Devil's Due [h.s.]

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

There was a time in my life where silence would have once been something that I sought out. As an escape to relax and decompress, to allow the inner workings of my mind a single moment of reprieve from the constant chatter that I normally surrounded myself with. On this particular evening, however, the silence in the car between Harry and I was a bit terrifying.

It had to have been about a full 15 minutes of us driving after he'd peeled out of the parking lot and down the driveway, barely even stopping enough to let the gates open, before I decided to bravely open my mouth. "Where are we going?"

His lip had stopped bleeding, from what I could see, but his normally pale cheek was now a twinge pink from where I'd hit him. I felt bad – I did. It had been a spur-of-the-moment reaction, an accumulation of my faltering restraint and nerves from the night as a whole, and he'd just happened to set me off exactly at the wrong time.

The passing streetlights illuminated the dash of the car in waves, catching in his eyes and the cross-earring dangling from his ear. He barely even glanced in my direction before muttering, "Your apartment."

I blew out a small sigh. That was good at least. He hadn't decided to kidnap me again and hole me up in his fortress of a home. Though after tonight, I figured he probably didn't give two shits what happened to me anyway.

"I don't see why it's a big deal," I said quietly. The hem of my dress had suddenly become extremely interesting, my fingers fiddling and flying about the few stray bits of fabric that had begun to unfurl. "I made a deal with him. This is good for you too. Once the deal is done, he'll leave me alone and you won't have to keep carting me around like some novelty possession that needs protecting."

"You were out of your element," his voice was low – thunderous, rumbling along the console of the car and skittering up my arm into my ear, where I shivered. His thumb tapped relentlessly against the wheel as he turned the corner, almost like he was on edge.

"I wouldn't say completely out of my element," I mumbled. I didn't dare tell him that the night I found out he ran a drug cartel, I binged almost the entire first season of Narcos with Meatloaf. It seemed pretty straightforward. "You heard what he agreed to. All I have to do is consider another job–"

"You don't know him, River," Harry yelled, slamming a hand against the wheel. The entire car shook. "You don't fucking know what you just agreed to."

"He said he wouldn't kill me if–"

"No," Harry growled, his entire body having gone tense. He turned to look at me, eyes shining with an incredible amount of malice – enough to cause me to shrink back. "You asked him to leave you alone once you'd done the deal. That was it." His nostrils flared as he hotly added, "And for Morgan not to have to go to those dinners for some fucking reason."

"She doesn't like them," I protested weakly with a frown. "I can tell."

An exasperated hiss tumbled over Harry's lips. "This is what I mean. You think you're doing the right thing and talk before you even fucking process what you're about to say."

"I don't get why what I agreed to that was so bad," I retorted with an annoyed shake of my head. The beginnings of a tension headache had begun, something I believed was courtesy of the mix of Ativan, alcohol and near-murder I'd experienced tonight.

"You asked him to leave you alone once the deal was done," Harry muttered, his jaw flexing as he ground his teeth together. "Not once did you specify that he couldn't touch you until then. Nor did you specify that him leaving you alone extended to your friends and family."