Markus


    “Stop,” I snap, “I’m not the good fucking guy in this story. Just because I didn’t leave you on the bathroom floor and gave you food doesn’t mean I’m a decent person. You’re still alive because you’re a good fuck, and nothing more. Don’t twist things. I’m not the knight in this story. I’m the fucking viin, and if you don’t stop with the bullshit, I’ll show you just how dark things can get.”


    Her brows furrow, and where I thought fear would fill her eyes, I instead find confusion and maybe even a little anger. “I wasn’t saying you were good. I was saying I’m thankful for your help and for feeding me. It sounds to me like you’re the one twisting things.”


    I don’t even think, all I do is react when I reach out and wrap my hand around her throat. She jumps, a startled gasp escaping her lips, and her sandwich falls to the floor. My hold is tight but not hurtful, which is surprising since I feel like strangling her right now.


    Her pulse hums beneath my fingers.


    “I’m not going to take your talking back anymore.” I give her delicate little throat a warning squeeze. It would be so easy to finish her off, to end this before it can be something bigger, but I can’t do it. I’m not even sure I could if I wanted to. The idea of seeing her eyes vacant, her body unmoving. It squeezes the life out of my fucking heart. I’m cruel, and I’ve done some bad shit but killing an innocent for nothing. That’s not me.


    “When I release your throat, you’re going to shut up and sit there. I don’t want to hear a peep out of you. Understand?” I sound like I’ve swallowed a bucket of gravel.


    The warning hits where it should, and she nods, shifting her gaze down fearfully. I release her throat and pull my hand away. Fallon shifts in her seat, but only slightly, and remains staring at the floor as if she’s been punished. Hopefully, she takes my warning as a promise and keeps her mouth shut the rest of the ride. For whatever reason, she acts as if she has less reason to fear me, and I can’t have that. I need her to understand who is running the show.


    Putting the car in reverse, I pull out of the parking spot and back onto the road. I follow the GPS directions, and thirty minutester, we arrive.


    I park exactly where La instructed me to. I check the time again and realize I’ve barely made it. La was very specific about me being here at four-o-clock sharp.


    “What are we-” I re at Fallon, cutting her off mid-sentence. She presses her lips together and res his nostrils like a bull. If she’s smart, she’ll keep her mouth shut.


    Looking away from her, I drag my gaze back to the road.


    A few minutester, a school bus pulls up right in front of the street corner I’m supposed to watch. Great, now I can’t see a fucking thing. It’s always something, I swear.N?velDrama.Org holds ? this.


    Luckily, the bus swiftly takes off again. That’s when I see her. Red hair, gray jacket, slender figure, petite-just how La described her.


    But that can’t possibly be her? This girl is just a kid, no more than maybe fifteen or sixteen-years-old. What the fuck?


    La doesn’t have a sister, at least not that I know of. They don’t look like they are rted at all, not with her fiery red hair. So why the fuck is he watching her? My stomach churns at the thought. La is a good guy, by mob standards, that is.


    We’ve done some fucked up shit in our line of work, but we don’t deal in underage girls. We don’t recruit from the streets as young as some others do. Some families shove guns into ten-year-old boys’ hands and have them do their dirty work. Julian won’t stand for shit like that, and neither do I.


    Fucking up kids’ lives, that’s a whole other kind of evil, an evil that I’m not okay with.


    La has some exining to do. Whatever is going on with this girl better not be what I’m thinking. I let the girl walk down the sidewalk a few feet before I put the car in drive and start following her slowly while keeping my distance. I don’t want to draw attention to myself. She doesn’t seem to notice me, and when I get closer, I can see why. She has earbuds in her ears, probably sting so loud, she can’t hear a thing.


    The girl turns into the front yard of the house La told me she would go to. So far, everything he has said lines up. I stop the car once more, watching her pull a key from her jacket pocket and unlock the door.


    “Oh my god, you’re going to kidnap her,” Fallon shrieks. “Y-you can’t! She’s just a kid. I’m not… I’m not letting that happen-”


    “What are you talking about?”


    “Y-you… you…” She looks like she is struggling to breathe, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Is she having a fucking panic attack? I need to diffuse the situation before it explodes in my face.


    “Calm down, I’m not kidnapping anyone,” I tell her, but it’s like the words don’t reach her at all. Her chest is heaving, her eyes are wild, and I’m pretty sure she is hyperventting. Shit.


    Grabbing her shoulders, I turn her to face me. “Look at me. You need to snap out of it.” Her eyes are so wide they are almost round. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, but her eyes slowly focus on me again. “Take deep breaths.”


    I start to show her how to do it. Sucking air in through my nose and exhaling through my mouth. She copies me, matching each breath until her breathing returns to normal.


    “There you go, just keep breathing like that. No reason to freak out.”


    “I thought… I thought you were going to kidnap her,” she admits.


    “I gathered that much.” I let go of her shoulders and twist away from her, so I’m looking out of the windshield. “I might be a monster, but even I have limits. I won’t touch a kid, and I’ll kill anyone who does.”


    “Then, why are we here? Who is the girl?”


    “That I don’t know yet,” I say through clenched teeth, irritated by the way she doesn’t believe me and angry by La sending me here in the first ce.


    As I pull out of the neighborhood, I keep ncing at Fallon, who is looking out of the window in silence. At least she is not freaking out anymore. It’s not until we are back on the highway that I see her head loll to the side.


    “Hey,” I shake her arm, “no sleeping.”


    “I know, I know. I’m trying.”


    “Tell me about your family,” I urge. I know this is a terrible idea, but I’ve got to keep her awake.


    “Um, my mom and dad own a little store in the town I grew up in. I worked there before I went to college.”


    “You liked working there?” I ask, surprising myself by how genuinely interested I am in the answer.


    “I guess.” She shrugs. “It was fine. My sister always hated it.” I don’t miss the way her voice takes on a sad note.


    “Why did your sister hate it?”


    “She thought it was boring, maybe even a little beneath her,” Fallon says, a smile on her face like she isughing about some inside joke. “She was always the wild child. Adventurous, never sitting still, and always up for anything. She left as soon as she turned eighteen.”


    “Where did she go?”


    “Europe. She went to France to study but dropped out and moved in with her boyfriend she met there. I don’t think she was ever nning oning back. I haven’t seen her in a long time. I miss her…” She looks out into the distance. I get the feeling that there is something more about her sister that she isn’t telling me, probably a falling out with the parents given the situation.


    “I’m sure you’ll see her again soon,” I say without even thinking about the meaning of those words. Shit. I should have kept my mouth shut because she won’t see her sister soon; she might not see her sister again at all.


    Not if I have my way, which has always been the n.