Bang Bang(10)

“Five years, Ax.” I looked straight ahead. “Five years where my tears were the only thing keeping me company at night. I think you lost the right to tell me what to do.”

He swore. The car door opened. I gasped as humid air filtered in. “What are you doing?”

“Getting out of the car.” He shrugged and gestured at the building. “Going into your apartment and packing you up. We’ll stay at a hotel tonight.”

I snorted. “My apartment not good enough for you?”

“No.” He pulled a gun from his jeans, thumbed off the safety, and held it out in front of him. “I just hate getting woken up in the middle of the night with gunshots ringing out, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” I gulped, my eyes still trained on the gun.

“Guns don’t hurt people… people do,” Ax said softly. “Remember that.”

“I do.” I met his gaze. “Because in the end, it wasn’t the gun that broke my heart — it was you.”





CHAPTER SIX



Axton



I’D ALWAYS PRIDED myself on being able to keep my emotions in check — especially when it came to Amy. I think I proved that time and time again when all I wanted to do was kiss her. But she was seventeen — or had been seventeen — and I knew it would be wrong. Kissing a girl who viewed me as her hero when I wasn’t even honest about who I was.

It was wrong to lust after a girl… especially when you were the one who was going to take the hit out on her father.

It was wrong to love that girl.

It was wrong to feel for that girl.

It was wrong to desire that girl.

Because all those feelings wouldn’t do me any good. To her I was enemy number one, and I think all those years part of me knew that if she ever found out I was alive, or if she ever found out what I’d kept from her, the look she’d give me would be complete disgust, mistrust, and betrayal. And I couldn’t take it. I almost didn’t survive leaving her the first time.

Having her reject me, knowing I was alive?

It burned.

It created a fire so hot that I wasn’t sure anything would ever alleviate the slow fanning of the flames. No one but her.

“You coming?” I called back, trying to keep my tone businesslike when really my gut instinct had been to pull her into my arms and kiss her tears away, to swear unwavering loyalty to her only after proving my worth by eliminating every single person in her life who had treated her less than the way she deserved to be treated.

I had a list a mile long.

Foster parents.

Social security numbers.

IDs

Hell yeah, I’d enjoy that certain assignment, scaring the shit out of people who dared tell her she wasn’t beautiful every damn day. Feeling the knife lodge between the owner of that club’s ribs and smiling as it took his life inch by inch.

Damn, I was mafia through and through.

It was in my blood and for the first time I could remember, I embraced it, because it meant that I could actually do something to make myself feel better about the fact that everything she’d said was true.

I should have done something after she moved away.

Fear held me back.

Rejection kept me locked inside my house.

And bitterness fed the doubt.

“Yeah.” She teetered on the high heels they’d put her in and walked slowly across the pavement to her apartment. It was in a low-income area of the city. Each of the three buildings were two stories. They had peeling white paint and enough stray cats to drive anyone who was allergic into an early grave.

Amy put her key in the lock, but the door pushed open.

“Shit.” I grabbed her as fast as I could and pushed her behind me then put my finger to my lips.

She nodded quickly.

The apartment was dark. I had my gun out in front of me and was ready to raise hell if anything so much as blinked in my direction. The light from the crap TV in the corner was the only illumination to the sad little studio. Her mattress lay flat on the floor, looking like it had been in a knife fight and lost. Two sheets were ripped to shreds and all her belongings were thrown around the room. Clothes were destroyed. It seemed that whoever broke in was either pissed she wasn’t here or pissed they didn’t find anything.

I pushed open the bathroom door and almost got sick as a mouse ran across my feet and hid behind the toilet. The smell of mold and mildew burned my nostrils. Quickly, I shut the door and turned on the lights to the room. They flickered twice before humming to life.

“Coast is clear, Ames.”

She walked in and stared, her eyes widening as she took in the state of disarray, but she didn’t cry. Which was so wrong. Who didn’t cry when every possession they’d ever been given was thrown to shit?