Strapped: A Second Chance Mafia Romance (12 page)

6
^th
October 2014

I
t takes
me a while to figure out where I am when I wake up. The room is so dark and strange to me, that I can’t quite remember what happened yesterday. It’s all a blur, like a bad dream that hasn’t fully formed in my brain just yet.

But then it hits me like a punch in the face...

The meeting with Carmine.

The fight.

The running... the endless running...

Urgh God, it all feels a little too much to take this morning, and I want to forget. Everything has been so heavy recently between me and Marco, and I’m afraid that it’s going to tear us apart. I’m scared that it will cause us to forget what we mean to one another, and I would love to have one last moment of fun before that consumes us entirely. I’m more scared of losing him than dying – and I have no idea what that says about my current state of mind.

I stand up and slide into the bathroom, where I can have a moment alone to gather my thoughts. I stare at my face in the mirror for a few seconds, barely recognizing the person looking back at me. I no longer look like the Olivia that I once knew, I look strained and stressed, and more than a little freaked out. My blonde hair is straggly and limp, my blue eyes look tired and weary, my skin looks stressed and taut...

“Morning gorgeous,” Marco suddenly appears behind me, kissing the back of my neck, causing any negative thoughts to simply spin from my mind. “How are you this morning?”

How can he still think that I’m gorgeous when I look like this? Is he mad!

“Better now,” I spin around to face him, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him back. Almost instantly, as if Marco has woken up with the same idea as me, the kissing becomes more frantic and passionate. His tongue starts to explore my mouth and his hands work my body in a frenzied way that makes it too difficult for me to even
think
. Nothing else matters with him here, and I grab on to that with both hands gratefully.

My mind grows hazier as the nightdress Marco purchased for me only yesterday is torn from my body in a crazy passion like nothing I’ve ever felt before. The shredding noise as the material rips from my body sends a crazy burst of bliss racing right through me, leaving me hot and gagging for more. This is needy and desperate, but that’s because of the situation surrounding us. The fact that our lives are on the line has heightened everything, and it’s making it that much more intense. I’m feeling everything so acutely, and it’s oddly amazing.

Marco presses his body up against mine, giving me a good feel of those amazing abs and that thick throbbing erection, which has me panting headily for more. I need him, I want him, and I find myself pawing at him, needing more. I wish that I could tell him what I want, to express that vocally, but I’m too breathless to even speak. He has me too worked up to even begin to form words.

Marco pushes me up against the wall and runs his fingers all over my cotton panties, pushing me dangerously closer to the knife’s edge of desire way too quickly. It makes my body pulse and ache for him even more, and I’m desperate for him to take me right where we are. The bed suddenly feels like miles away, so I would much prefer to be ravaged right here where we are.

I allow my head to loll to one side as I part my pink lips ever so slightly. I want to draw him in for a kiss, to bring him closer to me to establish that lost connection, but instead he ignores my mouth and works his way down my body with his mouth instead. His lips find my neck, my chest, my stomach – all the while he’s sliding down my body, falling until his knees hit the floor with a bump, completely derailing me for a second.

“What are you doing?” I gasp out in surprise. I was expecting him to thrust inside of me powerfully and quickly, to give into this need right away, but instead he’s running his mouth all over my thighs, sending bolts of lust bursting down to my core.

“I want to taste you,” he whispers seductively, before yanking my underwear down and throwing them to one side. “I need to feel you with my mouth.”

“Oh my God,” I groan loudly, as his tongue finds where I’m so desperate for him. He flickers it everywhere, tracing patterns over my clit, which causes me to buckle and crumble above him. Marco grabs my leg and tosses it casually over his shoulder, giving him even deeper access to me. “Fucking hell, Marco, this feels amazing.” He’s sending my body flying onto cloud nine, and I never want to let him go.

I grab tighter onto him, digging my nails into his shoulders, as he sends intense, powerful waves of passion crashing through my body – taking me through a sexual awakening like no other. He always opens my eyes to something new, something that I haven’t experienced before, and I’m more than grateful that I get to go on this amazing journey with him.

Even after the orgasm has subsided, I want more from him. I want to feel him inside of me, claiming me, consuming me, and I need that hunger inside of me fed.

Marco stands back upright, towering over me, before picking me up as if I weigh nothing and pressing my boiling hot body up against the freezing cold wall. The contrast in sensations fires me up all over again.

“Fuck me,” I plead as Marco kisses me once more. “I need you, I need to feel you inside of me.”

Luckily he doesn’t need to ask twice because he’s just as worked up as I am, and he slams inside of me, thrusting powerfully and crazily. He rides me, and I give in to him, allowing him to consume me whole, and it feels amazing. This moment with Marco feels like a massive release of tension, which is exactly what we both need, and as he shudders and crashes against me, I feel closer to him than I ever have done before.

“I love you,” I gasp into his ear. “And I never want to let you go.”

“Me neither, baby girl, I love you too – I always have and I always will.”

“Come on,” I smile, leading him back into the bedroom. “Let’s climb back into bed and have a day of fun – I think we both deserve it after everything we’ve been through.”

I can see in Marco’s eyes that he’s keen to move on and get out of here, but I’m not ready for that yet. I want to stay here in this fleabag motel and cling on to the magic for a little while longer. It feels like we can be ourselves in between these four walls, and I’m desperate to hang onto that for a little while longer.

“Okay,” he concedes. “How the hell am I supposed to resist an offer like that?”

“You aren’t,” I exclaim, laughing loudly. Thoughts of what we can do to one another to pass the time fill my mind, and I find myself growing with excitement with every passing second.

But we never make it to the bed. We never get back under the sheets, to explore our bodies that much further, because before we can someone hammers on the door.

Bang, bang, bang.

“Who the fuck is that?” I whisper, looking at Marco with terror in my eyes. There is no chance this will be a friendly visit, because no one knows we’re here.

No one except Carmine anyway – or so it seems. Despite all of our running and hiding, he’s found us, and that is absolutely petrifying.

“Shit, we need to get the fuck out of here,” he panics, which causes me to grab something to wear and tug it over my head. If we’re going to run again I sure as hell can’t do it naked. I need to cover myself up a little bit. Especially if I’m going to get shot – I would hate for my corpse to be found fully nude – a silly thought, but a valid one nonetheless.

The door swings open and I scream loudly as a guy bursts through with a gun pointed at my head. He’s in a suit, with sunglasses covering his eyes, but that doesn’t matter because I can feel the menace rolling off of him in powerful waves.

“Stop it,” Marco warns the man carefully. “Don’t kill her, you can’t. Luke, you know that this is fucking stupid.”

“I work for Carmine, not you,” he sneers, turning the gun on Marco instead. I gasp loudly, considering running to him to grab the gun out of his hand before he can hurt the love of my life. Before my feet can even move, the guy’s head snaps backwards and blood spurts violently from him, covering more of the motel than it should.

His body slumps to the ground noisily, and I spin back to see a smoking gun in Marco’s hand.

“What do you do now?” I gasp. “Won’t the cops catch up with you now?”

Another man dead, another death I’ve witnessed – what the hell have I gotten myself into?

“I booked this room with an alias,” he replies, gathering up his belongings. “Plus there are no cameras on the ground – I checked right away. Now get your shit together, we need to get the fuck out of here before someone else comes along.”

“Right,” I nod, wondering how such a magical moment turned to shit so damn quickly. Will we ever be allowed to just
be
again? “Okay, of course.”

As I gather up everything that I now own, Marco dusts the fingerprints off of every surface, using his knowledge of the criminal world to save our asses all over again. I gulp as I watch him from the corner of my eye, wondering how many more scrapes we’re going to get into before we can live normally again.

“What do we do now?” I ask. “Do we have a plan in place? Do you know a good place for us to go? Can you think?” I know that I’m panicking, and that it isn’t helping either of us, but I’m still not used to seeing murder happening right in front of my eyes. In fact, I don't think that’s something I will ever get used to.

“I don’t know, Liv,” he holds on to my shoulders and stares deeply into my eyes, showing me how much terror is there. “All I know is that we need to leave here. Once we’re away, I’ll make some decisions then.”

“Your cousin,” I pant back, refusing to accept his explanation. “Your cousin can help us. What’s his name? Johnny? Call him, get in touch with him now. Beg him for help. He will, I’m sure of it!”

“I don't know,” he yells, growing angry with me. “Let’s just... get in the car and go. Stop asking me questions, you’re making my head spin! All I want to do is leave... right now!”

His anger shuts me up and I follow meekly behind him. I need to hold it together, to keep it all inside or I’ll end up getting us both killed. I know that he’s right, and that hurts most of all. I’ve never been in a stressful situation before to know how I would react, but I always assumed that it would be calmer than this.

Come on, Olivia,
I scold myself.
Just get out of here. You have all the time in the world to worry about where you’re going next!

6
^th
October 2014

I
t was
lucky really that I had so many shady contacts. It seemed that Olivia’s slightly snide comment was right, and that crime really did pay, because it only took one quick phone call to a dodgy mechanic that I knew to have a new car to race along in.

Okay, so trading in my amazing Dodge Viper for a shitty old banger wasn't exactly a fair trade, and it made me feel really sick inside, but it had to be done. I needed to be inconspicuous, and cruising along in that thing definitely wasn't the way to do that.

Olivia remains quiet as I take her back to the edge of New York, and she doesn’t respond to giving up that luxury for the most uncomfortable seats ever either. She stays stoic and silent, but her emotion is plastered all over her face. She’s waiting for me to come up with some answers, to save us both, and I really want that too. I want to see that look in her eyes, the one that suggests I’m the hero rather than the villain, but it’s hard.

However much I spin it around and around in my mind, I keep coming back to the same solution. It isn’t something that I’m necessarily keen to do, because I don't want to drag my family member into this nightmare, but at the same time I can’t just do nothing either.

“Okay,” I sigh, feeling myself give in. “We’ll do it.”

“What?” She replies, staring right at me with a little bit of fear behind her expression. “What do you mean? Where are we going?”

“Johnny’s,” I admit defeated. “You’re right, we can’t live on the run forever, we need to do
something
and he really is the only connection I have that will help us.”

“Can you... trust him?” She asks anxiously. I can tell that she doesn’t really want to say this aloud, but that she also needs to ask it.

“Of course, he’s family.” No matter what has happened, no matter how many years it’s been since we’ve actually acted like a family, he’ll be there for me. We’re cousins first and foremost, and blood should always come first. “We’ll be fine.”

Luckily he doesn’t live smack bang in the city of New York, so I feel like I can go to his house without fear of being caught. Although if I really think about it, we aren’t safe anywhere, so we might as well be in New York. Luke managed to find us in the fleabag motel in the middle of nowhere, so really there isn’t anywhere we can hide.

My mind flickers back to the madman expression that was plastered on his face when he broke in on me and Olivia, and it sends a shiver down my spine. We were never mad close, but we were on the same team, so it’s absolutely gutting that it had to end in such a brutal way. I always considered the boys my brothers, so to have them all turn their backs on me in such a way is heartbreaking to say the least – they were my family after I lost my grandma, and I can’t believe that I’ve lost them too.

But the worst part of it all was the expression of pure hate on his face. Luke was always the peacekeeper, the rational, calm-headed one, so Carmine must have really planted some poison in his mind to have him reacting like that.

It makes me fear for the future. Is there going to be a way out of this? Will there be a solution?

“Okay,” I tell Olivia as I slide the car outside of a very classy apartment. “This is it.” The moment makes me think back to Johnny’s words when he brought me into this, the words that have kept me going throughout it all:

“For guys like us, this is the best offer that we’re ever going to get. We won’t get a better life offer than this.”

He was clearly right on one front – neither of us would have had a quarter of the money we do if we hadn’t joined up with this – but is it really a better quality of life? Is this really the best that we could have? Materialistically, yes of course, but I can see now how much more there is to love than that.

“Let’s go inside,” I tell her, as she scurries up behind me and grips tightly onto my hand. “It’ll be fine.” I hope that my words are reassuring her, but I’m not totally convinced that they are.

I knock lightly on the door, and within a millisecond it swings open and I see my cousin’s smiley face. He’s always been taller than me, but after not seeing him for so long it’s a bit of a shock. He’s towering, like a giant, but he has his arms outstretched to me, drawing me in which fills me with a familiar comfort.

“Hey, bro, how are you?” He pulls me inside, and since I have Olivia’s hand in mine, she’s pulled along with me. “It’s been too long – what have you been up to?”

Thankfully he’s welcoming, which fills me with relief. I don't know if this means that he doesn’t know about Carmine yet, or if he just doesn’t care, but it makes me happy all the same.

“Oh, well, to be honest things haven’t been great,” I admit, deciding to get through this quickly. If he doesn’t yet know, he deserves to. I can’t drag him into anything untoward, that isn’t fair at all. This is my mess after all, not his.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard all about it,” he laughs, which I try to join in with. “You’re the talk of the town, bro – what a shitty mess.”

“I know...” I start to explain myself, but he’s already looking over my shoulders, towards the girl hunched over behind me.

“And you must be Olivia!” He extends a hand to her, which she steps to one side and accepts gladly. I feel a weird fission of anxiety as their skin connects, but I quickly try to push that to one side. Johnny is cool, he’s being awesome and he seems to want to help us. I need to focus on that rather than the fear that’s been driving me for the last few days. “It’s so nice to meet you, how do you know Marco... except for the murder witnessing of course.”

My blood runs cold at that unbearable statement, especially considering what just happened recently, but Olivia takes the high road and chooses to ignore it. She’s so much classier and well put together than any of the other women that I’ve ever been with, and I can’t help but look at her in wonderment again. How did I get so lucky? What possessed a woman as amazing as Olivia to fall for me?

“So you’re the famous cousin,” she shoots back with an iciness to her tone. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

I can instantly tell that she doesn’t feel comfortable, and that she doesn’t want to stay here, but I can’t see that we have any choice now. We’ll have to at least remain here for a little bit, just for politeness and to give me some time to work out what the fuck is going on.

“So, I guess you two must be starving hungry and thirsty?” He glances at us both in turn and we nod enthusiastically. “Okay, so why don't you go and make yourself comfortable in my front room and I’ll sort something out for you, then I can tell you what’s been going on and you can give me your side of the story.”

“Sounds good, bro, thanks.” I smile with relief. If nothing else, I need to know what’s been happening, and I could really use that information right now before we get even deeper into this. “I really do appreciate it, honestly.”

Olivia shoots me a look, but I carry on regardless. I place my hand on the small of her back and guide her towards the couch, despite her obvious resistance.

“We need to go,” she hisses as soon as we’re alone. “We need to get out of here.”

“You’re the one that suggested we come here,” I protest. “This was your plan. I wanted to stay out on the run.”

She shakes her head with her eyes closed, completely dismissing my statement. “Look, it’s weird that Johnny knows so much about us and what’s been happening, it doesn’t sit right with me at all.”

“That’s just how it is,” I bluff. “We always know everything – it’s the way we stay alive.”

“He’s going to betray you,” she pleads with me. “Let’s just go now.”

“We can’t,” I insist. “Standing my ground. I
need
to hear what he has to say. He has information that can save us, that can protect us in the long run. We can’t keep doing this blind anymore.”

“Then go and ask him now,” she tells me sharply. “I don't want to stay here to eat – I’ll feel like a sitting duck, waiting for something bad to happen. I would rather just get back out on the road – you were right, not me. We need to run to live.”

“Okay, just... wait here, alright?”

I tiptoe quietly through Johnny’s hallway, trying to plan exactly what I’m going say to my cousin without outright accusing him of betraying us. I know that Olivia is convinced, but I’m not. I still think that blood is thicker than water, and that our family bond will win out in the end.

That is, until I hear a whispered conversation.

“... yep... yeah, he’s here...”

Johnny’s voice makes me cold, but I keep on listening hoping that I’ll hear something to disprove my theory.

“... okay... okay... I’ll keep him here for as long as I can... yep, the girl is with him too... okay... bye Carmine.”

Carmine.

Olivia is right, Johnny cannot be trusted and he’s just proven that.

Shit!

I turn to run back to Olivia, to get her out of there, when suddenly Johnny bumps into my back with his face still looking at his phone.

“Oh... sorry, bro,” he stammers awkwardly. “I didn’t see you there.”

I snatch the phone out of his hand, with a thunderous expression on my face. I can see him clearly now – he’s cowardly, fearful, and he’s turned his back on me because of that. I scroll through his last calls while he starts to tremble and shake in front of me. He might be much bigger than I am, but right now he’s a scared little puppy, freaked out about what I’m going to do to him.

And so he fucking should be.

I swing my fist out and it connects with his jaw in a sickening thump, before I’ve even looked up.

“What are you...?” He cries out in agony, but I interrupt right away.

“Don't you fucking speak to me, you dickhead,” I curse, shoving him backwards and throwing his phone onto the floor so hard that it smashes. “How the fuck could you do that to me? After everything we’ve been through?”

“Because...” he starts, but then his back hits the wall, giving me the leverage I need to punch him harder and harder until his body starts to slump to the ground in a blood-splattered mess. Even the fact that he isn’t fighting back, and he’s just allowing me to kick the shit out of him, isn’t enough to derail me. He needs punishment, and if he can see that, then good. “I... I...” every time he tries to get another word out, I hit him again until he simply gives up and allows his eyes to slide shut.

“Come on,” I call to Olivia. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

She doesn’t follow me into the hallway, probably having guessed what’s just gone down, she meets me by the front room instead. Just before I go to join her, I do one last thing. I pick up Johnny’s phone and I anonymously call him an ambulance. He might be a dick, but I’m not and I certainly don't want him to die.