The darkness made it difficult to see the expression on Jovani's face. Without streetlights to cut through the dense darkness, all Lena could see were arm movements from the man.
"Easy now princess. I know that things are kind of mixed up right now, but I do have the means to show you who I am."
"Then don't waste time talking about it and just do already. I don't have much patience with all the time wasted thus far." The princess didn't take the gun's safety on but kept it pointed at the other.
"Had you told me we were going to be dealing with someone like this, I might have changed my mind on the matter." Jovani let out a deep sigh in response to the comment.
"John, you do realize you aren't really helping matters right now? The princess is hardly the one you need to be worried about. That would be the person you helped to allow to get away." The mafia boss bit the inside of his cheek. It seemed no amount of painkillers could dull the ache in his arm.
"Really, Don? I think right now maybe you're the one who is mixing things up. The only person I see pointing a gun right now is this lady over by me."
"Don't address me in such a crude manner. My position far outranks your own. You don't even know me well enough to speak in such a manner." John flinched in response to the cold voice. The cold in her voice actually physically chilled him to the bone despite the humid night air.
"You wanted the proof right? Over shirt off. You can see I don't have a gun on me. Plus, there's the rather nice patch-up job that my fiancé did to make sure I don't end up bleeding out." Jovani dropped the shirt over next to him while keeping his arms at length.
"You can come closer to look if you want. I don't have anything on me that would hurt you." Dealing with Lena sometimes felt similar to dealing with a wild animal. When stressed, one could never tell what she would do from one second to the next.
"I don't have any intention of coming over there. I want you to come over here so I can get a better look." The princess used the gun to motion the other closer. She needed to be absolutely certain of what she saw before she'd let her guard down.
"As long as you promise you're not going to shoot. I have no problem with that." The young mafia boss left his shirt on the grass. It could be picked up later once this ordeal ended.
"John, why don't you do the favor of turning the car light on? It might make it easier to see." Jovani suggested as he stopped where the princess told him.
"My car. Not yours." Lena directed. She would've done it herself if not for the lack of trust for either man. The young man silently did as instructed. Leaning over to the driver's side to turn on the headlights.
"Goodness. I don't need you going about blinding me like that! Turn off those and replace them with the lower ones." Jovani flinched, using his good arm to cover his eyes from the bright light.
"Sorry, sorry. I didn't realize you were a vampire." the lights switched despite the grumbling. Afterward, he shifted back to standing within Lena's line of sight. He didn't want to give any reason for the gun to be pointed back at him.
"Show me one more time." Lena could see the other didn't have anything on him. She wanted to be absolutely sure though. The other obligated though a bit begrudgingly.
"Satisfied now? I can go ahead and take everything else off if you would prefer? Make sure that I don't have anything hidden down below?" Hands shifted down to the pants buckled into place. The belt would easily come off with a flick of the wrist.
"I don't find your normal jokes to be very fun in this type of situation. I would prefer if you would retain your more somber tone consider what just happened."
Lena finally lowed the gun. It seemed good enough to trust the other for now. It wasn't like she couldn't shoot him later if it turned out he lied to her.
"You know that it isn't in my nature to retain that for very long. Even in such situations, it's kind of hard." Jovani folded his arms over his chest, cradling the injured one atop his good arm.
"Then you better have a good reason for why things ended up the way that they did. I thought that we sorted everything out earlier." Lena returned the gun to her holster but kept her hand close to it.
"We did. But a few slight unexpected problems popped up along the way. The police for one. The other is that the person I needed ended up coming through later than anticipated."
"Alonso? Is that why this unknown shrub ended up coming with you instead?" John made a grumble of annoyance but quickly shut up when the Princess glanced over at him.
"Yes. I would have still needed someone else though anyways. You might not know John but he is reliable enough. As much as I would like to keep standing around talking about the finer details of this matter, we should probably leave the area."
"You want me to get into the car with the two of you?" Lena glanced between the two men.
"I mean, you can't really drive that thing back up onto the road. Nor should you really be driving in the first place."
"You'd be a fool to think I would trust either of you to take care of driving." Lena huffed. Though, she couldn't deny that it didn't seem like there was much of an option otherwise.
"Don't worry Princess. No one else will be going about jumping out of cars and causing problems. We have a very important date that we're already late for. John is a good driver and you can take the back seat and I'll sit up front. Decreases any kind of risk just in case."
"I don't mind driving if she keeps the gun away from me." John confirmed.
"I would like to know what exactly is going on here though." Considering the stressfulness of the situation, the guard felt he earned the right to know.
"You will know in due time. I need to make a few calls anyways and figure some stuff out. Once we are on the road, we can properly talk. What do you say, Princess?"
"Do I really get to have a say in the matter? It seems like it is the only option we have right now. I also want to exactly what is going on and why things went pear-shaped."
The princess didn't quite trust the situation but knew that she couldn't drive herself. The blurriness didn't seem to want to get better. Driving would just increase the risk of another accident. One that would make things worse than they already were.
She would just have to hope nothing else bad would happen.
