Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
If someone were to find me here, I could put on an act.
Pretend to be drunk. Say I got lost, but all it would take would be for them to remove my mask for people to ask questions.
Fear of being found out propels me across the room and into a closet stuffed with more pool cues, linens, unlabeled boxes, and mostly empty shelves.
I barely make it inside with the door closed behind me when someone flings the door to the room open so hard it crashes against the wall.
“Stop fighting,” says a deep, familiar voice I can’t place at first, followed by the thud of something heavy and solid against the floor.
The boards beneath my spiked heels quake, and I back myself into the closet, but the shelves stop my movement with a rattle of protest, and I startle, my chest squeezing.
There’s nowhere to go. “Close the door,” the voice orders.
Squeezing into myself is pointless, but I try to make my body as small as possible. Not that they know I’m listening to whatever confrontation is going on just a few feet away from me.
The door slams, yanking a yelp free I smother with my hand.
My knees threaten to collapse beneath me, so I lock them in place and grip the shelf behind me with my free hand.
A relentless drum beats in my ears, and I force myself to suck in humid breaths of air so I don’t pass out and give myself away.
“Now that we have some privacy,” the familiar voice continues, “do you want to tell me again what it is you’re demanding? Because I’m afraid I didn’t hear you clearly downstairs. So loud, you know?”
I should have left when I had the chance.
If I hadn’t let nostalgia grip me by the throat, I could have been gone by now, safe in an Uber back to my house.
Instead, I’m stuck in this closet, listening to whatever the hell this confrontation is, and close to wetting myself from fear.
My phone buzzes in my clutch with Yasmine’s next 30-minute check-in text, but I don’t dare fish it out, afraid the light will somehow give away my presence.
The shadows of their bodies shift in the space underneath the door. I swallow back a whimper as the door rattles. If I had to guess, whoever is speaking just threw someone against it. My stomach sinks into my ass. Whatever is going on doesn’t feel benign.
“This is a misunderstanding,” says a second voice, sounding so close he must be the one pressed against the door. Pinned against the door? “C’mon. We can talk about this.”
“I’m afraid there won’t be any more talking. This isn’t the way we like to do business. We agreed upon a price, and unfortunately, renegotiations are unacceptable.”
“Fine—that’s f-fine. I accept our original terms. C’mon, O’Connor. Let’s be reasonable. You can’t do anything to me. I’m a cop. People will look for me if you touch one hair on my head. So let’s stop now before you do something you’ll regret.”
The expensive champagne from earlier roils in my stomach, and I’m momentarily concerned for my glittering Louboutins.
He can’t mean O’Connor. I must have misheard.
Not Aiden O’Connor. I try to become one with the shelves behind me, praying they’ll magically turn into a portal and I can escape to a beach somewhere.
I’ve always wanted to go to the Maldives.
But no matter how much I try, they don’t budge and allow me to disappear inside them.
For a second, I’m thrown back to when I’d been caught in his line of sight, and I must admit, I could very much see him as the type to terrify anyone, even a police officer.
Fucking fabulous.
I can only hope they’ll take this little meeting somewhere else.
“I’ve been very reasonable about our arrangement, Dufresne, until you tried to ask for more money for your services. Then threatened my well-being. Frankly, I don’t take kindly to some feckin’ arsehole trying to think they can play games with me. Especially not a dirty cop.”
Well, so much for that hope.
Dread sews a lead weight lining into my stomach. All I can do is keep quiet so I don’t have that terrible, menacing voice directed at me next.
“Stop wastin’ your time on this piece of shite. He’s not worth it.” I don’t recognize the third voice, but its callous disinterest in the goings-on tells me I need to stay as far away from whoever it is as possible. Only another monster could be bored by the threatening undertone in Aiden's voice.
I expect O'Connor to help the man he's insulting back to his feet. To smooth everything over and get back to the party. I don't fully understand what the guy—Dufresne—did to piss him off, and I don't want to be around to figure it out. The less I know of all of this, the better.
But I don't get to live in that dream world because in the next heartbeat, three things happen in rapid succession.
There's a click. Dufresne jolts and shouts, “No! Don’t! I’ll tell everyone—” but it's clipped off by a whoosh of air and a dull, wet-sounding thump.
Did he...?
No. I shake my head, my hand pressing so hard over my mouth I know I'll have bruises in the shape of my fingertips if I keep it up.
The bored voice returns. “Damn rude of him to blackmail you at a charity gala. Americans.” He snorts, then comes another thud, and the body—Dufresne—jerks against the door.
I shake uncontrollably. “He couldn't have waited until Monday, could he? Now I have to miss the rest of the fun to clean up this mess. I almost wish he were alive so I could kill him for the cheek.”
“You'll survive. Hide him somewhere. I'll block the back elevator from the waitstaff, and we'll take care of the body tomorrow. Get one of the boys if you need help. I have to get back down to the party before I'm missed.”
Of all the terrible scenarios I'd imagined could take place tonight, this had not been one of them.
I'd painted the worst picture of Aiden O'Connor since he bought my family's house. A ruthless, greedy billionaire who takes what he wants and doesn't give a damn about anything else. But all of my silly caricatures pale compared to reality.
Because Aiden O'Connor isn't only a cold-hearted, arrogant asshole.
He's a killer.
“You owe me for this,” the other voice says. “Shall I just add it to your tab?”
Whatever Aiden says in response is drowned out by the sound of grunting and scraping as the other man hefts the body up and heaves it out of the door.
I hold my breath until I hear the door click behind them, and then I give myself sixty seconds to straight-up fucking panic. I didn't really hear billionaire Aiden O'Connor kill someone in cold blood right next to me, did I? This doesn’t happen in real life.
Yet…
I know what I heard.
Once the sixty seconds are over, despite the ringing in my ears, despite how my fingertips have no sensation whatsoever and are shaking uncontrollably, I breathe deeply through my nose and out through my mouth. It's even more imperative than ever that I get the fuck out of here as soon as possible.
My phone buzzes again, jolting me to life, and I resolve to text Yasmine as soon as I'm safe. If I ever get out of this hellhole, that is.
Part of me wants to freeze, to stay in this closet forever, but my mom's phone propels me to crack open the door. The room is empty. There's no sign anyone else was here aside from a few drops on the floor that I ignore for the sake of my sanity.
With one last long exhalation, I cross the room to the door, one step closer to sweet freedom.
Getting out of this hellhole can't happen any quicker.
My trembling fingers twist the knob and pull it open.
The scream that's been building in my chest for the past quarter hour rips out of my lungs when I find Aiden O'Connor waiting on the other side of the door, almost like he’s not surprised to find me here—in this room.
It takes me momentarily off guard, my brows knitting together.
“I thought I heard something. I should have known it was a lost little girl wandering where she shouldn’t be,” he says, and I loosen for a moment.
If he’d known my name, he would have called me out.
He slaps a hand over my mouth before I can unleash another scream or call for help.
“No, no. None of that. You're not going anywhere.”
He shoves me back into the room with his free hand, guiding my waist. I trip on my godforsaken towering heels and we both go crashing to the floor. His hand muffles my yelp of pain, and my body explodes into starbursts of agony. My elbows, my head, my ass.
Aiden's weight—200 plus pounds of pure lean muscle—crashes down on me a second later with a muffled umph from him, squeezing what little air remains in my lungs. Tears smart at the backs of my eyes as I struggle to show no weakness.
“Christ,” Aiden wheezes as he gingerly gets to his hands and knees, finally removing his hand from my face to squeeze at his crotch. It doesn't matter. There isn't enough air left in me to yell.
If I could speak, I'd tell him I'd do worse than crush his balls. Thankfully, I've retained enough of my common sense to keep my smart fucking mouth closed. I don't need to get in any more trouble than I already am.
“Fan-fecking-tastic,” he hisses between pants, his knuckles turning white as he grips his muscular thighs. “Did Cian send you here to render me infertile? Fuck!”
As I sputter and cough to draw breath back into my lungs, I glare at him, which only seems to irritate him further, his frown deepening.
I fist my hands over my stomach because gouging his eyes out with my new French coffin acrylics will not do me any good.
The oxygen deprivation must be making me go insane.
“Want to tell me what you're doing in here? I know for a fact this door was locked.”