Chapter 36 Misty
MISTY
“Idid it.” I take a deep breath.
“Anal?” Sienna sets down the tray of hot chocolate snowmen she’s about to take out.
“Anal? She did that in the locker room?” Lucy wrinkles her nose.
“Kids today know way too much.”
“It’s not me! Austen’s been complaining about it nonstop. I had to hear all about it at dinner, which wasn’t very good because Mom cooked.”
“I have emergency meals in the freezer. You all should have warmed one of the lasagnas up.” I feel guilty. I shouldn’t have just abandoned my siblings and let them fend for themselves.
“Dad said we could order pizza, but Mom insisted she could cook. She’s still pretty mad at you. Also, Brielle wants you to get disowned.”
“Mom doesn’t have anything that I would inherit anyway,” I tell her impatiently. “Screw Brielle. And screw Austen too.”
“Where’s the cum dispenser?”
“Gran…”
“I had a delivery over to Brandy’s house for her holiday block party, and she was shocked at the pictures. Shocked, I tell ya! She wanted to know if you’d been jacking off an elephant in there.”
Sienna chokes on her tea.
“He didn’t get scared off, did he? I swear, Spamalot the Imposter has gotten in your mother’s ear,” Granny Keagan complains. “I don’t know why the backbone skipped your mother’s generation. She needs to take a page out of your book and hire a hitman.”
“He better not have run off,” Sienna glowers.
“No, he’s—” I lower my voice. “Staking out the target. Austen’s on the last door of his advent calendar.”
Granny Keagan throws her hands up. “Praise Santa and his bestie Jesus!”
“You cunt!” Lucy claps her hands gleefully.
I contort my expression. “Is that a good thing?”
“The best thing. Austen’s going down. He was practically jerking off Dad at dinner.”
I cringe. “Can we just bring the language down to at least PG-13?” I beg.
“When’s Talbot offing Austen?” Sienna asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “He just said stay in a public area and make sure I have an alibi for the next forty-eight hours.”
“Oh my god, that is the hottest thing any man has ever done.” Sienna fans herself.
“Don’t give him all the credit—she had to pay for it. Woman worked hard for her blood money.” Lucy snaps her fingers.
I start to feel queasy.
Granny Keagan pours me a stiff one. “On the house.”
“I need to start working here regularly and not just cover for you when you booty call,” Sienna jokes. “No shit if we get free drinks.”
“A toast.” Lucy hefts her mug of hot chocolate.
“To Austen’s last night on earth.”
“Um, what the fuck? It’s been, like, thirty-six hours. He didn’t kill him last night or this morning, and here we are. Austen is still skating around like an idiot, missing passes and ruining shots on goal. Did you see that? The Orcas’ net was wide open, and he fucks it up!” Sienna is furious.
Lucy sidles up next to me. “I bet Talbot ran off with your money.”
“He says he’s a professional. It’s a professional company,” I say firmly.
“That a nine-year-old found on TikTok.” Lucy rolls her eyes. “Maybe it’s one of those romance scams.”
“Hey, if it is, then not getting kidnapped and taken to Eastern Europe is a win.” I down my cocktail.
I want to get another one, but Sienna and I have hunkered down in a far corner, and my mom is seething on the fringe of the WAGs who are not-so-subtly talking about The Incident.
Rachel hasn’t talked to me at all since the locker room saga. I can’t face Ryan, but I also can’t just sit home alone frantically refreshing my news alerts to see if Austen still walks this earthly plane.
I probably shouldn’t have come, but I’m technically here with Sienna’s family since Cocoa and I moved onto the daybed in her suite of a room.
“Talbot told me he’s going dark,” I try to reassure myself as much as my friend and sister.
I head out of the suite. I need a drink, and I’m not walking past my mother.
I suppose if Talbot were here, he’d just sneak into another of the high-end suites that encircle the arena. But I don’t have his chutzpah, and so I join the masses to find a stadium bar with a short line and that serves something other than beer.
Being annoyed at the alcohol situation is amplifying my anxiety about Talbot potentially scamming me out of my money.
“He said don’t call him.” I stuff my phone back into my purse. Yeah, probably so he could be halfway to Monaco or something with my life savings.
“Does any bar here serve anything other than a fifty-dollar gallon of beer in a hockey-stick glass?” I complain as I make another loop around the stadium.
“In Boston? Unlikely. This city has no culture.”
I look up. There’s a blond-haired man with gray eyes and a bespoke suit. “You’ll have to come to my stadium in Seattle. We have a higher standard of food and beverage there.”
Fitz Svensson, owner of the Seattle Orcas team, and the angry man from the Christmas party.
I turn and freeze, hoping he won’t recognize me. I had a mask on after all.
But so did Talbot, and this guy still recognized him.
But he doesn’t yell anything like “Police! Come arrest this gift-bag stealer.” Instead, he offers me his arm.
“May I escort you to my suite? I’m fairly certain there’s some type of slime mold in the bathroom, and don’t shine a black light on the carpet, but there is a bartender, and he does make a mean Negroni.”
“Oh, um...”
“Don’t worry, I’m not a stranger. I’m a friend.” The smile is as sharp as Talbot’s.
He puts his other hand over my arm before I can yank away. “If you leave now, you’ll have to suffer with the beer. It’s revolting, by the way. One of those local craft-brew monstrosities.”
“How did you—”
“Know? Billionaires all know each other,” he says smoothly as he escorts me through the crowds.
They part ways for the tall, handsome man.
“I saw Talbot had buried himself in the mud here and wanted to know why. No one else has ordered his services for use in Maplewood Falls of all places. And he’s been seen with you.
Therefore—” He smiles at me. “It seems we have to welcome you to the club. If Dana Holbrook wasn’t such a gorgon, I’d introduce you. Seems like you two would get along.”
“I’m not in the club,” I gulp. “I’m just, er, visiting.”
“You seem to be Talbot’s most cared-for client.” His gray eyes aren’t as silvery as Talbot’s. They’re more steel gray. “I’ve been looking for him, as you can tell.”
The suite door closes behind us. He jerks his head, and several other blond men in suits give us weird looks then clear out to the stadium seats that overlook the arena outside of the fancy sky suite.
He doesn’t even have to ask the bartender—the man just starts mixing drinks.
“Are you trying to kill him?”
Fitz snorts. “Seriously? Is that the lie he fed you? He owes me. He needs to finish a job. I got a partial refund, but I need to use up my credit with them. He’s been avoiding me.
” He hands me my drink. “Now I see why. You must have paid him and his brother a holiday rush fee. No, no, you don’t have to tell me who you put the hit out on—I can mind my own business. ”
It seems like he wants me to tell him, but I’m still stuck on…
“You got a refund?” I choke out and set my drink down before I drop it.
“Uh, yeah, they give refunds—partial refunds. Every business gives a refund. I’m not using them again if they can’t refund money,” Fitz scoffs. “They know that. I’ll just send one of my freeloading little brothers.”
At the seats overlooking the ice, one of the little blond kids turns around and makes a rude noise in Fitz’s direction.
“Heathens. All they do is eat and scream like monkeys.”
“Sorry to go back to this, but, um, Talbot told me no refunds back when I, er, engaged his service.”
“They say that, but they don’t mean it. They just want the cash.
” He clinks his glass to mine. “You didn’t hear it from me, but one of the Richmond brothers is contesting a bill with them, and they have cash flow issues, I suppose.
I’ve been assured they’re not going bankrupt or anything.
Still, if Talbot wanted to, he could have talked Hudson into giving you the refund. ”
I’m spinning. I’m going to throw up. “Hudson? Like, his brother Hudson?” The image of him at the outdoor hockey rink flashes in front of my eyes. “He works for Talbot?”
“Ooh, them’s fighting words! Don’t let him hear you say that. Talbot works for him. Just tell him you want your money back. I’m not saying I know who your hit is on—I’m just saying that the horse I bet on is still skating around the rink.”
“So they would have just given it back?” I gulp the drink. My throat is dry.
“I mean, I’m a repeat client. If you’re a first-timer, I don’t know the procedure, but I feel like they should at least give you fifty percent back, roll the rest into a new job. That’s the nice thing about working with a small local business—there’s lots more leeway.”
“I’m going to hurl.”
“Yeah, the beer here is really bad. I assume I was too late to keep you from spoiling your stomach with it. Fuck Boston. I hate this city. They serve eel here—fish it right out of those disgusting canals, probably infested with Revolutionary War cadavers or something. Nasty stuff.”
Fitz helps me onto a stool.
“He said they’d kill him if he didn’t finish the job.”
“Seriously? Talbot’s always so dramatic. Hudson’s not going to hurt him. You can’t give those Wynter brothers an inch—conniving little SOBs.”
“He said he loved me, that he wanted to quit the business, go away for the holidays together. He just had to finish one last job.” I gulp down my drink.
“Christ, did he give you the spiel about the romantic ski vacay to Aspen?”
“It was snowboarding in Crested Butte.”
“Whatever. It’s all a major concussion waiting to happen.” Fitz sneers. “What a loser, taking a woman to Colorado like it’s some sort of flex. I’ll take you to Tokyo right now. We’ll have the best omakase you’ll ever eat in your life in a monastery on top of an island.”
“I’m, um, I can’t. I have to deal with this.”
“Worth a shot.”
“I’m not the type of girl who dates billionaires.”
“You kidding me? A girl who hires an assassin to off her ex-fiancé—excuse me, allegedly. You are exactly my type.” He signals for another round of drinks.
“Trust me, dump Talbot—after he kills your ex, of course, because it’s like pulling teeth trying to get them to finish a contract in a timely manner.
Then you’ll have a line of billionaires outside your door.
You’re one of the most interesting things to hit the East Coast since the Hindenburg blew up. ”
“Great. Love being compared to a mass casualty event.” I down the rest of my drink.
“Tell Talbot to call me when you see him. Sounds like Talbot’s about to lose a ball,” Fitz says cheerfully. “At least you’re only out half the fee since he hasn’t completed the job yet.”
“He said I had to pay all of it.” I almost keel over.
“See, they say those things, but I never do. They still take my money.” Fitz gives me an apprehensive look.
My fists are balled up in anger, and I can tell my eye is twitching. “The only thing I’m doing when I see Talbot is shoving a Christmas tree up his ass.”