Deal with the Devil

by Stacia Stone

  “Let her go.” Leo’s face is pale and drawn, but determined.

  “Or, what?” Ares laughs over my head and squeezes me hard until I make a pained sound. “You brought a pea shooter up against an army, boy. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right where you’re standing?”

  Leo looks like he’s about to collapse. A streak of despair runs through me.

  “I’m giving you one chance,” Leo says, his voice weak. “Let her go and walk away.”

  “Just kill him,” Mack pipes in angrily. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

  Asshole. Obviously, his hatred of me has transferred completely onto Leo. I should have let Leo kill him when he had a chance. I resolve at that very moment to never let sentimentality get in the way of what needs to be done. If Leo says someone has to die, then I’m going to believe him.

  But I can feel the hesitation in Ares body. He’s smart, even if he is a fucking sociopath. He knows that Leo wouldn’t come in here without some sort of plan.

  “You got backup out there somewhere?” Ares snarls, voice heavy with suspicion. “You run to the fucking pigs like a chickenshit?”

  “I don’t need the cops.” Leo’s voice holds a determination that I wish I shared. “Last chance, Ares.”

  “I heard you were crazy,” Ares says with a complete lack of self-awareness. He holds up the knife. It looks like it’s still flaked with dried blood from the last person he sliced up. He presses it against the side of my face. The blade just barely touches the tips of my eyelashes. If I breathe too hard, it’ll slice me. “But I didn’t know you’d be this stupid.”

  “Five,” Leo says calmly.

  “The fuck are you counting for?”

  I’m wondering the same thing.

  “Four.”

  “Four? What the hell is four?”

  “Three.”

  Agitated murmurs start up among the bikers. They’re going to shoot Leo before he ever gets to one. I pray he has a plan that’s not Ares just letting me go out of the goodness of his heart.

  “Two.”

  Ares presses the knife against my throat. I feel a sharp burn as it cuts into the skin. “Stop counting, motherfucker.”

  “One.”

  Leo pulls the hand out of his jacket that I thought held the wound on his stomach. Instead, he’s holding a cellphone. He raises it up and presses a button.

  “Get down, Mara!” he yells and dives for the floor.

  I lift up my legs, forcing Ares to hold my entire weight with one arm or drop me. He lets me go but the knife slices a deep cut across my cheek.

  My knees hit the floor just as an explosion rocks through the far side of the factory. I hear screams. Fiery heat rushes over me, hot as an inferno. I throw myself to the floor as the sound of gunfire barrels over my head.

  Leo is on his knees. His face is full of cold determination as he aims and fires the Glock through the smoke.

  The place is in chaos. Ares has disappeared from my side and I don’t see him in the haze of smoke and fire. I crawl toward Leo, trying to make myself as small as possible while still moving forward. I’m practically blind. Acrid smoke fills my nostrils as I try to breathe, so harsh that it burns a trail from my throat all the way down to my lungs.

  “Mara!”

  Leo grabs my arm. He’s pulling me behind a metal barrel and reloading his gun. His hand on my back forces me down. I can tell from the sounds that a few of the bikers are returning fire, but I think most of them are running.

  The sound of sirens is barely audible over the gunfire, but I still recognize it. Firefighters and police will be here soon.

  A woman is screaming. It must be my mother. I try to look, but Leo pushes me down again.

  “Don’t move,” he yells.

  The sound of gunfire gradually recedes and the smoke slowly begins to clear. A small fire surrounds the hole that’s been blown in the side of the building. Leo must have set up explosives before coming into the warehouse.

  I remind myself to ask him where the hell he got explosives.

  Eventually, my mother’s shrieks and the sound of sirens is all I can hear. The bikers that are still alive have fled. I carefully look away from the few dead bodies scattered around the warehouse.

  Where is Ares? He’s the one we really have to worry about.

  Leo slowly rises but stops me when I try to follow him.

  “Stay here,” he commands.

  Fuck him, I think to myself. He’s never going anywhere without me again.

  Leo picks his way carefully through the wreckage toward the sounds of my mother’s screams. I follow right behind him. She’s finally starting to lose steam because her screams have become more like the whistle of a teakettle and less like the bellow of a steam engine.

  When we finally find her, Cecile is huddled over Mack’s dead body. Or at least, I assume he’s dead. Since a big piece of his chest and neck is missing.

  I wait for some emotion to rise up me. At the very least, I expect the slight discomfort of witnessing someone else’s suffering or seeing that another person has lost their life. But I don’t feel anything except relief.

  See you in hell, fucker.

  “Where’s Ares?” Leo asks. He shakes Cecile hard a couple of times until she stops screaming. “Where is he?”

  “Gone,” she chokes the word. “He and the rest of them took off — all the ones that are still alive.”

  “We should go,” I say. The sound of approaching sirens gets louder.

  Leo scowls at me when he realizes I’m not hiding in the corner like a good little girl. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

  “What about Mack?” she wails.

  “Mack is dead.” Leo has as hard a time sounding sympathetic as I do. He grabs her arm and tries to pull Cecile up, but she resists. “We have to go.”

  “Just leave her,” I say, not caring one way or another. I’m glad she’s not dead, but the rest of what I feel is going to take a while to sort out.

  “You want her staying here to talk to the cops?”

  He makes a good point. Together we’re able to force my mother up and get her outside. We practically have to lift her into the cab.

  We’ve just barely got her in when Leo collapses against the side of the truck.

  “Leo!” I rush to his side. A fresh burst of red slowly grows larger on the front of his shirt. He’s bleeding. “You’ve been shot!”

  He tries to laugh and then gasps in pain. “A couple of times, I think.”

  “We have to get you to a hospital!”

  When I try to lever him up, Leo grabs me around the back of my neck. He pulls me down until I’m kneeling on the ground beside him.

  “I thought they killed me, but I had to get back to you. I couldn’t leave you alone. I had to come back. I promised.”

  “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Just get up. We have to go.”

  He coughs. I hate how wet the sound is.

  “I’m sorry I never said it,” he mumbles.

  “Said what?” I ask. Why is he talking like it’s the last words he’ll ever say to me? “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I love you,” he says. The pained smile on his face sends a shot of warmth through my chest. “I love you so fucking much. More than I ever thought possible.”

  “I love you, too.” I’m crying, tears falling like raindrops down my cheeks. “You have to get up. We have to go to the hospital.”

  He doesn’t move. His eyes flutter closed.

  “Leo!” I scream, trying to shake him awake. His body collapses to the side and it takes all of my strength to keep him upright. “Please, wake up.”

  His eyes slowly open, but they’re hazy and distant. It’s like he’s looking right through me. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

  The world is closing in around me. I know that he’s dying. Leo’s eyes close again. His breathing slows down until I can barely even make it out. The pale blue of his skin takes on a gray cast.

  In
another few minutes, he’ll be gone forever.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Leo

  I wake up too hot and in pain. When I try to move my arms and legs they’re too heavy to lift more than in inch. I’m trapped under something thick, but also soft.

  My vision is blurry. It takes a minute for things to come into focus. I hear the steady beep of a machine and the occasional drip of liquid. My eyes clear and I realize I’m in a hospital room.

  My whole body feels like it’s on fire, but I’m alive.

  Mara is sitting in the chair next to my bed. She’s asleep and her upper body sprawls across my legs. I realize that I can’t feel her weight.

  Maybe I’m fucking paralyzed.

  No. I try to wiggle my toes and see the slight movement of them at the end of the bed. Not paralyzed, just too weak and wore out to feel much of anything.

  Except for pain. I can fucking feel that shit.

  Mara must feel the small movement because she shifts a little. I watch her as she slowly wakes up. When her eyes open, they’re full of love and relief. I feel swallowed up by all of the emotion.

  “You’re awake.”

  She throws herself on top of me, arms wrapping tight around my neck. She lands directly on the gunshot wound on my chest. It hurts like a son of a bitch but I force one arm out from under the covers to wrap around her. I’m never letting her go again.

  Mara pulls back when I wince in pain.

  “Oh my God, did that hurt?”

  At my slow nod, she reaches for a little remote that’s lying beside me on top of the covers. It’s got a wire that connects to the IV machine on a pole next the bed. She presses the large purple button. The machine makes a few clicks and then a cooling rush of relief moves over me. The pain recedes until it’s almost gone.

  I relax into it, feeling like I’m floating on a fucking cloud. “Oh, that’s good shit.”

  “It’s morphine,” she says, squinting at the little syringe locked in a box on the pole. “The nurse says it feels better than sex.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s pretty good.” I hold my arms open. The way I’m feeling, I could run a marathon or scale mountains. Because she’s right here and we’re both alive. “Come here.”

  She carefully lays down on the bed next to me and rests her cheek on my chest. The little machine beeps with the same rhythm of my heart — slow, steady and reassuring.

  “I love you.” She whispers the words like she’s not sure how I’ll respond.

  I tip her chin up with the tip of my finger. “I love you more, sweetheart.”

  “Not possible.” She kisses me softly and gently like I might fall to pieces if she’s too rough. I’m not having that shit. I grab her up with my uninjured arm and arrange her willing body so she’s lying fully across my chest. I kiss her with all of the emotions that I can’t put into words. I slide my hand down her back and dip under the waist of her jeans. Even sick and near dying, I can’t be this close to her and not want her.

  Finally, she pulls away with a laugh. “Stop it. The nurse might come in.”

  “I don’t give a shit.” I trap her with my arms and force her mouth down to mine in a searing kiss. All I want to do is tear her clothes off and fuck her right here.

  “You’re going to rip your stitches,” she says with a gasp when I break the kiss. I press my mouth against the overheated skin of her throat.

  “Then stop fighting me so much.” What am I saying? I love it when she fights. It gives me an excuse to punish her. Not that I really need one.

  “Leo!”

  I reluctantly let her go. Not because I’m worried about the fucking nurse, but because it’s getting hard to breathe. This is more exertion than my torn up body can handle at the moment.

  Mara leans back a little bit so she’s not laying directly on top of me. Her hand comes up to play on a patch of skin on my chest that’s not covered in bandages. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  There’s no calendar on the wall and my cell phone is probably long gone. I realize I have no idea what day it even is. “How long have I been laid up?”

  “Almost a week.” Her eyebrow quirks at my surprised expression. “You had surgery to get the bullets out. They had you in the ICU on a ventilator for a day or two, afterward. The doctors had to put you into a medically-induced coma because you kept fighting and bucking at the nurses, no matter how much they sedated you. Fucking caveman.”

  I can’t help but smile a little bit at that. “You knew what you were getting into, darling. I’m not gonna apologize for being me.”

  She laughs, but her expression quickly sobers. “I’m just glad we got you here in time. I already went through thinking you were dead once. I can’t go through it again.”

  Her voice breaks a little and a swell of emotion rolls through me. I’ve never done anything to deserve the love of a woman like this. But I’m not doing anything to screw it up.

  I stroke her cheek, right over the little scar left by Ares’s knife. I like it. Lets the whole world know she’s a fucking fighter.

  “How did you get me out?” It’s something I’ve been wondering since the first moment I woke up not dead. Mara’s stronger than most women, but I can’t imagine her getting my unconscious body up and into that truck all by herself. And it would have been too late if she waited for an ambulance.

  She clears her throat. “Cecile helped me.”

  My eyebrows shoot up my forehead. “Really?”

  “Yeah, after you passed out she kinda got her shit together. She helped me get you into the truck and drove to the hospital while I kept pressure on your wound.” Mara’s face is haunted. I can only imagine what that ride must have felt like.

  “Is she here?”

  “No. She went back to Newark.” Mara shrugs. “I didn’t think you’d want to see her. And she had to set up Mack’s funeral.”

  Fucking Mack. I don’t feel a thing but pleasure at the thought of that bastard six feet underground.

  “Willy?” My voice makes it a question.

  Mara slowly shakes her head and looks away. I see tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

  Shit. “It’s over now, baby. I promise.”

  “Ares got away. What if he comes after me again?”

  “I’ll take care of Apocalypse.” I invest my voice with as much certainty as I can muster from a fucking hospital bed. “Ares lost half of the guys he brought out here. They’re weak right now. We’ll chase all those biker assholes out of Newark. They won’t come back.” And Carmine would let me have a crew to do it with. Or I’d fucking take him out, too.

  Of course, I don’t tell Mara that. She’s got enough to worry about, as it is.

  “So, you’re not getting out then?” Her voice is very carefully neutral. “Almost getting killed doesn’t make you want to go straight?”

  The worry in her gaze is like a heavy weight on my chest. “This is who I am, baby. I’m not going to change.”

  She sighs, but there’s a grudging acceptance in her eyes. “Can you at least try for early retirement.”

  “That’s the only kind of retirement guys like me get, sweetheart.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mara

  I’ve only been back at school for a week and I already want to go back to Leo. He made me go — something about not letting me throw away my education when he worked so hard to keep me alive.

  I still grumbled a bunch. I even offered to pay him. And I didn’t stop until he threatened to tie me up and spank me.

  Which is more of an inducement than a threat, honestly.

  But in the end, he’s right. Papa always wanted me to go to college. I can still remember the pride in his face when I got the admissions letter. That was the day he told me he was paying for the whole thing.

  Papa always wanted something better for me.

  I’ve started talking to my mother again, though only in the most abbreviated way. She’s been at a rehab place in Florida for a few w
eeks. She wants me to come down for their family day. I told her we’ll see how it goes.

  I’m happy to be back in the apartment with Lynn — who had an absolutely fabulous time in Aspen — but sometimes it feels a little too normal. Part of me misses being holed up in Leo’s apartment or stuck with him in that mountain cabin. You can’t go through the kind of shit we did with someone and not grow closer.

  Our relationship was forged in fire. Now it’s unbreakable.

  I think about that as I get ready for bed on Friday night. To my surprise, Lynn doesn’t insist that we go out. In fact, she goes to bed early. She says she caught some kind of bug in Colorado, probably Mono from kissing too many boys on the ski lift.

  So when floor boards creak in the living room, I know it’s not her. Especially because I can still hear her soft snoring through the thin wall that separates our bedrooms.

  A flash of fear shoots through me.

  I listen hard in the dark but hear nothing except the gentle hum of the refrigerator and Lynn’s snoring. My body is frozen in indecision. Do I go looking for danger like some murder fodder in a horror movie or do I stay here and wait for whatever it is to come get me?

  Or am I just being paranoid and freaking out over the sound of the building settling into its foundation?

  The door to my bedroom is open enough that I can see part of the living room. I wait for a minute that feels eternally long, but nothing out there moves or breathes.

  I am just being paranoid.

  My heart is unconvinced. It beats a wild tattoo inside of my chest. I resolve to climb into bed, pull the covers over my head like a kid hiding from the boogeyman, and not come out until morning.

  An arm wraps tightly around my waist, almost lifting me off of the ground. At the same time, a large hand covers my mouth to silence my terrified shriek. I go into survival mode, hitting, kicking and throwing my head back in an attempt to catch my assailant’s face — anything to get away.

  It’s Ares. Somehow, he found out where I live and he’s come back to finish the job.

  Heavy breathing moves over my ear. Hands readjust their grip on me to avoid the elbows I try to jab into any flesh I can reach. It’s like I’m a child. That’s how useless it feels to try and fight. But I refuse to go quietly. If he wants to kill me, he’s going to have to work for it.