Kidnapping a Mafia Boss

Chapter One – Thea

There are some things in life you never think you’ll be a part of, no matter what the situation is. Getting stranded on an island after an airplane crash, for example. Situations so out of the ordinary you think, Well, that can’t possibly happen to me. And most of the time you’d be right.

Sometimes you’d be wrong, though.

Take me, for instance. Not once in my life did I ever think I’d be a part of a kidnapping—and, surely, if there was a kidnapping in my life it would be a man kidnapping me and not the other way around, but life likes to throw you curveballs every now and then, and my curveball? It’s a long story. A long story that starts with a kidnapping.

Personally, I blame my brother, Max. If it wasn’t for him, I’d still be splitting my time working two to three jobs a week. Waitressing, cleaning, even retail; I’ve done it all because I had to. Skipped college; couldn’t afford to go and wasn’t smart enough to get any scholarships, and Mom couldn’t afford to help out.

Course, Mom’s behind bars now, but once she gets out, Max and I have a plan. After this job, we’ll have enough money to buy us a house in the suburbs, away from this God-forsaken city, and we’ll have more than enough extra to get her some real help.

Our mom is a good person. She just… is weak when it comes to drinking, and it gets her into trouble sometimes. I’d say that’s why our dad left her, but that’d be a lie. Never met the man—and if I ever did, I’d give him the one-finger salute and tell him to fuck right off. We didn’t need him and we still don’t.

But, back to the present. Back to the kidnapping.

Max says this job will pay better than anything we could dream up, and at this point, I’m desperate enough to believe him.

Then again, it’s something my brother has always been good at: stretching the truth, convincing you there’s only one way, his way. He was born a used car salesman. He can make anybody believe almost anything.

The lights in the gentlemen's club are dim. I stand behind the bar, pretending to wipe the black marble countertops with a rag while scoping out the place. A stupid bowtie sits around my neck over the collar of a white blouse. The look is complete with black slacks and new, shiny shoes.

Yeah, in a fancy place like this, the owner doesn’t let any employee walk in with scuffed shoes. How stupid is that? I mean, this place is basically a bar. A fancy, high-end bar that caters to men with money. I’ve only worked here a week or so, but I’ve seen enough to know I’ve seen it all.

The leather couches scattered amongst the floor. The glass chandeliers that sparkle in the dim light. The small stage up front that holds live music every night, typically a piano player, although some nights a woman dressed like she was plucked from the swinging twenties croons into an old-fashioned microphone. On those nights, the air in this club gets so thick with smoke it’s choking.

The people who come here are always men, and they’re typically in suits that probably cost more than the rust-bucket of a car my brother and I share. With their hair slicked back, they take giant puffs from their cigars like they’re the most important men in the city.

And maybe they are, but I don’t care enough about them to give a shit. Men like that only ever look at a girl like me and think one of two thoughts. The first is obvious: that they’re better than me. I’m basically the help and they’re the Richie Riches of the world. The second thought has something to do with wanting me on my back or my knees for them.

Yeah, men like that are a dime a dozen.

It’s not too late in the evening; the club is still getting fuller as the minutes pass by. Bouncers stand by the outer doors to keep out the riffraff. All in all, it’s not a place you’d want to pull any kind of job, let alone with this clientele…

I’m not thrilled to be a part of something like this, but from what I understand, all I’ll have to do is sneakily spike someone’s drink and wait. Max’ll handle the rest.

“Hey, beautiful,” a smooth voice fills the air in front of me, and I stop surveying the club to meet the eyes of a man standing on the other side of the bar. He slipped onto one of the stools surrounding the bar, something most men who come here never do. “Can I get a drink, or are you there just to stand around and look pretty?”

The truth is I’m not even dolled up. I have a bit of makeup around my blue eyes, and my blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail—part of the uniform for girls with longer hair—but I do have a doe-eyed look that seems to draw in more men than I care to deal with. Doesn’t help that I’m on the shorter side of things too, so I look like I need protection from the world, and who better to protect me than a big, strong, manly man?

Gag me. The only thing I need help getting is shit from the top shelf of the cabinets in the kitchen. It’s why I invested in a stepstool. My brother, unfortunately, is even shorter than me at barely five feet tall.We’re a short family.

I stop wiping the counter and move in front of the man who got my attention, plastering a smile on my face the entire time. If I don’t smile, I’ll probably just sneer at him, so it’s safer this way.

“What can I get you?” I ask, sounding more pleasant than I ever have in my entire life. It’s my customer service voice intensified tenfold. I’ve learned that if you lay it on thick, they’re more likely to think they’re getting their way, even if they’re not.

The man lets his eyes travel down my face, stopping only when they reach my chest. He takes a good five or so seconds before saying, “Are you on the menu? I wouldn’t mind taking a long sip from you.”

God, it’s really hard for me to keep smiling at him after that.

“Unfortunately, sir, I am not on the menu,” I tell him. I’m not one who roots for kidnapping, but I really hope this prick is our target tonight. I wouldn’t mind drugging this asshole.

Course, everyone who’s in this club is an asshole in one way or another. You don’t get rich in a city like this without crossing some people, without lying and backstabbing. That’s directly from the asshole playbook, in case you’re wondering.

“How much I gotta pay, hmm? You have to have a price. Everyone does. I’m sure I could—” The man is like a dog with a bone: he just won’t give it up even though I’m clearly uninterested and at work.

“If you would like me to mix you a drink, sir, I can do that,” I talk over him. For the past three weeks, I’ve been studying how to make cocktails and all sorts of fancy drinks just for this damned job. Ironically, most men here go for the simple drinks involving whiskey or vodka. Nothing with those cute little umbrellas.

“I told you what I want.”

“And I told you I’m not on the menu.” My smile’s starting to crack. I need to be careful.

“Do you know who I am?” the man asks me. If I have to guess, I’d say he’s somewhere in his twenties. Old enough to know what his money can do and blasé enough to try to use it however he wants. Not as refined as most of the men this club gets on a nightly basis.

“Sir, I’m not interested.”

He taps the counter. “Come on. How much? A thousand? Ten thousand? I can keep going—”

This guy obviously won’t take no for an answer, so I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind, something that, every once in a while, makes men stop and think—because assholes like this only respect other men: “I have a boyfriend. I don’t think he’d be too happy to hear you’ve been propositioning me.”

The way this asshole smiles after that tells me he doesn’t respect other men, either.

Hey, I said it sometimes works. Not always. For some men, there isn’t a word in the world that means no.

He starts to say something else, but I turn my head to the side. My gaze settles on a man sitting by himself in the corner of the club. I don’t know if he’s waiting for someone, or if he’s simply here to drink his worries away. I think he’s drinking a vodka tonic—so I start to make another, an idea forming in my head as I tune this motherfucker out.

I don’t take the drinks to the tables; the club has waiters that do that. Still, if it’ll get this man off my back, then I’ll abandon my post and take a refill to my new boyfriend for the night.

“I could give you the city,” he’s busy saying with a sleazy smile on his face. “So why don’t you dump that boyfriend of yours and—”

My new boyfriend’s refill is done, and I pick up the glass and say, “Why don’t I ask him what he thinks? He’s right over there.” This time, when I smile at the asshole, it’s not a customer service smile. It’s a smirk, a warning that he’s stepped too far.

But I can tell he doesn’t believe me, because his eyebrows lift and he waits.

Shit. Guess I really have to do this. Here’s hoping it works and I don’t get fired before our target gets here.

Holding my head up high, I leave the area behind the bar and stroll through the club. I walk around half a dozen tables and booths until I reach Mr. Loner in the corner. We meet eyes the moment I set the drink down in front of him, and it’s only because my back is to the guy at the bar that I give this guy a sheepish smile.

“Sorry to bother you. I know this is a little weird, but that guy at the bar won’t leave me alone, so I told him you were my boyfriend,” I say to the man. “Don’t worry about your tab tonight. It’s on the house. Please don’t get me fired.” The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them, mostly because as I continue to stare into this man’s black eyes, I realize just how strikingly attractive he is.

Like, sex on two legs attractive. Hotter than sin with thick, black hair and a strong, wide jaw. He’s so sexy the semi-bewildered look he gives me at first quickly gives way to a smolder.

Yeah, the dude is smoldering. It’s almost enough to knock me off my feet.

“Again,” I whisper, “I’m sorry about this.”

The man doesn’t say anything right away, but he does lean around his booth so he can see the man at the bar. Something changes the moment the two men lock eyes even though they’re fifty or so feet away from each other. Is that… shock on the asshole’s face? I can’t tell.

When the man looks back at me, the corner of his lips curl into a smirk I can only describe as devilish. “Better make it believable, then.”

Before I know what’s happening, the stranger takes me by the wrist and pulls me down onto his lap. His other hand grabs my neck like it was always meant to be there. His semi-smirking mouth crashes down upon mine, and I’m so caught off-guard that I don’t know what’s happening.

I mean, I know he’s kissing me, but I don’t know why. Why would he go along with it? Why would he go this far to make the man at the bar believe he’s my boyfriend? In what world…

Anything else I might’ve thought fades in my mind when I realize just how great of a kiss it is. Fast, hard, the kind of kiss that, hand necklace or not, takes you by the throat and forces you into submission. A kiss like this makes you instinctively want more. It sets your world on fire and makes you feel everything for the first time.

Honestly, the kiss is over way too soon, and yet I’m still breathless when he pulls his mouth off mine. His gaze is half-lidded as he watches me with amusement twinkling in his dark eyes. “Do you think that was enough to scare your would-be admirer away?” The way he whispers the question, it’s like he’s telling me he wants to lay me down on the table and fuck my brains out—and my body reacts as if he said the latter.

Which makes no sense, because I don’t know this guy from the next.

I turn my head slightly, just enough to see the bar—and in doing so I realize the man’s hand is still around my neck, his other still on my wrist. I’m literally sitting on this guy’s lap, a freaking stranger, and even though it feels a little bizarre, it also feels kind of nice.

Okay, really nice.

“He’s gone,” I say when I don’t see the jerk at the bar anymore. In fact, I don’t see him anywhere in the club. It’s like he saw us kiss and literally ran away.

Huh. That’s weird.

What else is weird? The fact that I swear every single pair of eyes in the club is now on us. It’s like we became the show or something, that no one can believe their eyes.

“Thank you for, uh, going along with it,” I say, slowly trying to inch off his lap. I can’t move much, because of the fact he’s still holding onto me. Maybe it’s in my head, but it feels like this man doesn’t want to let me go. “Um—” I swallow, and the action makes me exceedingly aware of his fingers curled around my neck.

“Trying to run away from your boyfriend so soon?” He chuckles.

“I need to get back to work,” I whisper.

“I suppose I should let you, then.” The man is unhurried in letting me go, and when he does, he sits back and wears a smug, self-satisfied expression that tells me he enjoyed it far too much. The way his black eyes are so focused on me as I crawl off his lap and get to my own two feet, it’s as if the rest of the club ceased to exist and all he sees is me.

My cheeks flare, and I have to turn away and hurry back to the bar, otherwise I might say something stupid if I stick around longer. It takes every ounce of self-restraint in me to not outright run to the bar.

I guess I should be thankful he went along with it, but at the same time… fuck. Whoever he is, he’s got to be somebody in this city. People know his name, I bet, whereas I’m a no-name, no-face girl who grew up learning to take care of herself.

Someone like me could never really get someone like him.

The evening wears on. Live music starts at seven, filling the air with soft piano playing. No singer tonight. Twenty minutes later, I feel my phone buzz in my back pocket, and I slip into the backroom to check it.

Max sent me a message and a picture. This is the target. The picture is grainy, not the best quality by any means. It was clearly taken from a distance, the zoom feature not good enough to pick up all the details of the guy’s face.

But the moment I see the man in the picture, I know exactly who he is.

Our kidnapping target?

He just so happens to be my new boyfriend.