Page 14 of Operation Wolf: Eli
CHAPTER 7
Olivia
“WHAT . . . WHAT THE FUCK?”I exploded. “Eli . . . you—I—what are you doing here?”
“Saving you from your father’s fuck-up,” Eli replied, his eyes on the road.
His face was deadly serious as he drove. I saw his eyes occasionally flick from side to side in the rearview mirror in a way that told me he was looking for enemies.
“The mob is pissed at your father. He owes them a shit-ton of money and is refusing to pay up.”
“How do you know they’re telling the truth?” I demanded, instantly defensive of my dad. While I never truly approved of his actions or was interested in following in his footsteps in any way, in my mind’s eye, he was an honorable family man and loving father, and I didn’t want to hear anyone speak ill of him. “Maybe they just want to take a bigger bite out of him than they have a right to, and he’s standing up to them.”
“That could be,” Eli said quietly, “but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re after him and that your father’s grandstanding has put you in grave danger.”
I was silent for a long moment as I processed that. There was no refuting Eli’s words. My dad had put me in danger by refusing to pay the mob, and I knew, regardless of his reasons, he certainly had the money. He’d made a killing off the casinos. A headache began to pound at my temples, and I rubbed them in an attempt to stop it.
Why did Dad have to get himself into these damn situations?
It was times like these when I wished Mom were still alive so I could talk to her. Mom, Angelique, had always known exactly what to say or do to comfort me. My heart still ached at the loss of my mom. It had been over two years, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.
“How do you know all of this anyway?” I finally asked. “I thought you were supposed to be in the Army, tramping away in the South American jungles or something.”Away from me. “How could you have any idea about any of this?”
Eli sighed. “I’ve been back for over a year, Olivia. I’m working for the mob.”
I gasped. “But I thought you got away so you could leave all of that behind you and start a better life. I thought that’s why you . . .”Why you left me.
I’d been willing to let Eli go because I thought it would mean a better life for him. Now that I knew he’d been planning to come back all along . . .
“It’s not that simple, Olivia,” Eli said through clenched teeth. “I didn’t intend to go back to organized crime, but . . . you know how persuasive the mob can be when they want something.”
“Oh yeah, right,” I said.
Then I screamed as Eli suddenly slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting an SUV that had come out of nowhere. I was thrown forward, my seat belt cutting into my throat with bruising force, and then catapulted into the door as the car spun out of control. My whole world was thrown into chaos as we flipped once and then twice.
My last thought before I hit my head and blacked out was that if we ever got out of this alive, I was going to fucking kill Eli.
