Page 23 of Unwritten Vows

Derrick

Unsilenced gun shots are still so fucking loud.

For those who don’t hear gun shots often, or at all, they’re usually shocked. A car backfiring doesn’t have quite the same noise or strike quite the same amount of fear in a person.

Liza jumps halfway out of her seat, somehow preserving her ice cream, but I know mine isn’t going to get eaten, and I don’t want my car to get ruined. I throw it out onto the pavement and twist around, taking my gun out and pointing in the direction I heard the shot.

“Get down!” I say, pushing down on the soft curls at the top of her head.

She says nothing, which is how I know she’s scared as hell; she just does what I tell her to.

A shot whizzes by me—too close to Liza for my comfort. She screams and I shoot into the darkness in the direction I believe it must have come from. Amazingly, I hear a loud cry as my bullet meets its mark.

The shoot out lasts perhaps just a minute before there’s a screech of tires and a car drives off into the night. I hear security running back to us and curse when I see a bullet mark in the back of my car.

Far worse, however, is the sound I hear just a moment later. “Oh… oh god…” comes Liza’s terrified voice.

Shit, she’s going to be super fucked up over this . I had forgotten that she’s never been in a shootout. Her mother was killed in one, but she wasn’t there when it happened. I wonder if she’s ever seen a gun go off.

“Hey, you okay?” I grab her under the arms and feel her shaking. She keeps her head down and latches onto me as soon as I get her up onto the seat, sobbing in distress. “Shit. It’s okay.”

She clings to me, trying to get her breathing normal. “I’ve never… seen anything like that. I can’t believe I had something that could kill me so close to my head!”

Security comes back to us, and one of them whispers in my ear the name I knew I’d hear: “Edoardo.” Fuck .

This is too much of a coincidence. There’s no way that fucker somehow tracked us all the way up here. And I don’t know what his plan was, but I’m guessing if he’d wanted to kill us, the assholes he sent would have had better aim and better guns. So, he wanted to scare us or… take her.

The thought curdles my blood. I want her safe immediately. “Let’s go, sweet Liza.”

She doesn’t let me go. “Where? Where do we go now?”

She’s really asking me if anywhere we go will be safe.

The truth is, I’m not entirely sure. I don’t know what the point of this was, since we weren’t harmed and Edoardo’s men left so quickly that it couldn’t have been a true attempt on our lives, or even at capture.

Not to mention that when a mafia leader sends his men, they rarely miss.

Still, I want her with me. I protected her last night; I’m sure I can protect her as much as necessary. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”

“Yes,” she says immediately. This is how I know she wants to be with me. This is how I know her first choice would be my protection, and I fucking love it.

****

I let her sob quietly into my neck for a few minutes, but I don’t have much experience comforting people, so I’m not entirely sure what to do.

“Liza, it’s safe now. You’re fine.” I rub her back, wondering if she finds it annoying the way I would in this situation.

But that’s something that men seem to do with distressed women, so I hope it’s making her feel better.

“I’ve never had a bullet aimed at me,” she whispers. “I’ve never had something like that happen, but my mother was killed this way.”

She’s not an over-the-top crier, but at the mention of her mother comes a distressed sob, and then a hiccup, as if to suck it back in.

I’m not sure what to say since I’ve seen multiple shootouts.

Of course, it’s usually just for posturing—most families don’t want a feud on their hands and know that’s exactly what will happen if they actually hurt one of their rival’s members.

“I know,” is all I can think of to answer back.

My mother was also killed, but I was too young to remember it, and my father wasn’t interested in getting tied down again, so just took on a bunch of mistresses instead.

In any case, it doesn’t feel like I can relate, and I don’t want to talk about myself in case she wants to say anything more.

I think my comment back will fly right under the radar—it’s a quick, offhanded phrase I throw out often. But she leans back, eyes red-rimmed and brimming with new tears, and sniffles at me. “You know?

“Well, yeah. I’m sure going through something so similar—”

“I mean about my mom,” Liza cuts in. “You know how she died?”

I’m not sure what the “right” answer is here.

She wants honesty—don’t fuck this up . So I swallow down my unease at telling the truth about a difficult subject and spill it.

“Yes, I guess I was saying it for two reasons. One is because my mom died the same way, and in this life, the knowledge that it could happen anytime, anywhere, is something we all just have to live with. But I also know everything about your own situation. I looked you up a lot before I met you because I like to know what I’m getting myself into.

And then after I met you I was… extremely fucking curious. ”

I search her face for any indication of how this information is landing, but I find none.

I don’t want to upset her with the fact that I looked up a bunch of stuff about her, and I certainly don’t want to weird her out because I needed to know more and searched for any scrap of information I could find about her mother.

If I’m honest with myself, at first it was just routine, but then it became almost an obsession.

For hours a day when I wasn’t with her, in between calls and business, I was looking up everything about her.

She says nothing, but her tears are easing up now, and she gives me a nod. It’s like approval. It’s as if she’s telling me to go ahead and do it. She fucking trusts me.

A feeling alights in my stomach, and it feels like I can fly. I’ve never had it hit me this way before, but I know what it is. It’s elation.