“It’s not up to you. I know you’re important to Aubriella, and if something happened to you, it would upset my girl. So you’re coming with me because it’s not safe here right now.”
Aria looks like she wants to protest, but her eyes are still taking all of him in. He’s not the kind of man you refuse. He’s too powerful. Too confident. “Let me just get my stuff,” she says in a defeated tone.
“Make it fast,” says Vince, glancing to his side and down the hallway.
We all pile into the car while Vince and Jimmy’s heads swivel to glare at every person on the street as if they might be gunmen in waiting. I hug my arms to myself, feeling vulnerable. Inside the car, no one talks for a few minutes. While we’re waiting at a red light, Aria clears her throat. “So what exactly do you plan to do with Aubriella, Vince?”
I cringe. Is she really doing this right now?
“I plan to get her somewhere safe till this blows over.”
“No. I mean after all of this. Once you get bored of her are you going to just toss her aside?”
“Aria!” I snap, catching her gaze to bulge my eyes at her in warning.
“It’s okay,” says Vince. “She’s just looking out for you.” His eyes find me in the rearview mirror and he winks. “To answer your question, if Aubriella isn't careful she’s going to end up stuck with me for a long time.”
Something in his tone makes my breath catch. He says it like a threat, but the twinkle in his eye seems to promise something as well. Does he mean…no. He can’t mean he would marry me. What would I even say? Part of me instantly responds that I would say yes. One look at our current situation--on the run from yet another danger to my life--seems to be enough of a reason to say no, but it’s one thing to know I should stay away and another thing to do it. I can only ignore my body for so long. The way I get flutters and flush just from his touch or a look from him can’t be wrong. There must be something to that.
I laugh a little too loud and see Vince grinning at me again through the rearview. Aria catches the barely hidden meaning as well and sits back, speechless for once.
We drive until we hit upstate and no one seems interested in starting conversation back up. I spend the drive staring out the window, unable to stop my mind from racing. I think of my dad, Aria, my job, the way Jerry Washington’s body looked, and of course, him. It’s exhausting. I can’t think of one topic long enough to find resolution. I’ll just begin promising myself to stop second-guessing the way I talked to my dad, which leads me to think what Vince would say if he knew about my dad’s money troubles, which gets me thinking about him and the way he seems ready to bail me out of my financial trouble, which leads me to wonder if Aria would approve of me letting him, which makes me wonder if I’m against the idea because of what she might think or if it’s because of what I might think of myself if I wasn’t working an honest job. It’s a mess, and by the time we pull up to a small Colonial with red shutters, I’m more confused than when I started.
Vince opens my door and Jimmy opens Aria’s. She comes to my side, holding my arm protectively while Vince puts his strong arm over my shoulders. Even though the two of them are at odds, it feels good to let the two people I care most about show so much protectiveness toward me as we walk toward the house. If nothing else, I know I’m loved, and I don’t know that I knew that just a few weeks ago. In that moment, I realize I’m more scared to lose that feeling than my life. Even if gunmen come for me in the next hour, I’d rather die than go back to the way things were. That’s when I realize it. I don’t want to get away from Vince. I want to stay with him, to be his. Even if he’d never admit it, I want to make him mine, too. I still don’t know how I feel about everything else, but I know that.
Once he figures all of this out with the rival family, I’ll find a way to show him that I’m ready. One look at his stony features now tells me it’s not the time yet.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“This is a hideout for the wives. We haven’t had to use it for this in years, so it might be a little dusty.”
He opens the door and I raise my eyebrows. Dusty, maybe, but damn. The decorations are beautiful. A sparkling chandelier hangs over the high entryway. A second-floor balcony overlooks the foyer, flanked by two gently curved marble staircases. Straight ahead, I have a dazzling view of a pool and a well-manicured backyard. Aria gives me an approving smirk and nudges me.
“I think this will do,” she says.
I hear a din of voices coming from deeper in the house. The voices are affected and accented, punctuated by overly loud laughter and exclamations. The wives. The seemingly harmless moniker shouldn’t intimidate me so much, but these are mob wives. If Vince ever did ask me to marry him, I’d be one of them.