Page 25 of Mafia Scars

“You have people watching me?” I remembered him saying that he had eyes everywhere.

“I always have people watching you, particularly when I can’t. But those guys aren’t the ones you have to worry about. It’s the others, one in particular. Victor Pertrinkov. Amelia, there’s no one I can’t find. No one I can’t reach. But this guy has been a mystery to even me.”

“Demarco, was that you?” I knew we were talking about Victor, but I needed to know if Luc had anything to do with Demarco.

He nodded, confirming my thoughts. “But I didn’t kill him.”

“Who did, then?”

“One of his guys, by accident. I went to him looking for information, which I found.” He bit the inside of his lip, then pulled in a sigh. “I don’t kill unless if I have to.” There was a helplessness in in his tone that reached out to me, because he’d never sounded like that. It was different from the confident manner in which he usually spoke.

“What does that mean?”

“When someone wants to kill me. If I see a gun aimed at me, it means that person wants to kill me.”

I’d aimed a gun at him a few weeks ago, and yet I lived now to tell the tale.

“Would you kill me?”

“Jesus Christ. I can’t believe you’d ask me that. Look, we can’t really talk now, about us. I get it. I get it if you don’t want to be with me, and that’s fine. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. Right now, I need to get you to safety.”

He stood again, grabbed his pants, and put them on. He’d just been wearing his boxers. Our clothes were a mingle of his and mine everywhere. There were even things I hadn’t worn tossed in. I saw one of my bras on his biker jacket. I didn’t remember how it got like that.

If I was thinking logically and with my brain that screamedStay away from Luc, I would have told him it wasn’t a good idea for us to be together. I couldn’t see how that would ever be a good idea.

When I left Chicago, I’d left because I couldn’t bear to live with my father knowing he was such a terrible person. And here I was with Luc.

I watched him shrug into his T-shirt and reach for his jacket. He looked hurt, understandably.

I got off the bed, wrapping the sheet around myself, securing it so it wouldn’t fall off. Then I reached for his arm. My brain screamed several things, but my heart was wailing, crying from deep within because it seemed to only beat for Luc.

“Luc.” I opened my mouth to talk, then closed it, then opened it again.

He sighed and pulled me against him and sat down on the edge of the bed, me on his lap. I slipped my arms around his neck while he held me.

“I know how I feel about you,” I told him.

“Not hate?” He smiled, revealing the dimples. I touched the one in his right cheek.

“Not hate.”

“I’m not real sure if that’s a good or bad thing, doll. Means I’m just a little bit better than scum. Tolerable even, like a dog with mange.”

I couldn’t believe it. I started to laugh. “A dog with mange? Why would you even say that?”

“Because you love the pet but can’t stand the sight of it because of the way it looks. You may not love me like you would a pet, but I’m guessing you’ll tolerate the sight of me, even for great sex.”

That sounded horrible, and definitely not the way I felt. “It’s not true.” I had to tell him what I felt. But I was scared to accept it myself. I hadn’t even put a label on my feelings yet. “I feel more for you, and I missed you when you were away. But I shouldn’t because we come from—”

He stopped me with a kiss. I kissed him back, loving the moment and how lost I felt in him. “Leave it there. At missing me while I was away. We don’t come from different worlds.” He smiled against my lips. “You just have a different perception of me. Now’s not the time to talk about that though. You need to come with me, to Chicago. Your dad’s not talking to anyone besides me, not telling us what’s going on, and we have serious people after us.”

My hand slipped down to his shirt, and I clutched on to it.

I hadn’t been around my father in years, but I knew there was one main incident that I wasn’t supposed to speak about. How many things had happened like that since?

This could be about anything. Past or present.

“I don’t know, Luc. I don’t think I can go back to Chicago. I… don’t want to.”