Chapter 3 #2
“Have you been snooping through my phone?” She wandered back toward us, her hands on her hips and her eyebrows furrowed, like she was scolding me. “Why are you doing that? That’s an invasion of privacy!”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jade! We kidnapped you!” I shot out of the chair, and she flinched at the sudden movement. “Who gives a fuck about an invasion of privacy?!”
Jade gulped, blinking up at me with her pure, green eyes, sending my soul into freefall. “That was my ex,” she began calmly. “I don’t want to talk to him because I think he’s stalking me.”
“What’s his name?” Andrei asked immediately, quickly calculating the depth of this newly uncovered risk.
“Xavier Knox. He’s got a ton of money and no head on his shoulders,” Jade revealed quietly, her hands at her sides, looking mightily resigned. She slumped back on the couch, all the wind knocked out of her.
Andrei and I exchanged glances—no words were needed. We knew who that was, and this little detail wasn’t great news, that was for sure.
The whole point of this stupid kidnapping plan was to get it done quietly and without drawing too much attention. Xavier embodied the word attention. Attention should have been his middle name.
Xavier owned a very significant number of luxury car dealerships in the southern part of Florida. He was filthy rich, involved in all kinds of shady shit, and indeed, had no head on his shoulders.
Amazing turn of events. This is why you should always stay in your lane—just do what you know. We knew how to steal cars; we had no fucking clue how to steal people.
"Well, this isn’t great,” Andrei murmured in Russian. “We really should’ve done more research before taking her.”
Yeah, man. We both knew that, but we fucking didn’t. We didn’t.
“Why is Xavier calling you non-stop?” I turned to her, looking so small on the couch.
Jade stared right past me, zero emotions on her face. “He wants to get back together. But I’d rather die before that happens. So maybe you can just kill me now and we can all move on.”
There was something about Jade that got under my skin.
The way she threw words around and the way she didn’t give a fuck.
The way she handled this whole situation.
I’d imagined she’d be crying, begging, pleading, sitting quietly in a corner, but no.
She was talking back, talking shit, and talking a big game.
So I did something reckless and stupid—the Moretti girl was fucking rubbing off on me. I reached back and withdrew my handgun, the reward to my actions being her loud gasp. There it was—her shock, jaw on the floor, her wide eyes locked with mine.
“Yeah? You want to die?” I stepped toward her and she scrambled up the couch, regretting her words. Finally. “Do you ever think before you open your mouth, Jade?” I pointed the barrel at the floor, but Jade kept her eyes on it.
This wasn’t about her. Not really. The safety was on and the weight of the gun was meant to remind me that I was still in control of this clusterfuck.
Because the pressure in my head was unbearable and this was meant to diffuse it.
Because everything was spiraling into the abyss and I had no way to catch it.
Because Jade was untamable and I needed her to fit the stereotype in my head.
But instead, she stood on the couch, calm and eerily composed. She gulped before delivering the words that crashed all my thoughts into dust.
“Then do it. Pull the trigger,” she said, voice low but steady—certain of her vile words.
I stared at her, not processing it right away. Not her words, not her audacity, not the fact that she had the upper hand again.
Such a pretty girl. Such venom inside.
But before I could figure out my next step, that buzzing interrupted again. I turned to the phone, the idea blazing up in my head. I was going to pick it up.
I stepped toward it, three seconds away from sliding that accept call button, when something smashed into my hip.
White pajamas flew in front of my eyes, and as if in slow motion, I watched Jade launch herself through the air and fall onto the coffee table.
She shoved the phone off the edge of the table and it skittered loudly across the entire house until it smacked into the sliding doors with a dull thud.
The buzzing stopped and so did we all. Jade was half slumped over the coffee table, and Andrei was on his feet, standing beside me like we were both deer in headlights.
The Moretti girl wasn’t scared of a bullet. She wasn’t scared of me blowing her brains out—she taunted me with the prospect. But she was petrified of a phone call from her ex.
There were no words. No thoughts, no more goals in my head after I’d just witnessed that. There was only one way forward: we had to leave and not get involved with her any further. Forget calling Moretti. Forget this whole thing—we’d just play it all differently.
“Let’s go,” I addressed Andrei in Russian and sidestepped Jade, collecting the phone.
We headed for the door and that was the best course of action. It was best she just stayed here, alone and locked up, until we could collect our thoughts.
“Wait, um…”
Of course.
Of course she had more to say. My shoulders tensed, knowing that her uncomfortable tone meant she was about to request something. “I…I need to go to a drugstore and…and can you at least give me some of my clothes? I-I only have these pajamas and last night's dress."
"He'll take you." Andrei suddenly pointed toward me. What?! I wasn’t fucking taking her!
"Wait," I commanded Jade, pushing Andrei outside and closing the front door.
"I'm not fucking taking her anywhere! I'm not her goddamn babysitter!" I spoke in a loud whisper right outside the front door.
"You know you're taking her. Now that fucking Knox’s in the picture, we have to be extra careful." Andrei put on his sunglasses, speaking so calmly. "Whatever the fuck that was in there? She’s obviously scared of the guy and if he’s stalking her, as she said, we can’t risk it.
” Andrei motioned toward the door and checked his watch.
“I have to go or else I'll be late. You know how those soccer moms are; vicious when you're late to your three-year-old's soccer game. "
This day was rewiring my brain chemistry. What on earth was happening? Andrei was always the anxious one, always the one calculating all the problems, but he wasn’t perturbed by whatever the fuck that was in there, while I was still reeling.
“Also,” he turned to me fully, a mysterious smile on his face. “Stop eye-fucking her, alright?"
The words slashed against my ears and heat exploded inside me. What the fuck was he saying?
"What?! I'm not eye-fucking her!" I could barely even repeat his lie, but the way he chuckled and sighed made me doubt myself.
"Brother. I've known you my whole life. You think I don't know what you look and act like when you're interested? Please give me more credit." He pushed his sunglasses down, making sure I could see that confidence in his eyes.
"You are dead wrong this time,” I declared. “She's a fucking spoiled brat who literally bit through my flesh last night! Did you see what she just did in there? She’s fucking insane. I don’t do insane."
“That’s not true.” Andrei stepped closer, lowering his voice. “First of all, insane is right up your alley. Gianna’s fucking crazy too—”
“Stop. Just stop,” I implored him, praying to never hear that name again.
"All I’m saying is, there’s something happening between you two and you fucking know it.
I was like the third wheel in there.” He put his hands in his pockets and took a step closer again, as if to hammer down the point.
“She seems just as interested as you, and if you fuck her…
we're in deep, deep shit. This is legitimately dangerous.”
He suddenly pointed his finger at me while I tried to process the words: if you fuck her.
“Do not touch her. Do not think about her. Do not fall in love." He got right in my face, delivering another wild statement. "Keep your dick zipped up in your pants, and no matter what happens, do not fucking let her touch it because if she does? Brother...that's your death sentence."
This wasn’t the neurotic and careful Andrei. This wasn’t his anxiety speaking. He was dead serious, giving me a warning that he’d never had to issue before.
With one last death stare, he walked away, abandoning me at the front door with the understanding that no, I didn't have a medical problem. Judging by the pressure in my crotch, the thought alone of having her touch my dick made me incredibly hard.
Fuck. This would become a mess, wouldn't it?