Chapter Two – Thea
Shit. Fuck. Goddamn it.
Of course, out of everyone in the club, it has to be him. Couldn’t be literally any other guy. Nope. Has to be the one who helped get me out a sticky situation with an asshole who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
I lock my phone screen, slide it back into my pocket, and muster up the courage I need to do what I have to do before leaving the backroom. I’m going to roofie the man who helped me out. What a nice way to thank him.
Discreetly slipping something into a drink is something I practiced dozens of times at home with Max’s supervision. I’m not an expert by any means, but I do know how to do it without staring at the drink, while slowly looking around and making sure no one else is watching what I’m doing.
I wait until our target needs another refill, and then I make him a drink he won’t forget.
Or maybe he will and the drugs will make all of this fuzzy in his head. I don’t know. I don’t know how this’ll work, but Max says after the drink is passed off to our target, he’ll take it from there.
Don’t ask me how. Max said it’s better if I don’t know all the details, just in case something goes wrong.
I get one of the waiters to take it over to the target, and then it’s a waiting game. Not going to lie, my nerves are shot. It takes everything in me to not shake as I mix drinks for other members of the club. I hope my face doesn’t scream I’m guilty , but who can be sure?
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the man down his drugged drink. He probably thinks I sent him another to thank him for helping me out. Target has officially ingested the drugs. I don’t know exactly how long it’ll take for them to kick in, but he’s a big guy, so it might be a while.
And then what? Max said not to worry. He said he’ll leave the club once he starts feeling a little woozy, and he’ll handle it from there.
But what if the guy doesn’t leave the club? What if he just passes out in the booth? There’ll be no kidnapping and ransoming then.
Oh, yeah. Whoever this guy is, he’s important. His family’s got money or something. I knew that already with him being a member of this club, but for him to be our target, he must be something special. Max refused to tell me who, in case I got cold feet. Probably a good idea on his part.
After the target ingests the drugged drink, time crawls by. I try not to keep looking over at him, but it’s difficult for me. I want to throw up. I’m not the world’s biggest criminal; tonight is a night of firsts for me, but drugging and kidnapping a guy for money is a whole different level most criminals in this city will never reach.
This isn’t petty theft. This guy, whoever he is, is a bigwig. Important. And we’re going to kidnap him.
The moment the guy stands and feels his head, the world stops. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as he tries to shake it off, but he can’t. He pulls out his phone and his fingers work overdrive as he, I’m assuming, contacts his driver to pick him up. I slip into the back so he doesn’t see me before he walks by, shuffling his feet a little too much.
Don’t want him to see me and get suspicious.
The door to the backroom has a small square window, and it’s through that window I peek out and watch the guy push past the bouncers and leave the club. His shoulders were looking mighty slumped; I’d say the drugs are definitely kicking in.
I text my brother: It’s on you now.
Max’s message back is almost instantaneous: Take the bus home. Meet you there.
Yeah, our house isn’t exactly the best place to take a kidnapping victim, but our neighbors are the kind of people who only pay attention to their own shit. The houses might be close together, so old some are falling down from their age, but it’ll work.
And the moment we get our money? We’re gone. We’re going to leave this city, find a new place to call our own, and start fresh. By the time our mom gets out, we’ll be ready to take care of her and be there to help her. And then, for the first time in twenty-two years, we can be a normal family.
Not going to lie, it’s the desire to have a normal family, to be ordinary, that drove me to this point with Max. There’s nothing more I want in the entire world. I’ve tried to make money the old-fashioned way, but it’s not enough to truly start over. No amount of minimum-wage-paying jobs can pay enough for you to leave a city like this.
I don’t let anyone know I’m leaving. I grab my stuff out of my employee locker and head out through the side entrance in the alley, where the dumpster is. I throw on my jacket as I walk away with a quick pace, yanking off that silly bowtie as I go.
The nearest bus stop is a five-minute walk from the club. At night, the traffic in the city isn’t so bad, so I’m not slowed by waiting for too many crosswalks. I reach the bus stop and wait, though I do check my phone every few minutes just to make sure I didn’t miss anything from Max.
No new messages from my brother, so I’m hoping that means everything is going without a hitch, that he has our target. Still, I know I won’t feel better until I’m home and can see my brother with my own eyes.
The bus arrives after ten minutes, and by then I’m not the only one waiting for it. I get on first, mostly so I can pick a seat closer to the door, so I can be the first one out once the bus reaches the stop closest to our house.
Time drags on. I pull up the picture of the man and stare at it, remembering the heated kiss. I can’t shake the unease that settled in my gut when I first saw the picture, when I realized our target was the guy whose lips made me forget what it was like kissing anyone else. It wasn’t a good feeling, let me tell you.
I didn’t want to kidnap this guy, even if he is from a rich family who can pay a hefty sum to get him back. What exactly do I want to do with him? Uh… nothing that involves my brother, that’s for sure.
I shut my phone off and try to force myself to think of other things, but no matter how hard I try, my mind always returns to our target.
If I have to guess, I’d say he’s in his thirties. Too old for me, yes, but still a damn fine specimen of a man. His hair, his face, his clothes; there wasn’t a single thing about him to complain about. The literal perfect definition of a man.
What does get me, when I think back, is the look on the guy’s face at the bar when I went over to our target and acted like he was my boyfriend. I thought the man at the bar looked shocked that my boyfriend was present, but now that I’m thinking about it, his reaction might’ve been more than that. Maybe it wasn’t shock. Maybe it was unease.
That makes two of us. I feel like I want to throw up.
The bus slows to a stop a few blocks away from my house, and I stand to get off. The moment my feet hit the sidewalk, I walk with a brisk pace, the path so familiar I barely have to pay attention to it. Max and I rode the bus long before we were able to save up for a car; it’s how we got around in the city when we were young, when our mom was too busy losing herself in the bottle.
Max and I had to take care of ourselves since we could walk, basically. We wound up in the system once or twice, but Mom always got her shit together long enough to get us back. She loves us. She’s not a terrible mother, although she wasn’t so good at it, either. She’s never been good at helping herself. I think it’s why Max and I grew up knowing who we could truly depend on: each other.
That, and we promised each other we would never end up like Mom.
I heave a giant breath when I reach our house. The driveway sits between houses, the unattached garage in the back, though we never use it. Though it’s dark out, I can see a different car sitting where our rust bucket usually is—sleek and all-black, not a speck of rust to be seen.
Shit. That must be his driver’s car.
I pull out my key as I step up the three steps to the back door, but when I reach the door I find it’s not locked. My eyes roll at my brother, and as I enter the house, I say, “You know, anyone could just walk right in when you don’t lock the damn door—” I stop when I see Max standing in the living room with our target, Mr. Sexy.
Mr. Sexy’s arms are behind his back, and I spot a glimmer of handcuffs around his wrists. His wide chest is bound with some duct tape to the kitchen chair Max must’ve dragged into the room. His black-haired head hangs forward, the man out like a light. His feet are each duct-taped to a leg of the chair.
“How the hell did you get him in the house?” I ask my brother, slow to step closer to the unconscious man.
“Eh, he might have a few new bruises, but he’ll be fine,” Max says, shrugging my concern off. “Here.” He offers me something. “In case he wakes up. I need to go drop his phone and the car off. I’ll be back in an hour, okay?”
I look at what he’s trying to hand to me and see it’s a gun. “What do I need that for? Where did you even get it?”
“It’s his,” my brother says. “And you need it just in case. You never know with people like him.” My brother flashes a smile that, under normal circumstances, would sway me to his side—his used car salesman smile. Toothy, easygoing, and charming. His blue eyes are lighter than mine, his hair more brown than blond, but he has an innocent face that disarms most people.
And he learned that fact young, which is why he’s so good at putting it to use now.
“People like him?” I echo, slow to take the gun. It’s just a pistol, but it’s heavier than it looks. Max points at the safety and mimics how I would need to cock it back to put a bullet in the chamber. “Who is he, anyway? Now that he’s here, in our house, I think I should know who we’re trying to ransom off.”
The look my brother gives me after that tells me I’m not going to like the answer, and his awkward silence further confirms that suspicion.
“Max,” I take on my scolding tone, “who is he?”
My brother coughs, glances at the unconscious man, and then mutters the truth: “That’s Silus McLean.”
When I hear that name, my eyes damn near bug out of my head. “Did you just… did you just say we have Silus McLean in our living room, tied up? Are you saying I roofied the Silus McLean, from the McLean crime family? Did I help you kidnap a mafia boss ?”
“Uh, I mean, technically speaking, you helped us kidnap a mafia boss,” Max clarifies, as if that helps anything. “He’s here for you, too, not just for me.”
I lift my gun-free hand to my head. “Oh, my God. Oh my God. This can’t be happening. Couldn’t you have chosen anyone else in the city? Fuck, we’re so screwed. I feel a headache coming on.” I work on getting my hair out of the ponytail, hard to do with just the one hand, but since I’m holding onto a gun with the other…
Shit.
“See? This is exactly why I didn’t want you to know who it was until after it was done. I knew you’d get cold feet if you knew—”
“If I knew that we were going to kidnap a man who probably will have an army of goons out there, looking for him, ready to kill to get him back? Yeah, I might’ve had some reservations!”
Max steps toward me, lifting both hands as he inhales and slowly exhales, like he’s trying to remind me to stay calm. “It’ll be okay, Thea. I’m going to take the car back and dump his phone, so they can’t track him, then I will come right back. Tomorrow I’ll get a meeting with Cormac O’Connor and tell him he can have him. With all the bad blood between their families, I’m sure he’ll jump on the chance to get his hands on Silus.”
“Cormac O’Connor? That’s who you’re going to sell Silus to?” I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Don’t worry, sis, I got this. When have I ever let you down?” The way Max asks that question, so easily, makes it sound like he’s never had a bad idea in his life—which we both know isn’t strictly true.
I blink and deadpan, “Do you really want me to answer that? Because I can. Remember the babysitting job—”
“I was ten. A child. That’s different.”
“How is it—”
My brother must sense he’s not going to convince me this is a good idea, because the only thing he does is step around me and say, “Just watch him while I’m gone, okay? I’ll be back as soon as I can. He probably won’t even wake up until I get back.” He leaves the house before I can formulate any sort of response.
I watch him go with my mouth hanging open, holding onto that damned gun. This was a bad idea from the get-go, but now? Now it’s just about the worst idea anyone has ever had in the history of ideas.
Assuming we get out of this alive, I’m going to kill Max.
I go to lock the door and then I take a seat on the couch across from Silus freaking McLean. The furniture in the living room is all cockeyed thanks to the addition of the kitchen chair and the very large man fixed to it. All the curtains in the house are drawn, so no one can peek in from any window.
There’s a mafia boss in my house. An unconscious mafia boss. A man who, in all probability, has killed dozens of people and won’t hesitate to kill us if he gets free—and all I have to stop him is his own gun.
We are asking for trouble here.
An old TV sits in the corner of the room. A part of me wants to turn it on so I can focus on something else, but the other part of me is worried the sound of the TV will wake our guest up. Obviously, the last thing I want to do is wake this guy up.
So, instead, I sit on the couch and stare at him while mentally cursing out my brother.
This is going to be a long night.