Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sienna
I’d been awake for fifteen minutes and still hadn’t quite mustered the energy to get out of bed. It was late Monday morning, and for the first time since Fury and I had been interrupted by the news that Club Privé had been vandalized, I didn’t have anything demanding my attention. Thursday had been a late night, ensuring the place was clean and safe, while Friday and Saturday had rolled by with regular hours at the club, not even a pause in our usual schedule.
Some people might’ve thought it was about Gavin not losing money, but those who knew him understood it was more about flipping off the people responsible, showing them he wouldn’t be intimidated. I didn’t know if Arthur had gotten the message, but everyone else sure had.
Yesterday should have been another relaxing day off, but instead, I’d spent it at the club, setting up all the replacement equipment Gavin had ordered.
I felt like I’d been running non-stop for days, which hadn’t exactly aided in my healing from the assault last week. Still, I refused to use that as an excuse to neglect my job, so I kept pushing through. Now, my body protested all the ways I’d abused it over the past few days, making it that much harder to drag myself out of bed.
Honestly, if I hadn’t needed to pee, I probably would’ve stayed there until I dozed off again. But once I emerged from the bathroom, I heard the unmistakable sound of Vanessa in the kitchen. She’d had a busy weekend too, but I wasn’t surprised she was up and cooking. That was her favorite way to unwind, and she was definitely more of a morning person than I was.
“Hey,” I mumbled before yawning. “What are you making?”
“Four-cheese omelets.” She was far too cheerful for this time of day. “Do you want ham in yours?”
I shook my head and headed for the coffee pot. “Can I have extra cheese?”
She laughed, a bright, happy sound. “Already added the extra cheese to yours. Not mine, though. All of that would go straight to my ass.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. You’ve got one of those asses that someone could bounce a quarter off of.”
“Because I do things like avoid death by cheese.”
I laughed before taking a long sip of my coffee.
“Before I forget, there’s a letter for you on the table.” She gestured with her spatula.
“A letter? Doesn’t our mail usually come in the middle of the afternoon?” I glanced at the clock on the microwave, making sure I hadn’t misread the time.
“Someone slipped it under our front door,” Vanessa replied with a shrug. “No return address or stamp or anything. I’m thinking it’s from someone in the building. Maybe that cute guy one floor up?”
“Really? A letter from a cute guy?” I asked as I sat down. “What are we, Jane Austen characters?”
“Letter writing can be romantic,” Vanessa said earnestly.
“It’s also how horror movies start,” I pointed out, glancing at the front of the envelope where my name was printed in block letters.
I tore it open and found a single sheet of computer paper with a typed message on it. It wasn’t long, but it got straight to the point.
Convince your boss to sell or you and your roommate are the first to pay for his stupidity. And if I can find you, I can find anyone else who works there. Find and make them disappear. No one will miss a bunch of whores. You got twenty-four hours to get it done. After that, I start with the redhead.
My stomach lurched, and I bolted to my feet.
“Sienna?” Vanessa turned, concern threading through her voice.
“I, uh, need a tampon,” I blurted, the first thing that popped into my head, and practically ran to my bedroom, shutting the door behind me.
My mind raced as fast as my heart, and I slid down the door to sit on the floor. I stared down at the paper still clenched in my hand, and one thought struck me: I should let go so I wasn’t potentially messing up evidence.
That was quickly followed by the memory of how little the cops had cared about Lulu being assaulted. Chances were, they’d take one look at this letter and laugh. They might even accuse me of writing it myself to get attention or some other bullshit like that.
Except I knew this was connected to Arthur Dalton and what he’d done to Club Privé and Fury’s office.
And a part of me suspected that my ‘mugging’ hadn’t been about stealing fifty bucks from my purse.
Knowing it and proving it, however, were two different things. Because I knew about the vandalism and about who my boss and my … whatever Fury was, the accusation of me making it up could still stand. And it could take attention off finding the real culprit.
But I couldn’t just ignore the threat either. Not when it wasn’t just me being threatened.
“Sienna, are you okay?” Vanessa knocked softly on my bedroom door.
“I’m fine.” I forced the words out. “Just cramps. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
“Okay. Let me know if you need anything.”
I squeezed my eyes closed and rested my forehead on my knees. What was I going to do about her? I didn’t want to tell her about the letter, especially since she didn’t know about anything else except me getting hurt, and she thought that was just a run-of-the-mill sort of city crime. But I’d never forgive myself if she got hurt because of me.
Then another thought hit me.
It wasn’t because of me . I hadn’t done shit to deserve this. Gavin and Fury were the ones who’d pissed Arthur off. I’d just been collateral damage because of my connections to both men.
I was calling Fury before I even realized I’d gone to him instead of Gavin, even though his employees were being threatened.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, I was just getting ready to call you.”
Something in his tone told me he wasn’t talking about a personal call. “What happened?”
“You first.”
I wasn’t going to waste time arguing. “I got a letter threatening Vanessa, me, and my co-workers if I don’t convince Gavin to sell the club.”
“Dammit.” He sighed. “Gavin and I each got one too. Delivered to our homes without a return address or postage.”
“Same,” I said. “They threatened your families?”
“Yeah,” Fury replied. “Gavin’s ready to go burn down anything connected to Arthur Dalton.”
“Probably not the best idea,” I said. “Tempting though.”
“The three of us need to come up with a plan,” Fury said. “Something that’ll protect our people without giving Arthur what he wants, but giving us enough time to figure out how to take him down.”
“Is Gavin with you?” I asked.
“No, he’s at home with Carrie and the kids,” Fury said. “Let me conference him into the call instead of us trying to figure out the best place to meet. The sooner we get this taken care of, the better.”
“Yes, please.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. “This is crazy.”
“That’s a good way to describe Dalton,” Fury said dryly. “Give me a minute, and I’ll get Gavin on the line.”
A few seconds later, I heard Gavin’s voice. “Hey, Sienna. You okay?”
“Freaking out a bit,” I admitted. “Probably the same as you guys. I mean, I don’t have a spouse or kids or anything, but?—”
“People you love are being threatened,” Gavin interrupted. “Doesn’t matter who they are. It’s … a lot.”
“So how are we going to do this?” Fury asked. “I’m assuming that hiring a hitman to kill Dalton isn’t a real option.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Gavin said.
“I can tell Vanessa to stay with her parents, but I don’t know if that would end up putting more people in danger since they just live in Brooklyn. They’d be easy to find,” I said.
“She can stay with someone in my family,” Fury offered. “All of them have top-of-the-line security, and I guarantee they’ll all be locking down once I tell them what’s going on.”
“She can also stay with my family if she doesn’t want to stay in the city,” Gavin said. “I’m sending Skyler and her grandparents, along with Carrie and the kids, to our vacation home for a while. Vanessa’s welcome to join them.”
“Thank you.” A rush of gratitude warmed me. “I’ll let her know she has options and find out what she wants to do.”
“Family protects each other,” Gavin said, as if it were that simple.
As if I’d ever had a family willing to do for me a fraction of what Gavin had.
“We take care of that first,” Fury said. “Get our people safe, and then we go after Dalton.”
“How do we do that?” I asked. I felt completely out of my league here.
“We go on the offensive,” Gavin said.
“I’ll dig deeper into his finances,” Fury said. “See if there’s any way to squeeze him that way.”
“And I’ll reach out to my connections, see if anyone knows anything about him we can use for leverage,” Gavin added.
And suddenly, I knew what I could do.
“I’ve got connections too,” I said. “In some … different parts of the city. I’ll ask around, see if there’s anything there I can use. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll have a coke addiction or something.”
Even as I said it, though, I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Nothing ever was.