Claimed by the Cartel

Chapter 8 : Car Ride

Enzo

“That was f*****g awful,” I hissed, throwing Honey’s bag right into Dante’s face when I opened the door to his car. “You could have warned me she was a biter.”

He caught the bag, effortlessly putting it behind him. “She bit you?”

I got into the car, flattening out my hand to look at the indent of her teeth along the fleshy part of my thumb, already turning purple. I shook out my hand. f**k, that hurt. At least she didn’t break the skin. “And she punched me in the face.”

Dante made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. “She didn’t strike me as a fighter,” he said offhandedly, pulling out of the parking space to start our hour-long drive to the vineyard.

“Well, she is,” I said. “Why couldn’t you be the one to attack her?”

He shrugged thick shoulders. “She’d already seen my face.”

“And?” I asked dryly.

“She’s smart. If she saw me, she’d be immediately suspicious of Roman. We couldn’t well drag her kicking and screaming into his car, could we? She’d draw too much attention,” he explained.

I looked out the window, pulling my hair back to get it out of my face. “Should we warn Roman? If she’s as smart as you say she is, she’ll know something is up the second we leave the city limits. And now we know she’ll give him hell.”

An odd expression pulled at the side of his mouth. “He can handle her,” Dante said. “I don’t doubt for a second she’ll know something is up if she hasn’t already. I just hope he can make up something convincing.”

Roman could lie without blinking. We just had a good enough relationship that he didn’t lie to me—not anymore. But he’d lie to get what he wanted. Easily pass any lie detector test.

For a while, I thought he was a compulsive liar, but he never lied by accident. Everything he did was intentional. That in and of itself would be really f*****g worrisome if I didn’t know him so well.

My palm throbbed where Honey had bit me. For a girl with the name Honey, she certainly stung like a bee. I released a noise of frustration.

When I came across her with all intention of stealing her bag to further entice her to go with Roman, I didn’t expect to find her crying. Clearly, something was going on in her life, and I felt like a real dickhead to be adding to whatever she was going through.

Tear-streaked cheeks and shaking hands.

I didn’t want to be that guy.

The attacker. The aggressor. The asshole with a knife.

I wanted to be the one to comfort her. Even though I didn’t know much about her, I knew she was hurting and that gutted me inside. In the dark, I could see her golden brown eyes tinted red. Pink round cheeks that looked soft to the touch.

Part of me hated how I now knew that her face was that soft when I smashed my hand over her mouth. When I locked my arm around her throat to rough her up a little. She felt small and dainty like she’d break any moment if I threw her around hard enough.

Then she bit me.

And punched me in the face.

Never once had a punch in the face ever turned me on. Not until Honey Brooks-Whitlock.

All of a sudden, that small adorable woman didn’t look so dainty anymore. She was a panther in a fawn’s body, ready to strike. And that enticed me more than anything.

Roman showed up to save me from her, not the other way around. Honey would have chased after me for her bag. Without a doubt, that girl would have tackled me onto the ground, taken her bag, and stabbed me with my own knife.

And call me twisted, but I would have been hard as a rock if that cute little girl threatened me at knifepoint. I could tell that she had no idea what she was doing, but she had the spirit. She had the fire.

From what we knew about her home life, anyone she’d come to trust would find a way to smother her fire, but I wanted to stoke it. I wanted to see what it looked like fully blazing a trail of destruction.

That was the girl Roman wouldn’t shut up about?

Now I understood his use of the word adorable. Honey was the cutest woman I’d ever seen. And grappling with her? That was a surprise that nearly took my breath away. Her soft-looking mouth contorted into a frown that seemed so unnatural on her.

Why did I have to meet her like this? Why couldn’t it have been at a coffee shop like Dante's or even at a club like Roman’s?

Why did I have to meet her by pulling a knife on her while she was crying?

“You’re awfully quiet, Enz,” Dante commented. “Talk to me. I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

He was right, and now was the perfect time to catch up.

***

Roman

I can’t believe Honey punched Enzo. I was never going to let him live it down.

A five-two bunny got a hit on a six-foot cartel member. As badly as I wanted to laugh about it because it really was f*****g hilarious, I had to pretend to be sympathetic.

But whenever I looked over at the woman next to me, shoulders hunched over, watery eyes, I felt something. I didn’t like that she was upset. It wasn’t a completely foreign feeling to me. I didn’t like it when Dante was upset either.

But he had years of pain weighing down on him. From the disappearance of our father to the death of our mother. He’s fought tooth and nail to protect Enzo and me and there wasn’t anything I could do to help him.

Too much history.

Too much pain.

And an unfeeling brother wasn’t a good shoulder to cry on.

However, right now, I could help Honey. I could be there for her.

“How’s your hand?” I asked, noticing how Honey curled it to her chest.

“Hurts,” she admitted, before she leaned back in the seat, visibly worn down. She couldn’t care less that she was in a super fancy sports car. Material things didn’t matter to her. One of the several things I noticed about her after watching her for so long.

“You said you were having a bad night?” I prodded, mainly trying to distract her from the changing scenery as we got further out of the city. She seemed too in her head to notice. That was a good sign.

Honey trusted me, and I was about to wash all of that away when she came to her senses. “Aside from the mugging?” she asked sarcastically.

“Talk to me, baby girl. I’ll listen,” I urged, noticing how she shivered at the pet name. If I wasn’t driving a stick shift, I would’ve run my fingers down the slender curve of her neck to feel how fast her pulse pounded.

She brushed some of her wild honey-brown, nearly blonde, curls out of her face, tapping on her chin thoughtfully. “It’s my dad,” she admitted.

I had a feeling it was related to that jackass skipping out on her. “Oh?”

I could feel her eyes shift over to me, warm and golden brown. Wide gateways into her bustling mind. “He keeps canceling dinner on me,” she said. “It seems silly to be upset about it, but he’s all I have.”

How sad. I knew she didn’t have many friends. She kept to herself. But the only consistent person in her life was her barely-present father? “He’s a f*****g idiot.” The words flew from my mouth, but I couldn’t stop them.

“Hey. He’s my dad,” she objected. “Yeah, a shitty one. But he’s still my dad.”

I bit my tongue, fighting the urge to say that he was a shitty dad taking bribe money from the cartel and unknowingly putting his daughter in harm’s way. He wasn’t worth the tears. “I don’t like seeing you upset.”

“You barely know me,” she murmured.

Oh, I know so much more than you think. “Then why are you in my car, Honey?”

She sat up in her seat, seemingly noticing that we weren’t going further into town, we were going the opposite way into the hill country. “Where did you say you lived again?”

“I didn’t,” I replied, a sick part of me enjoying the catch in her breath, the panic rising around her. I had no desire to hurt her, but she didn’t know that.

“Roman. Pull over,” she ordered, her voice warbling.

“No,” I stated, rolling my head to look over at her. The wide-eyed terror was intoxicating. But she was cunning, not just a little lamb. She was studying me, trying to read me, but I didn’t think she could.

“Pull over!” she demanded, yanking at the handle, but Dante had special locks installed. She couldn’t get out unless I let her.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” I murmured.

Panic rose in the air. I could practically taste it. I pressed my foot down on the pedal, going even faster on the highway. We were still over a half hour away from the vineyard, but I didn’t want to spend it with her trying to escape.

She clawed at the leather interior. A fact that I’m sure Dante was going to hate, but it was his fault he let me borrow his car. I suggested throwing her directly into the trunk, but Dante said that would draw too much attention if she screamed.

“I’ll pull over and throw you in the trunk if you keep that up,” I warned calmly, not bothered at all by her outburst.

“Let me go!” Honey screamed, banging on the window, trying to get the attention of other vehicles, but the windows were too tinted for anyone to see her.

“Come on now, don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” I stated.

“f**k you!” she snarled.

“You said no, remember?” I chuckled to myself. “Even I know the difference between yes and no.”

Tears started to stream down her cheeks. I didn’t like that at all. When she cried for me, it would be because she was overwhelmed by pleasure, not fear. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me.

Huh. That’s new.

“Where are you taking me?” she shouted.

“Somewhere your dad won’t find you.”

That proved to be the wrong thing to say because she unclipped her seatbelt and made a move for the steering wheel. I caught her thin wrist and slammed it down into the center console, taking my hand off the gear shift to pin her back.

“I’m going ninety miles an hour. You f**k with the steering and we’ll fly off this road. Do you want that? Do you want them to identify you by your teeth?” I growled.

“Why does it matter?” She fought me and I had to fend her off one-handed, keeping my eyes on the road and one hand on the wheel.

My hand snapped to the base of her neck, finding the pressure point of her vagus nerve, near the carotid arteries. I could practically find it with my eyes shut since it was my favorite technique for strangulation.

But for Honey, all I had to do was add a little bit of pressure for ten seconds. She struggled, clawing at my hand, but I squeezed a little harder and it stunned her, her head lolling back as she fell unconscious.

Finally, a little bit of silence.

Shame. I would’ve loved to hear her voice a little longer.