“Stay here,” Aiden commanded. His fingers tensed around the grip of his weapon. “Don’t get out of this fucking car for any reason, you hear me?”
I couldn’t answer. I still couldn’t breathe, much less speak. I’d never so much as seen a gun in real life unless it was holstered on a police officer’s belt, let alone been so close to one. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the gleaming black metal.
Aiden opened the driver’s side door and started to get out, the gun clasped tightly in his hand.
“Aiden?” I managed to croak as I tore my eyes away from his hand and back to his face.
He paused, halfway out the door.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he said again.
“What are you doing with a gun?” I whispered. I felt like my body was trying to shut down, and I wondered what going into shock felt like. For a second, the phone call from my mother informing me of Dad’s heart attack filled my head. At this moment, the feeling of all my blood leaving my veins was similar to how I had felt when she had told me he was gone.
I focused on Aiden again and couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
Everything my subconscious had been warning me about Aiden Hunter began to fill my head. All this time, I’d been telling myself not to judge him. All this time, I’d been convincing myself that everything was fine, that he was fine. Since the moment I had met him, I’d been trying to convince myself that the only danger was in my head.
But it wasn’t.
The Aiden in front of me wasn’t the man I had known the past week. His face was barely recognizable. His eyes were dark and full of hatred. His jaw was locked, his teeth clenched. He had gripped his hands into fists, one of which held a deadly weapon. This man was not the one who cooked breakfast for me. This was a man consumed with raw fury.
Echoed words from Lance’s girlfriend flowed through my head: “I have never seen him mad, personally, but I hear it’s not pretty.”
No, it was not pretty. It was not pretty at all.
“Aiden.” It seemed to be the only word I could utter.
“Stay here,” Aiden commanded once again, and he slammed the door.
I looked out through the windshield, and I tried to make sense of the scene in front of me. Mo was outside, standing on the sidewalk near the strip mall. Aiden walked up to him, spoke to him quickly, and Mo glanced in my direction before tapping his ear and speaking into a Bluetooth device.
I sat there, frozen, as Aiden marched away from Mo and up to one of the doors of the strip mall, gun still plainly visible, and disappeared inside. Over the door was a sign for a Cuban restaurant, promising the best pulled-pork sandwiches in Dade County.
Mo yelled something, but I couldn’t hear his words through the windows of the jeep. He had his hand on his hip, resting on another gun. He took off after Aiden just as I heard a noise to my right, and the passenger side door of the jeep opened.
I screamed and tried to push away the hands that came at me. The seatbelt was still locked from the sudden stop, and I could barely move. I screamed again, but then I recognized Lo’s voice as he told me to relax—everything was all right.
“It is not all right!” I screamed back at him. “Aiden has a gun, Lo! He’s got a gun!”
“I know, babe,” Lo said calmly as he reached over to unlatch the belt and bodily remove me from the vehicle despite my struggles. “Ju
st come with me. I gotta get you out of the way.”
“Get off of me!” I cried. I swung my arm and smacked his meaty shoulder with the purse still attached to my wrist. I wasn’t even sure why I was struggling, only that I felt like I should be in the jeep, and I wanted to stay there. It was familiar. It was safe.
It had a gun in it the whole time.
“Don’t argue with me, Chloe!” Lo tightened his grip on me. “Not about this!”
I shuddered. My eyes burned, but tears wouldn’t come. I couldn’t get a good enough grasp on the situation to understand what I was feeling. I only knew I didn’t want to leave where I was. Aiden told me to stay in the car. He said not to leave—not for any reason.
Was I really still listening to his instructions?
I heard gunshots followed by screams. Two young men barreled their way out of the restaurant, grasping at each other and yelling in Spanish as they ran across the parking lot and into the street.
“What’s happening?” I yelled at Lo.
“I am getting you out of here!” he yelled back. He grabbed me and pinned my arms to my sides before lifting me up and off my feet. I kicked uselessly as he dragged me away from the jeep and into the back of a dark Chrysler.