by Danika Fox
This was gonna be a problem. I glanced at Chrissy’s face, watched as the blood drained from it. She gripped the back of the sofa, and on impulse, I reached for her hand.
Except it wasn’t Chrissy’s picture they showed.
The girl in question was bleach blonde, her hair tied up in a ponytail. She’d been blessed with a pair of brilliant blue eyes, and across her nose and cheeks was a scattershot of tawny freckles.
“Oh,” Chrissy breathed, low but hard enough to stir the hairs on my nape. “Fuck…”
“Roxine Moore, a waitress at the club, was working at the time of the shooting. Ms. Moore has not been identified among the bodies, leaving police and the public to speculate on her whereabouts. If anyone currently watching has any information regarding the location of Roxine Moore, please contact the number on screen.”
I looked away from the TV and up into Chrissy’s face again. “Friend of yours?”
“I guess so,” she said. “I mean—yeah. I just…” She chewed her lip.
“Was she there when everything… you know…”
“No.” She shook her head, obscuring her face with one hand. “I was covering for Roxy last night—she was hungover and couldn’t miss another shift. I’m not supposed to be hanging around one of daddy’s clubs. I used her ID to clock in.”
“So she’s alive,” I said. “And she won’t have anything to tell them about the shooting…” That train of thought veered suddenly, and I didn’t like the place it went. “except—”
“They’ll know about me,” she finished in my stead. “And now the psychopaths who shot up the club know that someone survived and they’ll think that it was Roxy.”
I opened my mouth to offer some kind of reassurance, but I had none to give. Chrissy was right. The way this had all played out, Roxy was now enemy number one to whoever had carried out that hit. She was a loose end. We knew she hadn’t been there that night, but if those guys got to her before the cops did...
“I have to warn her,” Chrissy said, pulling away and striding to the bedroom. She left the door open behind her; I followed. “There are payphones down in the lobby. I can call her, and—”
“And then what?” I asked, leaning in the doorframe while she disappeared into her suite’s walk-in closet. “Your father said not to leave the penthouse, Chrissy.”
She poked her head out. Her eyes locked onto mine. I could feel a pang deep in my gut—a kind of shame at trying to stand in her way. “Do I look like the kind of girl who gives a good goddamn what my father told me to do?”
I straightened then, coming up to my full height, which required me to cross the threshold and set foot in her room—the room I’d told myself I’d stay the hell out of.
Chrissy backed up a step, into the closet. Slowly, I followed. By the time I got there, she’d thrown on a sundress over her bikini. Somehow, it made her look even more vulnerable.
“Do I look like the kind of guy who fucks with Don Falcone?” I asked her. Coolly. Softly. She jutted her chin defiantly, but stepped back again when I moved further into her space. “Or the kind of guy who’d let a mafia princess get offed ‘cause she was worried about her bestie?”
The pulse in her neck fluttered as she answered, “I never asked for a bodyguard.”
“That’s too bad,” I told her. “‘Cause you’ve got one.”
She surged into my space suddenly, drawing her body up close to mine. The low, sweetheart neckline of her dress crinkled with her quickening breaths. The tops of her breasts, and the delicious hollow between them, flushed scarlet.
“When I first saw you, I thought you were some kind of badass,” she hissed, that angry flush working its way up her neck to her cheeks. “I didn’t think you answered to anyone. You were your own man. An outlaw biker, for God’s sakes.”
“I am,” I said, countering her heated stare with one of my own. “But I’m not without my loyalties.”
She recoiled, lip curled in disgust. “To my father?”
I chuckled. “To my club. And what’s good for Don Falcone is good for them. So, yeah. Maybe I’m taking orders from your daddy. But I’m doing this for my brothers.”
“Right,” she said, “the club. You guys are like family, aren’t you?” I shrugged. “What if it was someone you knew, someone you cared about? What if it was one of your brothers about to get hunted down by a bunch of hitmen, huh?”
“That’d be different,” I said.
Chrissy narrowed her eyes. “Why, because we’re girls?”
“Because you’re civilians.”
She threw up her hands. “So people who aren’t in your shitty gang or the goddamn mafia don’t matter?!”
That was a hard question to answer without making her angrier, because the truth, as I saw it, was a hard no. Outsiders could never matter as much as the people who had your back, the family you belonged to. We lived completely different lives from everyone else in the world, even the weekend warriors. Our bonds were sacred, and on a whole different level than the rest of the population.
Of course, I couldn’t expect Chrissy to understand that. She was an outsider herself. Not only when it came to the Hounds of Hell—she’d turned her back on her own family. And not just on the mob, but her actual father. And why? To shake her ass at a club like Earthly Delights?
She knew nothing about loyalty. She only thought she did. Sometimes, loyalty was about sacrifice.
“This whole mess is about more than just you and your friend, Chrissy,” I reminded her. “This is your father’s empire we’re talking about. This is your Uncle Tony. Twenty-nine people died that night, and—”
Chrissy shoved me, both hands on my chest. “Don’t you think I know that?! I was there! You weren’t! I saw… I saw twenty-nine people I knew, people I worked with—family—get gunned down, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it! All I could do was hide. There was no saving them. But Roxie doesn’t need to join them…”
She trailed off, a fine tremor coursing through her hands as she pulled away from me and collapsed in on herself. “I could save her, Crush. All it would take is a phone call.” She swallowed what for all the world seemed like a sob.
I looked down at her, standing there with her fingers curled around her own arms, knuckles white. Survivor’s guilt, they called this—the powerful, irrational belief that you’d done something wrong by living when everyone around you died. That they deserve to be here more than you do. That you’re unworthy of life.
Chrissy didn’t need a bodyguard. She needed a shrink. I was hardly qualified for that job—I could barely figure out my own problems, let alone someone else’s, but… I could at least be kind. I could care. I could give her that much.
I scrubbed my face with my hand, sighing as I weighed my options. There was a payphone bank in the lobby. We wouldn’t be leaving the hotel grounds. I could have her down long enough to make the call, then back up here before anybody saw her. No harm. No foul. And nothing Falcone needed to know about.
My gut said I was getting soft. But just looking at Chrissy, I knew somebody had to do something for her, or she was gonna fall to pieces. And the only person with any power over her right now was me.
“C’mon,” I said, taking her by the wrist. Her skin was soft and warm. Her pulse beat a quivering tattoo against my palm. “But we’ve gotta be quick about this.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, and for a second, I thought it was too little too late, because the words rushed out of her so hard all the breath left her lungs. She twisted in my grasp, just enough to grab onto my arm to steady herself. “Thank you.”
I nodded to her. And resisted the urge to pull her close, to wrap her in an embrace that might make her feel safe for a while.
Because the truth was she wasn’t safe at all. Not unless I could keep her from harm. And I couldn’t do that if I got too close. The money I needed, and her life, both depended on my ability to keep a professional distance.
We took the elevator to the lobby. T
he ride was a silent one, but that was all right with me, and it seemed to be all right with Chrissy too. Neither of us were the type for small-talk, and anyway, she’d drifted into that far-off place again—the place nothing could reach her except her memories.
I hoped this little phone call gave her back some of her power. I hoped it made her feel like less of a coward. In my opinion, she’d done the smart thing by staying alive. But if it was me in her shoes? I’d have felt like a traitor to my brothers. Maybe that was the thought that made me feel like this was a good idea.
“I’ll just be a minute,” Chrissy promised when we hit the lobby and made it to the phone bank. She ducked behind the wall, and I waited on the other side of it, watching the men and women throwing away their hard-earned cash on games of chance.
Guess that’s some kind of metaphor for their lives, I mused, never allowing my gaze to linger too long on any of the faces surrounding me. When you’re going nowhere fast, what have you got to lose?
My eyes trailed over the sea of bodies, making quick assessments about who they were, what the hell they were doing here, and finding no threats. Just tourists and a few locals so bored with what they had even the thought of losing it was a thrill.
But then I spotted someone I never expected to see again. Someone I didn’t even really remember until that moment.
It was the guy I’d bumped into on my way out of the club that night.
At first I was sure I was mistaken. I blinked a couple times as I looked him over, trying to pick out some kind of difference that would separate him from the man in my memory. But no matter how hard I tried, he was still there, standing just inside the lobby, doing his own scan of the guests gathered there. Looking for something just as much as I was.
Or someone.
For a split second, our eyes met. He blanched, jaw loosening as he recognized me too.
I stood a little straighter, moving off the wall—but he’d already turned around and was walking out of the hotel as fast as he could. As fast as he’d hustled out of the strip club the night before.
Every cell in my body was screaming for me to go after him. To chase the fucker down and find out what the hell he knew about that night, and what the hell he was doing anywhere near Chrissy Falcone now.
But that would mean leaving her here, unattended, while I pursued what might be a damn coincidence. A dead end. Grinding my teeth, I tried to tell myself that’s probably exactly what it was—just some tourist who wandered into two dens of sin at the wrong damn time. Twice in a row.
Yeah. That seemed a stretch. And it left me feeling uneasy.
But no way in hell was I leaving her on her own, especially if she was being watched.
“Are you done yet?” I asked, leaning past the wall to look at her. She was still on the phone, her hand cupped around the receiver. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but when her eyes met mine, they were red-rimmed. It was obvious she’d been crying.
My mouth went dry all at once, and that urge returned—the monumentally stupid one that tempted me to walk over there, put my arms around this girl, and keep her as close as it took to get her feeling something other than pain and grief again.
When I get back to the Hounds of Hell, I thought, I’m gonna have to make a real effort to drink this girl out of my head.
Her vulnerability didn’t last long. She waved me off with a glare, then returned to her conversation, rubbing at her eyes with the heel of her palm. I turned back to the lobby, then ducked behind the wall as one of the security officers rounded the corner. Maybe he wasn’t one of the don’s guys, but he was on the payroll, and I wasn’t too keen on anybody finding out we’d left the penthouse. It was anyone’s guess how many eyes and ears Falcone had around the place, any or all of them only too eager to make mention of the fact that his daughter’s biker escort had already fucked up the very simple task he’d been given.
You had one job, I could hear him muttering in my mind. All your dumb ass had to do was stay in the fucking penthouse.
“All right,” Chrissy said suddenly from behind me. It took a real effort on my part not to jump. “Let’s get back upstairs before anyone figures out we were gone.”
“Just a minute,” I said, peering past the edge of the wall to ensure the coast was clear. “Is your friend okay?”
She blinked at me. “What?”
“Your friend,” I repeated, “is she all right? No one tried to hurt her or anything?”
“No,” Chrissy said at length. “But the cops have been calling her friends all day. She was just about to go into the station before I called. She thought I was dead…”
I nodded. “I guess it’s a good thing you caught her, then. Otherwise, the cops would have been looking for you next.”
Again, she regarded me during a long pause. Finally, she said, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
I regarded her too. I’d been expecting more of a brag. I’d just admitted she’d done the right thing, after all. But Chrissy only shrugged.
“Let’s get back to the room. I don’t like being out in the open like this.”
“Me neither,” I admitted, glancing out into the lobby one last time before reaching for her once again. Just like last time, my fingers wreathed easily around her delicate wrist. “Let’s go.”
Just like last time, she didn’t fight me on it.
10
Chrissy
It was a huge relief to know Roxy was all right—the thought of my survival making her a target was way too much for me to handle, and I didn’t need to go bearing any more burdens than I already was.
She’d sounded relieved too, over the phone. But also guilty. I knew that feeling pretty well. It’s hard to reconcile being happy you’re alive with the knowledge that so many others aren’t.
Be careful, she’d said just before I hung up the phone. Seriously, Chris. You shouldn’t have even called. I mean, I’m glad you did, but…
I knew what she meant. Neither of us wanted to be the reason somebody else got killed.
“Let’s move,” Crush said, signaling that there were no security guards looking our way as we entered the bustling crowd between the casino, the restaurant, and the elevators. It seemed like the perfect place to get lost, to disappear, and for a moment I started to think about giving Crush the slip and making a break for it. If this was all my fault, then why put him through it too? Maybe I’d be better off hiding on my own, without my Daddy and his goons looking over my shoulder…
But the thought of making a break for it didn’t last long.
I honestly don’t know what made me look away from our destination as we made our way across the lobby toward the penthouse elevator, but my eyes were drawn toward the restaurant—and that’s when I saw him.
Suddenly I was back beneath the stage, covered in sweat as I looked through the bullet hole in the wood and fiberglass, watching helplessly as Tony was shot in the head.
The man responsible was here… in the hotel…
I don’t remember screaming, but before I knew it, I was on the floor on my knees right in the middle of the crowd, frozen to the spot as I relived that awful moment all over again, tears streaming from my eyes. Crush with down beside me before I even knew what I’d done, his arms wrapped around me. He was speaking, asking if I was all right, but for the life of me I couldn’t even begin to answer him. He slipped his strong arms beneath mine, lifting me and then carrying me toward the penthouse elevator.
I turned my head, eyes wide, to try and point to the man who’d killed my uncle… but he was gone. A different man stepped forward, smiling as he turned to a scantily-clad girl half his age and pulled her into a kiss. A cold chill seeped into my stomach, and suddenly I couldn’t help but question my own eyes. Did I really see the man from the club, or were my eyes deceiving me? First I’d seen Melody in my own reflection… and now this?
Maybe I should ask Lonnie to have my contacts or glasses sent up...
“Crush,” I whimpered as
we made it inside the elevator. “I think I’m losing my mind.”
“It’ll be okay,” he lied, his arms still wrapped tight around me as the car rose to the very top floor of the hotel. “No one is going to get you up here.”
“I saw him,” I whispered as the doors opened. “I swear to God, I saw him down there… in the lobby…”
“Him?” he asked warily.
“The man who killed my uncle.”
He stiffened. “Are you sure?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Crush grimaced. “Well, even if you did see him, he can’t get up to the penthouse, Chrissy,” he tried to assure me, leading me toward the bedroom. “No one can get up here except us and your dad’s men. We’re safe.”
He sat me down on my bed, affording me a quick once-over to make sure I hadn’t hurt myself before kneeling down in front of me. “I’m going to be right here, okay? Anyone who comes through those doors that isn’t one of ours is getting his ass blown off. All right?”
“A-all right,” I stammered, trying to swallow back another sob as he stood. “I just… what if he wasn’t there? What if my mind’s playing tricks on me? I’m just so afraid that I’m going insane. What if that’s what’s happening?”
“Just try to relax,” he said, taking my hand in his. “What you saw was fucked up, Chrissy, and no one can blame you if it’s making you feel a little crazy. I think right now, the best thing that you can do for yourself is to get some rest.”
And just like that, I was alone with only my thoughts—thoughts of all the ways I feared those awful people would find me and kill me just like that had done to Tony. My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I could feel my pulse in my throat. The entire world felt like it was reeling out of control, and I just prayed to God I could survive this.
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through whatever the hell this was—a panic attack, a nervous breakdown, whatever. I just wanted it to end, and the sooner the better. For the first time in a long time, I honestly wished my dad was there. At least I knew that he’d be able to protect me—not that Crush wasn’t capable, but there’s something to be said about how we’re conditioned to find comfort in the nearness of our parents.