Mary’s eyes dart to mine, and then back to the windows.
“I’m going to ask you to do something that might cause a scene.”
My hand immediately moves to hover over the gun at my hip. I don’t know what she sees, but I trust her instincts indelibly. She is as quiet and broody as she is watchful—it’s what makes her so dangerous.
She opens her mouth to speak, just as I hear the first unmistakable pop.
“Get down,” she shouts and lunges off of her chair. I follow as the gunshots break glass, shattering into the restaurant and spraying over us. I immediately cover her body with mine, crawling on top of her crouched in the fetal position, and cradle her head against me as a barrage of bullets zip above us through the windows. There are so many shots, and so quickly, I know they have to be shooting Uzis at us. Those damn machine guns are illegal for a reason.
This isn’t just some drive by, it was calculated, targeting both me and Marianna.
I hold her tightly, staring at the top of her head until the gunfire stops. It feels like an eternity, but is likely only a few seconds before the restaurant quiets to the gasping and crying of patrons and staff.
I lift just enough to look at my fiancée beneath me. The hairs around her face have fallen out of her braid, and her brown eyes are wide. She’s okay, neither of us shot. Neither of us are bleeding.
She’s alive.
A strand of hair lies over her eyes and I exhale before I trail just the tips of my fingers across her forehead and tuck it behind her ear. I would never let myself touch her in this way, only a respectable hand on the small of her back, my fingers brushing her palm when I placed the ring there.
But here, when she could’ve been shot, I let myself, just once.
“Sir, are you alright?” an employee asks, crouching beside us. We both turn to him and, after a moment, nod. He looks relieved, and is talking something at me, assurances perhaps that the authorities are on their way, but I return my attention to Marianna and help her to her feet.
“How’d you know that was going to happen?” I say once the waiter has left us. Her wide eyes harden. “I’m not accusing you, I?—”
“The car drove by three times. Dark fucking windows,” she explains. She sounds out of breath, rattled even. I watch her brown eyes scan quickly around the restaurant from one damaged thing to another.
My own heart is still racing in my chest, my throat dry, but my water glass was shattered with a bullet so there’s no relief there.
“Thank you,” I tell her. She swallows and nods.
“Can we go?”
“Of course,” I place a hand on her back and usher her beside me out of the restaurant. “Let’s get out of here.”
6
MARY
Nate’s beenin hysterics all afternoon, griping on and on about the “goddamn murder attempt”that I endured this afternoon. I admit that the barrage of machine gun fire into the restaurant was a close call, but he keeps asking if I need to go to therapy for the trauma of it all.
“I lived,” I mutter, when he asks for the twelfth time if I’m okay.
“This is just par for the course, I guess,” he says with a heavy sigh. “My first date with Ness ended in a near death experience too.” He pats my forearm absently in what I think is intended to be a comforting gesture.
For once, I do not glare at him for getting too close to me because he was just worried and the mafia is still rather new to him. I’m still not sure how Vanessa convinced him to go from math teacher to part-time mafioso, but he’s not so bad. As much as I pretend to dislike him, he’s weaseled his way under my skin the same way he has the rest of the family.
I would kill for him, and expect that, if needed, he might for me as well.
Willa and Vanessa were more pissed about the situation than concerned when I got home. They understand there’s no usefretting over whatcouldhave happened when I am obviously still in one piece. After making sure I wasn’t injured, the pair of them immediately started making calls. Maxim had been doing the same since ushering me into his town car, a protective arm around my shoulders. All three of them are trying to get to the bottom of the attack—who made it, why, if they’ll try again, etc.
Boring shit.
I make no calls, because that’s not in my job description nor particular skill set, but I do go downstairs and punch things until my arms hurt. My hands have been shaking since Maxim loaded me up in his car. I balled them up in my lap then, but now, they still shake.
The punching doesn’t help, nor the twenty minutes of stretching, the food I force myself to eat, the shower I take, the deep breathing—none of the usual fixes.
Now, in my bathroom, I stare at my hands in front of me for a moment, steam from my shower still fogging the mirror.
