Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
Max
In between thinking about how life-changing that kind of money could be, that was all I’d been able to think about.
That someone was now missing that same amount of money. And what they might be willing to do to get it back.
“Look, this isn’t some idiot amateur breaking into a diamond store, smashing the display case, and snatching whatever they could reach,” Lil went on. “This is the kind of shit that is kept in the safe in the back. So whoever pulled this off is an insider or sophisticated as fuck. I mean… I haven’t even heard of a big diamond heist. This shit should have been all over the news.”
“Unless…” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, passing me back my phone. “Unless.”
“If it is that…”
“Then you’re dealing with some sort of career criminal. It’s not easy to make those kinds of connections. To be able to pull something off under the radar. To keep it completely out of the news…”
“His name is Miko,” I told her.
“Miko. Interesting.”
“I stole his wallet because he was so hot that I wanted to fuck up his day.”
“Oh, you fucked it up, alright,” Lil said, wincing. “Miko doesn’t sound Russian to me. Maybe Eastern European. Unless he was Asian, because that could be, no?” she asked when I shook my head.
“No,” I said as my stomach felt suddenly full of lead. “No, he, ah, he looked like he stepped right out of a mob movie.”
“Oh,” Lil said, rocking back in her chair. “Shit.”
I slipped my phone away, wanting a sip of my coffee, but worried my hands might shake.
Because there weren’t a whole lot of rules when you operated in the criminal underworld. But one of them was simple and age-old.
You don’t fuck with the mafia.
“I could give it back,” I said, watching Lil for her reaction.
“I think you don’t really have any other choice. I mean, that’s a lot of diamonds. It would take a long time to unload all of that. And if the mob has feelers out and is looking for loose diamond sales…”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t have to tell you that they have their hands in everything. If my place had any sort of signage, I’m pretty sure they would shake me down for protection money.”
“How the fuck do I even go about giving this back? It’s not like they have a headquarters.”
“No,” she agreed. “But you have his wallet. And, I assume, his address.”
That I did.
“I don’t think you need to be pissing yourself,” Lil said, sensing my growing panic. “I mean, the mob is known for their code. And right at the top, just below loyalty, is no fucking with women or kids. And, you know, they’re criminals too. I think he’d understand that you were just doing your hustle. And that once you saw what you had, you brought it right back.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, writing off the idea of being a chickenshit and hiring a courier to do the dirty work for me.
Lil was right.
It’s not like I knew he had that many diamonds in his wallet.
What the hell was he doing walking down the street with that much money on him?
Really, he only had himself to blame.
Lil looked back at her diamond scale.
“Want me to hold onto this for you?” she asked. “I doubt he counted how many diamonds were in there. And one could have easily gotten misplaced when he put them in. Consider it your payment for doing the right thing.”
I knew it was stupid.
The diamonds weren’t mine, even if I did steal them fair and square.
But I was still me. Forever paranoid about being without money again, without a home, without food and heat and clothes on my back.
“Okay,” I agreed, nodding.
“Okay,” she said, taking the diamond and sticking it in a little red velvet bag before tucking it into a drawer. “Babe, it’s gonna be alright. You will give them back. He will do whatever he was gonna do with them and forget you even existed. No harm, no foul.”
“Yeah.”
“But get it done. ASAP. The sooner, the better. Then he doesn’t get a chance to really panic or get pissed. Or, worse yet, get his boss on his ass.”
“Definitely,” I agreed. “Thanks, Lil. I appreciate your help,” I said, already mentally planning what I was going to say to this Miko guy when I found him.
“Anytime. Come back when things blow over. I will give you back your little payday.”
“You’re the best,” I said, finishing my coffee then making my way to the door.
This time, the cold air outside was welcome. It cleared my mind and steadied my nerves as I made the long walk back toward the apartment building.
It was the dead of winter, so by the time I made it back, it was already dark as fuck outside, and I was wondering if maybe I could delay the delivery by one day.
Exhaustion was starting to tug at my eyelids, was weighing down my body.
The apartment was dark when I made my way into it, and I figured the girls had likely come back, grabbed their stuff, and headed out to the protest, since the poster on the table was missing.
I made my way to the fridge, finding a sticky note taped to it.
Brought you home Chinese. Please sleep tonight.
XX Megs and Nicole
The longer I was home, eating fried rice and sinking into my mattress, the more and more convinced I was that it was okay to wait until the morning to drop the wallet back to that Miko guy.
The past twenty-four-plus hours without sleep was making me groggy and frazzled. I could use a couple of solid hours.
Decision made, I was out cold sitting up in bed, the damn carton of Chinese food still in my hand.
It was the footsteps that woke me up, frazzled, unsure what time of day—or day of the week—it was.
I shot up, knocking fried rice all over myself and my bed, as something crashed in the living room.
Logic tried to reason with me, insisting that the girls were likely stumbling around in the dark and knocked something over.
But so many years of expecting the worst, because that was all life had to offer, had my adrenaline surging through my veins, making me feel racy as my heart thundered against my ribcage.
I winced as I shifted my legs off the bed, annoyed at myself for not replacing my noisy metal frame that creaked and groaned like an old man. All the excuses I’d made in the past—it was free, it worked, it was kind of a vibe—suddenly seemed really stupid if it was going to give me away to potential intruders.
I sucked in a deep breath as I inched my weight up off the creaky frame and mattress. Just then, something else crashed in the apartment. Glass or porcelain.
Someone was looking for something.
My stomach flip-flopped, mind on the wallet, on the diamonds inside it.
Was this him? Miko? Coming for his stash? Had he somehow found out who I was so quickly?
Or, possibly worse yet, was this some random home invasion? Where some ragtag group of morons might come across the stashed diamonds, steal them, and put me at even greater risk from the mafia than I already was.
I wanted to rush to my hiding space, grab the wallet, and hold onto it for dear life. Common sense was the only thing that kept me from rushing to grab it.
They were safer where they were than on my body, where they could much more easily be found.
What I could do, though, was slide open my nightstand and grab my knife. Or get behind the door to the hall and grab the bat I kept leaning there. Or the mace in my bag.
What can I say? I liked being prepared.
But before I could take a single step away from my bed, the bedroom door flew open, cracking hard against the wall and sending the bat I was going to go for shooting a few feet in the other direction.
Dammit.
“Where are they?” a ski-mask-clad intruder demanded, his voice all gravel.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, proud that my voice didn’t shake. My chin even tilted up, defiant.
“Bitch, I saw you take it from him,” he snarled, stalking toward me.
He saw me… take it from him .
So this wasn’t him? The Miko guy?
Could he work for him? A security guard or something? But if he did, why hadn’t he rushed after me? I hadn’t exactly been hauling ass when I walked off after lifting the wallet. I could have easily been chased down.
Why wait and break into my place?
Unless he didn’t work for Miko.
Maybe he’d been following him too, waiting for a chance to steal the diamonds.
Which meant I was still on the line with the mafia. So I really needed this asshole not to find the diamonds.
Decision made, I flew at the nightstand.
I managed to drag open the drawer.
But my wrist was grabbed and my body yanked back before I could close my fingers around the knife.
Pain screamed through my shoulder as I was whipped around.
I came out swinging, my fist colliding with the navy blue, scratchy material of his ski mask, though, softening the blow to his cheek, but pissing him off enough to swing as well.
When his fist met my jaw, there was nothing to absorb the impact.
“I won’t hurt you again if you tell me where they are,” he said between ragged breaths as I started to punch, knee, scratch, and kick.
It was when my fingers snagged the bottom of his mask and yanked it up and off that he lost whatever loose grip he’d had on his control.
The next blow caught me under the chin, the impact hard enough to have me lose my footing and free fall backward until I landed on my mattress.
“Fine. Have it your way,” he snarled, climbing up on top of me, his knees pinning my thighs.
But that pain was quickly dulled by panic as both of his gloved hands went to my neck, closing around it and squeezing tight.
My first thought should have been of how to get away. But I somehow found myself thinking how strange it was how quickly I started to feel breathless and tingly, how there was a roaring sound in my ear, silencing everything else.
Then, worse yet, the stars in my vision, the way it was starting to go dark around the edges.
Like I was close to passing out.
Then what? Death.
No.
Dammit.
I had to fight.
I raised my hand with what little strength I had at that moment, swinging at his face, landing a blow to his nose.
But it didn’t stop him.
He just kept squeezing.
My throat was screaming.
My chest burning.
Just when I thought it was lights out, though, his hands moved away.
It was embarrassing how I gasped, how I gulped, how I almost wept with relief.
“Where are they?” my attacker asked, his dishwater blond hair falling forward a bit to hide his blue eye.
I wouldn’t pretend to know much about the inner workings of the mob, whether they were more inclusive than they used to be or what. But I was pretty sure there weren’t a ton of blond-haired, blue-eyed Italians.
Which made me reasonably sure that I wasn’t dealing with the mob at all. That this was some other guy looking to rip them off.
And, hey, whatever. I wasn’t about to judge.
The problem was that I’d taken the diamonds first. The mafia could still blame me if this asshole stole them from me.
“Fuck off,” I managed, wincing at how sore my throat felt already.
Then I was fighting like I thought I would just moments ago. Flailing, wiggling, smacking, hitting, scratching.
“Fine. Do it the hard way,” he hissed as he fought me, rolling me until I was on my stomach on the mattress, my arm arched up so far up my back that I wouldn’t be surprised if it was dislocated.
Not that that mattered when his hand went to the back of my head and crushed it into the bed.
I had a bit of an unhealthy obsession with acquiring blankets whenever I found them on clearance or being given away. I guess it was another holdover from being on the streets and nearly freezing to death some winters.
But it also meant I had a pile of them on my bed at all times, little actual security blankets.
They were great when the night temperatures dropped and the drafty windows did little to keep the cold out.
Not so much when your face was stuffed in them and you couldn’t breathe.
I wanted to fight.
My fear was making me angry.
But with his body weight pressing into me, and my arm disabled, there was almost nothing I could do but rock and wiggle and try to inch forward, try to get closer to the edge of the bed so I could hang over, maybe get a good breath.
“You could stop all this if you tell me where to find them.”
My free arm shot out, finding the pile of blankets and clawing at them until I created a pocket big enough to draw in a desperate breath.
The burn of oxygen in my starved lungs recharged me, making me grab for the footboard, using it as leverage to flip myself over.
Only to be on the receiving end of a blow. It was meant to hit my nose. And if I hadn’t been moving, it likely would have broken it. As it was, he grazed off the side a bit.
The pain still exploded from the center of my face and ricocheted everywhere else, making my eyes and teeth hurt.
But I managed to free a foot from his body, using it to brace on his stomach and kick off, sending him flying back and off the bed.
I scrambled off the other side and sucked in a breath to do something that bruised my ego to resort to.
Scream.
And pray someone would come.
Or at the very least, call the cops.
He was faster, though, rushing up and over the bed, throwing me back against the wall. The impact was enough to silence me, to make pain shoot through my skull.
He was done negotiating with me then.
Instead, he wrestled me to the ground, face smashed into the hardwood floors as he grabbed each of my wrists, securing them with what felt like zip ties. He pulled them painfully tight, biting into my skin when I tried to move.
The next thing I knew, I was being dragged backward, only to have something wrapped tightly around my mouth.
It wasn’t until it was secured behind my head that I recognized it for what it was.
The sash from the thick fleece robe Megs had given me for Christmas. It had been on the foot of the bed and had likely hit the floor with the struggle, giving him the perfect gag.
“I’ll find them myself,” he snapped, shoving me back down toward the floor.
With my hands secured behind my back, and abs that weren’t in the best of shape to pull strength from, there was no way to stop myself from falling forward, from cracking my cheek off the wood.
There was something sharp beneath me—the edge of a jagged floorboard, maybe—that caught and sliced across my lip, the burn immediate. The trickle down my chin followed quickly after.
For just a moment, I let myself lie there, taking slow, careful breaths, trying to calm my frazzled mind, to think past the adrenaline flowing through my veins.
The intruder rushed around the room.
His movements weren’t random, though. The way he not only emptied my drawers but removed them to check under and behind told me he at least had some experience with robbing people before. Or, of course, hiding precious shit himself.
With a grumble, he made his way into my bathroom, sending things crashing to the floor, scattering all around as I finally turned over onto my side and started to fold upward.
I could get out of the zip ties.
I’d love to claim I knew how, thanks to my own badassery. But it was all thanks to Megs this time. She’d learned how from some of the more radical protesters who demonstrated it, so people who were being rounded up and mass-arrested could get out of their ties and away.
It was a simple thing, actually.
You raise your arms as high up your back as you can, then you force them down as quickly and hard as you can against your ass while trying to pull your wrists outward toward your sides.
I had one foot on the floor and was about to stand when he came stalking back, casually shoving me backward, this time sending me landing on my back with a muffled grunt as he made his way to my closet.
No.
Dammit.
Not my closet.
Granted, there was a lot of shit in there. But it wouldn’t take him long to find the wallet with how hard he was tearing through things.
I rolled over, got to my feet, and bent forward, raising my arms and slamming them down.
Once.
Twice.
Nothing.
But the third time was the charm, making my arms fly apart toward my sides as the plastic snapped.
I was reaching up to pull down my gag when I watched in horror as he lifted the shoe, reached into the toe, and came back with the wallet.
No .
But even as I thought it, he unzipped the coin compartment and saw the diamonds inside.
He made a snorting sound, a smile tugging at his lips. Then he was tucking it into his pocket and standing.
I didn’t stop to think, didn’t spend a second trying to get to a weapon.
I just flew at him, sending him stumbling forward on his path around my bed and toward the door to the hall.
But he was done with me and my fighting.
He grabbed me, turned me, and slammed me face-first against the wall. His hand went to the back of my neck. Then he yanked my head back hard.
“Nothing personal,” he said, then slammed me forward.
And everything went black.