still sore. By now, I would have thought that the cuts on the bottoms of them would have healed up, but they were really deep. Arlo’s said a few times that it’s amazing I didn’t bleed out.
I’ve knocked them from time to time, which only makes them pop back open. Right now, they’re scabbed over. Shoes would have been a nightmare, no matter how much I want to feel normal again. I can walk on my own though, as I long as I move slowly and only put weight on the outer edges of my feet. If I roll in at all or try to move too quickly, well, that’s when I bleed.
The parking lot is busy, but he’d parked near the back so that I wouldn’t be stared at for hanging out in his nice car. The leather seats would be hot on my skin, but we were under the shade of a tree, so as long as he hurries, we’ll be okay.
Craning my neck, I look for him, but he still hasn’t come out. Part of me gets worried that something may have happened to him, but I know how stupid that is.
Arlo’s the strongest and bravest person that I know, and I sincerely doubt that anyone could get the drop on him. Even so, I breathe a little sigh of relief when I see him coming towards me across the parking lot. He’s got a gorgeous bouquet of flowers in his hand and his eyes are locked on the car like he can already see me from there.
I move to pull the car door shut. It’s not that I’m afraid of him seeing me with it open, but part of me knows that he won’t like even thinking about the fact that I could have run.
And gone where?
There’s nowhere for me to go, which is probably why it doesn’t even cross my mind to make a run for it. I have nowhere to go. My breath catches in my throat at this thought, but it’s what I’m watching that makes my stomach twist.
Someone’s running at Arlo from across the parking lot. At first, I thought that maybe the person had just forgotten where they left their car or was looking for someone that they knew, but he has his head down a bit and is barreling towards Arlo like nothing can stop him.
My heart squeezes in my chest. There’s no way that this is good. The man is dressed in a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. He has a mask pulled low on his face. Even from here I can see the way his muscles twist in his torso and his arms as he runs. I can’t tell who he is, but there’s something about the way that he’s moving that feels familiar to me.
There’s a nagging feeling in the back of my brain, but I push it away. I don’t know him. There’s no way that I know anyone who would want to attack Arlo Torenti.
Then I catch the glint of silver tucked in the back of his pants.
I’ve been with Arlo long enough to know what that is.
I throw the door open and step outside, waving my arms. “Arlo!” I scream, “look out!” I know that I have his attention, because he lifts his hands in a wave to me, but he must not hear me.
“Over there!” I point, frantically, but Arlo doesn’t notice. He’s stopped to pull his phone from his pocket and is looking down at the screen. He’s totally exposed.
The man is closer now, and I watch with horror as he slows down and ducks behind a car.
He’s going to shoot Arlo. I can feel it. He’s going to kill him and I’m going to be standing right here watching it all happen.
I can’t let that happen.
I have no idea if there’s anything in the car that can help me, but I slam my hand into the glove compartment, making it pop open. Holy fuck, there’s a gun in there. Quickly I pull it out, not allowing myself to worry about the fact that I’ve never held a gun before.
I’ve certainly never fired one.
>
Arlo is still looking at his phone, taking slow steps towards me in the car. He’s dropped his free arm to his side, the flowers hanging there, brushing his leg.
It’s like my mind is trying to record all of these memories so that I’ll be able to figure out later what happened. What went wrong.
What I should do.
I don’t give myself time to think. I can still see the man in black. He’s slowly rising from his crouch and he has the gun in his hand. Without even knowing what I’m doing, I run away from our car. The door is still wide open, and I run at a crouch, my feet screaming with every step.
There’s no time for me to slow down or be careful with my footsteps, not if I want to save him.
I know for a fact that my soles are bleeding again. I can feel the blood between my toes with every step, but I just grit my teeth and keep going. Arlo needs me, and if I don’t have him…
Then who gives a fuck about whether or not my feet are bleeding?
The man in black has the gun pointed squarely at Arlo now. I watch in horror as Arlo slips his phone back into his pocket and then looks up. His eyes lock on me and they widen.
My arms are raising. I swear to god, I don’t even know how this is happening. It’s like something has taken control of my body and I have no way to stop what’s going on.
The man’s going to shoot any moment now. It feels like time has completely slowed down to a crawl and I force my gaze away from Arlo and back to the man in black. He’s right in front of me. I’m not sure that I can do what I need to, but I take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger.
The noise is so loud that I scream, and the recoil so strong that my arms fly up and over my head, but I manage to hold onto the gun. My ears ring and I watch in horror as the man in black crumples against the car he was hiding behind.
His gun falls to the ground and I turn back to Arlo. He’s running now, the flowers dropped on the ground and forgotten. He’s yelling something, I can tell by the way his mouth is moving, but I can’t hear a thing.
The deafening silence pushes down on me and I feel like I’m drowning. Before I can even cry out or think about what to do with the gun, Arlo has his arms around me and sweeps me up into them, running full out to the car. When he tosses me in, I simply curl up on the seat, not even bothering with a seatbelt.
He’s on the phone before we make it out of the parking lot. I’m surprised to see how tightly he’s gripping the wheel, how the muscles in his jaw twitch when he glances over at me.
Fuck. What did I do?
I realize that he’s asking me if I’m okay. Glancing down, I’m shocked to see that I’m in a pool of blood. It’s warm and sticky on the leather seat and I reach down to dip a finger in it.
It’s just from my feet, right? I don’t think that I got shot.
He’s saying something to me, but I close my eyes and lean my head back against the headrest. Whatever it is can wait. It has to.
Chapter 18
Arlo
“Tell me again what happened.” Pops gives me a measured look across the dining table. We’re the only ones here right now because everyone else scattered to take care of the bullshit at the store.
Ma’s in the kitchen, but she doesn’t count, because she’s not listening in. All she’s doing is making sure that dinner won’t be cold when we all finally get to it. And Hannah’s here as well, of course, but she’s passed out in the guest room.
I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for her. She fucked up her feet for me. She risked getting shot. For me.
The relief that I’d felt when I’d pulled her out of the car in Pops’ driveway and we’d seen that the blood was just from her feet and not from a bullet wound in indescribable. I still can’t believe that she’s okay. I don’t give a shit about the leather seat, although Roque told me that he’d take the car to get it detailed for me later this afternoon.
But first they have to deal with the asshole who tried to kill me.
I run through what happened again and the expression on Pops’ face doesn’t chance. When I finish, he sighs and nods.
“Do we know who it was?” I ask him. We need to get this figured out. It’s not the first time that someone has tried to take out a hit on a member of our family, and we know how to deal with these problems.
Retaliation will be swift. And bloody. We just have to find out who it was.
Pops nods, his eyes never leaving my face. “We do. I’m surprised that she was able to pull the trigger, Arlo. Has she said anything about recognizing the guy?”
Not at all. She was in shock after the shooting, which was to be expected, and fell asleep in the car on the way here. In fact, I don’t think that she said a thing after she screamed out my name in the parking lot.
“Do you think that she knows who it is?” The thought that Hannah killed someone she knew – for me – tears me up. I didn’t want her to have to make a decision like that. She already sacrificed her plans for me. She’s done enough and all I’ve done so far is put her in danger.
Pops nods but he doesn’t smile. That’s strange. Normally we’re happy when we know what asshole we have to deal with, but this is different.
“It was her brother, Arlo. That’s the problem. That’s why I needed to know if you thought that she knew who it was. She shot and killed her brother, and that’s going to be a hard thing for anyone to come back from, especially a broad.”
“What? Her brother?” I shake my head in disbelief. “No, that doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way. Why in the hell would he be trying to kill me? I thought that the Del Rossi family was happy with our union.” I’m standing now, but I don’t even remember getting to my feet. “What the fuck was he thinking?”
Pops doesn’t stand up, and it isn’t until I take a deep breath and sit back down that he continues.
“He was probably wondering why the wedding was put on hold and where the hell his sister has been for the past few weeks. We told his parents a little of what went on, but nobody wants to hear that their daughter was kidnapped and tortured. If they dug around, they may have been able to find out what really happened. I don’t know.” He looks grim.
The thought that some family could get information on ours without us knowing is scary and I take a deep breath before I speak.
“But I thought that he was on board with the wedding. I thought that they were all happy about what it was going to do for their family and how it was going to help them. Why the hell would he lose it now, even if she was in danger? It’s not like we didn’t take care of it as soon as possible.”
Pops shrugs and I know that the conversation is over.
Fuck.
Hannah’s asleep in the other room and has no idea that this is going on. I have no clue whether or not she recognized her brother, but I can’t imagine that she did and that she would have willingly shot him. My stomach twists and I feel sick, but Pops is staring at me like I need to pull it together.
“What do I tell her?”
For the first time since I’ve been involved in all of the family’s activities, I’m not sure what I should do. The thought of telling Hannah that she murdered her brother because he was going to attack me is enough to make me sick.
Pops doesn’t move. After a moment, he sighs and then stands up, towering over me. He’s always known how to take control of any shitty situation. “You have to decide what to tell your broad. Nobody here will breathe a word of it to her, but remember – you need to get her down that aisle. And you’ve been living together long enough that you should have her knocked up by now.”
“So you don’t care what I decide?”
He looks at me for a long moment then shakes his head. “As long as you don’t do anything to hurt the family, then I don’t give a shit. Tell her, don’t tell her, whatever. But just make sure that no matter if you do or you don’t, you’re able to control whatever fallout there may be. You got me?”
Yep. I got him. I got the fact that I’m kinda o
n my own on this one. Before I can say anything, though, we hear the front door swing open as the rest of the family pours into the house.
That can only mean one thing. They took care of the body and cleaned up the sight. Nobody will ever know that he died in the middle of the grocery story parking lot.
Fuck.
I have to get out of here before I see the rest of the family. Leaving Pops, I cut through the kitchen. Ma’s at the stove with her back to me and I walk over to drop a kiss on the top of her head before looping into the hall.
I could go join the rest of the family and hear what they did about Mitch. For fuck’s sake, he’ll probably be in the foundation of one of my new construction locations and I’ll have no idea. Hannah won’t ever know what happened to her brother if I don’t want her to.
I’d meant to ask Pops if her parents had been in on the hit. If he thought that the whole family hated me and wanted me dead or if it was just a problem with the brother and was now completely resolved, but I don’t want to go back in there right now.
Hannah’s in the guestroom, and although the door is shut, we didn’t lock her in. We’ve done that before with plenty of people who have stayed with us, but I would have thrown a fit if she’d been locked in the room. She can come and go as she pleases, but since the door is shut, I figure that she’s still in bed.
I pause outside it for a moment.
How the fuck did I get here?
All twisted the fuck up over a broad? I remember Roque saying that he felt the same way about Eva, but I never thought that it would happen to me. I never thought that I would want someone the way I want her.
My cock throbs in my pants as I think about her in the bed, just a few feet away. She was passed out cold when I dropped her off in there, but I know how to wake her up. Without giving it much of a thought, I swing the door open.
She’s not in the bed.
Even though I can easily see that it’s empty, I stalk across the room and flip the covers back. Nothing.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter. “Where the fuck are you, Hannah? What have you done?”