Blaze

“Let me go!”

Slick has dragged me out of the apartment. I expected to be thrown out. I didn’t expect the man doing the throwing to not let me go once I was out. Vicious was content to let me go once he had me out of the elevator. But Slick keeps a grip on the back of my ill-fitting maid uniform and marches me all the way to a low slung blue sedan with tinted windows, and a license place which reads: SL1CK. No prizes for guessing whose car this is.

“Seriously, let me go and I won’t come back. I promise.”

“Quit lying,” he snorts, pushing me into the front passenger seat. He shuts the door behind me, but I open it and pop out as soon as he walks around the car, and I run like hell.

He doesn’t shout out, he just chases me down. I’m pretty fast, but his long legs overtake me in a matter of seconds. His arms wrap around me and he swings me up and off my feet.

“Quit that,” he rumbles in my ear. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, but you’ll hurt yourself if you keep fighting me.”

“I’m not going to let you take me out of here,” I growl back, doing my best to bite him. I don’t know what he has in mind for me, but I doubt it is anything good. I saw Vicious’ face when he walked in and saw me there. He was pissed. I might have gone too far this time. I might have seriously fucked up .

“I gave you a chance to leave of your own free will. I was going to let you go. But you wanted to stay. You asked for attention, now you’re getting it.”

He drags me back to the car and releases me next to the door, points for me to get in. Maybe now is a good time to beg. Before he drives me out into the middle of nowhere and makes a brutal example of me.

“Okay, okay, please don’t hurt me. I’m sorry. Please don’t…”

“Shut up and get into the car,” he growls.

I get in. He shuts the door. Walks around the car.

I throw the door open and run like fucking crazy, dodging between other cars. He’s closing on me again, but this time I zip around a Maserati and use it as a block between us.

“You are making this so much harder than it needs to be,” he sighs, running his hand through his hair. “Just get in the damn car, please.”

“So you can drive me away and put a bullet in me and tell Vicious I won’t be a problem anymore? I don’t think so.”

“I’m not going to kill you. If I was going to do that, I’d have done it in the apartment. No witnesses.”

“Yeah? Then how would you have gotten the body down?”

“Rolled you up in a rug, I guess.”

His words remind me of the conversation I had yesterday. “Exactly! Thank you! Kitty doesn’t think that’s what happens, but I tell her I get real suspicious every time someone changes flooring.”

“You get real suspicious every time a fly farts, far as I can tell,” he smirks. “Come back and get in the car. I’m not going to kill you.”

“Promise?”

“I mean, I’d probably promise not to even if I was,” he says. “But I’m not, so you’ll just have to trust me.”

Trust him? The last thing I’m ever going to do is trust someone I don’t know. There are a handful of people in this world that I trust. Kitty is one of them. She’s my ride or die, and I am going to make sure she’s not being hurt. I guess that probably means sticking as close to these guys as possible. Okay. He wants me close? I’ll stay close. If he tries anything funny, he’ll soon learn I can protect myself a lot better than Kitty can.

Keeping an eye on him, I walk back to the car, get in, shut the door, and put my seatbelt on, just to show I’m not planning on going anywhere.

Slick comes around and gets behind the wheel.

I’m nervous. You’d have to be stupid not to be in this business. Men are dangerous as a rule. These men are more dangerous than most. He could still be planning to hurt me. I know whatever comes next is not going to be good.

We drive through the city, head out through Brooklyn and toward Coney Island. I haven’t been out this way in a while.

“Where are we going?”

“Luna Park.”

“We’re going to Luna Park?”

“Yep.”

“That’s a weird place to kill someone in the middle of the day.”

“It is,” he agrees.

It turns out he’s not lying. We actually go to Luna Park. I haven’t been here since my dad took me. Fifteen years ago, just after he got out of jail, and right before he went back.

The great white faced man absorbs us through the entrance. I feel myself slipping back into a more innocent, incredibly dated, much louder time.

“This is the weirdest thing,” I shout to be heard over the chaos of a gaggle of scrawny small people.

“Come on,” he says. “They have good ice cream.”

“We’re really getting ice cream?”

“Mhm.”

“Is it poisoned ice cream?”

“Nope.”

“Is it…”

“It’s just ice cream, little girl.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He looks down at me from his great height. “Why not? It seems apt.”

“Only because you’re a stupid tall giant.”

He ignores that remark as much as he resembles it. We get to the ice cream cart and it turns out he’s buying.

“What flavor do you want?”

“The only flavor there is. Chocolate.”

“Chocolate coming right up.”

He gets chocolate ice cream for me, and vanilla for himself. Seems like a waste of ice cream to me.

“So you just don’t like flavor?”

“Vanilla is a flavor.”

“Vanilla is the opposite of flavor.”

“Let’s sit down,” he says. He’s pretty good at selectively ignoring the things I say.

I can’t come up with an objection to that, so we sit down amid thousands of happy screaming people and we eat ice cream while I wonder what the hell is going on. I don’t know what they’re playing at with this whole “ice cream” angle. It’s a far cry from what Vicious did to me when we first met, and it doesn’t make sense.

“You’re being nice to me. Vicious said he’d kill me. He didn’t say anything about theme parks. Are we going to go on a ride next?”

“If you want,” he shrugs.

“Okay, what the hell is going on?” It’s hard to get aggressive over ice cream, but I do my best.

“You’re Kitty’s friend. She probably wouldn’t like it if Vicious hurt you, and she’s giving him enough trouble as it is. So I’ll babysit you. Make sure you don’t cause trouble. It’s what I do for Vicious. I make sure trouble doesn’t find him.”

So he’s only doing this because he has to. I push away the reluctant attraction I was starting to feel for him. These are Kitty’s boys. She seems to have both of them wrapped around her little finger. They might be holding her captive, sort of, but I can tell she’s having an effect on them.

“This assignment is much more pleasant than most,” he adds with a wink which makes butterflies suddenly erupt in my stomach. Okay, he’s handsome. He’s not scared to handle me, and of course I find that attractive. And he bought me ice cream, which is a win for basically any woman on the planet. He’s basically cheating at this point.

“That’s good, I guess. Ice cream is probably better than blood and guts. But it’s not going to be enough to get rid of me.”

“It’s pretty obvious we’re not getting rid of you,” he says. “What is it you want?”

“I want to see her. I want to know she’s okay. She is my girl. I’m serious about that. She doesn’t have anyone else.”

“And neither do you,” he says perceptively. “Is that why you’re hanging around?”

“No!” I deny indignantly. His brow rises just a fraction and his eyes stay locked on me. “Alright. Maybe yes.”

He nods. “Hey. I understand. It’s normal for people like us not to have close family ties. We have to choose our families. You and Kitty are obviously close. She called you first when things were going wrong. And you showed up. You were brave.”

I try not to be pleased about the compliment.

“I’m just me.”

“Mhm. I’ll make a deal with you though.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll give you my number. Next time you feel the need to drop round, text or call me first. Make sure you’re not getting caught up in something that will put you in more danger than you intend to put yourself in. Fair?”

I take a long lick of my ice cream. “Fair.”