Page 51 of Cruelest Contract
No fucking filters on any of them.
Cecilia doesn’t appear to be listening to the backseat chatter. This trip was her idea and I’m unsure why. All the backgroundreports on her indicate she’s most likely to spend her evenings curled up on a sofa. Then the lights are out and the bed covers are pulled up to her chin by ten p.m.
Whatever her reason, I’m using it as an opportunity. I’m just feeling a little troubled that I’ll be forced to split my attention between her and my unruly brothers.
As the backseat erupts into another raunchy argument, I turn the volume up on a Johnny Cash song to drown them out. Cecilia turns away from the window and glances my way.
The layers of her soft hair frame her face. I swear, she gets lovelier every time I look at her. I’m already jealous over the likelihood of other men checking her out tonight and having thoughts they shouldn’t be having.
“Did you go to college, Julian?” she suddenly asks and I turn the music down so she doesn’t need to shout.
“Nope.” I never gave a second thought to college. What the fuck would I major in? Mafia Studies?
Cecilia keeps staring, waiting for me to cough up more information.
“Tye had a hockey scholarship to UCLA so he went until he was drafted into the pros,” I explain. “And Getty did a year here in Laramie at the University of Wyoming before he got booted for throwing knives in the middle of a kegger.”
“It was a demonstration of skill,” Getty objects from the backseat. “Some people are too goddamn hysterical.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Those are the same people who dislike getting stabbed in the face.”
“What about you, Fort?” Cecilia asks, turning to address my youngest brother, sandwiched between Getty and Tye in the backseat.
Fort gives her a lazy smile. “I hate school.”
“He really does,” Tye says. “He had to repeat kindergarten because he wouldn’t stop climbing out of the classroom window to go eat the dirt outside.”
“I didn’t eat the fucking dirt.” Fort punches Tye in the chest, hard enough to hear the impact.
“Watch it, kid,” Tye says, so unfazed he didn’t even flinch. “You’ll find it tougher to find a date tonight with two black eyes and no teeth.”
Cecilia never seems especially bothered when my brothers knock each other around. I have to remind myself she grew up with three brothers so sibling violence is probably no big deal to her. She faces forward as the geniuses in the back continue to argue about whether or not Fortunato ate playground dirt. (He did.)
“What about the enforcer entourage?” Cecilia asks. “Did you give them the night off?”
“It’s my call whether the security team comes along or not,” I say. “They’re not needed tonight.”
“Would your father agree? He strikes me as extremely cautious.”
She gets points for being perceptive. I don’t like to call my father paranoid, not after the way he’s suffered. His suspicion of the world was earned.
“My father trusts my judgment,” I tell her, noting that the backseat arguments have halted as my brothers listen in.
“Don’t worry about anything, sweetheart,” Tye says. “We’ll protect you.”
I freeze when there’s an exaggerated, highly recognizable sound of a pistol being cocked. I know who is responsible even before I hear Getty’s terrifyingly amused voice say, “You’re safe with us, Cecilia.”
He takes note of my glare in the rearview mirror and smirks. I’m confident the gun is pointed down and unloaded becausehe’s notthatfucking insane. And anyway Fort, seated beside him and a stickler for firearm safety, would have blown a fuse.
Cecilia rubs at her bad knee, a signal that she’s troubled. “My grandfather keeps a man on staff to test his food. He always makes the guy try the first bite in front of him before he eats. The vineyard isn’t much of a vineyard anymore and the house has enough security to qualify as a prison. It wasn’t always the case. Everything changed…that day.”
The crack in her voice gets me all knotted up inside. I wish for the impossible, to reach back into the past and undo the brutal twilight massacre that crushed Cecilia’s world.
A radio commercial for a local ambulance chasing lawyer is the only sound in the truck. Even Getty responds with respectful silence and we pass a handful of dark miles in peace.
Cecilia inhales and exhales deeply a few times. It’s clearly a calming exercise and I don’t believe she realizes we can hear her. Her left hand remains balled up on top of her knee.
My hand leaves the steering wheel and briefly rests on top of her fist. Her fingers relax. If I make a move to thread our fingers together, she’ll let me hold her hand.
