Sell Your Soul

“You’ve been a bad girl Hannah. Look at you – the devil has a hold on you. What did you promise him to get that body?” He hissed in her ear. Hannah felt her body tense up. The scent of his cologne was strong enough to choke her.

“N-Nothing sir.” She stuttered.

“Bull. You’re quite the little harlot, and you know what happens to harlot’s Hannah.” He smiled an evil smile.

Hannah screamed.

“What is it baby doll?” Johnny was at her side in an instant. He flipped on the bedside light.
Hannah was shaking. She tried to take deep breaths to calm herself down. But she couldn’t shake off the memories that had plagued her in that dream. It was too real. She wore she could smell the musty books and Father Brinks’ after-shave.

“Is she okay?” Hannah heard a whisper at the door.

“I’ve got it. Just go on back to bed.” Johnny whispered back.

“Its okay baby, its just you and me now. Did you have a nightmare?” His voice was soft. Hannah could see the worry on his face.

All she wanted to do was cry. The dream shook up, but the fact that she probably work everyone in Johnny’s house up just made it all worse. She nodded her head.

Johnny’s hand found her face. He ran his fingers gently down her face.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. I just want it to go away.” She whispered feeling the hot tears slip down her face.

“Okay. We won’t then. Do you want me to stay with you?”

“Please.” Hannah moved over to give Johnny enough room to climb into the bed with her. Her heart pounded as he slid his arms around her and pulled her onto his bare chest.

“I won’t leave you baby. I swear.” He said kissing her cheek.
And he didn’t.

Hannah woke up screaming again the next night. Johnny ran to her side and spent the night with her again.

The next two nights Hannah slept in Johnny’s bed all night she didn’t have a single nightmare.

**

“Okay, we have to have a group meeting.” Charlie announced.

Since the incident at Rick’s the entire gang had just pretty much lived at Johnny’s. The boys had came and gone during the day but almost every night all of them were there. Andrea and Hannah never left the house. Johnny and Danny had paid a personal visit to Rick’s the next day before he opened. They were furious that he had left Andrea and Hannah alone like that. He knew better. He was one of their allies. He promised that it would never happen again, and the girls were told to take all the time they needed to recover from the incident.

“Life has pretty much stopped since the other night. We have to take back our turf and get our lives back to normal. Nothing is getting accomplished by us all hiding here.”

“Dude – lets not talk about this with the girls here.” Johnny interrupted him quickly.

Hannah rolled her eyes. She was biting her tongue not to lash out at Johnny. She loved how he wanted to protect her, but he couldn’t try to keep her in the dark forever. She wanted to be with him, she wanted a real relationship and that couldn’t happen if he kept her locked away. She had ran away from home so she could live. But of course she kept her thoughts to herself. She always did. She didn’t have the balls to say anything to Johnny.

Thankfully Andrea did.

“No. Hannah and I aren’t leaving. I’ve turned a blind eye to this for years Johnny. I’ve let you protect me and keep me at arms length from your job, but obviously that didn’t work. Seeing as they found us anyway. Remember when you got so pissed that Danny and Funny pointed the Huntington boys out to me? Johnny if they hadn’t then this would have ended a lot worse. Because you know they would have noticed that you and I look a lot alike, and I mean really I have ‘little 3’ tattooed on my ankle. If I had no clue who those thugs were I’d have been taking their order instead of Hannah and no one would have called you.”

Johnny was silent. The thoughts of what could have happened made him ill and pissed him off.

His sister was right. Trying to keep his family separate from work was more dangerous.

“Okay. Fine. You’re right.” He admitted.

“Alright, now – we have to plan our next move. We have to not only reclaim our turf but retaliate.”
Charlie continued.

“Retaliate?” Hannah spoke without realizing it.

“Yeah. We have to show them they can’t come in our restaurants and boss our girls around. We’ve got to return the gesture on their turf” Danny explained.

“No!” Andrea and Hannah said together.

“We have to. Our reputation depends on this.” Charlie stated.

“Fuck your rep! You guys are in enough danger on a daily basis without having to go to Huntington Beach looking for trouble!” Andrea was practically yelling.

“Calm down mamie.” Funny put his arm around her but she smacked him away.

“No! I will not be calm!”

“Danny can you please calm your chick down.” Charlie grumbled. He was getting annoyed. This shit was a lot easier when there weren’t females and feelings involved.

“We’ll talk about this later today. Johnny and Danny have women to tend too.” Kurlz said it like it was a bad thing.

“As of right now everything is going back to normal.” Johnny said. His tone said told them all that it was final.

**

Johnny’s hands were all over Hannah while his tongue danced in her mouth. She kissed him back just as passionately, but when his hands slid inside of her shirt she tensed up.

“Sorry babe.” Johnny said pulling himself off of her. He rolled over to face her with his head propped up on this hand. He could stare at her all day. If she had been any other girl he would be frustrated when she kept saying no, but for Hannah he would wait. He knew it wouldn’t take her long to give into him, the more hot make out sessions they had the farther she let him go.

“What are you thinking about?” Hannah broke the silence with a smile.

“How perfect this is.”

Hannah blushed.

“You know, you’re nothing like what I thought you were Johnny.” She told him softly.

“How so?” Johnny asked.

“Well, when I saw you that day in the diner, when you were teasing me – the first thing I thought was ‘this guy looks dangerous’. But you’re just a tattooed teddy bear.”

“Hannah, I am dangerous.” Johnny took her hand in his and locked his eyes on hers. “The other day at Rick’s you were put in danger because of me, and I know you told me that you don’t care what I do but I’m in love with you Hannah Faith and honestly I don’t think I could make it if you left. You need to know what you’re getting yourself into with me.

“The boys and me, we run an organized crime ring. We all grew up on these streets – they’re out home. So we protect them, we keep them clean the best we can. Sure there’s still shit. Two blocks down there is a crack-head who sells coke to the addicts, and we get a cut of every dime he makes but he doesn’t sell to kids. The brothel a few streets over is ours, we make sure all the girls are treated right and they make the money they need to feed their families. It sounds fucked up – well hell it is fucked up. But we’re the good guys, before we took over this place was a thousand times worse.

“Those guys at Rick’s they’re our biggest rivals. We pissed them off when we took over. We took Hollywood right out from under them and we took some of their guys and girls with us when we did. They’re still pissed about it.

“But I promise you – I’ll never let anyone hurt you Hannah. I love you and I’d die to protect you if I had too. Any of these guys would.” Johnny had never said those words to another human being that wasn’t family. He’d dated a ton of girls, but they weren’t much more than someone to get wasted and have sex with.

Hannah looked up into Johnny’s blue eyes. She let herself get lost for a moment. She was probably crazy for still being there. She should have ran a long time ago, any sane person would. But the truth was she had never been as happy as she was when she was with Johnny, and she sure as hell never felt as safe as she did at that very moment.

“I think I love you too. No matter what.”