Deal with the Devil (14 page)

So what is it?

Why does he look at me like he’s worried if I’m happy or sad? Why is he so concerned about what happens to me?

And why am I terrified at the thought that I’m going to get him killed?

I roll over on my back. When I risk a look at his face, he’s staring down at me. The expression on his face is tender, which just confuses me more.

“You okay?” he asks. His hand coasts low over my stomach. I feel an answering clench at his touch.

“Uh-huh.” I roll toward him until I curl up against his chest. My head fits perfectly under his chin. I just want to touch him, but looking him in the eyes is suddenly too overwhelming.

My head gently rises and falls with his deep breathing. I only know he’s still awake because every so often he twirls a strand of hair between my fingers.

The realization doesn’t come with some lightning strike of awareness. Instead, it settles over me slowly like being wrapped in a warm blanket.

I love him.

And I have no idea if he feels even a fraction of the same way. Even if he does, it doesn’t matter. There’s no universe where people like us could make a relationship work. We belong to different worlds.

God help us both.

T
his sit
-down is fucking doomed.

We’re meeting in a connected slaughterhouse on the edge of town in the meat-packing district. I know it’s a cliché, but slaughterhouses are the best place to chop up a body. All blood — pig, cow or human — looks the same when it hits the floor. Even totally legitimate slaughterhouses look like the scene of a crime.

It’s supposed to make us seem more intimidating, Adrian “Ares” Hancock doesn’t look like he intimidates easily. Ares is the leader of the Apocalypse MC out of Philadelphia. From what I understand, he’s a truly evil motherfucker. The last guy who insulted him got dragged face down behind a motorcycle for three miles. There wasn’t enough skin left on the dude’s face for the family to identify him. The coroner had to use dental records.

The Apocalypse MC makes the Devil’s Rejects look like a boy scout troop. I don’t regret kicking the shit out of those assholes. But if I’d known they hooked up with Apocalypse, I probably would have been subtler about it.

Now I’m sitting at a card table surrounded by hanging pieces of meat. And I’m wondering how the hell I’m getting out of this situation without somebody bleeding or dying, especially me.

The bikers enter through the plastic flaps. They look like fucking savages with all the tattoos and patched jackets. Ares has to be the one in the middle with 
WAR
 tattooed in bold letters across his chest.

Ares takes a seat at the table, flanked by two of his guys.

“Carmine,” he says, voice deep. He glances over at me and then looks away, dismissing me. I want to leap across the table and punch him in the throat, but I resist the urge. The whole point of this bullshit is to avoid a war, not start one.

Carmine also notices the slight. “This is Leo, one of my captains.”

“I know. I’m just surprised he’s here.”

I frown at him. “Why’s that?”

“I thought this meet was to discuss what we’re doing about you.”

“You threatening me?”

“Promising, maybe.”

My back stiffens and my hands ball into fists. Disrespectful fucks. “Remember you’re not in fucking Philly.”

Ares shrugs, like moving in on territory that’s already been claimed isn’t something to worry about. “I got to say I like it here. Maybe we’ll stick around for a while.”

“Maybe you’ll end up floating in the Hudson.”

Ares just smiles at the threat.

“Leo.” Carmine’s voice is a warning. It says, 
shut the fuck up, we’re supposed to be playing nice here. 
“Let’s just get down to business.”

Ares expression turns surly. “I’ve got three guys in the hospital because of this fucker here. What are you going to do about that?”

“For one, we had no idea that you were affiliated with the Devil’s Rejects. If we’d known, we would have come to you about the dispute.” Carmine’s tone is so smooth and conciliatory that it makes my teeth hurt. I have to remind myself that this is the time for diplomacy. Threats and guns can come out later. “Second, they were slinging in our territory. This is what happens when you try to corner turf that doesn’t belong to you.”

“Who says they were slinging?” Ares asks with a snarl. He points at me. “This fucking guy? They weren’t working your side of town.”

“What were they doing then?” I ask the question even though I already know the answer.

“A snatch and grab. They were working a job they got from one of your fucking women.”

Fucking Cecile. If she wasn’t Mara’s mother, I’d have blown that bitch away a long time ago.

“Cecile Matarazzo 
was 
the daughter of the old boss, but he disowned her before he died,” Carmine says. “She’s not one of us.”

Ares crosses burly arms over his chest, stone-faced. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Like you said, snatch and grab is a job,” Carmine argues smoothly. “They were still working the wrong side of town. It’s not my fault that Cecile misrepresented herself.”

“Maybe I’m making it your problem. I got three guys out of commission ‘cuz of this shit and I want some kind of retribution.”

Deep lines appear in Carmine’s face as he frowns. “What do you want?”

“The job was to put the squeeze on some chick.” Ares smile is evil enough that I feel cold. “Deal was for enough cash that I felt like I needed to come up here myself.”

My teeth are clenched so hard together that I’ll probably have a headache later. “So the fuck what?”

“So give us the girl and we’ll call it even.”

“Fuck you!” I yell.

“Leo,” Carmine snaps. “Don’t make me regret inviting you to this sit-down.”

I’m so livid that I’m literally seeing red. Everything around me is fading into a murderous haze. All I want to do is close the small distance separating us and wrap my bare hands around Ares’s throat. I don’t just want to kill him. I want to feel his body take its last breath and see the life drain from his eyes.

Carmine watches me for a minute, probably making sure I’m not about to do something crazy. Then he turns back to Ares. “That girl is the granddaughter of our old boss. Out of respect, I can’t just let you have her.”

Ares rises slowly from the chair, obviously intending the move to be menacing. “Tell you what. Me and my boys are coming for this girl. You can give her up easy or we can take her the hard way. I’m in a decent mood so I’ll give you twenty-four hours to decide.”

So it’s gonna be a war.

Carmine still sits at the table, looking pensive as Ares strides toward the exit. The other two bikers fall in behind like good little automatons.

“Leo.”

I don’t like the way he says my name, all slow and resigned. He doesn’t say it like 
let’s go get these motherfuckers. 
It’s a lot more 
I know you’re not gonna like this, but…

“Don’t you fucking say it.”

Carmine rubs his fingers over his temples like he’s trying to relieve a bad headache. “I can’t go to war with Apocalypse because of one girl.”

My heart cracks and fractures in my chest. “She’s Vito’s daughter, Carmine.”

“I get that. And if there was a way to help her that 
didn’t
 involve going up against the Devil’s Rejects and the fucking Apocalypse MC then I’d be all over it. But my hands are tied.”

A sound like roaring water rages through my head. I can barely understand the words he’s saying, though I completely understand the meaning. “You’re saying we’re on our own.”

“She’s on her own,” Carmine corrects me. “Why are you sticking your neck out so far on this? Loyalty to the old boss doesn’t mean you have to face down a fucking army by yourself.”

Why are you doing this?

I don’t have an easy answer to the question, not even inside my own fucking head. All I know is that handing Mara over to Ares and the fucking Apocalypse MC is not going to happen. They’ll have to kill me first.

The realization that I’m willing to die for her sits like a heavy pressure on my chest. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t have picked her out of a lineup. Now, I’m about to leap in front of a speeding train to keep her safe.

What the fuck is happening to me?

Carmine watches me. The expression on his face is sympathetic but resolute. He’s not going to help us. Mara and I are truly on our own.

“I’m gonna be out of town for a few days.” I fight to keep my voice even. I’m so full of rage and a deep hopelessness that I can barely think around it. “Give me some time, but I’ll try to get in touch.”

He nods in understanding. “Probably best that I don’t know where you’re headed.”

“Probably.”

“Take care of yourself.” Regret briefly flashes over his face before Carmine schools his face to a detached mask. “And take care of her, too.”

Taking care of Mara isn’t a choice anymore. There’s no moment of indecision. I’ll protect her because I don’t want to live in a world without her in it.

* * *

M
ara is still awake
when I get back.

I’d left Dino, one of the guys in my crew, to post up by the elevators outside the door of the apartment. Not just to stand watch and keep anybody who isn’t me out, but also to keep Mara in. I wave him away with a nod of thanks before opening the door. I don’t want her to figure out that I’ve had somebody outside the door this entire time.

Better she thinks I trust her to take care of herself.

When I open the door, she’s standing next to the large bay window in the living room. She stares out at the city below. Her face is half cast in shadow. I almost think I see tracks of dried tears on her cheeks, but it’s too dark to be sure.

“It’s late,” I say softly, somehow hesitant to break the silence. “Why are you still up?”

She turns around. I see now that she has been crying. I know she must have heard of me come in. But as soon as she lays eyes on me, a broken sob works its way out of her throat.

“Oh, baby.”

“I wasn’t sure if you were coming back,” she says and her voice breaks.

I stride quickly across the room and wrap her up in my arms. She collapses against me like a broken doll. I finally get a glimpse at the deep well of loneliness and fear that’s she’s probably been hiding for most of her life.

In that moment, I resolve to always come back for her. Even if I have to crawl out of my own grave to do it.

“I’m right here,” I say, rubbing gentle circles on her back. I murmur other words, whatever platitudes I can muster on short notice. There’s nothing I can say that will take away her pain or change the reality of our situation. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.”

Mara turns her face up to look at me with tears still shining in her eyes.

“I love you.”

Her confession hits me like a shot to the gut. I couldn’t have heard that right. Or she must mean something else. Love like the way you love your family, or a pet.

But that’s not the way she stares up at me — with every emotion she’s got laid bare and burning in her eyes. I know she means it exactly the way it sounds.

“Mara…”

“It’s okay.” Her smile is sad. “I know you don’t feel the same way.”

Love. 
It’s a four letter word — literally and figuratively. I won’t pretend like I haven’t said it before, but I’ve never meant it. Not even with my ex-wife. I used to lie through my teeth to that shrew, just to get her off my back. That marriage had been a mistake in every possible way, but I never had a problem telling her what I thought she wanted to hear.

I can’t do that to Mara. I won’t lie, even if it’s a lie that she wants to hear.

All I know for sure is that I feel things for her that I’ve never felt for anyone else before. But is it love? I just don’t know.

And I don’t want to hurt her. That’s why I still haven’t told her Apocalypse is coming for us. I need to make arrangements for where we’re going to go, so we can’t leave until the morning anyway. Let her have one more night to be oblivious to just how much shit we’re in before she has to face it head on.

Mara has turned away to shuffle slowly toward the bedroom. She looks like a wraith in the over-sized robe she took from my closet. I want to stop her, but there’s nothing left to say.

I’ll just sleep on the couch because I doubt she wants me anywhere near her. Women don’t tell you they love you, hear something lame in return and still want to jump into bed with you. I could probably force the issue, but it’s better to just let her have space.

“Are you coming to bed?” she asks, the soft words floating over me like strands of gauze.

“Yeah.”

I follow her into the bedroom. There’s no denying it, I could die for Mara a thousand times and still never deserve to have her.

W
e’re going to die
.

I freak out when Leo finally gets around to telling me about his meeting with Carmine and that asshole, Ares. He just let me go to sleep last night like there was nothing for me to worry my pretty little head about.

I’m in love with a complete asshole.

This is that old-school shit that always kept me from starting any relationships with connected guys. Even in high school, all my friends were going after the baddest guys they could find. I knew better. That rough and tumble exterior women always find so sexy is usually connected to the most backward, sexist ideals that you can imagine.

And now we’re arguing again.

“I’m going,” I say, glaring at Leo’s impassive face from where I sit on the messy bed. It’s covered in piles of clothes and toiletries. “You can come with me or I’ll go alone.”

“We don’t have time for this, Mara. They gave me twenty-four hours to give you up and half of that is already gone. We leave now.”

“No.” I don’t care if it makes sense. I don’t care if I sound completely insane. “I am not leaving town without saying goodbye one last time. Especially, if I’m never coming back.”

A low growl comes from deep in his throat. He disappears into the closet. He comes out carrying a black metal case that I bet is full of weapons. “You’re fucking coming back.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Damnit, Mara.”

“I just want to visit his grave. We can do it on the way out of town.” I feel him starting to cave and press harder. “I’m only asking for five minutes. Please.”

Leo hesitates by the door of the bathroom, obviously contemplating our options. “Five minutes?”

“That’s it. I promise.”

He frowns at the sight of my satisfied smile. “If I get clipped for this five minutes, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

I launch off of the bed and wrap my arms around him. “Thank you.”

Leo squeezes me briefly. He pulls back with a bemused expression on his face. “Finish packing.”

We’ve both been ignoring my confession from the night before. For him, the fact that the stray dog he reluctantly let sleep on the porch has turned into a love-sick puppy probably makes him intensely uncomfortable. I’m forcing myself not to think about it. I’ve said it and there’s no taking it back, so why dwell?

I didn’t say it expecting something in return. I know what kind of man he is. He’s the type of guy that wouldn’t recognize the emotion of love, even if he ever did feel it. And I know that the two of us could never work long-term. Assuming we even survive this, our time together has a short shelf-life.

I just wanted him to know. Even if it didn’t change anything.

Whether he loves me or not, it’s still us against the world. I’m dead, otherwise.

“You done?” he calls from the bathroom. I realize I’ve been standing and staring off into space for the last ten minutes.

“Just a minute.” Luckily, I don’t have much to pack. That’s the one upside to being forced to live out of a suitcase for the last few weeks. I shove my meager belongings into the bag without bothering to fold anything. I’m just grabbing my laptop when his voice stops me.

“You can’t take that.”

I look up to see him standing in the doorway. I follow his gaze to my laptop — probably my most prized possession. “Why the hell not?”

“Anything that can receive a signal can be traced.” He strides forward and plucks it the laptop out of my hands, ignoring my protests. “That means no laptop and no phone. You probably won’t even be able to get a signal where we’re going, anyway.”

So the one place in the world more boring than this apartment. “Is it a forced labor camp?”

The ghost of a smile crosses his face. “I hope you like the sound of your own thoughts.”

Great. “You’re going to have to find some way to entertain me if I can’t have the internet.”

His grin is wolfish. “I can do that.”

A shiver of anticipation works its way down my spine at the frankly sexual look in eyes. I get to be with him, touch him when I want. It almost doesn’t matter that he can’t love me.

* * *

L
eo waits
for me in an old beater of a truck while I visit Papa’s grave. I think it’s because you can’t see someone coming if you’re standing at the gravesite. He drove the truck off the little service road and right through the cemetery. He didn’t seem to care if the best vantage point that keeps both the main street and me in sight is literally on top of some random person’s grave.

If I wasn’t already sure we were both going to hell, I’d be pretty certain of it now.

I can feel his impatient gaze like an itch between my shoulder blades. When I glance back at him, his head looks like it’s on a permanent swivel as he constantly assesses for any potential threat.

No one is going to be looking for us in that truck. It’s an old single-cab Toyota with rust stains and dents all along the side. The thing doesn’t even have a working radio. Leo says we’re going to need four-wheel drive to get to wherever it is we’re headed. This is best he could get on short notice, though I have no idea from where. I assume that if were stolen, he would’ve picked something nicer.

Papa’s gravestone looks shiny new next to the others, but also sort of abandoned. The other gravesites are scattered with flowers in varying states of decay, little photos and other tokens of remembrance. It’s obvious no one else has been up here to visit him since the funeral. That thought makes me sad.

Leo wouldn’t let us stop to get a bouquet. He threatened to keep driving right past the cemetery if I wouldn’t stop asking. I pull a handful of wildflowers that are growing in a wild bush nearby and press them together in a makeshift posy. I just want it to look like someone still cares.

“I’m sorry, Papa,” I whisper as I fall to my knees next to the stone.

I can’t help but feel like I’ve failed him. He trusted me to manage things and hold my own against my crazy-ass mother. But I couldn’t do it. Now everything has gone to shit.

The stone is warm under my hands, in stark contrast with the cold air outside. A cold chill has picked up, sending tendrils of freezing air across my skin. I imagine them as the icy fingers of death.

I wish Papa was here to tell me what to do. He always had the answer to everything. I know he wasn’t the typical sort of grandfather. The kind who smells like mothballs and always has toffee-flavored candy in the pocket of his cardigan. Not my Papa. He was more the type to give you a $100 bill when you asked for money for the ice cream truck and threaten “to gut any schmuck that fucking touches you.”

God, I miss him.

Leo honks the horn in warning. Clearly, my five minutes are up.

I don’t move immediately. Another minute isn’t going to make that much of a difference.

It would be just too ironic if those Apocalypse bikers caught up to us here. Leo wouldn’t just let them take me. No. We’d go out in a hail of gunfire like something out of a movie. Bleeding to death on top of my grandfather’s grave has a sick sort of poetry to it.

I hear the crunch of footsteps on the icy grass. A second later, Leo grabs my arm and pulls me to my feet.

“I know you heard the horn,” he growls as pulls me toward the truck. “You trying to get killed out here, or what?”

Considering the morbid direction of my thoughts, he’s not that far off. I don’t want to die. But there’s a sick part of me that doesn’t want to run or fight anymore. If I give up, at least all of this will be over.

Except Leo would never allow it. He’d kill me himself first.

“Hurry up,” he says. “We need to get out of town.”

Despite his apparent rush, Leo walks me all the way around to the passenger door, opens it and helps me inside. I think that he’s less of a gentleman than just convinced that he can’t trust me not to do something crazy.

I shiver as I slide onto the cracked leather seat. Leo must have been sitting here with the engine off because it’s freezing inside the cab of the truck.

He climbs up into the driver’s seat. He seems completely unconcerned about the insane cold if he even notices it at all. The man has to be part reptile.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask through chattering teeth.

Leo reaches over and turns up the little dial for the heater. “I’ve got a cabin up near the border. Almost no one knows about it. It’ll take a couple of hours to get up there, though.”

“Near the border,” I repeat, confused. Then it dawns on me with growing horror. “You mean the border with Canada?”

“Well, we’re going the wrong way for Mexico. And I don’t speak Spanish, so what do you think?”

Jesus. “You mean I’m stuck in this truck for four hours.”

“More like six.” He pauses, thinking. “Or eight.”

I groan at that. I’ve never been a fan of long car rides. And without a phone or my laptop, this is pretty much torture.

Leo reaches over and gently squeezes my hand. “Maybe you should try to sleep or something.”

“It’s too cold to sleep,” I grumble.

“It’s not too cold for me.”

He shifts his grip on my hand and pulls it down on his crotch. He’s rock hard and hot as a furnace. I’m almost impressed.

I inch closer on the seat, stopping only when the seatbelt holds me back. My free hand strokes his thigh, marveling at the tightly coiled muscles. I can almost feel him forcing himself down the back of my throat. I shiver at the memory.

When I risk a glance, he’s staring down at me with a small smile on his face. I’m afraid he’s going to crash.

“Watch the road.”

He very deliberately grabs the back of my neck and pulls me in for a kiss.

“You’re going to kill us both,” I say, once he lets me pull back.

“What’s life without a little risk?”

“You’re crazy.”

His gaze returns to the road, but he rolls his hips up into my hand. And I’m back to thinking about how he good he feels in my mouth.

The look in his eyes says that he knows exactly what’s running through my mind.

“You want this, baby?” He makes another thrusting motion with his hips.

My hands are already working at the zipper of his pants. I’m desperate for something to push away all of the bad thoughts. His erection has the same idea. I’ve barely undone the button when he spills out of the pants — hard, long and thick.

I unbuckle the seatbelt so my head can move directly over his lap. I trust him not to crash the truck.

Leo lets out a loud groan when I kiss the tip. A heavy hand falls on the back of my head. My mouth opens just as he forces himself past my teeth and down my throat.

There’s a trick to deep-throating. You have to be active and passive at the same time. I’m ready to pull back if he goes too deep, but also force the muscles of my throat to relax against the invasion. Obviously, he appreciates the effort. His breathing comes faster and the hand on my head twists tightly in my hair.

I love this in a way that I never thought I would. It’s dirty and degrading, but I also feel this heady sense of power and control. He’s feeling this pleasure because of me. With each little moan and muffled shout, I’m that much closer to owning him.

“Just like that,” he groans, so close that I can hear the tension in his voice. “Faster.”

The whole world has narrowed to us in this truck and my mouth on him. Nothing else matters — not the men coming after us and not the state of our relationship. All that matters is that I make him come harder than any woman ever has before.

We’re running for our lives and I’m giving him road head.

I giggle at the absurdity of it. He groans again in response, his dick growing impossibly harder at the vibrating sound. His hand in my hair shoves me down until my lips hit the very base of him. It’s almost painful, but I force myself to relax against the thick feeling of him at the very back of my throat.

I can feel how close he is.

He orgasms with a loud groan. I swallow, not that he gives me a choice. The hand twisting in my hair holds me down roughly through every tiny spasm of his cock. Eventually, I pull away as he leisurely sets himself to rights.

When I look out the window, we’re passing the exit sign for Ithaca. I wait for a feeling of wistfulness or longing to rise up in me. But I don’t feel anything. Newark isn’t my home, anymore, but Ithaca really isn’t either.

Leo grabs my hand again and squeezes it tight. He pulls until I’m laying down on the bench seat with my head resting on his thigh. His muscle flexes under my cheek. I don’t ever want him to stop touching me.

The realization is like a sharp spike of pain in the pit of my belly. Because I know he doesn’t feel the same way.

Home is wherever he is.