Mobster Boy

9

Chance holds me against him with both hands on my hips, tongue flicking against my lower lip as he kisses me. "--mm?" I don't know what comes over me, but I sink into it almost immediately. I open my mouth to him, hands winding up the back of his neck. 'It feels...good...' Then he stops short of another kiss, pausing inches from my face. For a moment, we're frozen there, still breathing heavily from adrenaline.

"You're welcome." My palms rest on his chest, not pushing him away, but not pulling him closer, either.

"For what?" Slowly, his hands drop to his sides.

"That was your reward for helping me, Adrian." Turning from me, I can see his shoulder rise as he wipes his mouth off after kissing me. He bends down and checks the man for a pulse, fingers pressed to the neck. "Now let's make sure none of these guys get up before we do anything else." Floored by what just happened, I feel like crying for how stupid I am. I let him do it, which just makes me feel even worse. 'Don't cry over him, he wouldn't cry over you. Not like he would care anyway.' Turning away I ball my hands into fists, clenching them so hard my knuckles turn white.

"There's a lot of glass on the floor, be careful." My tone is devoid of emotion, but I don't know if he notices or if he just doesn't care to.

"Yeah, I know." A scowl darkens his face as he kicks aside a shattered picture frame. "They messed up my house. Come on. Let's clean up what we can." My stomach churns, the world spinning around me. 'Does he mean...?' I go to grab garbage bags from the pantry in the kitchen, and focus on cleaning up the debris in the living room. Not wasting the breath to argue, Chance helps me.

Two hours later, I hear the car roll up. At first I panic, thinking Giovanni sent more men here, but when the doors open a wave of raucous laughter spills in. "Come on, Yoshi, count them out." Phaedra giggles.

"I did, I did!" He replies just as joyfully.

"You're drunk. Give it to me. " 'It's our gang!' The fact that I'm beginning to think of them as 'mine' doesn't really register. I'm just glad to see familiar faces.

"Guys! What-?" I pause. Ash has a huge pile of money in his hands, all cash. Hideyoshi is fumbling to give him more, despite the fact that his arms are nearly overflowing.

"This has to be a prank. Why didn't they just wire the money to us? You're lucky none of you got jumped on the way home." Marcus shakes his head at them.

"...What's going on? Phaedra wasn't playing for money, right?" Swaying up to me, Phaedra leans up, pressing a finger to her lips and shushing me.

 "Not...over the table." A few bills fall to the floor.

"I can't count this right now." Ash mumbles with a frown.

"There you are." Like a thunderclap, Chance's voice cuts right through the chatter, making the rest fall silent. "Where have you been? I told Adrian to call you." His scowl deepens.

"Is everything alright?" Hideyoshi asks, his brows furrowing.

"Didn't get a call." Reality starts dawning on them, a piercing jab of sobriety cutting right through their drunken haze.

"Hey, who knocked over this book case? Someone threw my notebooks on the ground...who did this?" Marcus growls, glaring at me.

"It wasn't Jazlyn this time, at least..." Ash notices something is wrong first by the way he pulls out his gun, but Marcus is the one who starts putting two and two together out loud.

"I know you didn't want to come with us, but did you have to throw a party while we were away?" I want to face palm at how idiotic Hideyoshi sounded, but I refrained.