“Do you, though?” I frown, and run my thumb over her silken cheek. Not for the first time, I wonder if she is too soft for this life. “Every day brings more bloodshed to these streets, Alexis. The only way to put the Cartel down is with brutal force.”
“But once the Cartel is gone, it won’t have to be that way,” she says. “Promise me that once this war is over, you won’t start another one.”
I stare at her for a long while. The air between us feels thick, as though it’s pushing us apart.
“I can’t promise that,” I say finally. “This will always be a bloody business, Alexis. Violence is what drives this machine, and I couldn’t change that even if I wanted to.”
She sits up, biting her lip. I want to pull her back, stop her from creating a distance between us, but if she wants to be a part of this, she needs to come to me fully and willingly. I can’t make her accept the brutal man I am. She has to make that decision on her own.
Minutes pass. Neither of us says anything. Alexis stares out the window, her features drawn in concentration, and I try to do anything other than watch her. I check my phone. I look out the window on my side of the car. I pick pieces of lint from my suit.
Finally, just when the silence threatens to smother me, Alexis looks over and sighs. “I think part of what scares me most about being with you and being a part of this, is how seductive the darkness is. I’m worried that the more violence I consume, the more I will become numb to it. And then I’ll lose the very sensitivity that makes me a good person. I’ll lose my sense of right and wrong.”
“That won’t happen.” I shake my head and reach out to cup her cheek. “You will become more numb to it, but that doesn’t mean you’ll lose your sense of right and wrong. You will be grateful for that numbness because there are always going to be bad men in this city who need us to deal with them. Murderers. Rapists. Enemies. We operate outside of the law, and that means that we need to dole out our own justice. If that’s going to be a problem for you, I need to know now.”
Alexis covers my hand with her own. “Bad men,” she repeats. “Not innocents, Gabriel. Never innocents. Can you promise that?”
I squeeze her hand. “Killing innocents is never good for business,” I reply. “Though I think you will find we come across few who could be considered innocent in our business.”
“Fine,” she says.
For the first time, I get a clear image of her as my mob queen—beautiful and terrible. I glance at the closed partition. David won’t open it unless there’s an emergency. We’re about halfway back to the mansion, which means I have at least twenty minutes to do whatever the fuck I want to Alexis before we get there.
I lean in and kiss Alexis hard. She gasps in surprise but soon begins to kiss me back. My heart clatters against my ribs. My cock throbs. I hold her face in my hands and plunder her mouth with my tongue, eager in my need to possess her.
A robotic whirr alerts me to the partition opening in front of us. I pull away just as David’s eyes become visible in the rear-view mirror.
“Sir,” he says. “I have John on the phone. He says we are being tailed.”
John and a couple other guards are following behind us as a security detail.
I swear under my breath. The Cartel’s timing is impeccable, as always.
“How many cars?” I ask.
“Just the one.”
“Take evasive action,” I instruct, though I reach for the gun stowed away in a compartment behind the champagne glasses, just in case.
If Alexis weren’t here, I would probably take my chances in a firefight, see if I could capture any of them for questioning. It will be hard to slip away in a limousine, and there are more of us, plus my security detail is armed with a full arsenal.
But I can’t risk anything happening to Alexis or our unborn child. So for now, we need to get away.
“Hold on,” David warns.
I grab onto Alexis just as he slams his foot on the brake, and the limo screeches around in a hairpin turn. He takes off in the other direction, and we pass a car that quickly maneuvers to follow us.
“Are you okay?” I ask Alexis.
“Just dandy, but I’ll feel better with a gun,” she replies. “You got another one stashed in here somewhere?”
Her devil-may-care attitude surprises me, but I quickly search out another gun and hand it to her. “Don’t use it unless completely necessary,” I warn, since I haven’t yet had time to train her.
She cocks the gun, bracing against the door as David takes another hard turn. “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
“It’s not often I hand a child a gun,” I remark blithely.
Her eyes meet mine, and all the softness is gone. Her gaze is ice and steel. “You know what I mean.”
The tires squeal, and we turn again. Alexis and I both peer out the windows, trying to locate our enemy.
David swears. “We’re coming into traffic,” he says. “I can cut down an alley, but I won’t be able to make it all the way through.”
Alexis looks at me. “That’s okay, though, right? They won’t try to do anything around other people?”
“They will,” I say grimly. “And when they do, we can’t be seen shooting back. It’s too public.” I call up to David, “Go down the alley.” I turn to Alexis, deadly serious. “You need to stay in the car. You’re pregnant.”
“I’m a pair of hands,” she argues. “You need all the help you can get.”
“I would rather die than see something happen to you,” I reply. “Stay put, or I will tan your ass.”
She frowns but nods. “I’m keeping the gun though.”
“Of course. And if anyone gets in this car who isn’t me, shoot them in the fucking face.”
David turns down the alley, and I bolt out of the car, already shooting as the car that was tailing us plugs the entrance of the alley, and men start to pile out, screaming orders to each other.
“Get him alive!”
“Find the bitch!”
I count five in total. Five fucking idiots. I shoot one in the head before he even makes it a step toward me. I get another in the leg as my security detail pulls up behind them and starts picking them off.
They’re a bunch of amateurs, and we make short work of them. I am so angry that they had the fucking audacity to hound me down like this, and that in doing so they have put Alexis and our child in danger, that I forget all about taking a prisoner. My men and I execute them all, and then my men pile their bodies back into the car they came from and reverse it out of the alley to let us pass.
I get back into the limo. Alexis looks up calmly from her phone.
“Is that it?” she asks.
David starts to pull back out onto the street, passing a brick wall sprayed with blood.
“Yeah,” I say, stowing the gun away and plucking hers from the seat of the car next to her to do the same. “It wasn’t a well-organized attack. Are you okay?”
Alex smiles faintly. “Fine. I just want to get home and make sure Harry’s okay. You don’t think this attack was a diversion, do you?”
The thought hadn’t entered my mind until now, and suddenly my heart lurches forward. Fuck. What if it was a diversion? Though surely even the Cartel wouldn’t send their men on a suicide mission just to pull the wool over our eyes? It’s more likely this was just a messy attack, but I tell David to step on it just in case.