“No.” I kissed his cheek. “Not one bit.”
We stayed linked together for so long, and in such peaceful quiet, that I dozed. When I woke up, we were in the thick of night, hours until the first signs of dawn. Brando muttered something in his sleep—was he sleeping?
I leaned in closer to take a peek. His eyes sprang open, and I almost jumped out of my skin.
He grinned at me. “Can’t sleep, Ballerina Girl?”
“I was.” I sighed. “But something’s nagging at me. I don’t feel right.”
He sat up on his elbow, blinking at me for a second. “Is it about having—”
“No,” I shook my head. “This is something else.”
For no reason besides he was too gorgeous to ignore, I threw myself at him, knocking him into the bed. One minute we were tousling, starting to make love, and the next, a bottle came crashing through our window.
Jet came up on all fours, like cats do in cartoons, all of her hair standing on end. Brando sent me to the floor at the same time, meeting me a second later. Searching in the first drawer of the bedside table on his side, he withdrew a gun.
“Hold this,” he said, handing it to me.
He crept on the floor, looking for whatever had been thrown through the window. Voices were shouting in the house, Italian moving in every direction. A stampede of feet moved above and below.
I heard the cracking of more glass downstairs, and then what sounded like a gun with a silencer went off twice.
“What?” I gasped.
“Stay there!” Brando pointed at me. Somehow a Molotov cocktail had appeared in his free hand.
Was that what had been thrown inside? It hadn’t gone off. There wasn’t even flames coming from the fabric hanging out of the bottle.
Before he rushed off, he grabbed a pair of sweatpants that had been hung over his suitcase and slid them on. I grabbed for our sheet and used it to cover myself.
Brando’s voice mingled with the others, and I crept to the edge of the bed to peek outside. A car was on fire in the middle of the street, flames leaping into the air, making the snow around it sizzle and melt into glistening puddles. As gory as the scene was, there was something hypnotizing about it, almost beautiful. Opposites attract; ice and fire.
A car zoomed past, another one right behind it.
Maggie Beautiful and Aberto came crawling into our room, coming to rest beside me on the floor.
“What’s going on?” she hissed out, her hair a nimbus of auburn, and, despite the madness, a sleepy look on her face.
“Are we under siege?” Aberto asked, running a hand over his salt and pepper beard. He wore a two-piece striped pajama set, the little hair he had tight and neat around his head. He had managed to grab his gold-rimmed spectacles in their scuffle to get over here.
Good thing too, in case we needed an extra man to shoot.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I explained to them exactly what had happened, and the three of us sat in silence as the entire house seemed to be caught in chaos.
After five minutes or so had gone by, anger started to pulsate beneath the surface. “I don’t get it!” I almost screamed. “There are children and pets that live here! I mean,whowould do this?”
I couldn’t be sure, but I think Maggie Beautiful and Aberto were looking at me with pity. Both of them shrugged but added nothing else.
“Tell me,” Brando said, appearing in the doorway.
I repeated my tirade for him, and he nodded, agreeing with me. “Yeah, baby. Who indeed?” He ran a hand through his wild hair. “Neither cocktails ignited. I don’t think they were supposed to. Scare tactic. But the car burning in the middle of the road was set by the other car, which only had one driver—that cocktail ignited inside the car. Whoever it was didn’t want to leave witnesses.”
“There arepeoplein that car?”
“Were,” Brando said, coming to sit down next to me. “Guido.” He lifted his hands and let them fall. “He’s gone.”
“Gone where?” Aberto asked.
