“I’m going to need some more specifics,” Flea replies.
Cain takes a deep breath and launches into his story. A few minutes later, he’s done. “So I have no idea who, exactly, we’re running from. But it sure would be nice to know.”
“And I want to know if my sister is okay,” I add.
Flea nods and starts typing furiously. I can’t follow what he’s doing, but green text fills up the largest display, and the smaller screens are filled with what look like databases. After a few minutes of nothing being said, Cain leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, Flea stops what he’s doing and turns around.
“Your sister is fine, I think. I’m not positive. But she’s smoking hot, by the way.” He grins but neither one of us are amused.
“And there’s some definite bad news. I can’t find your file, man,” he says nervously. “I think you’ve been decimated.”
Cain laughs. “Excuse me? What do you mean you can’t find my file?”
Flea clears his throat. “When an agent’s been compromised, the feds cover their tracks so no one can know that they messed up. This usually involves hard-encoding virus software into their own system and erasing all the traces of the agent.” He bites his lip and pushes his glasses up his nose again. “Usually, that’s not where they stop.”
“I’ve never heard of this,” Cain says. “I’ve literally never heard of something like this.”
“Yeah, well. You wouldn’t hear about it, would you? That’s sort of the point of decimation.” Flea opens his mouth and closes it several times without speaking.
“Spit it out, Flea,” Cain says. “You clearly have something else to tell me.”
“Decimation isn’t just lines of code. They…well. The agency’s going to make sure you are erased.”
I glance at Cain. Surely this doesn’t mean what I think it means. “Sorry. Are you saying the government is trying to kill Cain?” I ask.
Flea nods slowly. “They’re not just going to kill Cain. They’re going to erase everyone who ever knew he was a part of this.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CAIN
His words sink in faster for me than they do for Elizabeth. I’m in action mode.
I always am. It’s how I’ve stayed alive this long.
“I’ll need a plane. Passports. Anything you have, Flea.”
Flea scratches his irritatingly awful hipster haircut. “All of my main stuff is in New York, I’m not sure I can-“
I slam my hand on his desk and get in his face. He looks scared. Good. “Then get sure. You know why?” I poke him in the chest and he nearly falls backward in his chair. “Because you know me. And you’re in this shit show, too, because as you just said, the government is cleaning out everyone who knows that I’m involved in all of this. If you don’t find a way, you’re dead too. So get me whatever the fuck I need to get out of this country. Understood?”
Flea coughs. “Yeah, I got it.”
I can’t bear to look at Elizabeth. I can’t bear to have her ask questions I don’t have answers to. And I can’t fucking bear thinking that I might lose her.
I’ve always lived my life going from zero to sixty in under five seconds.
It seems like me meeting her follows that rule. From strangers to me caring about losing her in under three weeks.
I move fast.
I step out of the house into the snowstorm. The air is thick with white flakes, swirling and falling. The wind is picking up. Already, there’s an inch of perfect powder coating everything in sight.
I was a fucking fool to come all the way out here to Flea and this ridiculous house. Now we’re stuck here until the weather clears. I guess the best I can say of the situation is that Flea will be on the decimation list. That puts his skin in the game.
Literally.
I stomp out into the powder and breathe in the fresh, crisp scent of snow-covered pine. It clears my head and slows my heart down.
I hear the door open behind me but I don’t turn around.
By the weight of the footsteps, I know it’s Elizabeth.
“You fucking asshole!” she yells, pushing my chest. I stumble backwards half a step.
“Elizabeth. Seriously, I cannot deal with you yelling at me right-“
She shoves me again. “You’re the reason my father is dead.” She screams at my face. “They were after you. That’s why he’s dead. They killed him, too.” She pauses. “And they’re probably going to go after the rest of my family now, too.”
I hold up my arms to block her punches. “I don’t think so, actually,” I say. “They don’t know who I really am. Not the way you and Flea do.”
“Oh, really? So you’re saying I know you? I know nothing about you Cain Maggiano. Nothing other than the fact that you’re a sell out and a snitch, and now you’ve gotten the one person in the world who mattered to me killed.”
“I’m not just an informant, Lizzy. I contract with the feds. They send me out, just like my father did. I take care of things for people.” The words spill out of me. She deserves to know as much of the truth as I can bear to tell her. This is just part of the process.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” she hisses. And with tears in her eyes, runs off into the woods.
“Lizzy!” I yell, chasing after her.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” she screams back. She stops dead in her tracks and spins around. “You’re an informant. No, you’re worse than that. You worked for the government. You double-crossed your own family and now my father is dead because of it.”
“I’ve lost people here, too, Elizabeth. Don’t even act like you’re the only one going through pain right now, because you aren’t.”
“You’re going through pain? But it’s your fault. None of this is my fault. None of it. Seriously. Get a grip on yourself, asshole. I didn’t sign up for this.”
I laugh darkly. “Oh really? And what is it you think your father did for a living, Elizabeth? Because it sure as hell wasn’t run a restaurant. You even said that much to me when we first met. You knew it was a front for his mafia work. You knew that. So what, do you think your father sent his henchmen out to deliver flowers to his enemies? You’re smart. You know better than that. You know better than that. I can tell you what your father did. He was the lead guy for the most feared mafia on the entire Eastern seaboard. And you knew that. And you stayed. You could have run. At least I chose to get out of my family. To do something good. To shut down the violence between the Maggianos and the Romanos. You did nothing. You were just your father’s little puppy dog.”
“Stop,” she says, tears in her eyes. “Don’t. Don’t tell me.”
I grab her shoulders. “You need to know who your father was. He killed people. He had children killed. That’s who your father was. All to keep up his drug empire. That’s who he was. My father is the exact same way. Tony Romano was not a good man, Lizzy. Don’t make him out to be some kind of hero.”
Tears are streaming down Elizabeth’s cheeks. The temperature has risen slightly due to the snowstorm; otherwise there’d be icy tracks across her perfect skin.
I reach up a thumb and sweep away a tear off of her cheek. “You have to trust me. I’m not saying I’m glad your father is dead. I’m just telling you that I was trying to do the right thing by working with the feds on this. I didn’t want him to die. I wanted to help him get out.”
She’s considering my words. They’re all true, and I know that she doesn’t have to dig very deep to know that they are true. “I hate you, Cain,” she says. Then she starts beating her fists against my chest.
I can hardly feel it. But I let her let it out.
“If you’re gonna hit me, at least try harder,” I say to her, trying to hold back a smile.
She lets out an almighty roar of anger. “I hate you. I hate you.”
She takes a swing at my face and I duck.
Now she’s not hitting me.
Now?
We’re boxing.
&n
bsp; I duck and weave and block her blows. She’s better than I would have given her credit for.
“You trained?” I ask her.
“A little,” she says through gritted teeth.
I don’t swing at her. I’d never hit a woman. But I let her let it out. All of her pain. If this is how she needs to do it, then so be it.
We’re dancing more than we’re boxing, our feet crunching the frozen, snow-covered ground. We turn and she swings and I block and she thinks she’s leading this dance.
But I’m leading it.
Finally, panting, she stops.
“I hate you,” she whispers. But there’s no real feeling in her words.
“You hate me?” I ask her, taking a step closer to her.
She’s breathing heavily, but now I’m not so sure it’s from physical exertion. It seems like it’s more from my presence. I like that.
“I hate you,” she says. But she steps closer to me.
“Tell me how much you hate me,” I say, tracing my fingers over her cheek. She closes her eyes and leans into my touch.
“I hate you more than the distance from here to the moon,” she says.
I lean down and kiss her cheek. “Alright. That doesn’t seem like so much hate.”
“It is,” she stammers into my ear. I’m kissing her neck, unzipping her coat just enough to find the delicate flesh of her cleavage. “I hate you more than all the stars in the entire universe. And if there are multiverses, I hate you in those, too.”
“I can deal with that,” I breathe against her rising chest.
She reaches her hands into my hair and tugs my head closer to her body, smashing my face into her breasts. “I hate you more than I could ever hate anybody in my entire life,” she finishes.
And then she pulls my head up to hers. She smashes her thick lips against mine, kissing me like she’s trying to bruise my face.
Her hands leave my head and fumble for my jeans. She gets them unzipped and I take my turn to get her pants around her ankles, lifting her up by her delicious, round ass and backing her against a tree.
“I hate you, Cain Maggiano,” she says between our tongues locking in furious embrace.
“I know,” I say back to her. She wraps her hand around my cock and slides it between her legs. The air is cold, but our bodies don’t seem to mind one bit.
I enter her body and we rise and fall together, hate-fucking each other until we have nothing left to give or take.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ELIZABETH
“Alright, back it up!” I yell to Flea, waving my hands toward my face. “One more inch…and stop!” I hold my hands up and Flea turns off the truck, the trailer hitch lined up over the ball on the tailgate.
“Thanks,” he says, getting to work connecting the chains.
The sun is blinding today, its effect doubled by the soft, white drifts everywhere around us. It snowed at least two feet in the night while Cain and I were cuddled up safely in Flea’s loft.
Flea slept downstairs on the floor of the diminutive living room.
I think he was afraid Cain would kill him if he didn’t offer us the bed.
Those were good instincts.
Cain walks past me and flashes me a smile. It screams “I fucked you hard last night.”
Which he did.
And I enjoyed every second of it.
“Glad to see you don’t actually sparkle in the sun,” I yell after him.
“I told you so,” he replies.
Flea brushes the snow off his pants. “Thanks for the help,” he says.
“Do you have other land somewhere that you’ll park it on?” I ask him.
“As far as you know, I don’t,” Flea says with a grimace. “The less you know, the better.”
“Right,” I say, understanding his meaning. “I guess the front of your truck will take care of clearing the trees out of the way?”
“They’re small saplings, yeah. They’ll snap just fine. And I don’t really feel like sticking around here any longer than I have to.” He sighs and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, lighting one up.
“You really shouldn’t smoke. Bad for your health,” Cain says, leaning against the truck.
“Right, well. I’m not long for this world anyway, right? None of us are.”
These grim words are Flea’s parting gift to us, along with a duffel bag of organic snacks, a red jug of diesel for our truck, and two falsified passports. We make it back to the truck, and I help Cain remove the brush, shaking snow off the windshield with the arm of my coat.
Soon enough, we’re on the snow-covered roads, nothing but the slightly awkward silence between the two of us to take us on our journey.
“The old man back at the house…he’s dead, isn’t he?”
Cain looks out the window. “Yeah. He is.” My voice cracks. “He was my trainer. He taught me everything I know about…you know.”
“Being a snitch?” Elizabeth finishes.
“Being an assassin. Yeah.”
I ponder this for a moment, letting him feel uncomfortable in the silence between us. “I can’t believe I married a murderer.”
Cain sighs. “I’ve never killed anybody who didn’t deserve it.”
“How can you possibly be certain of that?”
He looks at me, his eyes fierce. “Because I am.”
Something in his eyes tells me that I should believe him. And I want to believe him. I need to believe him.
Because I’m actually falling for him, against all of my better instincts. I’m falling for Cain Maggiano.
He actually lets me drive for a few hours, while he naps. I wake him up when I run out of road. “Hey,” I say, shaking his shoulder. “I’m not sure where to go next.”
Cain rubs his eyes and smiles at me, stretching his muscled arms as far as he can in the confines of the truck. He grabs the map and yawns. “Alright, take a right up ahead. We’re almost to the airfield.”
I put the truck in drive and follow his lead. “So you can fly planes?”
“Yeah,” he replies. “My dad actually helped me get my license at sixteen. Then when he’d send me on trips out of state to, you know-”
“Beat the shit out of people?” I finish for him, helpfully.
“Yeah. I would take some side-time and train with the feds. I learned a hell of a lot.”
“When did you have time to sleep?” I ask him.
“Here and there. You might have noticed I was out like a light in a matter of seconds last night and earlier in the truck,” he points out.
“You were snoring, Romeo,” I retort.
“No way,” he replies. “You’re bullshitting me.”
“I’m not, actually,” I say.
Cain laughs.
I pull into the airfield and Cain hops out of the truck. “You ready to fly this baby?”
He looks like a kid in a candy store.
***
“You’ve never been overseas?” Cain asks me, staring at my bewildered face. I’m in the jump seat in the cockpit. I’m too afraid I might knock some important switch to join him in the empty co-pilot’s seat.
“That’s right,” I reply. “I’ve mostly stayed in New York, actually. My…dad was always busy.” The word ‘dad’ feels like swallowing a box of rusty nails. I take a deep breath to cleanse my brain of the feeling. “Where is it we’re landing?”
“Zurich,” he replies. “In about…thirty minutes, actually.”
“Amazing that you could just, you know, rent someone’s plane,” I say.
“Money talks.”
“Right,” I reply, not sure of what else to say. “About last night-“
“It was wonderful. I mean, a little bit chilly, you know. But wonderful, all the same.” He grins at me.
I swallow and feel the space between my legs warm up at the memory. “I was upset. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Is that what happened the night I fucked you in the library?” Cain asks me, turning
around and smiling.
“It just. It won’t happen again, alright?”
“Right. We’ll see about that,” he replies.
I cross my arms. “I’m serious, Cain. I’m still mad at you.”
“I’m sure you’re still mad at me, but that hasn’t stopped you before. Wife,” he says with a heavy emphasis on the last word.
“Fly the plane and shut up,” I retort, standing up. “I have to pee.”
“Be back quick. We’re starting our descent.”
“Aye aye, captain,” I say sarcastically.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ELIZABETH
Zurich is cold. Really, really cold.
It looks like a storybook. Old castle-looking buildings line the streets that are filled with people bustling about. Everyone is in black, bundled up and rushing from one café to the next. I wish we were here under different circumstances, because I would want to stay here for months.
Cain pulls out a wad of cash and shoves it at a taxi driver along with a slip of tattered paper. “Take us here. Bonus if you get us there fast, alright?”
I nearly break my neck trying to look at everything as the buildings zoom past us and we drive out into the gorgeous, snow-covered mountains.
“You like it?” Cain asks.
I look at him. “It’s incredible.”
Cain smiles at me. “Glad you’re enjoying it. Soak it up.”
The unspoken words at the end of that sentence eat me alive. Soak it up…while you still can.
I try not to think about that. I try not to think about the fact that we’re running for our lives.
The taxi climbs up and up and up into the mountains.
“Where are we-“ I start to ask.
But I have my answer a moment later as the road curves. In front of me is an actual castle. Like, a real, fairy tale castle. With turrets, stone walls, and everything but a drawbridge. I actually gasp.
Cain helps me out of the taxi. “Don’t get too comfortable here,” he says.
“You’re like, Jason Bourne, aren’t you?” I ask him, my mouth still agape.
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