by Korry Smith
Alex threw his arm over my shoulder and pulled me close. He brought his face down to mine, secretive, keeping his eyes trained on Ramon’s back. “He sees your caring nature as a weakness rather than strength. That’s a fucking mistake on his part. If he knew the brutality you are capable of, he would see that out of the two of us you’re the bigger threat.”
I snorted. “I’m barely tall enough to see over a fucking counter.”
“Yes, this is true.” He chuckled and patted my head. I slapped his hand, trying to pull away, but he brought me back in and tighter to his side. “But that’s why you’re a bigger threat. Fuckers see me coming from a mile away. You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“Oh,” I said, and damn me to hell if I didn’t cover my mouth to hide the shit-eating grin that spread across my face.
It was ridiculous.
Alex was blowing smoke up my ass to make me feel tough in this world filled with drug dealers and murderers, but then again, it made sense to me. All this time people saw me like a delicate flower, some pristine and innocent girl, wasn’t an annoyance, but an asset.
I knew my role in the family: Alex was the leader, Sawyer was the diplomat, Len was the muscles, Dev was the hacker, Nyx was the thief, and I was the decoy.
“Hey, lovebirds, listen up. This is very important,” Ramon said, stopping mid-motion, and swinging around to face Alex and me, quickly realizing that he was losing our attention.
Alex smirked and gave me a sideways glance. “We’re listening.”
Fucking liar.
“Good, because I am only going to say this shit once and if you fuck it up, I’ll be the first one to sell you out. You got that?”
“Yeah, we got it,” Alex said, and just like that, he was all business.
“I’m going to talk fast so pay attention,” Ramon said, spinning on his heel.
He did talk fast, but he walked even more quickly, crisscrossing us in and out of the kitchen, side-stepping packed food trays, frantic waiters, and irritated cooks. He explained his plan to get Alex and me into the senator’s penthouse without security noticing.
It was simple enough, but there was no room for errors, and that was why it was vital for us to listen to each detail.
The hotel was on high alert and awaiting the senator’s return home. The guards outside were evidence of that. Every time the senator left, the security team compiled a list of all the tenants, making sure they knew who belonged and who didn’t. They questioned all visitors, asking for identification and patting them down for weapons. It was iron-clad and efficient.
It was impossible to breach; unless you knew someone from the inside.
That was where our buy-in came in.
It seemed that the only people who weren’t under inquiry by the security personnel were the employees. That didn’t make sense to me. They were the ones with unlimited access to the senator: they delivered his food, took care of his dry-cleaning, and made the very bed that arrogant asshole rested his head on every night.
That’s the people who need investigating and watched the most, but they overlooked that crucial part of their well-oiled machine because they trusted the man who oversaw the staff.
Ramon was the manager of the hotel/condominiums, and he had the final say when it came to the new hires. He did all background checks and invasive interviews. Every person in this hotel who worked under Ramon’s tight rein had a spotless record. They were honest, hardworking people.
Until today.
Ramon was going to have Alex and me change into staff uniforms, walk us right past the heavily armed men, smile in their faces and flaunt us like we weren’t notorious criminals on the run.
No, we were now two newly hired employees.
My life was quickly becoming an Ocean’s Eleven movie, except there was no witty commentary from Brad Pitt.
But I did have an Alex.
“You guys can dress in here,” Ramon said, opening the door to the staff lounge. It was small, barely five-by-eight in space, filled with wall to wall lockers. “You can leave your belongings in here or in my office. I’ll give you a few minutes to change.” He was closing the door when his head reemerged. “Lock this behind me, or you’ll have people walking in on you.”
Alex saluted him. “You got it, boss.”
Ramon was not impressed. “Marcos was right. You are a jodido cabrón.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Alex said, pushing the door closed and locking the deadbolt.
It was silent for a beat, and I stared down at the starchy black fabric folded nicely in my hands, a typical maid’s uniform. Nothing too flashy, simple enough in design, and something I’d seen my mom wear a time or two, before she met Terry, and he ruined her.
“Hey, kid,” Alex said, tugging my beanie down over my eyes to gain my attention. “What’s our time?”
I yanked my head away and dropped the garments down on a bench. I dug into my coat pocket and pulled out the stopwatch, still ticking away. “Thirty-four minutes.”
“Fuck,” he said and unzipped his sweatshirt. “I thought we had more time than that.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice drifting off, and I stood frozen, eyes glued to him as he undressed.
The gun was one of the first things to be set down, after that, I sat in a stupor, cataloging each layer of clothing as it came off. The wife beater discarded in one swift motion, over his head and ending up folded neatly on the bench, revealing the taut muscles and tattoos.
I was unable to look away, Alex oblivious to my inappropriate ogling, continuing about his business. But as soon as he unbuckled his belt and the pants slid down, all bets were off, and my mouth went dry. The sight of his gray briefs got my heart rate up. The cotton, tight and thin, was snug in all the right places, accentuating his bulge.
Fuck!
I closed my eyes, taking away the stimulus and quickly rushing over to the other side of the room. The air in this fucking lounge was suffocating, and I clutched my throat, feeling the parched burn that Alex always seemed to cause.
“So,” I said, hoping to distract myself from the naked and beautiful man less than four feet away from me. “Do you think this plan will work or do you think Ramon is full of shit?”
Personally, I suspected that we were being set up, but I didn’t trust anyone.
“Fuck no!” And I could hear the sudden anger in his voice. “I don’t trust that asshole, but it’s better than the flipside.”
“What’s the flipside?” I asked, removing my jacket and gun, and throwing it down into a mountain of crumpled chaos. Alex was much more organized than me.
“Shooting our way through,” he said.
I laughed and tried to imagine how far we would get with that strategy.
In all truthfulness, it seemed like Ramon had a solid plan, and dressing up as part of the help wasn’t the worst idea, but it wasn’t foolproof. There were so many unforeseen variables that could still get us caught. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life behind bars. I didn’t want to live without Alex.
I shuddered at the thought of never seeing his smile again.
“No,” I said defiantly. “This shit is going to work. It has to!”
I didn’t know who I was trying to convince now, him or me. All I knew was that I was going to do what I had to do and putting on this maid’s costume was the first step.
Taking off my shirt and folding it, I bent down to grab the uniform when I felt his hands on me. Hot to the touch, squeezing and digging his fingers into my waist.
“What’s our time?” he whispered, his nose buried in my neck, lips kissing and tickling the skin.
“Um...” I closed my eyes, thinking hard about the question he was asking but distracted by his mouth and the hardness pressing into my lower back. “What?”
“Our time.” He laughed, his hands sliding up my sides to my breasts, stopping short of grabbing them. “What is it?”
I opened my eyes and looked down at the stopwatch that laid
face up on the bench, bright neon green numbers ticking away, taunting me with their cruel truth. Even with his fingers slipping under the bottom of the lacey underwire, I was able to get my words out to answer him.
“Thirty-one minutes and forty-six seconds.”
Alex groaned in disappointment, but his hands were under my bra now, gripping my breasts. He thrust his hips into my ass, pushing me forward, and my hands flew up to the lockers to brace myself. I rested my forehead on the cold metal as he trailed his kisses down my back. He slipped his knee between my trembling thighs to widen my stance, causing me to throb with anticipation. We both knew there wasn’t enough time and that Ramon would be coming back to check on us, but neither one of us did anything to stop it.
“Motherfucker.” I whimpered, and my breathing picked up as he squatted low, biting my ass cheek.
Rising to a standing position, Alex spun me around to face him. Not even giving me a chance to say anything, he pinned me against the lockers and kissed me. Surrounding and consuming my body, he was rough; hard-pressing his mouth to my mouth, not giving a shit about people walking in or anything. It was chaotic, and I was breathless, but still wanting and needing more.
Lifting my leg up, I threw it around his waist, pulling him forward and demanding that friction. Grabbing a fistful of my hair, he pushed his frantic and hasty tongue against mine. I clawed my nails down his back and towards the thin, flimsy fabric that served as an unwanted barrier. Gripping at the waistband of the boxers, I yanked them down in one swift motion, springing him free.
“Jesus!” Alex cursed as his cock twitched against my stomach.
He released my hair and slid his hand into the front of my pants. It drove me even more insane, and I reacted, biting at his lip ring, putting it in between my teeth and tugging on it. My guy shoved his fingers inside me, curling them up and adding pressure against my bladder. I swore too loudly, but he kept plunging in and out, faster, and faster. My moans echoed off the lockers as the feeling of pure bliss exploded within me. I saw a white sky with black stars and everything ceased to matter.
Then it happened.
Just like I knew it would.
A loud knocking interrupted Alex mid-stroke and Ramon was on the other side of the door shouting at us to hurry up.
“God damn it!” Alex pulled away from me and slammed his fist into the locker by the side of my head. “Yeah, yeah, we’re coming.”
“I know I was,” I said, saddened and bitter.
“I’ll make it up to you, kid,” he said, leaning in, and taking hold of my bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth, biting it and making me squirm. Pulling away abruptly, he crossed the room and left me there, a panting mess.
Fully dressed in the uniforms and with less than thirty minutes to go, Alex and I were standing in Ramon’s office. He was handing over several baggies filled with white substances and various pills that we were going to plant in the senator’s home. It wasn’t the massive number of drugs I’d initially thought it would be, but Alex assured me that it was enough for an arrest.
“You’re going to have to remove those piercings,” Ramon said to Alex. “My staff isn’t allowed to wear jewelry on their faces, and I don’t want to show favoritism.”
“Fair enough,” Alex said, taking out the silver hoop from his eyebrow and lip ring. He shoved them into his blazer pocket and looked over at me. It was striking how different he looked.
“Now listen to me very closely,” Ramon said, exiting the office with Alex and me close behind. He locked it and turned back to us and spoke in a low, rushed voice. “You let me do the talking if we get stopped, okay?”
“That’s not a problem,” Alex said.
“Good,” Ramon said, stopping at the door that entered out into the lobby. He slid a card in the key slot, and it flashed green, clicking open.
On pure instinct, I reached back behind me, fingers gripping at Alex’s crisped blazer. He was there, and I knew he was, but I had to have tangible proof of his presence. It relaxed me, but I couldn’t keep a hold on him after we passed through this door. We were supposed to be strangers and touching each other was off limits.
This job was going to be a long and miserable one. I breathed through my nose and pulled out the stopwatch.
26:27...26...25...24...23...
Ramon glanced both ways and nodded. “Let’s go.”
Loud and anxious people filled the lobby from wall to wall. The overall atmosphere beyond hectic. I tried to pinpoint which ones were security and which were the guests. I had no idea, but that was the point. They needed to blend in with the crowd. Ramon never met the undercover men hired to protect the senator, and he couldn’t tell us who was dangerous and untrustworthy.
That put me on edge—like I needed the added stress.
Alex kept in step with Ramon, and they chit-chatted back and forth about God knows what, and I walked behind them, surveying the surroundings. There were cameras everywhere, giving rise to nausea in my already uneasy stomach.
Even the elevator had a camera, and I heard the whine as it zoomed in on my face.
Ramon pulled out his two-way phone. “We are in elevator seven.”
It beeped.
“We see you. The camera switched over to a pre-recorded feed now.”
I turned to Alex, and he winked.
“Is there security still on watch?” Ramon asked.
“No, sir, they all left to grab a quick bite before the senator returns home. It’s going be a long night for those poor bastards.” There was a sympathetic chuckle on the other end of the line. “Your friends, at the most, have twenty minutes.”
I gasped, and my heart skipped a beat, looking down at my stopwatch. That cut our time down by ten minutes. Alex and I always liked to get out before the stopwatch hit zero. It was better to play it safe than sorry, something that I’d learned the hard way.
Ramon caught sight of my minor breakdown and looked over at Alex with a questioning eyebrow raised. “Is that a problem?”
“It’s less than we planned for, but no, it’s not a problem. We’ll make it work.” Alex glanced over at me and nudged my arm. “Won’t we, kid?”
I nodded, and quickly got my shit together. What choice did we have? Giving Alex a small smile, I reset our stopwatch.
19:59...58...57...56...55...
“Here,” Ramon said, handing Alex a key. “It’s a two-key turn system. It was an extra precaution the senator set in place for the penthouse. In normal circumstances, if you didn’t know somebody,” he smiled and gestured to himself, “it would be challenging to penetrate.”
“Unbelievable,” Alex said. “Shit has changed.”
The security measures taken since his departure floored him, but the sheer luck of stumbling across the right people later in life to get this job done was more unbelievable to me. I was starting to see how Marcos in my debt would indeed be beneficial and valuable to our survival.
“You lived here?” Ramon asked, and his eyes were wide with surprise. Alex shrugged. “Who is this guy to you?”
“My father,” he said, and it almost sounded like an apology.
Ramon laughed. “Shit, cabrón, that’s fucked up to screw over your old man.”
“You don’t know the prick like I do.”
It was quiet, uncomfortably so, and I spoke up to ease the tension, “Why are you helping us?”
“I’m not,” Ramon said. “I’m just paying you for the wildcat.”
The elevator came to a stop, and he motioned over to Alex. They both put the key in at the exact time, turning it to the left, and the doors dinged open. Ramon put up his hand and poked his head out. Once the coast was clear, he waved us forward.
I could feel the adrenaline in my blood, pulsating and drumming in my ears as my heart pounded against my chest. The time continuing to tick by and reminding me that we had less than fifteen minutes to get this fucking thing done.
“Is the wildcat that good?” Alex asked, sensing my panic, and grasping m
y hand to comfort me. The halls were empty, and we didn’t have to obey the ‘no touching’ rule.
“You never tried it?” Ramon asked.
Alex shrugged. “Coke isn’t my game.”
We stopped before two large mahogany doors. There were four chairs set up in front and a deck of cards. I could imagine how mundane a job it must be sitting around and watch a hallway. It was too bad that they weren’t there at that moment; they might have something to do.
“Ah, well, it’s fucking superb. I’ll give you and your girl a little taste before you leave.” Ramon decided. He peeked over at me and winked. “It’ll blow your pretty little mind.”
I was shaking my pretty little head, and Alex laughed. “That’s very generous of you, Ramon, but we like to stay clear-headed as much as possible. We already have issues staying focused.”
Ramon didn’t exactly catch us in the act like so many people had in the past, but he caught on to the meaning. “I’ll give you some to take with you then. Have a little party at home.”
“That’s not our thing.” Alex was protesting, but Ramon wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Okay, whatever, man. Thank you for this and, well, for being so generous.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Ramon said and leaned towards me with a knowing smile. “A friend of Marcos is always a friend of mine.”
“I’m not his friend,” I said because it was the truth, no matter how stupid it was to voice at the time.
Ramon shook his head. “Oh, but you are.” He turned back to Alex. “Make it quick. I’ll be out here waiting for you, but if the security comes back before you’re out, I’m leaving you to fend for yourselves.”
Alex nodded, fully understanding his reasoning.
The endless contradictions of this man perplexed me. “What happened to all that talk about any friend of Marcos is a friend of yours?”
Alex smiled when Ramon looked at me in shock. My guy knew me all too well, and I called people out on their bullshit.
“I’m a friend, but I also don’t give a shit about you or your boyfriend,” Ramon said, and his words were cold. I knew right then that I’d misjudged him. There wasn’t anything contradictory about this man. “As I said, that sort of thinking will get you killed.” He flicked his wrist at me dismissively. “Now go.”