Page 47 of Relentless Oath

She shrugged, her expression forming into a smirk as if she were the cool kid and I was the nerd desperately trying to impress her.

Hmm…. at this moment, I kinda was.

The sound of a car pulling up caught me off-guard.

“Are you expecting someone?”

She was frowning now, and her eyes searched mine. She knew that there wasn’t supposed to be anyone else coming to visit us here.

I shook my head. I wiped my hands off and reached into the secret area right above the dishwasher. There was a little compartment there where I kept weapons just in case of an emergency.

I pulled a gun out, and she gasped. “Why do you have a gun in your hand?”

I could hear another car pulling up. I handed her the gun.

She stepped away, shaking her head no vehemently

“Take it.” I pressed it into her hand. “Head to the basement and don’t come out until I come get you. Stay quiet.”

“But…”

“Go, now!” I barked, pushing her in the direction of the basement. She hesitated and then disappeared in that direction.

I waited until she was gone and questioned my judgment yet again. I was fucking up, making mistakes. I had told Ivan that he wasn’t needed this evening.

Clearly, I had been wrong. Now there was no one to get Mya out of the house while I took care of business.

If people were able to actually drive onto my property here on the island, then that meant my men guarding the ferry were dead.

Fuck. This was terrible timing. That omelet would have been delicious.

I had given Mya a handgun because of its size. I kept much more powerful guns around all my houses in strategic places, always loaded just for situations such as these, but she could never have used them safely.

I was the kill-them-all-and-let God-sort-them-out type.

I planned to just start shooting, no questions asked. They shouldn’t have shown up uninvited with good intentions.

Armed, I made my way through the kitchen and hit the emergency switch I had asked the electrician to install, plunging the house and gardens around it into darkness.

My mind drifted a little as I strained my ears for sounds at the front of the house.

I broke my wrists and dislocated my ankle one summer, falling six feet down into the creek that ran next to our summer cabin. The cabin had been on the mainland, not here on the island.

I’d limped home, the pain in my ankle horrendous. My mother had taken one look at me and panicked. My father had sent Dr. Kali to come take a look at me.

I remember being afraid that the doctor would tell my father that I had cried.

Dr. Kali wasn’t the kind of Mafia doctor I had seen in the past, however. He was dressed in a sharp suit, but his voice had been reassuring. His words had lacked roughness and he had a quiet dignity about him that I had wanted to emulate.

I couldn’t believe he was an acquaintance of my father’s.

As he had put a cast on each of my wrists, I remember asking why he worked for my dad. He had asked why he wouldn’t.

“Everyone deserves compassionate care”, he had said. “Especially innocents like you and your brothers….and your mother.”

He had paused and then he had asked me if the cast was all right.

“I think it’ll be itchy.”

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