Make Me: Manhattan Mafia - Book Two Read online

  I bend and put the chain against the wall, squinting against flying plaster as I push the saw up and over, then back down to the floor, pulling it across the top of the molding. Then it sputters, kicks, and dies. Out of gas.

  “Back up,” I call, then shove my shoulder into the wall. It cracks, and on the third hit, bends. I smash my body against it over and over, grunting, “Mine. Mine. Mine,” with every impact.

  The wall drops with a pop and a spray of dust.

  Sarah stands in the center of the room, sweet brown eyes wide as chocolate coins. A dozen walls could not keep me away from this woman.

  Mine.

  Neither of us move over the line separating us.

  I have to tell her to get her toothbrush and underwear before her family comes to take her away, but she’s so beautiful, there’s nowhere to run.

  “You’re ready.” I step forward, onto the fallen wall.

  “You lied to me,” she says, stepping back.

  “I told you our marriage wasn’t legal.” Forward again.

  “You don’t get a medal for that.” She points at me while taking another step back. “You knew that if I knew you were already married—”

  “You wouldn’t have obeyed me. Damn fucking right. You would have screwed your ass tight to your Colonia bullshit… your loyalty. Your upbringing. That trash fire of a wedding I saved you from.”

  “You didn’t care who I married.”

  “I didn’t!”

  What am I saying?

  Why is my face hot? Why am I shaking?

  How did it come to this?

  “That was then.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “This is now.”

  Why is she crying? God damnit, why is she crying?

  No. Comfort is too much of a distraction. I need to get her out of here before they take her away from me forever. Physically, she needs to be safe from the world. Her body is all I have control over. It’s the only safety I can guarantee. I’ll never be able to protect her heart and mind from me.

  I bend, pick her up, and throw her over my shoulder.

  Chapter 5

  SARAH

  Someone pulls Willa away, and her voice is lost behind a slamming door.

  His own wife was trying to protect me, but I’m tired of being protected.

  Dario throws me over his shoulder before I can tell him how sick to death of it I am.

  “Stop!”

  I just want this to stop. The taking. The forcing. The surprises and upheavals. But after Dario throws me over his shoulder, he doesn’t even pause before taking me down the stairs. I’m whipped around corners, blurring the windows at each landing.

  Twisting my body, I jab my elbow into the back of his head until he stops on a concrete landing and roughly puts me on my feet.

  “You want to stay here?” His shout echoes off the walls. “They’re coming for you.”

  “Who?”

  “I have no time to explain it to you.”

  “Make time.”

  “Your family. They’ll be here in under an hour, and you can either come with me or you can sit in that apartment and wait for them to come and take you back.”

  “They don’t want me back.”

  He shakes his head, palms up, perplexed. Starts to say something. Finds it inadequate or maybe untrue, stopping himself.

  “You staying with me… it makes them look weak.”

  “And if they get me back, you’ll look weak.”

  “I’ll be dead.” He grabs my arms as if I’m about to run away. “I don’t care how I look. I just want you to be safe.”

  “I’ll be safe with them. As long as you have me, you’re in danger.”

  He bows his head in a kind of overwhelmed resignation.

  “I can’t do this anymore. What if I just go back?” I ask.

  “What if you do?” He stands straight, looks up the stairs as if considering that old life on the top floor, then back at me. His anger seems to melt into exhaustion.

  “Right. What if I do?”

  “Then I’ll stay with you until your family comes.”

  “How long?” I ask.

  “Half an hour.”

  “They’ll kill you.”

  “I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  He’s not talking about owning me or using me as leverage. There’s only one other motivation for him to want to stay here when someone’s coming to kill him.

  “To protect me?”

  “No.” He presses his eyes and mouth shut for a moment, as if looking inside himself to make sure he’s speaking the truth. “To be with you. Before they find us. Before they take you back. I want that time. It’s mine. I want every second of it, and if that means I stay here with you and wait for…” The sentence falls off the end of a cliff. He takes my hand. “Fine. It’s fine. We’ve done it my way from the beginning. Now we can do it your way.”

  He starts to pull me up the stairs, but I resist.

  “You’ll stay here just to be with me, even though you think I’m staying to be rescued so I can get away from you?” I ask.

  “I don’t think you want to be rescued. I don’t even think you want to get away from me.”

  “What do you think I want?”

  He shrugs as if it’s obvious. “You want to make your own decision.”

  He’d stay here and wait for his death just to be with me.

  I squeeze his hand and lead him up the stairs. When we reach the top floor, the hallway is unnervingly quiet.

  “I need to get back into my suite,” I say.

  He takes me through his apartment and the cut-out wall. The suite was only abandoned a few minutes ago, but there’s a forlorn feeling in the air. The newly exposed interior of the fallen wall has released a stale, musty smell.

  Dario closes the blinds.

  “Give me a minute,” I say, crouching in front of what’s left of my mural to scoop up dropped pencils. “Let me get this together.” I drop the pencils in the box. “I think some got stuck in the couch cushions if you want to check.”

  He doesn’t move. At first, I think he’s staring at the hole in the wall, but he’s looking at the intact half of my mural. Hands in his pockets, as if he’s not interested in checking the crevices of the couch. Men are all the same. I rip off the cushions and throw them to the side.

  “What does it mean?” he asks.

  “I have no idea.” I grab what pencils I can see and hunt around the seams for stragglers. “Just whatever I was thinking about.” With the last rescued pencil in my grip, I toss them all into the box and shut it. “I’m going to have to carry this, I guess.”

  He takes the box and puts it aside.

  “Let me move the couch away from the plaster.” He brushes his lips along the length of my neck, and I’m rendered nonverbal. “Then I’ll fuck you on it.”

  “We have time? I thought—?”

  He silences me with a kiss I can’t refuse, and I’m immediately made of softened butter, wrapping my legs around him so I can rub myself against his erection like an animal in heat.

  “Fuck moving the furniture.” He pulls my pants down and props me against the arm of the couch, grinding against my bare, wet pussy.

  We must have time, if this is what he wants.

  “First.” He unbuckles, and I hold on to his neck. “I’m going to fuck this cunt like I own it. Then I’m going to fuck it slow, over and over.” He releases his cock, fisting the thick shaft. “I’m going to die fucking you.”

  “Do we have time?”

  He thrusts into me. “No.” He pushes again, burying himself deep. “You’re going to take my cock until you forget how it feels when I’m not inside you.”

  “But—”

  “God, you feel so good.”

  He keeps his promise to fuck me like he owns me, grinding fast and deep while he pulls me against him like a doll. My legs are gelatin, and the rest of me is a simmering pot on the stove with the flame turned up to high.

  He fucks me ha
rder and groans with satisfaction, grabbing a breast and squeezing until I whimper because the pain delays the oncoming orgasm.

  “I’m going to mark your soul,” he says against my neck with the seriousness of a wedding vow. “You’ll belong to me in darkness.”

  “Yes.” I don’t know what I’m agreeing to, but yes, yes, yes. “Make me yours.”

  “You won’t know how to come without thinking of me.”

  “God, yes.”

  “You want to come.”

  “I do. Please.”

  Still inside me, he brings me to the center of the couch, his arms wrapped tightly around me, and fucks me until all the stars fall from the sky and fill my body.

  As we come down, he kisses my face and neck, whispering sweetness I never thought I’d hear from any man.

  “I don’t want to get out from under you, but I have personal needs to attend to.”

  He laughs and gets off me. We’re both still half-dressed, wrinkled and twisted. I hop to my bathroom, strip down to nothing, clean up, and dress in something clean and comfortable.

  When I get to the living room, he’s fully dressed with his back to me, facing my silly mural. The couch is even farther from the wall.

  From behind, I slip my arms around his waist.

  “I’m all over this thing,” he says.

  “I was just drawing whatever came into my mind.” I stand next to him. He puts his arm around me. “You came into it a lot.”

  He kisses me and looks back at the wall as if he’s on a rooftop looking over the East River.

  “I’m ready,” I say, sliding away. “I’ll just take the suitcase Oria packed, then we can go.”

  “Agreed. I have better supplies at my place.”

  “You’ll have to carry the art box downstairs. It won’t fit.” I snap up the suitcase handle.

  He looks at me with his hands on his hips and his brow in a knot.

  “What?” I ask.

  “We’re staying.”

  “I thought we were going.”

  “You said you wanted to make your own decisions,” he says.

  “And you said that if I decided to stay, you’d stay with me.”

  “Right.”

  “And we both know you have no one else here, so it’s you against however many. So you have no chance. We talked about this. They’ll kill you.”

  “I thought…” He stops himself, letting out a quick laugh.

  “That I wanted you to die?”

  “Not that you wanted it.”

  “That I didn’t care? That I’d let you get yourself killed?” I put my palm against his chest. The pound of his heart is the same. Not weaker or slower for the sacrifice he thought he had to make for me. “Dario. Really?”

  He runs his fingers through his hair, looking away. He’s as tall and powerful as he ever was, but his vulnerability is unbearable.

  “We should go.” He kisses the top of my head. “We’re already behind.”

  Chapter 6

  SARAH

  The wide, rollup door next to an open chain-link storage cage is marked DANGER—LIVE ELECTRICITY. Dario inputs a code that seems to go on forever.

  “Aren’t you going to get electrocuted?” I point at the yellow sign.

  “That’s fake.” The light goes green, and he presses his finger to the pad. “This is our ride.”

  There’s a loud clack and a beep, then the door rolls up, revealing a pristine black Audi parked in a tight space, another rollup door on the opposite side—in front of it.

  “This is the ghost car.” He reaches for a briefcase on a high shelf. “Registered to a fake name in a shell corporation. Untraceable. I have it maintained and taken out once a month.”

  “It’s nice.”

  He pops the trunk and puts the briefcase, my art box, and my suitcase inside. “I’ve never even driven it.”

  Dario slaps the trunk closed, and in the echo, a word forms in the concrete cavern.

  “Sarah?” The thick clap of a door closing follows.

  I recognize the voice. The familiarity shakes my guard loose, and I turn to see one of my father’s many security men crossing the lot from the stairway door.

  “Sonny?”

  He’s big at the shoulders and bigger in the waist, with a full head of sandy hair and a mouth full of perfect teeth. Daddy called him Muscles, because he had them, and Rock, because he was as dumb as one.

  “We found you.” He seems happy to see me. His smile is relaxed and genuine.

  I glance to the side, looking for Dario, but he’s not there.

  “What are you doing here?”

  It’s the only question I can think of besides, Where did Dario go?

  “I knew you’d be down here!” He reaches for his pocket, and I flinch before I realize what he’s pulled out is a phone. “I’ll get you out before the swatters are done clearing upstairs.”

  “I don’t want—”

  Behind him, Dario appears, fast as lightning. A sleeve appears across Sonny’s neck—an arm. Another arm locks the first in place.

  “Sonny Graco.” Dario swings the man to get him on his heels. “Nice to see you.” Sonny claws at Dario’s arm. “How many?”

  Another minute of struggle and Sonny’s legs flap like two flags in a storm.

  “He can’t breathe!” I shout, as if Dario doesn’t know.

  “How many with you?” He jerks Sonny’s head to the side. “Show me!”

  Sonny makes a gacking sound and holds up four fingers.

  “Thank you.” Dario lets him go.

  I exhale, but it’s too soon for relief.

  Sonny’s on his knees for half a second when Dario takes out a knife and slits his throat.

  I’ve never seen a person die, so I don’t know if it always happens in slow motion in the space of a blink. My senses are heightened. I hear the lights buzzing, smell the copper of fresh death. The air against my skin is warm and heavy.

  By the time I gasp, Sonny is already on the ground.

  “Wait,” I whisper too late.

  “We’re going.” Dario grabs my elbow.

  “He has kids.”

  “They all have families. Come!”

  I let him pull me away, into the car, wide-eyed and empty as he drives up the ramp, through the gate, and into the streets of Manhattan.

  Along the East River, joggers slog through the gray foam air and the slabs of the Queens skyline are softened in the haze.

  We’re stuck in traffic, trapped between movement and stillness. We are bodies flung through the air on our heels, shoulders forward, chests back, waiting for the ground to hit us from behind.

  Dario squeezes my cool, dry hands and says, “Welcome to New York,” which is meant to console me about the traffic.

  Timothy never had to take me far and always seemed to be able to avoid a jam.

  I wonder if he’s alive. And William. And how many more?

  “Just so you know,” he starts after a pause. “You don’t have to worry about Willa.”

  “She doesn’t have to worry about me either.” I take my hand away and fold the left fist under my right palm. “You can tell her that.”

  “She’s my wife by the law. You’re my wife by scars.”

  I rub the sore lines on my fingers. The tissue is still sensitive. “I don’t even know what you think that means.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why you feel comfortable saying your wife isn’t really your wife.”

  “She’s…” He stops himself with a quick wave and starts over. “It was a situation. I met runaways all the time. Hired them to do stuff. This one, Rosemarie… she was maybe thirteen. I knew before she even opened her mouth she was Colonia. Nico was the one to get the story out of her. She was sold into marriage to some old fucking pig. She got out.”

  “How?” I’m surprised. Once a girl is promised, she’s in a transitory place, owned by everyone and no one. So she’s protected and watched by both families.


  “She’s a smart, smart girl. Funny too. But once she told Nico shit, she never told another outsider, she got spooked. She ran off and got picked up by Protective Services. Willa was her social worker. So, I caught Willa on her way home.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah, what?”

  “You met her and saw how she was and you had to have her.” I shrug as if it’s obvious. He shoots me a glance that says it’s anything but. “Look at her. And she’s so… I don’t know… she knows her business. If I were a man, I’d want to marry her.”

  He looks away as if he can hide his chuckle. “It wasn’t like that. I mean, maybe a little.”

  “Thought so.”

  “At first, she didn’t believe me about the Colonia. But it got through when Rosemarie’s foster parents reported a story the girl told about wedding scars. Everything clicked, and Willa… when she gets fired up, watch out. She was all in. Wanted to know all about them… you. The Colonia. First thing was to get Rosemarie a permanent home with people who knew what the Colonia was about and that was me, and now Willa. But the adoption was going through Catholic Charities, and they don’t adopt to single parents.”

  “So you got married.”

  “We did.” He faces me. “It was business.”

  “You cared about another person together.” I turn away. “That’s not business.”

  “Maybe. Everything after that, though. We were in the business of catching girls who escaped and getting them out. Willa’s parents were on St. Maarten, so we settled on an island close by, where we could hide money and identities. There were bumps. We fight. She can be a fucking bitch, but we’re close. Not husband and wife. We understand each other.”

  “You’ve both been living in the same world,” I say. “Under the same laws. Where these scars don’t mean anything. The only reason you learned what they’d mean to me is so you could hurt my family.”

  Maybe he’s lying to me. Maybe he’s lying to himself. Maybe he’s expressing a disappointing truth. None of it matters. I want to be his as much as I want to be free, and I don’t know how both can be true.

  “You’re crazy not to.”