The Woman in the Wrong Place (Grassi Framily)

That was the level of fear I’d instilled in this poor woman who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I didn’t stop to think.

Because if I let myself think, I would realize how completely and utterly insane it was.

So I didn’t do that.

I just reached for her, hauled her up into my arms, brought her out to my car, and slid her in the trunk before going to grab some duct tape to secure her wrists and cover her mouth.

Did I feel like a monster doing this?

Yes, yes, absolutely.

But that being said, I didn’t know what other option there was.

What would happen if I went to my brother and told him that a woman who worked for me and therefore knew who I was had seen me shoot a man dead right in front of her?

Logic said we couldn’t just let her walk.

But what then?

Bribe her to silence her? That was always worth a try.

Then there was the second choice, scare or coerce her into silence by threatening to share some sort of information with the world at large. The problem was, the latter was only useful for people in the business who had all sorts of skeletons in their closets and dirty laundry hiding in their hampers.

If none of that worked, I knew what the only other option was.

To permanently silence the person.

See, usually, I would be okay with that in a sort of resigned way, knowing there was no way around it. But that said, we typically only had to do dirty shit like that to men. We didn’t, as a rule, murder women. And while I did believe that some women could be just as evil and deserving of a bullet or a court-ordered needle in their arm, I didn’t ever want to have to be part of that process.

That was really all that was on my mind as I locked up work, got in my car, and drove this woman who I barely knew back to my own fucking house.

I clicked the button to open the garage and pulled inside, knowing from the knocking around in the trunk that the woman was awake and ready to put up a fight again, and not wanting any of my neighbors to see or hear anything.

With that, I closed the door and sat there for a second with my head back on the rest, staring at the ceiling of my car, trying to come to terms with what I was about to do.

Lock a woman in my basement.

What fucking world was I living in right now?

It was straight out of a horror movie.

I didn’t duct tape women and toss them in my trunk.

I didn’t lock women in my basement.

But what other choice did I have?

I figured if I just bided my time, I might get a chance to talk to her, to reason with her. And then I could get my brother involved. Or not, if I didn’t absolutely have to. Luca already had a low enough opinion of me; I didn’t need to add to that. If I could just handle this without him needing to get involved, that would be ideal.

Exhaling hard, I climbed out of the car, opened the inside door, then went around to my trunk to fetch the woman who had used her heel to kick out my tail light.

Good for her.

But I needed to get that fixed as soon as possible.

If anyone in the Family saw that, they would immediately think someone was in my trunk. I didn’t need that kind of attention.

“You’re okay,” I said as I pulled up the door. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I added, watching as her eyes slit at me. “Yeah, I imagine that’s what all the assholes who end up hurting someone say,” I agreed, pulling off her shoes because they would make a pretty fierce weapon, then reaching in to grab her arms. “But in this case, I mean it,” I said, pulling her out of the trunk and setting her on her own feet, but keeping a hand on her arm. “I’m just trying to figure out what to do with you,” I added, half-dragging her along with me as I walked across the garage and into the back hallway of my house.

She fought hard when I got to the basement door, making me need to grab her and toss her over my shoulder as we made our way down.

My house as a whole was a work in process. But, admittedly, the basement hadn’t gotten a single bit of attention from me since I bought the place a year ago. I had plans to sheetrock the walls, lay some flooring, really make it something nice. The living room on the main floor was fine, but when I eventually settled down and started having kids, I liked the idea of giving them their own gathering room where they and their friends could hang out.