#2 Chapter 59
“He’s all I have!”
Even she would be better off without him.
Mom’s face falls, and then she goes in for the attack. “What about the people at the club? Don’t you care? This is going to start a war. People will die! Your cousins will get hurt.”
I think about Beatrice and her long blonde hair. Doing her highlights every couple months, talking about guys, convincing her to come with me to a connected bar. There were small rays of sunshine in the fortress, and she was one of them.
I can’t just abandon them.
Do nothing, and you might as well pull the trigger yourself.
“Get out of my way.”
I shove at the two men guarding the restaurant’s entrance, but there are multiple entrances. I run down its side and they take off after me. My shoulder slams into another door and I stumble through the kitchens, where Johnny looks at me as though through a mask of blood. My dad kneels on the tiles, staring straight at Johnny. I realize they moved him to the kitchens because it would be easier to clean the blood from the floor.
“Don’t kill him!”
A chill descends over me as Johnny’s handsome face turns toward me, his eyes detached. They’re endless, black tunnels. Nothing. Jesus, there’s nothing there.
“He needs to go.”
“Johnny, please.”
“This was never going to work out.”
The harsh sound of Mom’s voice grates in my ears. “Maya, stop him! Oh God!”This material belongs to NôvelDrama.Org.
“He’s the president. You’re going to start a war.”
I scream his name, but it’s like yelling at a brick wall. His men grab my shoulders and rip me backward, and my heels connect with someone’s shin.
“Fucking bitch!”
Johnny gives his soldier a deadly look and eyes me with the same deadened expression. “It’s too late now.”
Blood runs from my dad’s nose, which looks broken. “Pull the trigger, you son of a bitch. Watch what happens.”
Johnny digs the muzzle in my father’s skull. “What’ll happen is this bullet will go right through your fucking head!”
“No!”
I shove his arm away and he grabs me, rage contorting his features as he attempts to shove me out of the way. His face tightens under my fingers as I grab him.
“Please, Johnny.”
“Why? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill him.”
I search for reasons inside me, anything that might spare my drunken asshole of a father for the sake of my mother’s tears. I just know deep down that killing him will make things worse.
“Two dead bikers is bad enough, but their president? You’ll have to kill every last one of them.”
“Then that’s what’ll happen.”
“He deserves a chance-”
The restaurant echoes with his hollow laughter. “You don’t know me very well. I don’t give second chances.”
He smiles against my hand, and it’s his smile that makes my throat tighten and tears slide down my cheek.
“Give him one. For me.”
Then slowly, little by little, he lowers the gun from my dad’s head, his haunted eyes never leaving me.
From here on out, we’re done. You stray from your territory, I’ll kill you. You make an attempt to contact my fiancée, I’ll kill you. You so much as suggest to her that she should get an abortion, and I’ll take my time pulling you apart, limb from limb.
The sodden rag I’m holding drops into the dirty dishwater.
Pink mist.
Like the suds of this dishwater, except blood red, flying through the air in fine water droplets.
He just killed them. Two men from the MC. Foul bastards, but still. They had wives. And he just blasted them as though they were nothing. He was going to do the same to my father.
My heart pounds a wicked beat as I wash the dishes.
Just keep him happy. Keep him content.
Or he’ll kill your father, and that’ll be enough to start a war between the bikers and the mob.
I don’t want anyone else killed for me. I wanted so badly to get out of there that I wasn’t prepared for how much I’d miss my mom. My cousins.
And now it’s all turned to shit. What’s going to happen when Dad goes back to the MC and tells them that the boss of the Cravotta family gunned down two of his men?
It’ll be a long, bloody war with casualties on both sides.
So how the fuck do I stop it?
I need to control him.
There’s no fucking controlling Johnny Cravotta, you idiot.
I have to try.
A key scrapes in the lock and I jump to action, washing the rest of the dishes and hurriedly putting them away.
He steps inside. I hear the hollow sound of his footsteps and a chill runs up my spine.
I’m not weak.