Dante
Viola parks her rental car in the drop off space and gets out. I’m waiting for her. I’ve always been waiting for her, ever since the day I saved her life and she owed me.
Her life is mine. It belongs to me.
She may say different, but she knows it too. That’s why she can’t stay away.
I don’t get out of my car. I don’t need to. I just need to wait.
She’s wearing a leather jacket over a winter dress with knee high boots. She looks cold, but then again, Viola likes the cold. Her lips are almost blue as she scowls at me because I make her wait to open the door.
“Come on, let me in motherfucker,” she says, rubbing her arms to take away the chill. Cold reminds us we’re alive. I told her that once when she complained about being frozen on a stakeout.
I open the lock to the vehicle door and she yanks it open, slipping into the warmth.
“You’re late,” she growls at me.
“I allowed you weeks to get your shit together, no one here is late but you,” I sigh.
She rolls her eyes. “Why are you always so self fucking righteous?”
I turn the engine over. “No bags?”
She gives me a look. “Why would I bring anything?”
“Fine,” I say and pull out of the airport parking lot.
She fiddles with the radio and I let her, just like old times. Her hair is no longer platinum blonde but a fawn brown. It makes her look younger. It doesn’t suit her. I would tell her but I think she knows. She keeps playing with it. Tossing it over one shoulder and then the other like a tail she can’t get away from.
“I don’t get it,” she says, finally. “You helped me escape once, and now you’re bringing me back.”
I wait until she looks at me, brown eyes peering into mine, before answering. I like seeing the chestnut color of her eyes, drinking me in, focusing only on me.
“Sometimes things don’t make sense,” I say.
“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to give me fucking bullshit answers.”
I allow the ends of my mouth to curl up. “Your mother was paying me before, and now your father is paying me.”
“So it’s just about the money?”
“It’s always been about the money.”
“Why? You’re loaded. I worked it out. You’ve got hundreds of millions in the bank or close to it. And yet you drive this shitty brown mustang everywhere and live in the fucking woods.”
“I don’t live there anymore. It burnt to the ground, remember.”
“You never lived there,” she snorts. Then she looks at me. “Where do you live?”
“You’re asking lots of questions today,” I say.
“Answer me just one.”
“I’ve answered one already.”
“Another one then, for fuck’s sake,” she fumes.
“What do you want to know?”