“Sorry, uh… bug.” I pounded my chest a few times to prove my ridiculously lame lie.
“In an airplane?” she asked, her voice dripping with skepticism.
“It happens!” I snapped.
“Okay.” She lifted her hands into the air and, thank God, removed her hand from my person. I stared at her hand midair and noticed a scar on her arm. It wasn’t a typical scar — it was like a burn of some sort.
“What’s this?” I grabbed her wrist and leaned in to examine the mark; it reminded me of a cigarette burn, but it was too big to be a cigarette and on closer inspection it had definite lines, like it was drawn on her. Like it was burned against that perfect skin with a hot knife or something.
Mil clenched her fist and tried to pull away, but I pulled tighter, making it impossible for her to do anything. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s something,” I half-snarled. Holy shit, who the hell would mark what was mine? I focused in on the burn; it was an old scar, not recent, but it didn’t matter. Not a shot in hell that it mattered. Her skin, her body, everything I touched was mine, not anyone else’s to tarnish. Rage like nothing I’d ever known poured through me. My heart slammed against my chest as my jaw clenched and flexed, causing my teeth to grind.
“Another bug?” Mil whispered, a smile appearing on her expressive face.
“Tell me—” My chest heaved. “Who did this?”
“Chase.” Mil’s voice was pleading. “Let’s not do this here, not now.”
“But—”
“Leave it, or I swear I’ll knife you in your sleep.”
I released her hand, a bit ashamed about how attached I clearly was to my anatomy, and looked out the window, refusing to talk to her, like a little child throwing a pity party.
Who the hell would touch her?
My first thought was Phoenix.
My second thought was how I’d find time to go to hell, raise his lifeless corpse, and kill him all over again.
And then a fuzzy memory surfaced.
That night, the night Mil and I had been together, Phoenix had been protective, so protective that it was a bit ridiculous. I mean, I was his best friend and he was still pissed. He hadn’t talked to me for weeks…
“Dude!” I slapped my hand onto the table. “You’re like a freaking dog with a bone!”
“Poor word choice, Chase.”
“Phoenix.” I dropped into the chair beside him. “It’s been a month. I said I was sorry, I offered to let you shoot me in the foot, I even wrote her an apology, by hand!”
“Not enough.” Phoenix leaned his elbows on his knees, both legs shaking with irritation. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
His head shook. “Can’t. Don’t want to, and it’s none of your damn business.”
“At least tell me she’s okay. You owe me that.”
Within seconds, Phoenix was on his feet, gripping my shirt with his hands as he used his body weight to slam me against the wall, still in my chair, I could only gape as his chest heaved, his eyes wild with fury. “I owe you nothing, you sorry piece of shit! You took the only thing she had! The only—” His lips trembled. “—the only thing that was keeping her close. And now? She’s going to have to go away. She already is.”
“What?” I shook my head. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Boarding school.” Phoenix released me and stepped back, exhaling a curse. “Don’t ask me again.”
“Ask you what?”
“About Mil.” He refused to look at me. “As far as you’re concerned, she doesn’t exist. You better cherish the one night you had, because it won’t ever happen again.”
“Dude.” I lifted my hands in the air. “I know!”
“No. You don’t.” Phoenix met my gaze. “Because if you did, you wouldn’t have done what you did. You would have known the cost of your actions. Because now… I have no one, but I can thank you for one thing.” His smile was tense.
“Yeah, what?” I grumbled.
“She’s free.” Pain etched in every plane of Phoenix’s face. His mouth relaxed as he nodded his head. “She’s finally free.”
“Huh?”
“Beer?” Phoenix didn’t wait for me to answer, just walked into the kitchen, leaving me confused as hell…
“Mil?” I whispered.
Somehow, in my daydreaming, she’d found a way to lean against my shoulder without being too irritated that the shoulder was attached to the person she had just snapped at. Her head was heavy, her breathing shallow. Damn, my questions could wait until we landed.
After all, we had a year of marital bliss.
That is, if we lived that long.
Damn mafia.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mil
The smell of cigarettes burned my nose. I waited as the voices quieted and then something stung my face. My vision cleared for a brief second. Though I was still seeing double, it was better than nothing.
“Wake up, baby girl.”
I blinked a few more times, relieved to see it was my dad standing in front of me, not some crazy kidnapper. Though, why was it so dark?
A few rough men stood around my father, each of them looking worse than the next. They weren’t from our family — most of them were faces I’d never seen before.