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She started tugging the dress off, but the remembered voice froze her.
“I like the dress, but I bet you look even hotter naked,” Cesare had murmured in her ear. It had made her shiver with desire. Then he’d kissed her, and it hadn’t been long at all before the dress had been discarded on the floor.
Hands gripped her own, trying to pull them away from her skirt. “Careful, Vespa,” Antonio said, and she blinked up at him. “Your piece is showing.”
She had a gun strapped to her thigh. One she could use to shoot anyone who hurt her. She’d kill them. Just as she had before.
Somehow, the thought wasn’t helping. She dropped the hem of her dress, her hands filling with her hair, twisting it up and behind her head, but she had nothing to secure it with. “I can’t look like this.” She blinked down at the dress, which was making her skin crawl. Her shoulders tried to hunch even while her hand held her hair. “I can’t wear this. I can’t look like this anymore.” She was going to start shouting at any moment.
Antonio stared at her, drawing the moment out. The crawling along her skin dug in like it had claws.
Then he grabbed her hand, the one not holding her hair, and tugged her forward.
Her feet nearly tripped following after him, but the fuzziness in her head twisted, the confusion of it combining with the panic and sealing her mouth shut. That was good. She couldn’t shout with what felt like paste coating her mouth.
He took her in the opposite direction of the hotel. About a block down, he pulled her inside a twenty-four hour convenience store. He seemed to know exactly which aisles to go to, not faltering at all as he grabbed a few things on the way to the bathroom in the back.
To her surprise, he pushed straight inside the women’s restroom. He finally let her go, piling the things he’d grabbed into her hands for her to clutch. Then he checked all the stalls, making sure they were empty before he turned his back and strode out without saying a word.
The skirt of the dress seemed to burn where it brushed her legs. Vespa dragged it the fuck off. The Velcro of the gun holster was loud in the room as she removed it from her thigh, and she kept the gun close as she changed. The sweats Antonio had grabbed were gray, but the T-shirt was her favorite shade of black. She’d had to drop her hair to change clothes, but the plain, black pack of hairbands flopped to the ground from the shaken-out shirt. Once she was dressed, she pulled her hair back in a sloppy bun. The hair tie held it nice and tight.
She hadn’t overdone the makeup, and it scrubbed off quickly. She stared at herself in the mirror as her face dripped. Her eyes looked bloodshot, like she’d been crying, and her face was pale.
The shitty bathroom didn’t have any paper towels. She used her new shirt instead, not caring about the dampness as it fell back in place and she reached again for her gun.
She should strap it back to her ankle. The sweatpants would hide it near her boots well enough.
But when she crouched, she caught sight of the discarded dress. It lay in a messy pile, so like the last dress she’d stripped off and tossed aside, along with her underwear, which one of Montrell’s father’s men had later rubbed on his face as he described raping her while the others held her down and spread her legs. Even Cesare had held her down. Or maybe especially Cesare.
She hadn’t been able to move her arms or legs as panic had filled her. She had only been able to turn her head. Cesare’s throat was closest when he leaned in to whisper in her ear, but this time his whispers made her shake in revulsion.
Not long before, she had kissed and sucked on that neck. When she sank her teeth into it, she attempted to tear it out.
The rest of the fight had been a blur. She’d turned feral, tearing out more throats like the animal they had made her become.
She clutched the gun tighter as her ass hit the floor and she leaned her back against the wall.
At least the nausea hadn’t returned. Drinking had been a mistake. It had been a long time since she had gotten drunk, given that Montrell hated alcohol so much. It always turned him adorably boyish.
It turned her into an emotional mess apparently. Something about the fog made the emotions crowd too close to push back down. Panic and fury and frustration and hurt and guilt and patheticness all curled up inside her. At least she wasn’t crying.
It was all she could do just to breathe and deal with it. Emotions couldn’t be reasoned with, so she’d sit there until they could be pushed away again.
The door clicked open. She must have been taking too long, and Antonio was a worrier. She’d noticed that in his interactions with Giovanni Di Salvo.
She still clutched her gun in her hands, but it was in the holster, not pointed at him.
Antonio’s eyes saw way too much.
He didn’t say anything. He simply crossed the room and crouched down beside her, not too close, not where they would touch. Then Antonio Di Salvo sat his ass down on the dirty floor of a convenience store women’s restroom, fancy suit and all.
It made her feel even worse. She buried her face in her arms, letting him worry about staring at the door. Eventually, she attached the holster to her ankle and stared across at that same door.
“Fucking Cesare,” she muttered, then winced, expecting Antonio to pounce on the information.
Silence stretched between them.
“Not going to ask?” she asked, her voice cracking at the end of the question.
