Page 35 of A New Days Don

“I sobered up the next day. Figured I couldda been more help to ya if I’d been.” She shrugs a bony shoulder.

She was high. Am I the only person she saw? Would she remember?

“Was there anyone else there? Anyone at all?” I beg, and she stumbles back, her eyes flashing with unease, and I know she is done speaking with me, “I’m sorry… That night is a blur. I just want answers.”

“I don’t remember anything else.” She looks over my shoulder, her body stiffening and she begins to back away. I step towards her, but she shakes her head, “I don’t have nothing to say.”

“Wait, please,” I stumble after her when I hear a low, warning growl from behind me. I whirl around, the hair in my ponytail flying into my face. I sputter on the ends as they whip at my mouth and cheek, only to see a tall, broad figure. His fists are clenched, and as he steps out of the shadows, the darkness melts off of him reluctantly.

“What are you doing?!” I snap at Massimo, but his sharp eyes don’t budge.

“What am I doing? What are you doing? I gave you explicit instructions.” He growls, voice low and warning.

“I had a lead.” I stumble back against the wall.

The cool bricks are burning my back like acid. When the world around me turns to water again, I rub my temples. Massimo seems to be scolding me, but I can’t hear a word. It’s only when I don’t respond to what must have been a question that he looks back at me, his eyes blazing with fierce concern.

“Mila,” he says my name in his rough voice that tears through the thrumming anxiety. I want to respond, but I can’t form words. I wrap my arms around my body, looking out to where the woman scrambled away from me, desperate for her to come back.

“I had a lead.”

Chapter 15

Massimo

Mila sits lifelessly in the passenger seat of my car. She keeps muttering and mumbling incoherent words that I can barely unscramble.

A lead.

She was there.

Lost.

Her electric eyes are dull, even with the flashing neon from passing buildings. It’s only when a whimper slips past her lips between her unintelligible words that my foot lets off the gas. Her face pales as she looks toward me, and I recognize the signs immediately.

Swerving onto a quiet side street, horns blaring and tires screeching, but I don’t care as I slam on the brakes, and Mila is scrambling out of the car onto the curb. I run around to her, pulling the hair that had fallen out of her ponytail back as she dry heaves. There is nothing in her stomach to expel, but her nerves don’t register that as she gags over and over again.

I kneel beside her, rubbing her back as she sniffles and gags again.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” I murmur as some bile splashes against the concrete, “I’m here. Everything is going to be okay.” And if it’s not, then I will bend fate to my will and make it so.

Cars pass by, lighting us up before the darkness swallows us again. We remain on the curb side in the fresh night air. She finishes gagging, but she doesn’t move from her hands and knees, even when colour kisses her cheeks again.

She rasps something I can barely hear while her eyes look anywhere but at me.

This time, I don’t hold back the waves of possessive aggression that slam into me. I pull her head back using the hand currently wrapped around her hair, and a little whine escapes her throat. The sound is livelier than anything she has said or made since I left her to speak with the dealer.

Fisting my hand tighter in her hair, forcing her to feel the pin pricks of pain, I growl at her, “No, you do not get to lose it. Cry. Scream. Freak out. But you do not get to fall into silent numbness.”

I have watched many people retreat into their psyche to escape the bitter taste of reality. Most of those people are ones trying to escape my torture, not that I let them. I have my ways to keep them with me. Though I can’t and will never use any of those particular techniques with Mila.

Her cerulean eyes flare with an emotion I can’t quite pinpoint, and when she fights me, trying to pull herself out of my hold, I grip her chin tightly, “Use your words, Mila.”

My command sends a shiver down her spine, one that sends my own pulse of pleasure through my veins.

“I’m sorry,” the apology is quiet, her eyes flashing earnestly.

“Don’t apologize. But what you can do is start by explaining what happened.” When her dilated pupils shrink to pinpricks, I release her. Mila shakes her head, my jaw clenching in frustration.