End Game (20 page)

God, I was so stupid to want Joe. He was right. I didn’t know him.

The drive to Brooklyn is filled with strained silence. I keep looking behind us at the trunk, terrified that the man he shot will somehow jump out of the trunk, still breathing. Finally, we pull up at his brownstone, and he gets out of the car.

I contemplate making a break for it for a split second, but there’s no way I can outrun him with my injured ankle. Plus, I’m afraid to cross him while he’s in a mood like this.

While he’s in the mood to kill.

“Get out.”

He unceremoniously yanks me to my feet and guides me up the steps of his apartment. Opening the door, he pushes me inside.

It’s a dark, tiny place. All around the living room is the evidence of restlessness. Half-finished beer bottles, magazines strewn on the floor, a pile of dishes in the sink a mile high, and most disturbing—a gun sitting on the coffee table. It’s a portrait of an unstable mind, and he’s led me right in the center of it. I assume that he’s leading me to the couch, but instead he leads me to his bedroom. It’s not made. Dark sheets and dark comforter.

All my senses feel like they’re on overdrive. The cold air in his apartment is like a knife dragging on my skin. Joe pushes my collarbone and I fall backwards onto his bed. Our shoes touch. The air is thin. I breathe and breathe, but nothing goes down.

I’m scared shitless to have all these revelations right in front of me. There are picture frames on his dresser, turned away or laying flat. The man has issues. My eyes slide to his unfathomable ones, which stare at me with a mixture of suspicion and anger.

“How long have you been working with Carmine’s crew?”

I blink at him. “Working? Joe, they kidnapped me from work. You weren’t there. They brought me to a restaurant in Jersey and threatened me. They said I owed them forty grand and that I had to stop working with you if I wanted to live.”

His nostrils flare. “And you said, ‘okay?’”

My chest tightens. “What was I supposed to do? They would have
killed
me—I had to tell them what they wanted to hear.”

“Fine, but then why not fucking tell me the moment you were out of danger?”

“They said they’d be watching me, and besides…you threatened me, too. I didn’t know who to trust.”

“What about the folder of cash?”

“I was going to pay him. It was only ten grand. I couldn’t withdraw forty grand all at once. He got upset.”

Joe crosses his arms, still studying me. “And they told you they wanted you to sell the company to them?”

“Y—yes.”

He shakes his head and rips off his jacket, hurling it to the ground. Then he unties his tie and throws that away, too. “Do you realize what Jack will do once he finds out that you knew New Jersey was trying to take hold of our investment, and didn’t tell anyone?”

“I didn’t know—I didn’t think—”

“That’s fucking obvious.”

The barb stings, but I shove my hurt feelings aside. “Joe, what’s going to happen to me?”

“I don’t know,” he says roughly.

 
And I don
’
t care.

Shaking, I stand up on my feet and try to catch his gaze. “You’ve got to let me go. I have to get out of here.”

He pushes me back down. “Not a fucking chance. I’m not a hero, remember?”

My ankle twists under my weight, and excruciating pain sears up my leg. I clutch it and moan. For a moment there’s nothing but the sounds of my shaking moans in his bedroom, and then Joe bends to my feet with a sigh and gently takes my ankle in his hands. His soft fingers move over my skin like a caress as he takes off my heel. I expect him to take it and twist it, but instead he gently bends my foot and touches my swollen ankle, examining it.

“Probably sprained it,” he murmurs. “You’ll have to keep off it for a few days.”

“If I’m still alive, that is.”

He looks up at me under dark strands of his hair and swallows hard. “Marisa—”

A cold feeling fills my chest. He stood over that corpse with perfect indifference, as if blowing out someone’s brain was no big deal. “You killed that man like it was nothing.”

The hard look returns to his face. “What do you care about some wiseguy in Jersey?”

“I
don
’
t.
It was just…”
Unnerving. Scary as fuck. Take your pick.

Joe seems to understand from the way I flinch from his gaze. And yet, I am not filled with disgust. What he did shocked me, horrified me, but he was protecting me.

Will he still protect me?

The doorbell rings and the air leaves my chest so suddenly, I feel like I’m in a vacuum. I grab his hand without thinking, but he yanks it out of my grip and strides to the door. Already, I see his personality hardening, his movements more purposeful and calculated. I look around the bedroom when I hear a familiar voice outside his door. Joe opens the door and a man I recognize as one of Jack’s lackeys steps inside. Two other men join him.

“Vince.”

The older guy who sneered at me when they broke into my apartment gives Joe a quick hug and looks over his shoulder, right at me. It’s an accusatory stare. I clench the sheets on the bed.

“Where’s the body?”

“In my car.”

Vincent’s dark eyes look around the apartment rapidly as he thinks, and then he turns to the two men. “Take Joe’s car to the shop. No head and no hands, do you understand me?”

My stomach boils with fear and disgust. What’s going to happen? They’re not going to saw off his fucking head, are they?

But Joe, who didn’t flinch at killing a man, certainly has experience disposing of them as well.

I had no idea who I was dealing with this whole time.

It turns my stomach just thinking about the chunks of brain sitting in the parking lot, the way his eyes rolled up in his head before he hit the ground.

The two guys nod solemnly and Joe unclips the keys to his car, slapping them into their waiting hands. They’re gone in a flash.

Vince closes the door behind him carefully. “Who the fuck was he? What happened?”

Joe sighs and sits down at the kitchen table. I can’t stand waiting in here, hearing everything and yet not being part of their conversation.

“Someone from Jersey, who said he had a message for your wife from Carmine.”

Two juxtaposing forces fight over the older man’s face. First, there’s the pale of cold blanching his face as he sits down on the chair, shortly followed by fiery heat. He lunges for the stray beer bottle sitting on the table. His fingers tighten around it, whitened, until I’m sure it’s going to explode in his hands.

“That piece of shit—that
fucking
piece of shit—What was the message?”

“I didn’t let him talk very long. Vince, I get the feeling he was just trying to get under your skin, that’s all.”

Vince explodes, sounding like a mad bull. “WELL IT FUCKING WORKED!” He seizes the beer bottle and throws it across the room. I flinch at the sound of it shattering into a million different pieces.

“Control yourself, for fuck’s sake.”

But he can’t.

“What the fuck did you just say to me? He threatened my wife
again
. He should have been killed months ago. I don’t understand why our contacts in prison haven’t
done their fucking job!
”

“Keep it down.”

My heart feels like it’s going to burst. It’s escalating—the whole thing is. I’m hearing things I have no business hearing. I’m seconds away from lunging forward and locking the door.

“Vince, we don’t have time for this shit. They’re trying to take Worlds Casino from us. They’ve been leaning on her all this time, and probably the other shareholders to get them to sell to Lences Holdings.”

“Her?”

“
Her
.”

Joe nods his head towards me, and Vincent’s unbottled fury aims itself directly towards me. I launch at the door, slamming it shut and ramming the bolt home as he slams into the door.

God, what’s going on?

I hear Joe behind him, trying to calm him down, but he won’t have it. A vivid flash of Nathan trying to beat down my bedroom door as Jessica tried to calm him down burns into my mind.

“Just open the door!” she screamed. “It’ll be worse if you don’t!”

“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, YOU BITCH!”

“She didn’t know about your history with Carmine. Will you calm the fuck down?”

The screams ring in my ears as I search his bedroom, yanking open drawer after drawer. What am I looking for? I sweep my hands under his pillow and my fingers touch something cool and metallic. I drag it out from under the pillow. It’s heavy in my hands.

Oh, God. I don’t know if this is the right thing to do.

The wood breaks as he kicks open the door.

I point the gun at the door.

Aim.

The door slams open and a furious Vince bursts into the room. He backs up when he sees the gun pointed straight to his heart.

“G—get the fuck away from me.” My voice sounds strange. I hardly know who it belongs to.

Joe enters the room, but I only have eyes for the man who kicked open the door, who looks at me like he’d love to rip my head off. His chest pulses as he raises his hands, a sneer widening his face. It sends dizzying jolts of fear to my head.

“Drop that fucking gun, or I’ll shove it up your cunt.”

I raise the gun to his face, my hands trembling more than ever. He’s fucking evil, whoever this guy is.

“Will you fucking let me handle this?”

“Handle this?” he turns around for a moment, ignoring me, to Joe’s white face. “You fucking let this broad lead you around by your dick. You were supposed to control her. Instead, she made you into the biggest fucking jerk-off in New York. If I had known fucking her would have turned you into a
jamook
, I would have sent someone else to deal with her.”

Deal with her?

For a moment, I look at Joe’s strained face, which gives me a guilty look. “What did you expect me to do? Beat it out of her?”

“You’ve gone soft! Ever since your sister died—”

Joe grabs the lapels of Vince’s jacket and slams him into the wall, his face inches from Vincent’s. “Don’t you
ever
talk about my sister.”

“Fine,” he sneers. “All I’m saying is that she has your fucking gun, and she’s pointing it right at you.”

His hands drop from Vincent’s throat and he turns around to look at me, his expression calm. Vincent takes a large step towards me, and I swing my arm towards him.

Joe raises his hands. “Drop the gun, Marisa. You don’t want to do this.”

“Yes, she does.” Vincent’s eyes glitter as he stares at me.

“Will you shut up?”

“I’ll drop it when he leaves. Don’t!” My finger trembles over the trigger, the gun still aimed at his heart.

It frightens me to see his complete lack of fear. There’s something wrong with both of them. They’re both deranged.

“I know something you fucking don’t.”

“W—what?”

He lunges forward and I pull the trigger several times, but nothing happens. I scream as he wrestles it out of my hands and then he gives me a slap that makes tears rush to my face. I fall on the bed and cover my burning face.

“The safety was on,” he says coolly. He slams the gun into Joe’s chest, who takes it numbly. “I need to tell Jack about this shit. You watch that bitch and keep her here.”

“There’s a board meeting at the end of the week.”

Vince gives me a contemptuous look. “You’re going to send me as a proxy to handle shit while we figure out what to do with you.”

“Vince, I don’t know if the guy I did was made or not.”

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. It was always going to come to this.
Fucking
Carmine.”

It’s weird to see them talking to each other like nothing happened between them. They walk out of the bedroom and their voices fade as they say good-bye. The door slowly closes and the stifling silence descends over me. I’m still frozen on the bed. I can’t even look up with Joe reenters the room with the gun still in his hands. It makes a loud noise when he tosses it on the dresser. Then he sits down next to me.

The weight of his body depresses the bed and I sink closer to him. It's like sitting too close to a roaring fire. It’s so hot that it actually burns my skin, but it’s better than backing away from its heat and feeling the cold sting my limbs.

His head turns towards me and I feel his breath hiss over my face. “You’ve made a huge fucking mess. Aiming a gun at my underboss was fucking stupid.”

“H—he was crazy. I thought he was going to kill me.”

He lets out something that might be a laugh. “Yeah, well, he’s a bit crazy when it comes to protecting his wife.”

A part of me wonders if that overprotective streak runs inside him as well.

He stood up for me, didn’t he? Even though he had nothing to gain from it.

“Joe, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.”

The energy he displayed when Vincent was in the room seems to have deflated. “You made me look really bad in front of him.”

I feel like disappearing under his look of cold disapproval. “I didn’t mean to do that to you.”

“From now on, you’ll do what I say, when I say it.”

“But, Joe—”

I get one look of his darkened face before his palm spreads on my chest and shoves me backwards. My back hits his bed and Joe’s stomach brushes over mine as he climbs over me. I feel lightheaded as I lay under him, remembering how amazing it felt when our clothes were shed and he was thrusting over me. The look he gives me makes me want to shrink into the covers.

“I’m done being the nice guy, so shut up and listen. You fucked up under my watch. I risked my neck to save your ass, so that means you’re mine.”

My skin burns when his hand wraps around my wrist, and all I want is for him to be sweet, but the way he says ‘you’re mine’ sends a hot trail down my body from my breasts to my core. The other plays devil’s advocate on my neck. I gasp for air when he touches my chest, tracing my collarbone. The hands stroking me killed a man. He probably has killed many. How can they be so gentle with me?