Chapter 18

Chapter 18OliviaWe didn’t make love at the safehouse. My body wanted it, and I knew he wanted it. But my head was too much of a mess.When he touched me, a war kicked off inside me. Wanting more, wanting to pull away from him, wanting to cling to him, wanting to run. I wanted to lose my mind and all sense of time in his arms. I wanted to make my excuses and hurry off quickly to hide in my home with Michael. To hide in my last shrinking scrap of normalcy, in my quiet world where people did not try to murder me and then got their heads blown off to stop them.Instead, he held me, seeming to understand that sex would have only added to my turmoil instead of resolved it. I felt bad about denying him, and frustrated about denying myself, but I wasn’t okay, and he could see that.Now I was on my way home, in a butter-soft jade-green jacket dress that fit so well I wondered if he’d snuck a measuring tape into bed with us. Grateful, but also conflicted, and still a little terrified.If only he was less understanding than I expected, not more. The irony stuck in my mind. It was true. If he had been petty or pushy or thoughtless with me after today’s insanity, I would have fled. But instead, the more I knew of him, including how he was under pressure, the harder I fell for him.No matter how dangerous that got for me.He had put himself between me and a bullet. He had sworn to go all out to protect me and our son. He had put my needs before his, even in extreme situations. He had even apologized for the scare afterwards, though God knew he had been the one trying to protect me from the men who were really guilty.He was perfect. Well, not perfect, but amazing. More amazing the more that I knew about him. Except, he was a gangster who just shot three people in front of me.The memories of those deaths sat strangely in my head. The horror surrounding them was dreamlike and distant. But then I would remember looking away from those terrible red blurs with such nauseating clarity that I would go cold and start trembling.He killed in front of me. But he did it to save our lives. Maybe more lives than that. Viktor was heroic and monstrous in one action. And I couldn’t have one without the other.This was his life. This was his terrifying world. If I wanted him in my life, his world would leak into mine. Into Michael’s. Maybe not as much as I was afraid would happen, but enough that I had serious reasons to worry.A smart woman wouldn’t fall for him. She would figure out the minimum contact she and her son could legally get away with and stick to that. She wouldn’t be craving his body and his touch in the middle of all this turmoil.Apparently, I was not a smart woman.***On my way to pick up Michael, I was right on the nose of ‘on time’, as if nothing unusual had happened today. When I pulled up, I noticed two strange cars in Anna’s driveway—a scratched-up black sedan and some kind of fancy Italian sports car in silver. Curious, I walked up the brick walkway and onto her porch, listening before I knocked.Two men were arguing inside, while a baby wailed in the background. I could hear Anna’s strained voice asking them to stop fighting in front of the children. Their Spanish was so rapid and full of slang that I couldn’t pick up on all of it through the closed porch window.Oh God, not more drama. My mind already felt like a stack of bowls leaning against a cupboard door, ready to fall apart with a crash if shifted too much. But my son and Anna and her baby were all in there. I had just survived the scariest day of my life. No way two macho assholes having a fit were going to measure up to being caught in that gunfight.I set my jaw and rapped on the door. “Anna? Hey, Anna, it’s me Olivia!”“Come around the back!” I heard her call and sighed with relief. If we could dodge whatever testosterone war was going on inside the house by hanging out in the backyard, I was all for it.When I got through their incredibly narrow side yard and out into the little lawn out back, I heaved a sigh of relief. The baby had stopped crying, Anna looked frazzled and irritated but also resolute. She gave me a one-armed hug as I walked over.Michael was playing with the dog, who had been chained up at the far end of the yard under a tall pine tree. He waved and smiled distractedly when he saw me.I hugged Anna back. Inside, the yelling and bitching kept on.I could understand a lot more of their conversation now through the glass patio door. I pretended I didn’t, but listened in as I talked to Anna.“Hey. What’s going on?”She rolled her eyes. “My brother. One of his work buddies rolled his car and they are fighting over what to do about it. His buddy thinks it’s Luis’s job to pay out what insurance won’t cover. Luis told me to leave them alone to deal with it. I’ve been trying.” But her expression was troubled and resentful, and I could understand why.Inside, I made out Luis’s voice, contorted with anger, his Spanish so rapid that every word came out like machine gun fire. “I didn’t make a call on any of that! What the hell did Miguel think he was doing, bringing you guys there and going after him? Now we’re down—”The other man cut him off, his voice now raised in shock as much as anger. “What the fuck do you mean, you didn’t want us going down there to hit the guy? Miguel said—”“Miguel lied, Paco. He came up with the idea all on his own. And now two more of my guys are—”His next few words were cut off abruptly, and they shifted to harsh whispers. I was pretty fluent in Spanish, but it was hard keeping up with what they were saying, though I got the gist of it—it sounded like one of Luis’s friends had gotten involved in a fistfight. What was it with men? I’d been shot at today by some mobsters, and now Luis and his friend were arguing like hot-headed teenagers about some fight. I met Anna’s eyes, she shook her head before pasting on a too-bright grin and continuing. “Anyway, I brought us out some lemon popsicles. They’re homemade.”“Awesome.” I went over to the table under the same tree the dog was chained to and gave Michael a hug before sitting down. Anna didn’t usually chain Pookie as she was such a sweet dog, and I wondered why she had. I gave her head a scratch before sitting down. The white, cast iron chairs bit into my thighs uncomfortably, but I didn’t care. I was just glad to be sitting with my little boy and my friend after the nightmare I had just been through.But I couldn’t help but strain my ears for snatches of the men’s argument.I didn’t see Luis much nowadays as he spent most of his time working at his regular job, or working on cars with his friends at their garage. I still saw him occasionally at family events, where I had been Anna’s perpetual plus-one since we were ten. But it suddenly struck me that I knew very little about Luis’s life these days, and the man he had become. He looked tired, I remembered Anna’s dad used to be the same. Her mom was worried he’d work himself into an early grave—which was what had happened. I could see why Anna was so concerned about her brother now.“So how was the auction?” Anna sat down across from me with the bowl of popsicles and passed me one, before turning to hand one over to Michael.Michael pouted. “Pookie wants one too.”“Oh, honey, she doesn’t like lemon. She has her nice cool water.” Anna smiled at him, but he sulked a little.I jumped in on my cue. “We don’t want to give her an upset tummy, Michael.”That clicked with him. He pulled the pop out of its mold and stuck it in his mouth, nodding.“How come your dog’s tied up?” I asked, pretending to have forgotten her last question as I fished around frantically in my head for an answer that wouldn’t lead to even more questions.“It’s Paco. Him and Miguel and a couple other guys in Luis’s crowd, she just really doesn’t like them. We have to tie her out here because she’ll bite him if he gets too close to me. Some dogs are funny around men.”“But not Luis, right?”“Oh, no, she loves him to death. Most people, actually. It’s mainly just Paco and Miguel.” She frowned thoughtfully, then popped her own popsicle back into her mouth.I tried mine. The sweet-tart taste reminded me immediately of lemonade and champagne with Viktor, and that reminded me again of how we hadn’t slept together. It was like an itch under my skin, one only he could scratch properly. I tried my best to push the feeling aside. Later. Once my head is clearer.“You know,” I said hesitantly, “they say dogs know when someone isn’t a good person.”She shot me a look that told me she had considered this before, and then turned toward Pookie, who was playing gently with Michael. And yet the dog had also positioned herself between the table and the house as soon as we had sat down.“Luis wouldn’t let anyone near us who would hurt us,” she insisted, but I wasn’t so sure. And as I looked down at the dog and my son, I saw Michael looking up at me with those pale green eyes that, like his father’s, missed nothing.More shouting inside the house, the volume going up until I could hear it clearly again. Luis’s voice was raised in anger, “Paco, if I have to tell your dumb ass again that none of this happened on my orders—”“Well what the fuck did you expect? Miguel wanted action.”A door slammed.I almost dropped my popsicle.Anna had gone very quiet. The mix of fear and confusion on her face mirrored my feelings exactly. Michael looked between us, worry growing on his little face.“What are they saying?” he asked us, startling us out of our shock.“They’re just having an argument, sweetie,” I reassured in a shaky voice. “Don’t worry about it.”“Yeah.” Anna clearly didn’t have any more of an idea what was going on than I did.“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said, trying to convince myself more than anything, just as the argument moved closer.Both men burst out suddenly into the yard, yelling and swearing at each other. The baby, who had been snoozing on Anna’s shoulder, woke up and instantly started wailing. Michael cringed back behind the dog at the noise, and Pookie started growling in a low, menacing tone I had never heard from her before.One of them was, of course, Luis, who came out after the other like he wanted to pull him back, still yelling at him in Spanish. “Damn it, Paco, this is my sister’s home, stop being a dick and leave her out of this.”“It’s not her, it’s the fucking redhead! Who is she?” Paco turned out to be a small, wiry guy with a wispy black mustache and beard and some really unfortunate tattoos. He was red-faced and sweating and so blind with anger that for a few seconds, as he stomped toward Anna, he didn’t notice Pookie. But then the dog jumped to her feet to protect us, and he stopped in his tracks.“Hey!” Anna had had enough. She bundled her wailing baby against her chest and stepped forward to stand with the dog, glaring between Paco and her brother like a couple of idiot kids. “Luis, did you bring this asshole over to my house just so you could argue, scare me, scare my kid, and upset Michael and Olivia too?”Michael’s eyes got big, and he blinked at his Auntie Anna in almost comical shock.Paco stared at her, then at me. His jaw worked.Meanwhile, Luis came up and slapped a hand down on Paco’s shoulder hard enough that he winced. “No,” he said with a completely forced smile while his buddy stared holes through me. “This is just a misunderstanding. Paco had to tell me some things that wouldn’t wait.”Anna clutched her baby tighter as she saw the look on Paco’s face. “Yeah, well, next time you and your punk-ass friends want to beat your chests and scream at each other, do it somewhere that is away from me, my home, and my baby.”Luis reddened slightly, and his grip tightened on Paco’s shoulder until the smaller man grunted in pain. “Sorry, sis, sorry, Olivia. We’ll just take this elsewhere. Come on, Paco.”Paco didn’t budge, instead stabbing a finger at me. “Who is this white bitch? What’s she doing here?”Michael stood up, one hand still on Pookie’s bristled back. “Don’t you talk about my mommy that way!”Oh God. I was about to lunge forward and scoop my son up out of harm’s way when Luis lost the last of his patience. He dragged Paco away one-handed, gripping him so hard that Paco went from red to pale. “I said come on, Paco! You and Miguel have made enough of a mess as it is without you getting paranoid over a family friend.”He switched back to Spanish and kept lecturing him as he dragged him around toward the driveway and out of sight. The baby started to calm down with her mother rocking her, and I hugged my son, who still looked alarmingly shocked.A few seconds later, a car door slammed, and then another. Two engines roared to life, and I winced. “What was that about?”“I have no idea,” Anna mumbled. “I’ve seen Paco before, but I’ve never had something like that happen around us. And I sure don’t know why he was asking about you.”“Yeah, that was really messed up and weird. I thought all your family friends knew about me.”Michael petted Pookie, who was calming down as well now that the men were leaving. “You said a bad word,” he told Anna, who blushed.“Sorry, sweetie. I didn’t mean to. I just got mad because they came out and upset everybody.”“Yeah. That guy was mean. I hope he won’t come back.”“I’ll make sure Luis tells him not to.” She puffed out her cheeks in exasperation and grabbed a fresh popsicle before sitting down again.Numb, I went through the motions of doing the same, and got Michael a new one too. I couldn’t even taste the popsicle anymore.We spent twenty minutes talking about everything but the alarming incident that had just derailed everything, trying to get normalcy back. It only worked on the surface. The whole time, I was thinking back to being in the car with Viktor, the shooting, and even the fact that Luis had once been friends with the guy who murdered Viktor’s accountant.The last snippet of information had been weighing on me, and I wondered if it was something that I should tell Viktor about. But I didn’t want to get Luis involved in the Bratva’s business, with his friends fighting it sounded like he had more than enough on his plate. I shuddered as I remembered the way his work buddy, Paco had stared at me before Luis had dragged him away.