“I also wanted to make sure you realize I know exactly where you are and what you’re doing—at all times.”

If Trent wasn’t full of shit, and I doubted he was, he would know if I were to take her out of the danger zone.  If that were the case, and he decided to go after her once I’d returned, I would have no way of keeping her safe.  I had to make sure she was safe.

Where was the safest place for her?

With me.

It was also probably the most dangerous, but a lot of that was because she had no idea what she was dealing with, and I wasn’t going to tell her.  Telling her could result in anything, up to and including her taking off.  If she took off, he might decide to follow her.  If she was on her own, I still wouldn’t be able to protect her.

Another option was to forget about the whole deal with the feds, take Lia, and leave town.  I would probably be able to manage getting us both away without being followed, though it would take some effort.  At least then I wasn’t going to have to balance keeping Rinaldo off my trail and Greco convinced I was on his side.

It was the best option.

“We’re going to leave,” I said definitively.

* * *

Lia was pissed.

I couldn’t really blame her.  I’d told her basically nothing but demanded she put a few days’ worth of clothes in a bag and just follow me.  I didn’t want Odin left on his own—the woman who usually took care of him when I was out of town worked for Moretti, and I didn’t want to risk anything coming out while we were gone, so I tossed him on top of a towel in the back of the car and took him to a dog-boarding kennel.  I’d come back for him later.

I drove my Audi up to the north side of the city and parked it outside a nightclub.  Grabbing our bags out of the back of the car, I led a protesting Lia through the front entrance of the club, through the throbbing techno music, and then out the back door.  Once out back, we made our way down a graffiti-covered alley between the buildings, across the street, and over to a small conference center where I called a cab to take us back south.

I gave the driver an address, and he turned around to look at me.

“That ain’t no place to be,” he said.

“Look,” I replied, “I don’t have a shitload of patience right now, so here’s how this shit works.  You drive me where I say, and I give you cash.  Capisce?”

He narrowed his eyes, said he was charging me double, and then made me pay up front before he’d drive us there.  Under other circumstances, I would have put a gun to his head and told him to be happy if he got paid at all, but I had Lia with me, and I was doing my best not to scare her.

A pissed-off Lia was definitely preferable to a scared one.  As it was, she had completely stopped speaking to me about halfway to where I ditched the car, and she continued to sit next to me, looking out the window with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips smashed tightly together.

I took a long breath and leaned back in the seat to relax a few minutes.  I was rushing all of this, and I knew I hadn’t thought through everything.  Not telling Lia why we were leaving was part of the problem as she was fighting me the whole way, but there was a lot more to it.

I knew deep down that Trent wasn’t going to just let this shit go.  He wouldn’t just come after me; it would end up being a countrywide manhunt.  Any chance of having the charges against me dropped would disappear completely, and he’d probably come up with a few others to tack on.  At best, we would have to live on the run, leave the country, and change our names.

No doubt about it—I wasn’t thinking straight.

Why?

Because Lia was with me, and I didn’t want her scared or hurt.

Rinaldo had been right—having a chick in your life complicated everything.  It wasn’t worth it—not for me or for her.  What I really needed to do was just take her to the airport so I could buy her a plane ticket back to her mom’s.

The very thought brought the taste of bile to the back of my throat.  If I wasn’t doing my very best thinking now, how much more rattled would I be if I hadn’t slept last night?

Fuck the sleep.

Waking up with her—that had been worth the world to me.

My eyes squeezed shut, and I shook my head sharply.  I couldn’t cope with all this shit.  I couldn’t even have named all the conflicting thoughts and emotions going on inside my head, let alone make sense of them.  It was too complicated.  It was too dangerous for both of us.  I should definitely tell the cab driver to head west and buy her a plane ticket.

I didn’t say a word but stared out the opposite window and hoped I’d be able to come up with some way of explaining all of this that didn’t end up with her leaving me.

Chicago has some really beautiful areas to live in.  Auburn Gresham isn’t one of them.  Though it was one of the roughest places in a city littered with crime, it was exactly what I needed for the moment. Not only would it be difficult for the Feds to follow me around the area, but they'd also have to watch their own backs at the same time.

The cab driver took his own sweet time getting there, and by the time we’d arrived near the address I’d given him, the sky was darkening.  He dumped us on the corner, refusing to actually go up the block at night.  I was tired of listening to the guy bitch, so I just got out where we were, Lia still in tow.

“Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Lia asked as the cab sped away.

“Not out here on the street,” I replied.

We only had about two blocks to walk, but that’s all it took.

Two dudes with hooded sweatshirts pulled down their foreheads and pants shagged down to show their striped boxers came at us from across the street.  I felt Lia tense beside me, but I was nothing but annoyed.

“I got me a damn fine idea,” the guy on the left said as he walked up and blocked our path.  I reached out and pushed Lia slightly behind my back.  “You give me all yo shit, and maybe my frien’ don’t cut yo bitch.”

He reached down to yank up his pants and glanced over at his younger buddy.  The other guy brandished a switchblade, which might have been scary to someone who hadn’t been around much larger knives. The knife-wielder moved his head back and forth like he was listening to some kind of phantom dance music.  Other days I might have laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood for stupid gang shit.  Moretti and Greco’s outfits had put them in their place plenty of times, and I was happy to do it again.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and centered myself before speaking.

“I’ve got a better idea,” I told him.  “You turn around and go back to the slimy cunt you crawled out of, and I won’t blow your dick off and shove it into the sewer.  I’m pretty sure this particular sewer flows right up to the river.   You know the river, right?  It’s where all of us who own your sorry asses work.”

The older guy’s eyes opened wide, but the younger one just looked pissed.

“I think fuckin’ you up would be a lesson you don’t soon forgit!” he sneered.

“Evan,” Lia whispered as her hand gripped my bicep, “just give them what they want.  It’s okay.”

“Fuck that,” I spat.  “I’ll give them what they fucking deserve.”

“You need to listen to yo bitch,” the kid with the knife started to say as the other one tried to stop him.

It was too late, though.  I’d already had enough.

I pulled my Beretta out, pointed it between the younger kid’s eyes, and flicked the safety off.  I could hear Lia’s quiet gasp and watched the younger guy as he started to take a step back.  He seemed confused for a moment, and I thought he might actually be stupid enough to take a stab at me.

“Go ahead, you piece of shit,” I said calmly.  My eyes stayed locked with his.  “Take a swing.  I’ll make sure my bullet doesn’t hit you fatally so you can watch me castrate you with that piece of shit blade.  Dick to throat, I’ll show you what a cut really looks like, and then I’ll slam my fist through your ribcage and fuck the hole I made.  What do you think of that?”

There was a long moment of silence as the kid’s eyes got bigger and bigger.  He didn’t seem able to move or speak.

“We cool,” the older one finally said as he cleared his throat and took a step back.  He smacked his friend on the arm with the back of his hand.  “Come on and let these nice folks git on wid der business.”

They backed up slowly until they were a good twenty feet away, then turned around and quickly made their way back across the street toward some nasty-looking liquor store.  I took a calming breath and turned to face an ashen Lia.

“Come on,” I said quietly.  “Let’s get inside before any other trash wanders up, okay?”

She could only nod dumbly.

“You fuckin’ mo-ron,” the older guy was saying as the pair reached the other side of the street, “don’t you know who dat is?”

I grabbed Lia by the arm and headed for the motel entrance before the gang-bangers started yelling out parts of my resume for everyone to hear.  She’d already seen and heard enough from my own mouth.  It wasn’t something I wanted her to see, but I wasn’t about to risk her getting hurt.  Demonstrating exactly who I was ensured her safety.

They knew better than to mess with the mafia.  We’d put them in their place before, and we’d do it again.  Even though I was in their territory, they still knew power when they saw it.

Lia didn’t say a word until after we’d checked into the motel, found the right door, and hauled our bags inside.

“Are you going to explain that to me?” Lia asked quietly as she sat down on the end of the bed.