Her Mafia Bodyguard

MIA

“You didn’t even think to wonder why I was able to get to you as fast as I did, did you?” Dean laughs at his own question before I have the chance to answer. “Of course, you didn’t. I was waiting in a hotel ten minutes from your house because I knew you would come running. You were too busy thinking about yourself to think about it. With your head so far up your ass, you practically threw yourself into this situation.”

Now is not the time for me to be a smart-ass. I have to keep him calm and level. All through the drive to school, he slowly went deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. Telling me all about how miserable his life was after Zeke murdered his father.

Murdered. It’s an ugly word. How would I feel about Zeke if I watched my father die because he pulled the trigger? What if I was ten years old, crouching in a closet in a cramped motel room, peeking out through the barely open door? “I was there with his body for hours until somebody came.” I lost track of how many times he said that. “And that wasn’t anywhere near as bad as things got.”

I practically know his entire life story, and it hasn’t been easy. I keep having to remind myself of that while I sit here on the sofa, hands folded in my lap where he can see them at all times. He paces the length of the room, occasionally looking out through the balcony doors. He won’t go out there, but he keeps checking. Waiting to see if Zeke will show up.

He will. I know he will. He would’ve gotten the message on his phone. Please, be paying attention, I beg silently. Maybe if I wish hard enough, he’ll hear me. It doesn’t matter right now what happened earlier. His lies, the way he covered up everything my father tried to hide. He’s been complicit this entire time. I can’t worry about that. All I want is to get out of this alive, for both of us to get out of it alive.

Right now, I’m not sure our chances are all that good.

Because the second Zeke steps through that door, he’ll be ambushed. Unless I do something about it.

“I hope you understand I hate him just as much as you do.” Do I sound convincing? Maybe not—Dean doesn’t even react. Like he’s already hardened himself against anything I might say. “He led me on all this time. He went out of his way to lie and hide things from me.”

“You didn’t try too hard to figure anything out, though, did you?” he asks, disgusted. His eyes shine with an unnerving light. He’s losing it.

“What was I supposed to do? Everything I did was tracked and monitored. Even what I did online.”

His head bobs up and down. “No shit. The son of a bitch logged into your Facebook and everything.”

My heart skips a beat, but I manage to keep my voice even. “That doesn’t come as a surprise. I’m sure he had all my passwords and everything.”

“But you let it happen.” He sits on the coffee table, close enough that our knees touch. I have to deliberately keep myself from flinching. I can’t let him see how it unnerves me, being this close.

“Haven’t you ever been in a situation where you didn’t have control?”

“That’s been most of my life.”

“Then how can you judge me? I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t seek out my birth father after my mom died, either. Pretty much all of this was decided for me.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“What choice should I have made?”

His eyes harden. He senses I’m challenging him. I have to back off. “I was alone in the world,” I murmur. All the memories come rushing back, and that’s probably not a bad thing. I don’t mind sounding vulnerable right now. I need him to think of me that way. “I was so scared. Mom was all I had. I always wondered who my father was, but she would never tell me.”

“Yeah, and now you know why.”

“Now I know why. Yeah.” And I have to wonder how she’d feel about him bringing me into that world. “But he took care of me. He still takes care of me.”

“Stockholm syndrome.” He gives me a firm nod. “It’s not even your fault. You’re already too far gone to understand.”

I have to clasp my hands tight to keep from screaming. He couldn’t be more wrong. “Listen, it’s not like I’m saying I love him or anything like that. I don’t think I’m ever going to forgive him for not coming clean with me. But he wanted to protect me. That has to mean something.”

“My father wanted to protect me, too. He was all I had.”

“But you got through it, right? Look at you now. I mean, this isn’t an easy school to get into.”

“I got lucky.”

“Just like I did.”

“No! Not just like you did.” His reflexes are scary fast. One second, he’s sitting on the table. The next, he’s leaning over me, boxing me in with an arm on either side and his face inches from mine. I can smell his sour sweat, and my nose wrinkles before I can stop myself. Of all the things to care about when a maniac is practically on top of me.

I force my voice to be steady. “How not like me?”