Page 14 of Mistletoe & Mayhem
Tomorrow, maybe, we’ll plan the murder of a king. Tonight, we’re alive, and that’s enough.
Chapter 10
Laura
Iam held together by the heat of his hands. Pierced through, stitched to this world by the length of his body pressed along my back, his breath stirring the wild of my hair. The sheets are tangled and damp. I taste salt on my lips—mine, his, both. His thumb glides in a slow orbit around my left shoulder blade, as if circling the jagged hole that nothing else can fill.
It’s almost peaceful. Almost. The danger, for once, is not a swelling force but a slow tide, a distant hum beneath the hush of our breathing, the gentle ping of the radiator, the chaos of our clothes flung across the floor. We lie in the dark together, our bodies wrecked and wanting more, pretending the world outside the windows is just an absence—no father waiting, no death sentence ticking, no loyal soldiers in cars on the curb.
He says, “I missed you. So much it made me stupid.”
“Apparently not stupid enough,” I say. The joke lands softly—a skipping stone that forgets to sink. I shiver, roll, push my forehead into the hollow below his throat.
Pierce holds me tighter. “You scared the hell out of me,” he says. “I thought you’d shoot me, then I thought you’d run. You did both, in your way.”
“My way’s terrible,” I murmur. “It’s the only way I have.”
He laughs—bleak, but the kindest sound I remember. “Your way kept me alive,” he says. “Your way is—” He stops. His hand trembles a moment against my spine, and I wonder what he sees: the cracks, the cracks, nothing but cracks.
It’s my turn to fill the silence. I think about lying, but I can’t, not to him, not when everything is already so warped and ruined. “My father sent me here to kill you,” I say, almost gently, like saying good night or naming a star. “He thought I’d do it. Or maybe he wanted to see if I’d do it. Or maybe he just wants to see what happens when I fail.”
A pause—a real one this time, no attempt to cover or comfort. His body goes rigid. I feel the sharp edge of memory in his heartbeat at my cheek.
“Are you sure?” he says, but he knows.
“Gino’s outside,” I whisper. “He’s got orders not to intervene unless I ask. But there are others—my father wouldn’t risk just one man. By now, he already knows I didn’t pull the trigger. The only reason we’re breathing is that he’s still deciding which is worse: letting you live, or losing me.”
Pierce lifts my chin, tilts my face until I see him even in the dark. His eyes, always hungry, always shining with blue heat, are wet now. I hate that. I hate that I did that to him.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“So are you.”
He kisses my face. My mouth, my eyelids, the delicate seam of my jaw. “You don’t have to?—”
“I know,” I say. “But I will.”
We’re quiet a while. There are words, but they’re nothing new. I love you. I’m sorry. Stay. Don’t leave me. I can’t. I already have. And so on. Our mouths have learned this language too well; our bodies know it better.
After a time, I get up and go to the window. Put on his shirt—white, threadbare, sleeves too long—and look through thecondensation. Three floors down, illegally parked, Gino’s SUV squats against the curb like something malignant. Behind the tinted glass, a cigarette ember pulses—patient, predatory, and awaiting instruction.
There’s more movement. A dark van, lights off, half a block down, its windshield reflecting the amber streetlights like a predator’s eye. Two men near the deli, shoulders hunched against the cold, pretending to argue about the Mets’ pitching rotation. Their gestures too precise, their stances too aware. No one I recognize, but the cut of their coats—Italian wool, tailored at the shoulders to conceal shoulder holsters—is the kind my father provides to his most trusted soldiers. The city is alive with watchers, all of them in love with their own reflection in the barrels of their guns, fingers tapping impatiently against triggers that ache to be pulled.
Pierce comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. His chest radiates heat through my borrowed shirt, his heartbeat a steady counterpoint to my racing pulse. He doesn’t ask what I see. He just watches me watch, his breath warm against my neck.
“Maybe we could run,” he says, but not like a question. His voice is a low rumble I feel more than hear. “There are protocols. I can call the FBI. Witness protection or?—”
"No,” I say, and close my eyes against the kaleidoscope of streetlights and shadows. “It won’t work. Not for me.”
He leans his cheek against my shoulder, his stubble catching on the thin cotton of the borrowed shirt. His palm smoothes over the back of my hand, tracing the blue veins that branch like rivers beneath my skin. The weight of him anchors me to this moment, this room, while everything outside threatens to dissolve into chaos.
“Then what do we do?” he whispers, his voice vibrating through my bones.
“We vanish,” I say, the words hanging in the air like smoke.
There is a woman, Frida, who can make us disappear. Frida left the CIA years ago and now trades state secrets for private ones. She sells discretion at premium rates—and I’ve always been her most reliable customer. I fish the burner phone out of my boot and dial. The connection crackles, stretches across whatever dark corner she’s hiding in, until her voice materializes—cool and distant as if transmitted from another planet.
“Stasio,” she says, not a question.
