Dominic
It’s simple. I choose a motorbike because losing people on a bike is easier. You can get to places that no one else can. I don’t bother with a helmet. If you’re wasting time trying to put one on, you’re giving the enemy a chance to shoot you.
Just don’t have an accident.
I park the bike a few yards from the entrance to the house, and I walk casually toward it. I stop short just before the property line. I can hear guards talking, and I kneel, listening to what they’re saying.
“She goes to Jose in an hour. Make sure the transport is prepped,” a burly Latino man says, puffing on a cigarette.
I don’t have much time. I was initially going to do this discreetly, but I see now there isn’t time for that.
I take out a grenade, pull the pin, and roll it toward where the guards are standing.
I take cover behind a tree. The force of the grenade exploding makes the tree lean over and causes a slight ringing in my ears. I pull both of my handguns out of their holsters and walk into the yard, firing at everyone I see. I don’t care if it’s a guard, a dealer, or an innocent bystander. Everyone goes down until I find Sofia and get her out of here.
I walk toward the house. Doors open, and guards spill out in all directions. I fire at them, ducking behind a tree as they fire back. I hear them shouting, and I hear women screaming.
I also know the neighbors will call the cops because of the explosion, so I have a limited amount of time before the pigs arrive.
I peek out, assess where the guards are, and by stepping out and back behind the tree, I fire and take out four. A bullet grazes my arm, and I wince slightly. There’s no time to cry about flesh wounds now.
I kill two more guards before the sirens sound off in the distance.
The guards no longer care about me. They need to move whatever illegal stock is in the house.
I walk toward the house quickly, taking out another guard. The front door bursts open, and I raise my guns, but a group of Hispanic women dressed in overalls comes rushing out. I scan their faces, but Sofia is not among them.
Behind them, a guard surfaces, shouting when he sees me. A bullet to the head stops his train of thought very quickly, though I don’t know who else he has alerted. I walk into the house, checking around corners to make sure there aren’t guards hiding around them.
A door near the front opens, and I swing around as a beautiful woman steps out and points a gun at me. I scan her face and lower my gun.
“Sofia?”
“Who are you?” she asks, her hands trembling from holding the gun up.
“We need to get out of here. The cops are on their way.” I turn toward the front door and motion for her to go through without bothering to tell her my name.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Who are you?”
“Your father sent me,” I explain, annoyed because we need to hurry.
“I’m not with the Catalans. I’m with the New York family, the Sorvinos.”
“That means nothing to me.” She lowers her arms slightly. It looks like she’s getting tired of holding the gun. I quickly disarm her. “We haven’t got time for this bullshit. Get your ass moving.”
She looks afraid as we quickly make our way across the front yard. I take her arm and yank her in the direction of the bike. We’re barely past the property line when a car arrives, and more men get out. It doesn’t take them long to realize I have Sofia. There are shouts, and bullets start flying past us.
“Run,” I shout, running alongside her. Once we reach the corner, I pull her to the side where I’ve parked the bike. “Get on.”
“There’s no helmet,” she whines, but she climbs on behind me.
The bike roars to life in a split second. “Hold on,” I yell. As I pull off onto the road, I feel her surprisingly strong arms around my waist. I can hear the police are closer, but I also hear the revving of a car. Checking my side mirrors, I see that the black car is full of men, and it’s chasing us.
Instead of driving back toward Long Beach, I hop onto a freeway and head toward Riverhead. They expect me to go straight back to Facuno, but I’m going to get them a little lost first.
If I go straight to Long Beach, they’ll just pick her up again, and it’ll all be for nothing.
I zig-zag through traffic, and Sofia clings to me hard, winding me slightly. She’s got quite the grip. Now and then, the sound of a bullet sounds off, but I keep moving, trying to avoid the car, and soon enough, they fall back, trapped by the other vehicles on the highway. When I think they’re suitably far enough back, I take the exit and drive through the suburbs, taking multiple twists and turns so they can’t tail me.
Even though it doesn’t take long to get the car to drop back, I drive for another half an hour. Stopping now and then to look around before I take off again, making sure we’re not followed. Each time I stop, Sofia asks me where we are going, but I shush her. Doesn’t she understand that I’m working here?
I’ve never had time for princesses, not even for Arianna, my sister. They don’t grow up in the family as we do. They don’t have to face the sullied underworld that we do. They just get to spend money, cook and look after the men. They have it so much easier than we do.
Sofia is probably just like my sister. She’s got a bitchy streak in her, but the only thing backing her is her family’s name tacked onto her own.
She tries to say something when I stop, and I snap, “Just shut up, will you.”
She looks offended, but I don’t have time to deal with this bullshit. I start the bike again and circle the block twice before I take off toward East Main Street. There’s a good restaurant there that will be a decent place to stop. Sofia’s grip has lightened around me, and I almost warn her not to fall off, but it seems she knows how to handle a motorbike. I slow down, not wanting to draw the attention of a traffic officer. As we near the busy street, I give a cautionary glance around, but there’s no sign of the car. We’re safe, at least for now.
I never trust anything, so I stop a block from the restaurant and wait there in silence. I can feel Sofia getting antsy and wanting to speak.
“You can get off and stretch your legs,” I say. “We’ll walk from here.”
“Like back to Long Beach?” she says incredulously.
“No,” I say slowly as though she’s an idiot, “To where I plan the next part of our little trip together, Princess.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snarls. “If you call me anything, call me Sofia.”
“Whatever you say, Princess,” I say, smirking at her. No one outside of my family tells me what to do.
Sofia
“You just drove us in circles repeatedly,” I say. “I really don’t think that was necessary.” I wait for him to dismount the motorbike.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, we had a tail,” he says irritably, which just annoys me more. Talk about a grumpy fish. “I had to make sure we lost them so that I didn’t just kill a dozen guys for no reason.”
I swallow slightly. “Sorry about that.”
“Sorry about what?” he asks, starting to walk down the block.
I walk quickly to keep up, my small steps hardly a match for his great strides. “Sorry you had to kill people.”
He shrugs as though it isn’t a big deal. I stare at him for a moment. I can’t believe he can shrug something like that off so easily. He obviously kills often.
He stops outside a restaurant and holds the door open. “Get in.”
I walk in and look around. It’s a nice-looking place, everything is neat, and the waiters are dressed impeccably. I realize what state I am in. My hair is a mess, and my clothes are dirty. I definitely stand out.
My rescuer walks in behind me, makes a hand gesture to the hostess, and leads me toward a booth in the back. “Sit, order something to eat.”
I sit as he tells me to, and the hostess herself brings me a menu,
“Anything you want, on the house for the Sorvino family.”
He nods and pushes his menu back. “Give us two beers. I’ll have a pepperoni pizza and whatever she wants to eat.”
I look at the menu and look up. “Um, can I have the Chicken Cordon Bleu?”
She takes my menu and leaves, “Beer, really?”
“You need to relax after what you’ve been through,” he says.
“Can I at least get your name?” I ask.
His blue-gray eyes look into mine, and my heart skips a beat. “Dominic,” he says. “Dominic Sorvino.”
I hold out my hand. “I’m Sofia Lopez.”
He doesn’t shake my hand. “I know. I came to save you.”
I retract my hand, frowning. “You’re not very pleasant, are you.”
“It’s not like I’m being paid to be nice,” he says, sitting back as the hostess brings the beers and sets them down on the table.
He takes out his phone and starts scrolling on it, leaving me to my own thoughts. He’s grumpy, self-absorbed, and irritable, and I’m not. I’m like the sunshine, and he’s a hurricane. At least he isn’t bad to look at, but God, I wouldn’t be able to stand being around him for any length of time.
He starts clicking away at his phone, and I ask, “So, is there a next step in your plan?”
“Yes,” he says, but he doesn’t elaborate.
“Care to share it?”
“No,” he doesn’t even look at me. I decide to add rude to his description.
The hostess brings the food over, and the smell makes my stomach grumble. He puts his phone in his pocket and starts to eat his pizza. I start on my chicken, and the silence hangs thickly between us. I realize I don’t even want to talk to him because his moodiness irritates me, but I’m curious about the plan.
“Where are we going next? Where is my father waiting for me?” I ask.
“At Long Beach,” he says after swallowing. “They’ve probably gone to check there now and will be there for a few days waiting to see if you come back.”
I frown. “So, you’re not taking me back to my family.”
“Not yet, princess,” he says. “Not until it’s safe. Otherwise, again, this was pointless.”
He speaks down to me like I’m a petulant child, which sets off my temper. I eat in a huff, and while angrily thinking of ways I’d kill him, I accidentally choke on a piece of chicken.
“Don’t you know how to chew your food,” he says impatiently, getting up and smacking me on the back. I cough, and the piece goes down the right pipe, and I glare at him. “You didn’t have to hit so hard.”
He snorts. “That was a love tap, honey.”
“I’m not your honey, and I’m not your princess,” I snap. “So just call me Sofia.”
He rolls his eyes and continues eating, so I point a fork at him, “Tell me the plan, or I’m not budging.”
“You can stay, get caught, and get taken to Jose. Firstly, you would have to bear God knows how many children for his little army, and secondly, your father will be unable to break away from the Catalans and give the rest of your family freedom.”
“You won’t let that happen,” I point out. “Otherwise, it’s pointless.”
“My family can find other ways to fight Jose Catalan. You’re not my only option, so don’t make my life difficult because I will leave you stranded.”
I look at him, surprised. He simply mutters, “Now eat your food. We need to get going.”
When we’re done eating, I walk with him a few shops down from the restaurant to a pharmacy. He buys a first aid kit, a rather large one, and I wonder who’s injured. I then realize he might be, and I feel slightly guilty, only slightly, though, because he’s still an asshole.
We return to the motorbike, and he packs the first aid kit into one of the panniers. He then climbs back on, and I slide on behind him.
We don’t go far, and we’re only on the bike about ten minutes before we pull up outside a Holiday Inn. He parks the bike in a parking space and climbs off, opening the pannier to grab a duffel bag and the first aid kit.
I’m quiet as he checks us in and leads me to our room. Thank God there are two beds. He leaves me in the room to go shower, and I flip on the television. There’s a news report about an explosion, and I know that’s the house they were holding me at. I’m so engrossed that I don’t notice Dominic come out of the shower in only his pants. I catch his bleeding arm in my peripheral vision, and I almost get whiplash swinging my head. “Are you okay?’
“It’ll be fine. Just have to wrap it up,” he says, opening the first aid kit.
I watch him struggle for a moment before I say, “Here.” I take the bandage from him and wrap his arm gently. I think he’s about to thank me when there’s a knock at the door. In a flash, he has a gun in his hand and stands in the bathroom doorway. “Call, it’s open,” he whispers.
“It’s open,” I call.
The door opens with a bang, and two suited thugs walk in with guns. I scream when Dominic comes out of the bathroom and shoots the one in the head before hitting the other with his weapon. Then he aims and shoots him three times when he’s on the ground.
“Grab the bag,” he shouts, pulling his bloody shirt back on.
As we run out of the room, people poke their heads out of their rooms to see what’s going on. We don’t stop, though, and Dominic grabs the bag, throws it into the pannier, and climbs onto the bike.
I get back on behind him. “We should go to my father.” “If they found you here, they’ll definitely find you there.” I hold on for dear life as he speeds off.