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“YOU’RE STARTING A WAR?” I asked him. I could already feel the fear starting to flutter up my body. I had never seen him this angry before, not in all the time I had known him, and the shock of it – the terror of it – had me struggling to think straight.
“It’s not what you think—”
“You’re going to start a war?” I repeated, hardly able to believe I had to say any of this out loud.
“I’m going to do what needs to be done,” he replied. “Didn’t you hear the call? They went after the club—”
“Then call the cops or something,” I protested. “Why would you – why would you go straight to something that....?”
“Because these people don’t care about the cops,” he spat back. I knew the anger wasn’t aimed at me, but, being the only one there, I was the one who got the sharp end of it. I flinched back from him. There was no way I was going to let him talk to me like that, but I didn’t know what to say to get him to stop. This wasn’t the man who had taken care of me last night – this wasn’t the man who had chosen to deal with Roger through the proper authorities. This was some gangster, some asshole who was willing to do whatever it took to make sure he stayed in control over everything else.
“So you’re going to fight them?” I asked.
“I’ll keep you safe,” he promised me. “They’re going to come after anyone they think is close to me, so we’ll have to make sure that you stay here—”
“I’m not staying here,” I replied, quietly. There was no way I was going to sit around in this place while I waited for him to come back from the war he was waging.
“You have to,” he replied, and it was clear he wasn’t leaving this up for debate. I shook my head.
“Nadia, listen to me,” he told me, sounding exasperated. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with here. If you—”
“I thought I did,” I replied, and I narrowed my eyes at him. “I thought – I thought you were different. After you handed Roger over to the cops, I thought you weren’t like those other gangsters, just out for revenge and violence and everything. But you are, aren’t you? You’re just like the rest of them.”
He glared at me.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know I don’t want anything to do with it,” I replied.
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Yes, I do,” I snapped back. I wasn’t going to let him act like I owed him anything. He had helped me, sure, but that didn’t matter – that didn’t mean I had to throw myself at his feet and grovel for the merest hint of his kindness. If he had shit he wanted to get into with these other bad guys, then that was his problem, not mine.
“I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not—”
“Call me a cab, or I’m calling the cops to tell them you’re keeping me here against my will,” I warned him. He grimaced. He knew I wasn’t kidding. He knew me better than that.
And I had thought I’d known him, too, but clearly, I hadn’t had a clue what I was talking about.
I stormed to the door, grabbing the fresh clothes that had been left there, the ones I had ordered last night. I was in nothing but my underwear right now, and it was hard to make a real stand about storming off when I was half-naked.
I expected him to stop me, but he didn’t. He likely knew there was no way he could have kept me here, even if he wanted to, I was never the girl who sat around and let guys tell her what to do. I was out of here, and there was nothing he could do to stop me. Nothing I was going to let him do to get in the way of that.
Once I emerged and headed for the door, he touched my arm.
“You need to stay,” he tried, one more time. “If you leave, I’m not going to be able to protect you—”
“I’m not asking you to protect me,” I told him. I meant it. I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for some guy to play out all his savior fantasies on me, I was better than that – I was smarter than that. I knew staying here would only stick me with more of the chaos that he was a part of, and I had no intention of going down with that ship. If he was that certain he wanted to look after me, he could do it from a distance, where I didn’t have to deal with his violent tendencies close-up.
“There’s a car waiting outside,” he muttered. “Just... promise me you’ll go somewhere safe for a while, alright?”
I didn’t reply as I brushed past him and out the door. I knew he was right, but I could deal with that once I was as far from this place as humanly possible. I needed to get away from him – not just him, but the version of him I had been sure existed, the one I had allowed myself to fall for, just a little bit, over the course of the last night.
There was a car waiting for me, just as he had said there would be, and I leaned forward and gave the driver the address to my father’s store. I sank back into the seats, and wondered how on Earth I was going to be able to explain this to my dad.
He was going to freak out. The cops had probably been around to ask about what had happened with Roger last night, and he must have been panicking about that even as it was. My phone was dead, which must have been freaking him out even more. I wished I could go back in time and stay there at the apartment with him, tell him I was okay, but I had needed to get out of there so badly I hadn’t been able to think straight.
I had thought he was different. I really did. When I saw him show that mercy to Roger, choosing to call the cops instead of executing him on the spot, I thought I had uncovered a side to him that nobody else had gotten to see – one that was willing to work with what he was given, one that could handle the hard stuff without freaking out and causing chaos.
But as soon as I had woken up to that conversation he had been having that morning, I knew I was wrong. I had been stupid to even consider for a moment that he might have been able to make it out the other side of this mess without pulling a trigger and leaving behind a body. He had been so sweet, downright tender with me the night before, but now...
Now, I could see that was all an act, and he wasn’t truly the man I had thought he was, the man I had needed him to be. He had been able to perform it for a while, but now that the veil had fallen away, I wasn’t going to let myself think for another instant that he was anything close to the man he had pretended to be last night.
We pulled up outside my father’s store, and I climbed out and took a deep breath. God, I didn’t even know where to start. He was going to have so many questions. I wished I could give him a straight answer to all of them, but I wouldn’t even have known where to start. I just... I wanted this all to be over already. I wanted it behind me. I should never have let myself get anywhere close to Andreas.
I headed inside the store, and my father looked up – his eyes widened when he saw me, and he came racing around the counter to hug me.
“Oh, thank God,” he muttered. “I heard that something happened at the club last night... are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I promised him, and I felt my shoulders sag. I needed to get him out of here. I knew Andreas had meant it when he had said I couldn’t stick around in this city any longer, at least until some of the heat on him had died down. People would be looking for any way that they were able to cause him problems, and I was a straight shot to that, as far as they were concerned.
“We have to... we have to get out of town for a while,” I told him. I had no idea if he was going to believe me, or if he was going to refuse, but to my great relief, he nodded.
“Okay,” he murmured. “Can you... will you tell me why?”
I paused, and then shook my head. I couldn’t do that. I knew it would kill him, to find out everything I had been involved in – let alone what had happened with Roger, and that I had spent the night with Andreas.
“We just need to go for a while,” I replied. “Not long. A week or two. Do you think we can manage that?”
“If that’s what you need,” he replied, and I felt a lump in my throat. He would do anything for me, and this was how I had repaid him; by getting us both caught up in the middle of this chaos that we couldn’t get out of. I had thought I was helping, working with Andreas to pay back the money we owed, but now, we were having to flee town just to stay safe.
“Thank you,” I murmured, and I pulled him into a tight hug. I couldn’t say or do much more right now, but I wanted him to understand how important this was to me. How much it meant that he was willing to trust me.
We packed up some stuff, and threw it into the back of our car – we didn’t use it much, given that we hardly had money for gas, but we had hung on to it anyway. Now, I could see why. We had needed an escape plan, easily accessible, for if something went wrong.
I plugged my phone in as I climbed into the front seat beside him, and when it turned on, I found a dozen voice messages from Andreas waiting for me, along with at least twenty texts. I hovered my finger over the button to open them, but I thought better of it. There was nothing he could say to me to change my mind, and I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of our escape right now. I needed to get my father and myself out of this city before the war Andreas had been talking about kicked off.
“Everything okay?” my father asked as he spotted me looking at my phone. I switched it off and set it down.
“No, I’m fine,” I replied. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
He pulled away from the curb, and I looked back at the store behind me, praying it would still be in one piece when we got back. I wasn’t sure I could live with having done something to fuck this up, fuck up the last piece of my mother that my father still had. Hopefully, when they realized we were nowhere to be found, those guys who were after Andreas would leave us alone – but there was no way to tell for sure.
I turned back to look at the road ahead of us. I needed to stay focused on what came next. And hope to God that what had come before wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass.
THE END
