Chapter Five – Thea
When morning hits, Max shuffles down the stairs like it’s another day, nothing out of the ordinary. I spent most of the night-slash-early-morning lounging on the couch, trying to ignore the way Silus kept staring at me—since the man had duct tape over his mouth, he couldn’t say a single word more, but that didn’t stop him from being so intently focused on me that I constantly had to fight a blush.
I mean, shit. The man could undress you with his eyes. I don’t know what kind of superpower that is, but I’m not here for it. Nope. Not even a little.
Maybe if I keep repeating that lie to myself it’ll eventually become true.
Max yawns as he rounds the bottom of the staircases and turns to walk through the living room. Silus instantly flicks his gaze to him, narrowing that dark stare, while I get up and follow him into the kitchen in the back of the house.
My brother holds up a hand and mutters, “Yeah, yeah. I know. I swear I didn’t stay up all night playing Crazy—”
I slap him on the arm, and he bounces back, recoiling with a much faster reflex than I thought he would, given his half-asleep state. “He’s awake,” I hiss out, glancing over my shoulder at our kidnapped mafia boss.
The look my brother gives me: shock mixed with disbelief, tells me he didn’t notice Silus’s glare when he walked by. Leave it to Max to be so oblivious.
Max says not a word as he scurries back into the living room and stands next to Silus, who turns his head and his glare my brother’s way the moment he comes into his sight. Max takes in the tape across his mouth and asks, “Did he try to call for help or something?”
I go with Max to the living room. “No, he just wouldn’t shut up,” I tell him as I fold my arms over my chest, “and I didn’t want to listen to him anymore.”
Silus’s gaze travels to me, where it stays. When he looks at me, his eyes don’t scream murder; they scream something else instead, something I’d rather not think about.
Max chuckles. “Nice.” We return to the kitchen, where he starts a pot of coffee and pulls out a mostly-empty box of cereal. “After I eat, I’m going to see about meeting one of Cormac’s guys. I’ll need to snap a pic of Silus just to prove we have him, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to meet with Cormac today. I mean, these two have bad blood. The O’Connors and the McLeans hate each other, some Romeo and Juliet kind of shit, minus the Romeo and Juliet.”
I watch my brother take his bowl to our tiny kitchen table. “How are you going to get him out of here?”
“I’m not. Cormac’s guys will.”
“I’d rather not have more dangerous men in this house.” I mean, shit, is my brother thinking straight at all? What’s to stop Cormac’s men from killing us the moment they get their hands on Silus? This whole thing is asking for trouble—which, I guess, just proves it’s one of Max’s schemes.
“What do you want me to do?” Max speaks with a mouthful. “He’s one heavy motherfucker. Do you know how hard it was getting him out of the car and into the house by myself? Give it a day. I’m sure that asshole will have bruises upon bruises.”
My brother is a small guy. Logistically, it must have been difficult for him to get Silus into the house all by himself. He didn’t want me to help, though; he wanted me to come home separately so no one could tie me to Silus’s disappearance—as if the new bartender at the club who abandoned her post the same time Silus stumbled out of the club isn’t suspicious.
I’m still skeptical about this plan. There’s so many holes in it the water would’ve leaked out already if it was a jug.
“Look, these guys—” Max pauses as he glances over his shoulder at Silus. “—they all run their empires on codes of honor and shit. You do them wrong, they’ll do you wrong. But if they agree to a deal, they won’t back out. They’re not that kind of slime.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because, sis, I keep my ears to the ground. I know how these things work. Trust me. Absolutely nothing will go wrong.” The look I give him stops him from saying anything else.
I mean, shit. Saying nothing will go wrong is like the ultimate way of tempting fate. It’s like those scenes in the movies where someone says something along the lines of it can’t get any worse and then the next frame shows a heavy rain pounding on their heads. My brother is asking for the rain to come, and in our case, the rain will be a spray of bullets accompanied by early graves.
Once the coffee is done, I pour my brother and myself a cup. Normally I hate the stuff, but seeing as how I stayed up all night, I’m going to need a shot of caffeine straight into my heart today. Max takes his black, but I have to put a shit ton of sugar into it, otherwise it just isn’t bearable to me.
I’m not very hungry, but I force myself to eat some toast. The bread’s a little stale, but as long as it doesn’t have any mold on it, it’s edible. I sit at the table and eat with Max in silence, keenly aware that Silus is less than fifteen feet away, probably hungry himself.
Should we offer to feed him?
No, that’s stupid.
Max wolfs down his cereal and chugs his coffee. He wipes the back of his mouth with his hand, stands, and says, “I’m off. Wish me luck.”
I don’t say anything, mostly because I want to tell him we shouldn’t need luck to pull this off. Every what-if scenario should’ve been accounted for. Those are the kinds of things people do before trying to pull off a bank-robbing heist or a high-profile kidnapping like this.
Max leaves the house, and just like that, I’m alone with our prisoner again.
I don’t hurry. I take my time eating my toast and sipping my coffee. It isn’t like I’m in a rush to get back into that living room, where Silus can stare at me and undress me with his eyes like I’m a piece of meat. But as I sit there and eat, I do start to feel a little bad that he’s probably starving. Just like me, Silus has been awake most of the night.
Fuck.
I don’t know why, but I feel like I need to feed him, so after I finish my toast and my coffee, I plop another piece of bread into the toaster and pull out another coffee mug. All I know is, if this asshole says anything I don’t like while I’m holding a cup of hot coffee, he’ll get the whole thing poured on his lap.
Once his toast pops up, I set it on the same small plate I used. After a little butter, it’s ready, and I bring both the plate and the mug into the living room. I set both on the small coffee table in front of the couch before facing Silus and placing my hands on my hips.
“I’m going to take that tape off. If I were you, I’d think very carefully about anything you want to say to me,” I warn him.
He’s amused. I can tell by the twinkle in his black eyes.
I move closer to him and peel off the tape slowly. He has a bit of dark stubble growing, a five o’clock shadow or whatever people call that, and it gives him a messier look. I hate to say it, but the stubble on his jaw doesn’t detract from his good looks one bit.
The moment I finish peeling the tape off, he licks his dry lips, but he doesn’t say a word. Of course, the man still stares at me, saying so much more with those damned eyes than he could with his mouth.
“I thought you might be hungry,” I mumble as I drop the used tape onto the coffee table near the rest of the unused roll. “So I made you some toast. Do you take anything with your coffee? We only have some milk and sugar in the house right now, nothing fancy.”
“Black is fine,” Silus says.
I give him some coffee first. It’s not the easiest thing, to gently tilt a cup against someone else’s lips, but I manage to do it without spilling any of it onto his face or his suit. The entire time I’m focused on not making a mess, Silus stares at me, to the point where it’s a little disconcerting.
Next comes the toast. Honestly, not once in my life did I ever think I’d hand-feed a mafia boss, but then again, not once in my life did I ever think I’d kidnap a mafia boss, either. Guess life is full of surprises.
I give him more coffee after he finishes the toast, and when I pull the mug away from his lips, he asks, “Was that your brother?”
I tense up and don’t say a word.
Silus notes my unease as he says, “I heard him call you sis. Is this a family job, then? Kidnapping and selling me to make yourselves rich?”
My fingers are tight around the mostly-empty mug. I don’t owe him any answers, but for some reason I find myself saying, “It’s just me and my brother. Our dad’s never been in the picture, and our mom… she’s in prison right now, but she’s getting out this year.” I set the mug on the coffee table, giving Silus my back. “It’s not about getting rich. It’s about leaving this stupid city.”
“Surely you and your brother could leave anytime you want.”
“We don’t have anywhere to go.” I look back at Silus. “It’s nothing personal, okay? We just need enough money to get us a place in a good neighborhood so when our mom gets out, we can take care of her, get her some real help. It’s not like we want to roll around in money. We just need enough to start a new life.”
The corners of his mouth curl into a smirk. “Then untie me, love, and after you’ve given me the time you owe me, I’ll buy you whatever house you want.” He sounds utterly serious, but there’s no way he…
There’s just no fucking way.
Just to screw with him a little, I tell him, “This is my brother’s plan. Technically, he owes you time.”
Silus’s reply comes swiftly: “I don’t want your brother. I want you.”
“Why?”
“Why do I want you? Are you sure you want to hear the answer, or will you get annoyed and cover my mouth with more tape?”
“I won’t tape your mouth shut again,” I tell him. When he only lifts a single brow, I add, “Just tell me why. If anything, you should want to torture me for helping to kidnap you. Isn’t that what you guys do?”
Silus’s shoulders shrug as much as they can given his current state. “Sometimes a little torture is necessary, but for you… Thea, I think we both know there are other things I can do to you, things we’d both enjoy. Why would I torture you when I could instead spend the time getting intimately acquainted with every curve on that body?”
I bark out a laugh. “Is this what you do? You think using a smolder and saying things like that get women to fall onto their backs for you?”
“Backs, stomachs, knees… I’m not picky. But for your information, no. Typically women come to me, willing to do whatever I want them to in hopes that I’ll either marry them or bless them with a child. It’s all about my last name, the money and the respect I have in this city, and what they can gain from it.”
Silus pauses, eyeing me up. “But it’s not like that with you. You had no idea who I was when you sauntered over to me in the club and asked me to pretend to be your boyfriend. Your only goal was scaring off the creep at the bar, not to seduce me. You intrigued me, love, and I’m not so easily intrigued.”
“Lucky me,” I deadpan.
“Lucky you indeed. It will save your life.”
The way he says it, so off-handedly, makes my stomach churn in the worst way. “I don’t know how you think this is going to end, but—”
“Oh, but I do know how it’s going to end: with you spread eagle under me, every inch of your body quivering in need.” Spoken so confidently by him, I’m taken aback, and all I can do is stare at him with an open mouth. “What time is it?”
I don’t pull out my phone, mostly because I know it’s well after nine. His hour for a month exchange rings in my head. There’s no way he’ll get free and kidnap me in revenge, right? Ugh. I feel like I’m asking for it.
When I don’t answer him, he changes tactics and says, “I need to use the restroom.” Silence is his only answer, mostly because I’m wondering if this is some kind of joke. “I need to take a piss. You heard me, love. I’ve been on this chair for hours. It’s not the most comfortable position—”
“Hold it,” I tell him.
“What do you think I’ve been doing? I had a lot to drink at the club, thanks to someone’s multiple refills.” The smile on his face reveals his mischievous nature. “Tell you what. You can keep the handcuffs on me the whole time.”
Oh, my God. Is this really my life right now? Do I really have a mafia boss in my living room, tied up with handcuffs and a mountain of duct tape, telling me he has to pee ? I must’ve stepped in some kind of opposite world without realizing it.
I stare at him and he stares right back. We have a good, old-fashioned staring contest, our wills battling without words. It’s not completely out of the blue, the notion that he has to pee; he was right when he said he drank a lot at the club. Hell, I don’t know how he held it for this long, but even so, the last thing I want to do is let him go just so he can relieve his bladder.
I shouldn’t give in to him. I know I shouldn’t. But, as we continue to stare at each other, something in me gives, something weakens, and before I know it I’m strolling into the kitchen to grab scissors so I can cut through the tape rolled around his chest and his ankles.
I kneel near his feet and cut him loose one leg at a time, and Silus tells me, “Thank you, love. I really do hate to bother you with this, but it’s—” He shuts up when I stand and point the tip of the scissors at his neck.
“If this is some kind of trick to escape, I’ll stab you,” I threaten him.
All the asshole does is smile, like I just made his day by telling him I’d plunge a pair of scissors into his body.
Though it’s the last thing I want to do, I cut him loose. His hands are still kept behind his back thanks to the handcuffs, so when he stands, he can’t touch me.
Unfortunately, when he does get to his feet, he towers over me like some kind of freaking mountain. The guy is easily over six feet, with a few inches to spare. Now that he’s not seated and I’m directly in front of him, clutching those scissors for dear life, it dawns on me just how impressive of a specimen he is.
Fucking tall, with wide shoulders to match. And that suit? It might be a little wrinkled from the whole kidnapping thing, but I’ve never seen clothes fit a man like that suit fits him.
I swallow hard, and my mind is so frazzled thanks to him that it takes me a moment to remember why I cut him loose—and that I shouldn’t have threatened him with scissors. I have his gun. Sheesh. This man is driving me crazy already, and I’ve known him less than twelve hours.
I swap the scissors for his gun, and though the metal doesn’t feel right in my hand, I point in the direction of our bathroom. This house technically has one and a half baths, but honestly the half bath on this floor is nothing to write home about. The toilet’s cracked. Still works, doesn’t leak yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
That said, as much as I’m embarrassed to show him our lower bathroom, the last thing I want to do is take him upstairs and let him walk past my room. I don’t want him seeing my things. It’s too personal.
Just off the kitchen is where the half bath is, and since I’m walking behind him, I can see the way he looks around and takes everything in—which only proves that I was right in not wanting him to walk by my room.
Once we reach it, I say, “Through that door.” There aren’t any windows in the tiny half bath, so there’s nowhere for him to go. I don’t need to be in the room while he takes a piss. No thank you.
Silus chuckles, and he stands half in the bathroom and half out. His dark gaze turns to me, amusement flickering in its depth, and he asks, “What do you expect me to do? Love, I need your help with it.”
All I can do is blink at him and wonder if I heard him right. “Uh… what?”
“With no hands, how am I supposed to undo my belt and get myself out? How am I supposed to aim, for that matter? Thea, you’ll need to come in here with me, undo my pants, and—”
“I should shoot you right now,” I huff, my cheeks blazing after listening to him. He wants me to… to undo his belt and his pants, pull his dick out, and hold it while he pees? He has to be fucking with me.
Silus flashes me a smile that would knock most women off their feet. “If you were to kill me now, I’d just piss myself anyway when I die, so unless you’d shoot to maim, I wouldn’t.”
I can barely formulate the words of a refusal: “I’m not holding onto your dick while you pee! I can’t believe we’re even talking about this!”
“Well, unless you’re going to unlock these cuffs—”
“I’m not unlocking the cuffs,” I growl out.
“—I need your help with it. Believe me, it’s not something I thought I’d ever have to ask of a beautiful woman, but I also never thought I’d get kidnapped by one, either. Life is full of surprises.” Silus pauses, his smile deepening. “So? Are you going to get in here with me or not?”
For some stupid reason, I’m stuck on the fact that he called me beautiful, and he did it in such an off-handed way, like it’s a fact and not an opinion, something everyone should believe. The only thing I can stammer out is, “This has to be a joke.”
“Oh, trust me, it’s not a joke. You’ll see once you pull it out.”
Was that a dick size reference? I’m actually speechless.
A moment passes, and Silus leans his head back on the door frame. “What’ll it be, Thea? Are you going to help me with my cock or not?” The way he looks at me tells me he already knows the answer, and he’s enjoying the hell out of the anticipation.
God, I hate this guy. I hate him so much. I want to strangle him.
My answer is one word, and it’s muttered like a swearword: “Fine.”