Isla clears her throat and wrings her hands.
Fuck me and the shirt on the floor.
“I want to go home.”
“Go,” I say.
Isla stands, hands on her hips. “That’s it?”
She expects something of me. I have no idea what it is. Clearly, she wants nothing to do with an ex-felon, and she’s scared of me now, so yeah, sending her home is the right thing to do. “No?” I prompt.
“Well, no, Mr. Mafia Kingpin. That’s not how it works. You don’t just barge into my vacation cabin, wreak havoc with my head when you make me breakfast, wine me, dine me, take me out for a day, make out with me, and then send me off back to my parents.”
I lift a finger. “I’m not a Mafia kingpin. That’s Nikola.”
Isla smiles. “What are you, then?”
“The hitman.”
She laughs.
She thinks I’m joking. Ex-felon is one thing, hitman another, and nobody believes in the Mafia anymore anyway, but organized crime very much exists. We’ve just upgraded, erased the moral code that drove the old-school guys, and became savages because of it. Lines of conduct are few, and we cross them more often than not.
You’re dead if you cross someone, dead if you don’t, so I cross many to ensure I have a nice big hit list and a healthy job for the duration of my career.
She shakes her head and gets up, then grabs the suitcase she dragged down earlier in the day.
I meet her at the door and slap a hand on it. “You can’t walk home in the middle of the night.”
“But I will.”
“And roll a suitcase?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, you certainly can do that, or you could stay and not ask me questions I don’t want to answer.”
“My dad would flip out if he knew. He’d hunt you down and… It’s just a bad idea all around, Stefan.”
“Are you looking out for me?”
“For both of us. It’s best to nip it in the bud.”
Huh? Never in a million years did it cross my thick man brain that she’d look out for me. What the fuck kind of girl is this? An angel? I put a hand over hers. “Let go of the suitcase.”
She does.
I kick it to the side, take her hand, and lead her back to the couch. I pull out her phone and hand it to her. “Call your dad.”
“You had my phone the entire time,” she concludes.
“I walked into my house and found a person inside it. What would you do?”
She snorts. “I’d call my dad and have you arrested.”
I place the phone on her lap. “Call him, then. Tell him who you’re with. This way if anything happens to you, he can come after me.” I tap her knee. “I’m gonna hit the shower. If you’re still downstairs, I’ll take you home. If not, you will come upstairs, naked and ready to fuck for the duration of your stay. Up to you.”
Maybe she’ll stay. Maybe not. But if this was my sister, motherfucker better give her some choices. And maybe Isla will surprise me and actually wanna ride the ex-felon thrill train.
