by Julia Swift
Nine cars parked on her side of the street. Four look familiar, the others could be people at the bar or visitors to the area.
Except . . .
My eyes catch on one of the cars. Black, tinted windows, expensive SUV. Exactly the type of obvious car that Aaron’s thugs prefer. I drive past it and slow just beyond it, studying the rear view mirror. The windshield, by necessity, is not tinted as deeply as the side windows.
Sure enough, lounging in the passenger side seat, a cigarette in hand and earbuds in, his head bobbing to the music, sits Topknot.
My stomach churns. What the hell is he doing here?
But the answer to that is obvious. Staking out Sloan. Guarding Aaron’s investment. Making sure that Freddie pays us the $500k . . . or else.
“Fuck,” I swear under my breath. I can’t go near her place, not right now. For all I know, Aaron has had Topknot tailing her for days already. He’d already know that we had a falling-out. It would look suspicious if I ran to her the minute Aaron told me the end-date for this little game.
If she’d even let me inside the building, that is. I can’t blame her if she wouldn’t.
But there is one person who can get in. One person who can still protect her. I open my cell and tap on recent contacts. Stare Topknot’s car down as I wait for the line to connect.
The moment it does, I don’t even wait for him to say hello. “Casey, this is Gage. We need to meet.” I shut my eyes and force myself to take a deep breath. Then continue driving past, not stopping at Sloan’s, even though every instinct in my body screams at me to run in there right now and make sure she’s all right. To stay with her until I know for sure she’s safe.
“We need to talk about your sister,” I say.
Less than ten minutes later, I’m parking beside Fred Casey’s car outside the site I plan to use for our drop. If Aaron asks questions, I’ll just say it’s better to show Casey the joint now. Make sure it’ll work for both parties. This is, after all, an amicable exchange of bribe money. At least, as far as Freddie knows.
Me, I have my suspicions of what Aaron plans to do, exactly, the moment he’s got his greedy fucking hands on the cash he’s owed.
Fred slams his door hard and leans against it, studying me as I squint up at the rooftop far above us. Six stories of offices, and a scenic completely empty roof above that. I pull open the door to the lobby and hold it for Fred, who shoots me a suspicious glare as he crosses inside.
Neither of us speak until we’re through security, who take one glance at me and wave us on inside, clearly having been prepped by the owner already. In the elevator, he finally turns to me, his jaw clenched tight.
“What about my sister?” he spits. “Are you here to threaten her?”
“The opposite.” I turn the full force of my anger on him. On this punk ass who put his own flesh-and-blood in danger. “You’re the one who got her into this mess, Fred. Now there’s people gunning for her.”
He tenses, his face visibly paling, eyes going wide. At least he still appears to give some small shit for what he’s done. “What do you mean? It’s me they want.”
“Yeah, and it’s insurance that they’ll get your cash that they need. What better way than by threatening your beloved sister?”
“Says the guy who they hired to threaten her.” Fred actually has the audacity to roll his eyes.
I slam my fist into the side wall of the elevator, hard enough to make the lights on the console blink. Fred jumps, but otherwise manages not to react. “If it was just me, you’d have nothing to worry about,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “I care about Sloan. More than you probably do, considering how she wound up threatened this way.”
He opens his mouth like he’s about to contradict me, but I bowl right over him.
“I want to protect her. Understand me? I might work for Aaron, but I’m not like his other thugs. Those other thugs, however, are currently scoping out your sister’s house. Probably watching her shower in there, for all we know. I just spotted one of them lurking out front half an hour ago, and he’d clearly been there a while.”
“Why should I believe you?” Fred mutters.
“Because you know I’m telling the truth.” I meet his gaze, and I’m sure he can see it in mine. The weak spot I’ve developed. The sincerity of my feelings for her. “She cannot get hurt in this, Fred. I don’t give a shit about you, but she doesn’t deserve this.”
He clenches his fists. “Fair enough. We’re agreed there.”
The elevator dings at the top floor, and we disembark, crossing an empty office floor to a staircase marked Emergency Exit Only. “The fact that Aaron’s got multiple guys tailing her is bad,” I explain. “When it was just me, I could control the situation. Now? I don’t know. Either Aaron doesn’t trust me, which is entirely possible, or he’s doubling down on the asset because he plans to do something sooner than later. Last time I talked to him, he was pretty pissed about having to wait five days for the drop.”
Fred shakes his head. “I can’t swing it any sooner. Believe me, I’ve tried. It has to be Saturday, not before.”
“Why, got to win your gambling money back before then?” I scowl.
“I just can’t, okay? What are our other options?”
“Watch her,” I say simply. “Tail her. Every minute of every day, if you can swing it. God knows you spend enough time moping around on your computer. Do you even have a day job?”
“You’re one to talk. What’s your day job, intimidations, or do you specialize in anything else? Threats? Seducing women?” His expression turns wry.
“I’m multitalented like that,” I respond. Let him suck on that one. Let him imagine all the things I did to his sister, all the ways I claimed her. She is mine, after all, whether he likes it or not. What Sloan and I have can’t be torn apart. After all this is done, after I’ve made sure she’s safe, I will find a way to win her back.
That, or die trying.
Fred seems to decide this argument is one he doesn’t want to pursue. He steps away from me, hands tugging at his jacket sleeves. “She’s not even speaking to me right now. She’s pissed about this whole situation.”
“Do you blame her?”
His frown deepens. “Not at all. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to tail her like that. To be with her all the time. She might not let me.”
“Then find a way to convince her. Make her, if you have to. Understand me? Aaron is not someone you want to fuck around with.” My jaw tightens as I scan the rooftop once more. Three exits, two buildings near enough for sighters, if Aaron wants them on this drop. Or worse, snipers, if he wants to go that far. I’m not sure exactly how much this Fred kid has pissed him off.
Whatever else he might be, Fred at least appears to be reasonably afraid of Aaron’s people. His hands shake at his sides, though he thinks I won’t notice the way he has them clenched in tight fists. He nods, once, though. “I understand.”
I leave him to it. I’ve got work to do.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sloan
The last two days have passed in a haze. I go to work. I come home. I sit on the couch and stare blankly at my television screen, uncomprehending the stupid sitcoms and reality shows that flash before my eyes. Eventually those eyes start to droop with sleep, and I curl up alone in my empty bed, staring at the wall until sheer exhaustion finally allows me to collapse into the sweet erase of sleep.
My stupid memories don’t help. They keep replaying, a constant loop of pain in my head.
You’re hot as hell, do you know that Sloan?
I want to devour you.
I see you all the time. Every day, every night, every time I blink.
His words are a constant refrain in my head, and I can’t stop searching them for the broken thread, the clue that should have let me in on the fact that he was lying the whole time. What should I have doubted? What should I have ignored? Should I have disbelieved him the second he said he wanted me that much?
> How does it feel?
Like you’ve claimed every part of me.
I have. And you own me too.
I let him have everything, every ounce I had to give, and he made me believe he felt the same way. He made me think I had his heart, the way he’d stolen mine. I know it was fast, I know we were only just getting started, but the whole thing had felt right, felt inevitable, in a way no man I’ve ever been with before has. It felt like coming home, or finding my path after a lifetime lost in the woods.
At the diner, I go through the motions. Serve my tables, smile robotically at all my regulars. Mr. Tim, the eighty-year-old guy who lives down the block from Morton’s, asked me this morning if I was all right, if something had happened to my family. Yeah, I wanted to say. My brother fucked up our lives permanently a decade ago, and there’s no other family left to warn me away from ruining my own life too.
Instead I told him I had indigestion. That seemed to satisfy him, or at least distract him into an hour-long rant about his own struggles with digestive tract problems.
But at home, it’s impossible to escape the flood of memories. It doesn’t help that we went through every inch of this apartment in our handful of nights together. Bent over the couch, splayed out across the bed, even one morning in the kitchen, as I brewed coffee, and he ran his hands up my inner thigh to toy with my panties until we both abandoned the coffee and woke each other up with our mouths instead.
Ugh. I abandon the pot of coffee I’d been in the middle of brewing on my countertop and wander over to collapse face-first on the couch instead. Fuck it. It’s my day off today, I don’t have to wake my brain up. It’s probably better off half-asleep and un-caffeinated. Maybe it will finally shut up.
That’s when a crash outside my door startles me to attention.
Great. What now? Probably my idiot brother coming to apologize and try to crawl back into my good graces. All while trying to explain that the only man I’ve ever felt truly myself with, the only man who’s ever made me feel like a sex goddess, doesn’t actually give a shit about me and was just using me to get to him.
Yeah. This is definitely a conversation I’m looking forward to having.
Still, I can’t help but remember my brother’s words. These people are dangerous criminals. I pause halfway to my door and peer out the peephole instead of just throwing it open the way I normally would.
The hallway is empty. Which is weird, because I definitely heard a sound—and a loud one at that—not moments ago. I squint. Maybe it was Lacey coming in or out? She works a day job, so she’d be gone today, since it’s Monday. But maybe she’s running late or something.
A glint catches my eye. At the end of the hallway, through the window that leads out to the fire escape. A flash of brown that looked almost like . . . but that couldn’t have been a shoe, could it?
A loud buzz fills my ears, and I actually jump and scream softly. Then I can’t help laughing at myself. Just the door buzzer.
I hit the door to buzz whoever it is inside. But I also keep my eye pressed to that peephole, because a thought has started to form in the back of my head. If they sent Gage after me, and Gage isn’t here anymore . . .
Surely Gage would just knock, though, right? He wouldn’t skulk around on fire escapes peering at me. He’d confront me head on. Right?
I shiver and pull my sweater a bit tighter around my body. The sudden sensation of eyes watching me tingles all down my spine, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something here. Something telltale . . .
Footsteps stomp up the staircase, and then my brother’s stupid head lifts into view. I breathe out a sigh of relief and roll my eyes, but I undo the latch at the same time. Angry as I am at Fred right now, I’m relieved to see him and not . . . well, anyone else, on that staircase.
“What is it?” I ask, cracking the door wide enough to fit one eye through, but leaving the chain on. No way I’m just letting him waltz in here like nothing happened.
“We need to talk,” Freddie says. He hops from foot-to-foot, glancing over his shoulder at the hallway. Almost like he, too, can sense what I did. That weird second sense that there’s someone else here, someone else watching.
“We can talk here,” I say.
“It’s private,” he hisses.
“So’s this. No one else is home. Unless there’s someone here I don’t know about,” I point out sharply.
His frown deepens. Now that I look closely at him, my brother seems pale and tired. Nervous, too. Even more nervous than he usually is, which is saying something. “Sloan, please just let me inside.”
“Tell me what it’s about first.”
“It’s about your freaking boyfriend,” he whispers sharply. “He met with me today. At the place where we’re doing the drop on Saturday—”
“I don’t want to hear about this,” I interrupt, moving to shut the door.
He presses a hand flat against it to stop me. “He says you’re being watched.”
The tingle along my spine increases twofold. I can’t help it. I actually shiver, and cast a sideways glance at my window. Blinds are still drawn shut. Good. “By who, him?” I mutter, trying to keep my voice sarcastic. Because if I don’t remain sarcastic, I might start to sound scared. And I definitely do not want to sound scared. Not right now.
Not when I actually am.
“By other of Aaron’s people. People Gage doesn’t trust.”
I snort.
“I know,” Freddie says. “It’s not like I trust him either. But why would he tell us that, unless he really doesn’t want to see you get hurt?”
I shrug. “Maybe he wants to make us paranoid. Spook us and see where we go running to.”
Freddie runs a hand along his jawline. “Maybe. Either way, I feel awful for getting you involved in this, and I don’t want you in harm’s way, Sloan. I booked a hotel up in Jersey City. If you leave tonight, you can stay through the weekend, until all this is done.”
I plant my feet and stick my face closer to the door, closer to his. “Oh hell no. You are not getting rid of me that easily, Frederick Casey.”
“You’re in danger, Sloan.”
“So are you.”
“And it’s my own damn fault, whereas it’s not yours. Just leave, please? I’ll be fine.”
“I’m not going anywhere while some mafia creepfest threatens you. What the hell kind of a sister would that make me?”
“The smart kind?”
“You don’t tell me what to do, Freddie. You are not my keeper, and you are not going to treat me like some breakable porcelain doll just because shit’s getting real. I’m staying put, and I’m going with you on Saturday to this thing—”
“Oh, no you’re fucking not—”
“Yes I fucking am, or I’ll text Gage right now and tell him to please come over and take me away to whatever creepy shit Aaron has planned for me.”
“Sloan. Be mature here.”
“I am being mature. I will stay away from Gage and stay locked up in this apartment and safe this week, if you promise me that you’ll bring me with you on Saturday. Deal?”
He throws his hands in the air. “You’re fucking impossible.”
“And you’re not? That’s my only offer, bro. Take it or leave it.” Then I slam the door hard, so fast he only barely manages to yank his hand away in time. As I turn the lock, I hear him through the hard wood.
“You’re not safe, Sloan.”
“No one is,” I shout back. “That’s life.”
But I do turn all three locks in my door, after listening to his feet stomp down my staircase. I turn all those locks, and then I circle the house, checking every window. I’m not running away from this, but I’m not planning on being an idiot, either.
One week, I tell myself as I pick up my cell phone to call in sick at the diner. Just one week. Then this nightmare will be over.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Gage
The next day seems to move in even slowe
r motion than the first two. Seventy-two hours since I last touched her, I recite as I go through the motions, pouring coffee and straightening my tie and getting into my car and driving through this stupid city to Aaron’s hideous office, in the back of the Revel, where renovations are almost complete.
I sidestep a mob of shouting construction workers, hoisting a gaudy new sign for The Daily Double-Up, some new slot section in the corner of the Revel. Trust Aaron to not only work in a bad pun on his own last name—O’Malley/Daily, really?—but also to steal a Jeopardy line in the process. I hope absently that someone will please sue his ass for that.
Aaron’s new “office” looks exactly as sketchy as you would imagine. From the outside it’s not bad, located at the top floor of the Revel’s new glass central staircase, offering a view of the entire gaming floor. But the moment I knock and the door swings inward, any hopes I had that Aaron might finally bring some class to this operation are flushed down the toilet.
The walls of the office are plastered with pin-up posters. Not the vintage kind, either, with real women in them. Posters that look like they were pulled straight from porno still-shots, stick-thin women in every position getting fucked six ways from Sunday—in one case, by six guys at once.
Then, of course, there’s the live action version. Aaron on his leather couch, a girl in a tight thong and nothing else perched beside him, absently rubbing her foot against his thankfully-still-clothed crotch as he types something on his phone. He glances up at me when I enter, grunts, and looks back to the phone.
I lean against the door and wait.
I swear he takes extra time on purpose, knowing I’m standing there. And the whole time, I have to stare at the ceiling to avoid watching his hooker stroke his hard-on. Not exactly something I want burned into my memory, thank you very much.