A Table for Three: New York, Book 1

by Lainey Reese

  “Hello, Ann,” Riley said, remembering not to use her nickname at the last second. “Umm…you just missed the guys. They had some errands to run before we leave.”

  “I know,” Ann replied with a sneer. “I waited all morning for them to go. I need to talk to you alone.” Ann had thought and stewed for a week about what to do. She knew that Cade was onto her stealing. She didn’t think that he knew it was her yet, but she was desperate.

  Her only hope was to get rid of Riley and switch their attention to her. Obviously, the little tramp was boring them, or Cade would not have dug into the missing items. Well, she would make sure they were kept busy once this little slut was gone. She would cloud their minds with sex. Then beg them to take her on a trip across Europe. By the time they got back, the little discrepancies in the inventory would be a distant memory, and her troubles would be behind her.

  She would not have needed to steal from him if he had only started dating her when she first came here. It was his fault. If he had followed her plan she wouldn’t be in this fix and wouldn’t have to be here doing this. Well, there was no hope for it. What’s done was done. She had to follow this through, and it would be easy street from here on out.

  Riley wiped her hands off and gestured to Ann to sit. “If you want to talk, let’s have a seat. Can I get you a drink? Some juice or tea?” Riley felt tension coil in her stomach as Ann just stood in the middle of the living room and looked around. It was as if she were taking inventory or something, and it made Riley nervous.

  “Look, I want you out of here. I’m prepared to offer you twenty thousand dollars to disappear. Pack up your shit and leave, and I will write you a check.”

  Riley was stunned. “What are you talking about? What on earth makes you think I would take your money? For that matter, why would you think I’d leave?” Anger was boiling in her gut, and her voice shook with the force it took to keep quiet. Ann might think they were alone but that was because she didn’t know Brice had spent the night, and Riley did not want to wake him. Whatever it was that Ann was doing was between her and Ann. She didn’t want to drag anyone else into this ugliness.

  “What I think is that you are a money hungry little whore who saw dollar signs the first time they laid eyes on you and that I’m offering you way more than you’ll get from them once they tire of you.” She shook her short blonde hair back from her face and paced closer to Riley as she went on. “C’mon, Riley. We’re both girls here. You don’t have to act for me. I know what they do to you. I know you must hate it. But hey? Who could blame you really, when you look at this place? And the clothes they’re showing you off in? What about those rocks in your ears? You get those for taking it up the ass like a good little slut?

  “You’re only here for the money. Why else would you be here? I’m offering you it all up front. Believe me it’s more than they’ll give you when they’re done with you.” She was face to face with Riley. “They will be done with you, Riley. No matter what lies they’ve told you to make you believe otherwise. They will be done with you and throw you away like the used up condom you are, and then where will you be?” She stepped back, took her checkbook out of her purse and arched one perfectly tweezed brow at her. “Twenty thousand to walk away now, before they’ve grown bored with you. Look at it this way, you can live out the rest of your life being the one that got away instead of just one of the many who was tossed back.”

  Brice sucked in his breath and clenched his fists. So angry that he could easily picture himself snapping her vicious little neck. But he stayed out of sight, hoping she would say more to incriminate herself.

  Riley was not a fighter. She never had been. She had never even hit anyone in her life. But right now, she wanted to hit Ann so bad it was making her arms shake with the effort it took to hold back.

  “If you don’t leave I’m going to call security and have them drag you out by your hair.”

  “Oh. Come. On. Is that all you’ve got? Security? You spineless little nobody. Don’t you get it? You don’t belong here. I do. I know everyone down there, and if you call them, you’ll be the one who is dragged out by your hair after I tell them how I caught you with the man I saw you sneak in here the minute Cade and Trevor left. You know, the same one who ran out half naked when I charged up here to see what you were up to.” While Riley stared at her in open-mouthed shock, Ann shook her head and continued.

  “Get out now, Riley, before I have to get ugly. Just take the check and don’t look back.” She ripped the check from her book and stuffed it in Riley’s cleavage with a sneer. Her sneer turned to resignation when Riley tore the check into pieces and threw them in her face.

  “Get out now. You may be able to convince security for a little while, but Cade and Trevor would never believe you. Now leave.”

  “You know, I’m almost glad you did that. I worked hard for that money and was not happy about giving it to you. Nevertheless, I wanted to give you a fair chance. After all, I felt kind of bad about the whole near death thing. I mean, you were supposed to die, I gave you enough to kill a buffalo, but after, when you pulled through I thought that maybe I was going too far. But now I see that you deserved it. Just like you deserve this.”

  Ann moved before Riley could react. She pulled a gun from her purse and a dart shot into her gut that felt like the sting of a scorpion.

  Brice registered what he heard a second too late and stepped from around the corner to see Riley clasp her stomach and crumble to the floor.

  “Freeze,” he shouted. He didn’t have his gun, but experience had shown him that a commanding tone was enough to bluff most crooks. “Drop the gun and get on the floor. Now.” Ann startled when she heard him and cursed under her breath.

  “What the fuck are you doing here? You are going to ruin everything.” Her voice was the same shrill whine that he remembered. Brice wondered how she’d hidden her true self from Cade for the whole year of working with him. He walked to her, thinking that it was a shame that it had turned out to be her after all. They had watched her grow up, and he liked her folks, this was gonna kill them.

  He should have been paying attention. He had been distracted and had underestimated her because he knew her. He never checked to make sure she’d dropped the gun, didn’t think she’d gone so far over the edge that she would turn and shoot him even if she hadn’t. But she did, and she smiled like a damn cat when he staggered to his knees as he fumbled to remove the dart from his chest.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mike was scared. He liked this new job, and he needed it. Three years ago, his dad had died of a heart attack and left his mom with four kids to support and a lot of debt to be paid off. Mike had quit college and come back home to try to keep his family together. His mom was an immigrant who had never worked outside the home. He knew his mom being there for him and his brothers and sister was the reason none of them were ever in trouble. So as long as he was living, his mother was going to stay at home. His three younger siblings were too young—the oldest was only thirteen, not old enough yet to help with the bills. So it was up to him.

  This job was his ticket. It paid better than what his father had made, and with the overtime the boss let him work, things were looking good. He had not known how much his schooling was pinching his dad. The debt it had racked up made Mike cringe every time he thought about it. Well, he was taking care of it and if things kept up at the same pace, he’d have the biggest credit card paid off in six months. The rest would be paid off in just a year and a half after that.

  But only if he kept this job. There was a buzz going around about someone stealing, and they were looking at him for it. He guessed he couldn’t blame them for thinking it. He was the newest, and his money problems were no secret, but it still made his gut burn to be looked at as a thief.

  Especially when he knew who the thief was. Since saving every penny was all he could think about, he often walked to work instead of taking the subway or a cab. The walk took him by some rough neighborhoods and a
bout a month ago, he’d seen Annie the scarecrow bitch along the way.

  At first, he hadn’t thought about it. Figured she was making a crack deal since she was meeting with some pretty shady characters. It made sense considering she was skinny as a crack ho, but as he’d passed he saw them hand her money, not the other way around. It was peculiar enough that he’d looked back as he passed. He saw her open the trunk of her car, and the thugs with her had started unloading boxes. Sure, it didn’t prove that she was the one stealing, but it was proof enough for him. His only problem was that he didn’t know how to get them to look at her without making himself look even guiltier because he was pointing fingers.

  Mike was worrying over the dilemma while cleaning the storage room when he saw Ann let those same thugs in the back door. The place was closed this early, and there wasn’t supposed to be anybody here. He was only here because the boss had okayed some more overtime for him again. Mike wasted no time and headed for the closest phone once they had gotten onto the elevator; this was his chance. If they caught her red-handed, he would be in the clear and his family would be too.

  “Hey, Boss,” Mike said when Cade answered, “I hate to bother you but I just thought there was something you should know…”

  Cade had never been so scared in his life. When the call came through, he’d almost let it go to voice mail, but when he saw that it was his private line from his office phone, he’d picked up. What he heard next made his blood run cold. He’d told Mike to call 911 and had run out of his broker’s office without saying a word to him. As he ran, knowing it was faster than the waiting cab, he called Trevor. He said only what was needed to get the message across, “It’s Annie and she’s at the penthouse with Riley.” Then he hung up and sprinted as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ann was sweating. This was the tricky part. Security was out front. She didn’t know if they ever checked the back, there was no need during the day to look in the alley was there? Well, all they had to do was clear out the penthouse and take the slut with them. They had been buying from her for years. Cade wasn’t the only one she’d lifted items from whenever things got tight. This was different though, this time she was selling a girl to them. They knew a lot of people, people who moved in that elusive and mysterious black market that everyone talked about. The part that surprised her was the gang hadn’t even blinked when she’d asked them if they knew someone who’d like a girl who was into gangbangs. They’d named an enormous price if she could deliver. Since the fat little tramp had refused to cooperate, she’d called them in. They were going to take a bunch of things from the house and make it look like Riley had stolen them and then split. No one would ever see her again. Simple.

  The big problem now was what to do with Brice. They didn’t want a man. They offered to kill him for her, but the price of that was going to be everything that they had been going to pay her for Riley. Moreover, murdering a man she had known since childhood was turning out to be a lot harder than she would’ve thought it would be. Nevertheless, she could not let him live. He’d been there and seen her, and she couldn’t think of any way out of this unless Brice disappeared.

  “Go ahead then. Take care of him. Just make it quick, before he wakes up, at least he won’t feel anything.”

  She walked toward the living room when she saw one of the two men pull out a gun. She was not going to watch, she couldn’t. Nothing surprised her more than to see the elevator open and Cade rushing in with cops behind him.

  “No.” Ann was so angry and frustrated she couldn’t see straight. It was finished, done. All her plans and plotting, all she had been through for the last year, all for nothing. As anger pumped through her veins like a super drug, she raced to where they had plopped Riley’s body with the junk they were going to take. She didn’t know what she would have done once she got to her, tear her apart with her bare hands probably. But she never got the chance. Cade rushed her and fisted one hand in her hair, the other around one of her arms and yanked her off her feet. Her howls of rage reverberated through the penthouse as he tossed her on the couch as if she weighed less than the throw pillows she landed on. Then he stood towering over her like an avenging angel.

  “You stupid son of a bitch. What are you doing here? You ruined everything. I hate you! I hate you!” she screamed as she kicked out at him and her arms pounded into the cushions. The tantrum not unlike the many she had been throwing her whole life.

  Cade could not believe the sight before him. Annie was flailing like a spoiled two-year-old, and he thought that she just might have lost her mind. When Trevor rushed in, he watched him take in the whole scene in a glance—the shouting cops who were cuffing the two thugs, the trashed apartment and Annie cursing and thrashing on the couch. The two locked gazes across the room, and they shared very similar thoughts of astonishment and gratitude that they hadn’t taken her out after all. Relief that they had dodged this particular bullet.

  Then as one, they turned when Riley moaned and tried to push herself up. Some art and other things from around the penthouse surrounded her and it was clear to both of them that she was drugged. Cade reached her first and scooped her up before she tried to stand. Trevor was right behind him and the two of them crooned to her as she looked around, clearly confused.

  “It’s okay, Riley,” Cade murmured. “God I was so scared. We were both so scared.” Then he said those familiar words in her ear, “You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

  “Maybe I should go back home.” Riley was still shaking late into that night. She was seated on the couch between Trevor and Cade and Brice was on a chair brooding into a cup of coffee. It had taken hours to deal with the police statements and paperwork. They were exhausted and wrung out. Ann had been charged with attempted murder, grand larceny, assaulting an officer and a slew of other crimes that Riley couldn’t remember. The men she was with had been charged with more of the same. Riley couldn’t get the vicious words that Ann had said out of her head. What if she was telling the truth? What if she was just here until her novelty wore off? Would the guys send her packing without a backward glance? Even with the money they were lavishing on her, did it really mean the same to them that it did to her since they had so much of it? And, neither of them had said they loved her. After the intimacies they had shared, they had never felt compelled to give her the words. She let herself believe that they would when the time was right for them. But what if the truth was that they hadn’t because they didn’t and it was as simple as that.

  Brice looked up from the cup of coffee in his hand and watched his cousin and his friend’s reaction to the statement. They both looked ready to murder. Before either of them could say something that would make matters worse, he spoke up.

  “Don’t go flying off the handle. You guys didn’t hear what that bitch said to her. You gotta know she’s gonna be freaked about this now.”

  “It doesn’t matter what that cunt said,” Cade spoke without taking his eyes off Riley’s face. “She is a certifiable lunatic and anything she said should have no bearing whatsoever.”

  “She told her Riley was just another woman in a long line, and she was fooling herself if she believed otherwise.”

  Trevor harrumphed in the back of his throat. “Riley would never fall for that. She knows how we feel. Don’t you, little one?” When her eyes filled with tears, he was baffled and dismayed. “Riley?” he asked, voice soft and coaxing, “Ry, we love you. We both do. How can you doubt it after everything that’s gone on between us?”

  “Yes,” Cade demanded, “how?”

  “Well,” Riley sniffled, voice quavering as she tried to keep it together, “you guys have never said it. We have only been together for a couple weeks, and the way she said it made it sound so stupid that I would believe this could last.” She looked between the two of them, pleading for them to understand. “I mean, c’mon as much as this feels real and as much as I want it to be forever... how can it be?”

&n
bsp; Cade took both her hand and Trevor’s, clasping them in Riley’s lap. “It can because it is.” He got down on his knees facing her. Trevor, in sync with him as always followed suit. “What we have is real, and it will last. I love you, Riley. We both have loved you from the first day. Maybe we should have told you before, but we’re telling you now, and we’ll keep telling you until the day we die.”

  In the end it was Brice who convinced her. He told Riley about the other women in their lives, and how he’d known that she was different after only five minutes in her company. He spoke with such an open honesty that there just wasn’t room left to doubt. Besides, he was just telling her what her heart had been saying from the first morning waking up with the two of them wrapped tight around her, she was in love and it was real.

  Epilogue

  Six months later Riley was getting married. She stood in front of a mirror, looked at herself in her Vera Wang wedding gown, and tried not to cry. It had taken a professional hair and make-up crew two hours to get her looking like this. She was not about to cry and ruin their hard work before the wedding pictures were done. The dress was a vision in ivory with sequins and pearls, long flowing train and a decadently low-cut back with three chains of real diamonds swooping from shoulder to shoulder.

  “Oh dear! You look like I always dreamed you would!” Riley smiled at her mom and warned, “Suck it up, Ma, if you cry, I cry. I am not going to until the pictures are done.” She wrapped her arms around her mother and hugged tight.

  “You’re right. It would be a pity if you ruined your make-up. You look beautiful.” She pulled herself together and took her daughter’s hands. “Now, I know I don’t have to ask, I’ve never seen you happier, but a mother should always ask. Are you sure this is what you want?”