Page 9 of A Game So Reckless

She’s not screaming, though. Why isn’t she screaming?

She’s half-hunched, one hand in a fist banging against her belly, the other clawing at her throat. Dark hair hangs in front of her face, but I see the food on the plate nearby and I know what’s happening.

She’s choking on something.

I move closer to be sure. I don’t hear the sound of breathing.

Well. If that isn’t damn good luck, I don’t know what is. She’ll die choking on something she swallowed all by herself, not from anything I did. Couldn’t have wrapped this up any neater if I’d fucking tried.

I start walking again, passing her. I expect she’s about to collapse.

But she doesn’t.

She seizes on my arm, and in that little manicured hand is the strength of fucking God, dragging me to a halt. Dark red nails dig deep into my flesh, breaking the skin.

Some fucking nerve, this one. But that’s what imminent death tends to do to a person. Turns them into a puddle of piss. Or makes them ballsy.

And you’d have to be ballsy to grab my fucking arm that fucking way in this fucking city. Grabbing it like it belongs to her.

“Let go.” I grasp her wrist, ready to wrench her hand away.

That’s when I see her face.

This isn’t some expensive escort or a tipsy, nameless girl from the party downstairs.

It’s Valentina fucking Titone.

Daughter ofCosa Nostraroyalty Vincenzo Titone. Cousin to Elio Titone, a man I’d happily stuff dick-first into a barrel of acid if I ever got the goddamned chance.

I’ve never seen her up close in person like this, but there’s no mistaking her face. The distinctive heart shape of it, with the high, soft cheekbones and the delicate, pointed chin. You’d have to be a fool not to know who she is. It took me way too long to notice it myself. It’s because her long hair is usually lighter in the photos I see of her. Photos that accompany the articles and press releases about whatever bullshit charitable gala or fundraiser the Titones are putting on that month to make everyone forget that they’ve built their vast empire on the foundations of this city’s spilled blood.

Just like I have.

“This hair colour suits you,” I say. I drop her wrist and seize her chin.

It does suit her.

So do the tears streaking dark lines of makeup down her cheeks.

A Titone dying right in front of me. God really is too good.

Maybe I’ll stay a little longer than I’d planned. Just to watch the show.

She’s got to be close to losing consciousness now. But she’s a stubborn fucking fighter, like her da and her cousins, I guess. Because she only digs her claw-like nails in harder. Blood wells and rolls down my arm. Her other hand rises, then clasps the front of my shirt, pulling so hard that in any other circumstance I’d assume she was desperate to press her mouth against mine.

“What?” I ask, bending towards her. Just a little. “You want me to kiss you? You can’t possibly think that I’d save you.”

She’s the only witness to the murder I just committed. She’s a massive liability, not to mention a Titone – an integral member of a family I would love to see go completely fucking extinct. If she died, I’d go dance a merry little jig on her grave.

And then I’d piss on it.

So why the fuck am I leaning closer to her now?

I always thought her eyes would be dark brown, like her cousins’ eyes, or like my right eye, but they’re not. They’re bloodshot and swollen and ringed with ruined makeup, but the irises are scathingly clear. They’re the colour of sunlight hitting a tumbler of whiskey at the precise angle to give birth to gold fire in the glass.

Jesus. It’s like bad poetry. I should let her die just for inspiring such a shitty line.

“Here’s the thing,” I murmur, so close to her now that my breath skates across her lips. Her body convulses, but I don’t know if it’s from my proximity or the lack of oxygen. “If I save your life, then that life becomes forfeit. That life becomesmine.”

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