Within seconds, I had her outside, rushing her through the dark to get to the car I had hidden deeper on the property, covered by a tarp. They’d already set fire to the truck.
They had found the hidden car. I gave the fucking bum standing guard no time to react. I pulled out my gun before he even lowered his phone and shot him between the eyes.
“Get in,” I said, opening the driver side of the car. Rosalia hurriedly slid in and then hopped to the passenger seat, buckling up.
I didn’t put the lights on as I started for the cabin. Just as we passed it, a blooming explosion shot out from the inside—sending windows shattering and the entire place to go up in flames.
Gas had met fireplace.
Not such a stretch to describe the first time I looked at the woman sitting next to me.
Rosalia looked behind her, her eyes glowing from the reflection of the fire. “Aniello,” she barely got out. “What about the pictures? What about all of our memories?”
“Safe,” I said. “Those were copies. Never put your trust in one place, and rarely in people. There’s an old saying: ‘Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’ Take that to heart.”
“I trust you,” she said. “Only you.”
“What we have is rare,” I said.
“You’re the exception to this life,” she breathed out. “It takes bigger balls to fight the system than to go along with it.”
“Us against the world,” I said.
She nodded. “What if you didn’t get them all? The men at the cabin?”
I turned the headlights on, highlighting nothing but miles of road ahead of us. Woods passed by in a blur on either side. “They’ll wish they were dead. There’s no hiding from me.”
She stared in the rearview mirror until the fire disappeared, the smell of smoke lingering in the air, and then reached out to take my hand.
33
Rosalia
The sight of him would forever stain my memories. It looked like he had walked out of a nightmare.
He was covered in blood.
So much of it that it seemed like someone had painted him red, and the paint was so thick that it had acted like glue and made his shirt stick to his skin.
At the house in the Bronx, instead of taking a shower to remove the blood, he had me hose him off outside. It seemed like the shower would never end. Red-tainted water rushed over cement and soaked into the grass in a constant flow.
“Blood never leaves pipes,” he said, shaking off water droplets. “No matter how long, or how strong of a cleaner, it never washes clean. It makes an imprint.”
“I’m the metal and you’re the blood,” I said, watching as he looked for clothes in our closet after he’d burned the clothes he’d worn.
He stopped what he was doing, and when his eyes met mine, I took a step back. The power of his force was turned on me, and even my feet felt it.
For each step he took, I took one back, until he had me pinned against the wall. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and I trembled.
“Say it plainly, Rosalia.”
“Why?” I whispered. “There’s not a damn thing plain about you, Aniello Assanti.”
“Humor me,” he said, his voice rough.
I nodded. “You’ve marked me. Deeper than bone. What you’ve done to me, who you are to me, can never be washed clean.Sono tua.” I slowly slid my hand up his chest, spreading my palm when I came to his heart, pressing harder against his skin.
“Fucking correct. You are mine.” His hand came over mine, overpowering it, and he held it as tightly as he held me in his arms. “But I said plain. That was far from it.”
