Professional Liar

by Monica Corwin

  Prospero inclined his head.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A day maybe?”

  “No one alerted us you were missing…” Or maybe Kat hadn’t told me.

  He shook head slowly and dropped it back against the wall. “No, they wouldn’t know. I was at my cabin alone when his men came for me.”

  “Why were you alone? Don’t you have family, a guard?”

  Lucien shifted again, his roped creaking behind him. “He doesn’t like them,” he supplied instead of waiting for Prospero to answer.

  I focused on the kid. He didn’t look as beat up as either of us.

  “Did they get Katherine?” Prospero asked.

  The idea of Kat in the hands of these dicks shot a fresh burst of anger and adrenaline through me. Then I remembered.

  I remembered. And it hurt all over again.

  “No,” I said, and cleared my throat to answer more clearly around my fresh grief. “I wasn’t with her, and I think we’d hear her by now if they had her.”

  Lucien snorted. I glared and then shook it off. Defending Kat was no longer my job.

  The door opened behind me, and I shifted on my pained knees to look. One of the guys who grabbed me entered first, then another. Finally, the Adam or A-something Dick followed after him. Someone else trailed in behind and closed the door.

  “You know I can’t remember your name again, what was it? Something about a sweater?”

  Lucien chuckled softly behind me, and the first goon clapped him on the head with the end of a handgun.

  “My name is Argyll Aristo.”

  “Great. Thanks for clearing that up.”

  The goon lingering near Lucien stepped up behind me and wrenched my head back, his hand tight around my throat. It could have been erotic in better circumstances.

  Argyll waved his hand and the man let me go. I sagged forward, sucking in air until I could breathe again, well, the best I could with pain slicing up my side. The kicks at my ribs in the bar likely broke or bruised something.

  “Here is how this is going to work,” Argyll said, extending his hands as if addressing his subjects. “We are going to let one of you live.”

  “The kid,” both I and Prospero called out at once.

  Lucien shifted behind me, but kept quiet.

  “Noble of you gentleman, but this is a test. I’m going to call a ransom to your family. The first to show up and pay the fee will get to take you home. The other two will die.”

  I laughed out loud this time. “You are going to invite my brothers here to get me. You better have a whole hell of a lot more men than this.” I eyed the goon and the other guy monitoring the phone.

  My mouth earned me another crack to the skull. Ringing started in my ears, but I shook it off.

  “I mean the family who will represent you here. I’ve already placed a call to Mrs. St. James. The others have been made the offer as well. We shall see who cares the most, shall we?”

  I hoped Kat told him to go fuck himself. The sight of her here would not be good for my sanity right now.

  The men filed back and out, and I toppled onto my ass to relieve the ache on my knees. My pants were ripped and shredded, my jacket long gone at the bar, and my shirt blood stained and dirty. A warm trickle of blood still poured down my face, and I tried to lean and staunch in on my shoulder.

  “So what are the odds we get out of here?” I asked my companions.

  Lucien didn’t answer. He sat and stared at empty fire grate across the room.

  Prospero broke the silence. “I couldn’t say. A power play of this kind hasn’t been seen since Katherine’s father pulled one. I am curious what your wife will do.”

  Knowing Kat, she probably had Bianca under lock and key in a safe house somewhere as she contemplated how much I’m worth losing.

  The money didn’t matter, but Kat wouldn’t show her face here unless she had the upper hand. I shrugged. “I have no idea what she is going to do. She won’t leave me here, but I don’t exactly know if she’ll come and get me either.”

  “A rough patch so soon?” Prospero asked.

  I glared through the darkened room. He had no malice etched in his features, and no humor. His face a blank canvas dotted with blood and dirt.

  The door opened again and slammed against the other wall. Goon number one thrust a phone at my face and held it on my ear. “Pierce?”

  Gerry’s voice came through the line. “Yeah,” I ground out, my disappointment at not hearing Kat’s voice a living breathing thing inside my chest.

  “Glad you’re alive. Stay that way, okay? We’ll be there soon.”

  “She doesn’t come here. I don’t give a shit what happens to me. She does not set foot in this place,” I said, my voice gravelly on a new register. I didn’t give orders often, but when I did I expected them to be followed.

  The goon took the phone and left, closing and locking the door again.

  If Gerry was spearheading my rescue, I did have some hope. The man could negotiate. I didn’t think it would appease Argyll and his world domination plans.

  A commotion erupted from outside the room. A gun shot went off and then another. We all scooted across the dirty floor away from the door. It wouldn’t be good to get saved only to be shot in the rescue attempt.

  Voices and shouting came next until the door was thrust open again, and Argyll entered hands on up by his ears a large desert eagle pointed to the back of his head.

  I saw her arm first, then her delicate elbow, her hair, the curve of her waist under her t-shirt, my black leather jacket. My heart stopped. It broke. It shattered into ground glass. She couldn’t be here.

  I speared Gerry a glare as he followed her in hauling the two goons with him.

  Kat struck out quick, and Argyll dropped to the concrete. “You move, I fucking kill you.”

  Her voice went beyond snow and ice. This was the burning pain of something colder. “Kat,” I called.

  She didn’t look at me, just stood there holding the gun to the back of his head. As if trying to decide the best place to put a bullet.

  Gerry shoved the goons in further. One struck out toward Kat, and I swung my legs under him, caught him by the knee and brought him down on top of me.

  My last sight was Kat turning to look at me, the dim light haloing her riotous curls.

  As unconsciousness claimed me a second time, I thought she look like an angel. Not the kind from the happy biblical stories. The ones who brought fire, brimstone, and the God damn cavalry.

  Eighteen

  Katherine

  Something broke in me when Pierce walked out the door. He’d begged me. He’d begged me, and I gave him the same face my father gave my mother so many times. She only wanted to be loved. He only wanted to be loved.

  The sight of him lying on the floor, blood dripping down his face, broke the rest of whatever I’d been clinging to in order to keep Pierce at a distance. Nothing left between me and my feelings for him. All I could do was face them, go head to head, and hope I came out the other side in one piece.

  Argyll staggered to his feet, and I allowed him to stand for a second. “I give up,” he announced. His tone, however, said fuck you.

  He shuffled sideways, and I couldn’t react fast enough. He kicked Pierce again. Something clicked in me, I aimed at the bastard’s knee, and pulled the trigger. The gun jerked back, but I held on as Argyll slammed to the ground screaming.

  I held up the weapon. “You know; I don’t even need this.”

  Argyll clutched his knee in both his hands, rocking on the side of his hip. “I have something so much better.”

  “What?” he screamed.

  I leaned in and met his eyes. “I have little Patricia. She looks so adorable in that tutu. And I have baby Erin. It’s so sweet how his sister calls him Ari. I love that.”

  I settled my eyes on the other man held tight by Gerry and gave him a sugar-coated smile. “And I have Theresa. Does your wife know all the naug
hty things you two do when she’s not in town? And Sam. You want her to take over your family one day, don’t you? I can’t wait to meet her.”

  I waved the gun around. Sure, I looked like a lunatic. But I needed them to believe I sat just on the wrong side of sane. I needed them to look at my face and see my father.

  I reached in my pocket to pull out a pack of smokes Fox bought only twenty minutes ago. The plastic crinkled faintly as I pinched it, pulled out a cigarette, and stepped up to Benedict again. His eyes widened as I fished a lighter from his breast pocket I knew he kept there.

  My father had done that very same thing hundreds of times. I lit the cigarette, took a short drag, crossed my arms, and angled my head back. The perfect imitation of his classic ‘I’m debating on how to torture you’ stance. Another move my father did expertly. The same pose he took when he considered how to punish someone, and who’d be next to die. I glanced over my shoulder, and Benedict shivered in Gerry’s grip. “Do you think I’ll kill every single person you love?”

  He scanned me head to toe and nodded twice. “Good, keep that in mind as you find a replacement to take over your family.”

  I crouched and extinguished the cigarette an inch in front of Argyll’s pain drawn face.

  Then I stood, planted my foot, and roundhouse kicked Benedict so hard, he hit the ground, his face smacking on concrete.

  I knew this should be harder, and yet, every time I looked at Pierce laying in a small pool of his own blood, I couldn’t force myself stop.

  Gerry nodded once and wiped his hands on his pants. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “Both my sister and I earned black belts in martial arts as teenagers.”

  A voice broke in from the corner. “This would be following the assassination attempt, correct?”

  I stepped into the shadows and caught sight of Prospero, injured and leaning against the wall in the corner. “It was.” I answered.

  A few of Pierce’s guys hovered at the door. I snapped my fingers and pointed to Prospero. One of them came over and helped the man out of the room. “Take him to his family. They will get him the help he needs.”

  I focused back on Argyll, and I itched to empty the whole fucking gun into him. His boot still shiny with Pierce’s blood. I pointed at Gerry. “If I kill him, do you have the resources to make sure he disappears?”

  “Sure, Boss.”

  Anger flashed through me as I peered down at this man. The one who’d ruined my chance at happiness. The bastard I’d love nothing more than to gut. I couldn’t just let him walk away. So I stepped forward, shifted the mantle of leading this fucked up group of assholes onto my shoulders and aimed. It probably should have been harder to pull the trigger. The sound of the gun echoed through the room again, and Argyll jerked as the bullet struck his torso.

  I flicked on the safety and handed it to Gerry. “You know; I think I missed something important. If he lives, send him back to his family, and tell them to choose another representative. If I see him ever again, I will kill him.”

  The other two goons sat on the floor, staring at the once lauded leader of the Aristo family. I addressed them now. “You two go home, tell your family, tell your friends, tell anyone who will listen that I am head of the families now, and if anyone so much as breathes the word rebellion, I will come for them, and their children, their dogs, and their fucking yard gnomes. Nod once if you understand.”

  They both nodded frantically, and I gestured at the men by the door to get them out of there.

  Lucien sat on the floor, eyes wide as I untied his hands. Then I gripped him under the arm and helped him. “We’ll take you to the hospital with us.”

  Gerry came back, lifted Pierce from the floor, and I trailed after him. We went straight the hospital, and I installed him in my family’s private wing.

  The doctors explained the extent of his injuries, and I broke down in tears, collapsing to the floor in the middle of the hospital hallway. Fox lifted me gently and set me up beside Pierce in his hospital bed.

  Waiting for him to wake up was a kind of helplessness I never wanted to feel again.

  Nineteen

  Pierce

  The gentle flush flush flush of hospital equipment reached me first. Then the light blazing against my eyelids. I open my eyes, blinking against the too-bright fluorescents. I’d woken in hospital beds before. Never after having been kidnapped and beat up by a bunch of Italians though.

  A warm weight on my forearm prompted me to look down. Kat’s hair lay splayed across my sterile white sheets, one of her hands clutched around my arm, her other twisted at an ungodly angle so she could entwine our fingers together.

  The side of her cheek was barely visible through her ponytail, and the gray sweater enveloped her shoulders. She appeared so peaceful like this. Tiny. So very fragile. I swallowed against a wave of nausea arching through me at the thought of her lying in a bed like this. She’d break, and right now, I couldn’t do a thing about it. Where were my guards? Where were hers?

  I gently tugged her hand from mine, about to find them, or my cell phone to call them, and she jumped away, hair flying around her head. “You’re awake.”

  “Where are the guards?” My voice cracked. “Do you have some water?”

  She leaned over her chair and came back up with a bottle in her hand. Before I could grasp it, she cracked the top, took a swig from it, and handed it to me. I shifted up, and a sharp pain shot down my side, robbing me of breath. She cupped my hand around the bottle, helped me take a few sips, and then and gently reclined me into the bed again.

  “You need to be careful. You have two broken ribs on that side. And Gerry is outside the door. He checks every employee on a list and won’t let anyone in until they talk to him. I think he misses you at home.”

  “Is that all? It feels like someone took a sledgehammer to my lungs.” I tried to steady my inhales and exhales, moderate the air best I could. Other aches and pains began to filter in as I continued to pull from sleep. My left wrist sported a serious bandage, and my two middle fingers were splinted together with tape and wooden sticks.

  I tried to pull apart what happened. The bar…Holt trying to drag me to the car. Someone ambushed us. I closed my eyes against the pain and the haze. “Damn. What happened?”

  She scooted her chair closer the edge of my bed and grasped my hand. It seemed more for her support than mine. “You went to the bar, got drunk, Holt tried to bring you home, but a couple of guys from the Aristo family knocked him out, left him on the curb, and brought you to one of their houses.”

  “That’s about what I remember.”

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes, instead staring intently at the bedding and our entwined fingers. I’d allow it for now, but if she felt some sort of guilt about what happened to me, I didn’t care if I broke another rib. I’d strip her of that notion and whatever else I needed to get it through her thick skull.

  “I don’t know what happened on that side except they held you there with the heir to the Cambio family and Prospero from Biondello. Apparently, they refused to join with Aristo and Litio against me. They were in similar shape as you. Prospero is at home being cared for, and Lucien is next door.”

  “But how did I end up here? For a little while, I think I’d resigned myself to the end.”

  Her fingers tightened on my arm, and her jaw tightened. “They turned it into a game. Set a ransom for each of you, called their families, and whoever’s next of kin showed up first, they got to live. But I doubt they intended that for you.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Holt came back to the house and told us what happened. Gerry stepped up to take control of the situation, we, er…had a conversation, and I let him accompany me to get you. We arrived at the Aristo compound, found you guys, and I persuaded Argyll and Benedict they should choose another course and another person to pay penance.”

  None of that sounded familiar. I didn’t even remember Kat arriving. I would have liked
to see her pitted against those bastards.

  “What did you do to get us out of there?”

  She tucked her chin again, and I tried to stretch my other arm across to force her eyes to mine. Another rocket of pain shot down my nerve endings. “I’m going to keep moving if you continue to hide things from me. Do you feel guilty about me being here? Is that why you won’t look at me?”

  She swallowed heavily and glanced up. “Guilt. Not for you, but what I did to them.”

  “What did you do?”

  A sheen of tears coated her eyes and threatened to thread down her cheeks. She held them back until she could speak again. “Years ago, when my father assumed control of the five families, he captured the loved ones of the leaders and forced them under threat of violence to accede. I didn’t take anyone, like he did, but I threatened it.” A sob came out of her, a sound I’d never heard before. My heart splintered. I wanted to hold her, but I could barely move to reach for her.

  “I listed off where their kids were one by one, and implied I had them at gun point. Argyll wanted to push me, but Benedict is old enough to remember my father and his ruthlessness. He gave in and released you and the others.”

  “What did you do to Argyll?”

  Another tip of her chin toward her chest.

  “Stop it.”

  She shook head back and forth and back and forth. Her voice cracked as she answered. “I shot him with my father’s gun.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “I thought so, as I’d never shot anyone before, but no, he’ll live. He’s under his family’s care, and his daughter Rebecca has now been appointed to take care of his family business.”

  “Where did you shoot him?”

  She threw up her hands trying to explain and reason through the guilt I could tell wracked her. “He kicked you while you were already passed out. I thought you were dead. I shot him in the knee once to make him kneel, and then I shot him in the stomach, low. I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted to put him in more pain than you. Gerry said I barely missed the important organs.”