Chapter 11 Break In
Break In
Grant
Iknew it was only a matter of time before Vixen contacted me again.
She did say she would contact me, even when I had no idea how she'd manage that. I couldn’t say I was overly excited at the prospect after seeing Frank’s mutilated body hanging over the edge of his sink.
In the bustle of the Red Riot’s cleanup crew, I snuck out the back door without incident, so I must not have been part of the directive.
Instead, I counted my limited blessings, somehow making my way back to Andrea’s condo to faceplant onto the bed, clothes and all, and sleep until late this morning.
Needless to say, the day was spent in unsettled paranoia and in an excessive caffeine haze.
And trying to decide how to break the news to Andrea that Frank was, in fact, killed over his transgressions to the Riot.
I knew she would come for me. What I didn’t expect was finding her in my fucking living room, draped over my loveseat like she owned the place when I came back from a quick trip to a local burger joint for takeout.
I could have had it delivered, but the walls felt like they were closing in on me, and I hoped a breath of fresh air would settle my hyperactive senses.
“Hey, puppy.”
“Fuck!” My heart jumped into my throat, and I leaned back against the front door—which had been locked—in a desperate attempt to collect myself. The phone previously in my hand had clattered to the floor, and I cursed again.
Cracked screens were peak annoyances for me. And I just knew the burner’s screen was shattered.
Even worse, a tingling sensation crawled across the top of my scalp that sent a bolt of dread straight to my chest and seized my lungs.
My hand flew up to brush against the silky fur of a fox ear.
More tingling raced down my spine toward my tailbone, and I desperately tried to concentrate on not letting a tail pop out from beneath my shirt.
Betas typically didn't shift unless they were under duress, so it wasn't like I had a ton of experience with controlling partial shifts.
I literally had the fox scared out of me.
And of course, the woman responsible for all this was busy cackling, as if this wasn't already mortifying beyond recovery.
Bending her head back over the armrest, she practically howled at the ceiling with mirth while wrapping both arms around her stomach.
"I can't… I can't breathe," she finally wheezed.
"Oh, fuck you!" I spat.
Vixen’s trailing laughter was garbled by the voice modulator.
“Not today, Satan. But I’m open to being charmed into bed in the future.
” Her booted feet hung over the armrest of the very white, very stainable couch, while the rest of her slouched across the cushions.
Long pink pigtails draped over the armrest to brush the floor.
I noted the black leather gloves covering her hands as she pulled one arm away from her middle and tapped something into the phone one-handed.
Even if I called the police—which was a monumentally stupid idea in itself—I doubted they would find evidence of her breaking into the condo.
Assuming she was associated with Red Riot, I could also assume she was under their protection when it came to dodging trouble with the LVPD.
She raised the phone high enough to clear the back of the sofa, pointing the camera straight at me while her thumb tapped the screen.
"Did you just… take my picture?" My brain short-circuited with the ridiculousness of this whole situation.
I knew Vixen was fucking unhinged after my encounter at Frank's house—of which I had yet to recover—but this was a whole new level I hadn't expected.
"Yup," she chirped in that modulated tone. "I'm setting this as my wallpaper. So fucking cute!"
The sheer audacity of this woman had me frozen in place.
Never in my life had I met someone with the balls or lack of sanity to break into another person’s home and wait around for them to come back, mob protection or not, much less take a damn picture of them to save as a wallpaper.
And I dealt with a lot of fucked-up mobsters with inflated egos.
I could feel my ears twitching in agitation.
“What’s wrong, puppy? Cat got your tongue?
” she snickered. “Or maybe it would be ‘fox got your tongue,’ but that’s not a popular saying, is it?
” Vixen swung her feet down to plant on the beige rug, and she pulled herself upright.
Knees spread wide and elbows pressed against them, she flipped her phone between her hands as she stared at me from behind that creepy mask.
“Just shocked at how far you’d go to send a message,” I said coolly, trying to scrounge up what little pride I had left.
“I was anticipating a text, or a phone call if you thought I deserved it.” With an eye glued to her relaxed form, I bent to pull my shoes off and pluck the phone up where it had skittered across the floor.
Small cracks branched out from the bottom right corner of the screen.
“You were sitting in that fucking meeting at the club just gloating at me, weren’t you?
I’m sure you got a real kick out of acting like a whore and letting me think you had no other involvement in the mob. ”
She shrugged a shoulder. “It was a little amusing. No one told you I was a prostitute. You made that embarrassing assumption on your own.”
“So, what, you’re the Riot’s resident hitman and a camgirl?
Where do you find time to go grocery shopping?
” I couldn’t help the unnecessary sarcasm.
Maybe it was the tense situation, or my lack of self-preservation, but she brought out the worst in me.
If I were going to die tonight, it wouldn’t be sniveling at her feet.
I could feel my ears twitch again, ruining the tough persona I was trying to portray.
In my experience, they would go away on their own if I relaxed.
Of course, that was likely not going to happen soon.
“Who says I do my own shopping?” Even the modulator couldn’t strip all the teasing from her tone.
“I’m sure it would blow your little mind to think I hold any position of power in a mob.
And quite frankly, I don’t have to justify shit to you.
You’ve seen what I do to people who piss me off.
All you need to know is to stay out of my feckin’ business and let your boss know I’m tired of his bullshit. ”
Scowling at her, I shrugged off my coat and tossed it onto the back of the couch opposite where she sat, and placed the brown bag that held my dinner on the side table by the door.
My fingers plucked at the buttons on my wrists, and I rolled the sleeves of my simple white shirt to the elbows.
It was something to buy me time as I stared Vixen down, brain offering and subsequently tossing possible ideas to either capture or remove her from my condo.
“Why don’t we just quit the games then?”
“I’m bored, mostly,” the answer came just on the heels of my question. “And again, I don’t owe you a damn thing. But I like watching you squirm.”
I was getting tired of this. My feet carried me around the couch toward the one she seemed to make herself at home on, one hand reaching out for her arm like I was going to drag her off. “Well, I don’t owe you shit either, so get–”
I blinked, and the next second Vixen slammed me onto the area rug on my back.
The breath whooshed from my lungs. Before I could fill them again, Vixen’s weight pressed against my hips as she straddled me.
Leather-clad legs pinned my arms to my sides, and the cold kiss of a blade pressed against the side of my throat.
Something brushed lightly against my clavicle, cool and hard and dangling from the hilt of the knife in her hand.
It looked like… some kind of fox face charm made from pink beads?
If I weren’t in mortal danger, I’d laugh at the ridiculousness of a killer having fucking hot pink beads dangling off her knife handle.
This close, the full blow of her scent rocked my head back and almost made my eyes roll from the sheer pleasure flooding my system.
It took a moment to realize how familiar the smell was, and why.
She was definitely the woman I met in Masked Merrow's office and the bartender, Lorelai. The mask wasn’t a coincidence at all.
I should have known the Red Riot logo matching its design went deeper than aesthetics. They were all connected.
Despite the terror flooding my system as I was frozen beneath her, another, more embarrassing development was happening between my legs.
My dick was in a whole other alternate reality, straining from behind the zipper of my jeans in the worst kind of betrayal.
One that she was quick to catch on to. I curled my hands into the rug’s pile to avoid latching onto her enticing hips and pushing her down even harder.
I had a higher chance of dying from sheer embarrassment than a slashed throat at this point.
“Mmm,” she moaned in that robotic tone. Her ass ground right into my unintentional boner and my ears flattened to my head in frustration.
She was definitely enjoying my precarious situation.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a bottom.
Maybe I could introduce you to pegging, wouldn’t that be a treat?
” The laugh that tittered through her modulator made my teeth grind in horny frustration.