Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
“W as this supposed to be my rescue?” Cristian pushed himself to sit on the worn mattress, the handcuff on his wrist clanging on the iron frame.
“You should be grateful we didn’t abandon you the way you abandoned us,” Emma spat out, pulling and twisting the ropes around her wrists. “For the record, I wasn’t in favor of rescuing you. My vote was on the ‘let him rot’ side.”
Two carloads of Mafia guys had dragged us out of the truck at gunpoint and tied us up in the bedroom with Cristian. Gage and Jack, who had caused some serious damage before they were forced into compliance with multiple guns, were chained to the bed frame.
“Why did you take so long?” he snapped. “I sent that message ten days ago when they brought in someone’s sister to take over for one of the guards who had some concrete to pour.”
“You seduced her?” I said, incredulous. “You seduced a mobster’s sister while beaten, kidnapped, and chained to a mattress with two armed mobsters in the other room?”
“It’s what I do.” Cristian rolled his eyes and sighed. “Her husband was having an affair. He didn’t notice her anymore. He didn’t appreciate everything she did to look after the kids and the house. I figured they were going to kill me anyway, so why not bring some joy into someone’s life before it was all over. I was already on a bed, and she was into the handcuffs. I told her to lock the door and I’d show her how a woman should be treated.”
“Fuck me,” Gage muttered, shaking his head.
Cristian shrugged. “It was an opportunity, so I took it. Afterward, I asked her to bring me my phone, but by the time she found it, her brother was pulling up outside and I didn’t have much time. I had to text with one finger while she held it for me. It was damn close.”
“You sent your message to the wrong Chopra,” I said. “It went to my dad, and my brother told him it was a butt dial. I only just found out about it, and when I figured it out, we came straight here after rescuing Jack.”
“I didn’t need to be rescued.” Jack shifted against the bed, his chains rattling as he tried to work his way free.
“Really?” I lifted an eyebrow. “What was your plan to escape from four armed men in a locked room? Do tell.”
His mouth turned down in a pout. “I would have thought of something.”
“I’m going to ask to talk to their leader,” I said. “They probably don’t know who we are. It’s counterproductive to have us here. We have one more day to get the necklace. Angelini will want us out there trying to find it.”
“Is that really what you’re going in with?” Cristian rolled to his side and propped his head on his elbow. “ Do you know who I am? They’ll probably think you’re some low-level influencer with ten thousand followers, or a D-list celebrity who is only known for her appearances on panel game shows and reality TV.”
“I’m not just going to say, ‘Do you know who I am?’ without context.” Why was he being so annoying when we were in this predicament because of his betrayal? “I’m going to explain our relationship with Angelini and then they can call him to confirm, and he’ll tell them to give us our day to find Clare and the necklace.”
“Or he’ll realize we don’t have it and off us now because if they let us go, there is a high chance we’ll run away.” Cristian shrugged. “Just saying.”
“Then he still doesn’t get the necklace and he has six dead bodies to deal with,” I shouted, all my stress and anxiety finding an outlet in Cristian’s defeatist attitude. “He’s not an idiot.”
“But you were, coming here without the police and no backup.”
“We were discussing what to do.” My anger and frustration finally tipped me over the edge, and I called out in the direction of the door. “Hey, out there. We don’t want to rescue him anymore. You can let us go. We take it back.”
“Shut the hell up.” The door slammed open and one of the Mafia goons, a heavyset dude with thick dark hair and a bushy mustache, pointed a gun at me. “One more word and I’ll gag you.”
“Do you know who we are?”
“Oh God.” Cristian groaned. “Here we go.”
“Tell Tony Angelini that you’ve got Simi and her crew tied up, so we can’t do the job he asked us to do.”
The man smirked. “He knows you’re here. We checked your ID and told him who’d come to visit.”
“Surely, if Tony knows I’m here, he wouldn’t expect me to stay in this kind of situation.” Simone gave him a withering look. “We had an arrangement. I thought you Mafia types were honorable men beneath your crude and brutal criminal exteriors.”
“Mr. Angelini says you’re even.”
“I would beg to differ,” Simone said coldly. “Considering the night he had and my considerable efforts to help him through his ‘problem’?”—she emphasized the word with air quotes, holding her bound hands in front of her—“he more than owes me. Perhaps you could convey that message and my intention of sharing that ‘problem’?”—again with the air quotes—“with all and sundry should I be forced to remain in these abhorrent circumstances.”
Silence.
Without another word, the dude closed the door.
“Is there anything you want to share with the class?” I asked Simone when I was finally able to peel my tongue off the roof of my mouth.
“Oh, darling. Really. Can you not figure it out for yourself?”
“I can figure out what you did.” My stomach churned. “The question is why?”
“We needed a reason to hold an event at Vera’s house to get access to the diamond.” She spoke slowly, enunciating each word as if she thought I couldn’t follow. “Vera had confided in me that Peter’s family were not good people. She told me about his nephew in Sing Sing. The family let people think he was there on drug-related crimes, but in fact he’d been imprisoned for sexually assaulting a young girl. She wanted my advice about how to distance herself from the whole sordid affair. I wanted to help her, and it occurred to me that I could use the situation to help us, so I went to see Tony…”
I held up a hand to stop her mid-sentence. “You went to see Tony? As in Tony Angelini? How did you find him?”
“Darling, he’s a businessman above all else. Just like Jack’s Mr. Braithwaite. Businessmen have places of business, and places to talk business—golf clubs, social clubs, and the like. It wasn’t hard to find him, and when I went to his office and gave his people Richard’s name, they waved me through. One thing led to another, and we wound up at his place…”
“But you are…were married,” Chloe said. “To Richard.”
“Richard and I had an arrangement,” she said with a dismissive wave of her bound hands. “We were free to sleep with other people so long as they were not in our social circle. He broke that agreement when he had an affair with Martha.”
Olivia had mentioned at the celebration of life that Martha had been having an affair, but I hadn’t paid attention. What else had she overheard?
“The same Martha whose funeral I arranged?” My voice rose in pitch. “The Martha who you thought would appreciate a circus? If she cheated with your husband, why on earth would you arrange her celebration of life?”
“Everyone knew about the affair, darling, even her husband. And they knew I knew. It was humiliating, but I had to let them think I didn’t care and that I still thought of her as my friend, especially after her tragic accident. But the theme…” She laughed. “It was inspired. Nothing says ‘tawdry whore’ like a circus.”
I’d never equated circuses with “tawdry whores,” but I made a mental note to take that theme off my list for future celebrations of life.
“What was Tony’s ‘problem’?” Emma asked the question that was on everyone’s lips with her own version of bound-hand air quotes.
“He was a lot of work, as men that age often are.” Simone sighed. “My hands were so sore afterward I used up my entire pot of La Crème, but I gave him a night to remember. After he woke up, I mentioned my own little problem and how it would be so much easier for us to get the necklace if we were able to hold an event at Vera’s house, and how Peter had a nephew in Sing Sing who had done terrible things, and the next morning, bingo. We had our way in.”
“Oh my God, Simone!” I couldn’t disguise my horror. “You had him killed so I could plan his funeral?”
“I did no such thing,” she said. “I mentioned my problem. It was solved by the next morning. What happened to him in prison had nothing to do with me.”
I tried to take a breath, but the air didn’t seem to be getting into my lungs. I heard the rattle of chains. Jack was trying to reach me, but he couldn’t move more than a few feet from the bed.
“Put your head between your legs,” he said. “Take deep breaths.”
“A man is dead because of me.” I wheezed out the words, staring down at the scratched wooden floor.
“To be fair, it sounds like he was a piece of shit, and they would have killed him in prison anyway,” Gage offered. “Dudes who hurt young girls don’t last long. The world is a better place.”
“Bad,” I wheezed. “Killing is bad.”
“It’s a gray area,” Gage said. “I wouldn’t waste time or energy mourning a guy like that.”
“Okay. I’m done with this.” I toed off my right sneaker, dragged it near my hands with my foot, and dug out the razor blade I had hidden under the insole.
“Am I the only one wondering why Simi has a razor blade in her shoe?” Emma asked. “Or why it took her this long to take it out?”
“I thought they’d let us go after they talked to Angelini,” I shot back. “And why don’t you have a razor blade in your shoe? After what happened to us last time, I resolved to always be prepared in case I was kidnapped and tied up again. I’ve practiced escaping from ropes and I put a razor blade in every pair of shoes. It’s a basic survival tactic.”
“After being tied up during our last heist by a Mafia daughter’s fly boys as she tries to pawn her daddy’s necklace so she can escape an arranged marriage to his rival’s son, I never imagined I’d be tied up by Mafia goons again, so the answer is no on that count.” Emma grimaced. “My bad.”
“I have a lower tolerance for risk.” I gestured to Chloe’s foot. “I put razor blades in Chloe’s shoes, too. Olivia needs her mom during her vulnerable teen years.”
“Please don’t secretly put razor blades in my shoes,” Emma said as Chloe toed off her sneaker. “I love you like a sister, but sometimes you’re just too weird and dangerous for me. I’d be worried I’d lose a couple of toes.”
Using the razor blades, Chloe and I managed to saw through the ropes and then free Emma. We were just trying to figure out how to free Jack, Gage, and Cristian when we heard the low growl of engines outside.
“Did they call for reinforcements or is that the concrete for our new shoes?” I peered out the barred window, but I couldn’t see the street.
“Either way, we need to get out of here right now.” Jack’s voice was tight with urgency. “You’ll have to pick the lock on the handcuffs. Do you have something long and thin to make a shim? A paperclip, bobby pin, or piece of wire?”
“They took everything.” I searched the room, poking into every corner on my hands and knees. Outside, the roar of engines grew louder, and the building began to vibrate with the sound.
“I know.” I reached under my shirt. “The wire from my bra. I can use that.”
“Jesus.” Emma shook her head. “Who wears underwire anymore? Talk about pain.”
While Chloe pulled out her wire, Jack talked me through how to bend it into a Z shape, and how to twist it in different directions to lift the locking device inside the cuffs.
“What about me?” Cristian whined as I worked on Jack’s handcuffs while Chloe used hers on the cuffs around Gage’s wrists.
“You lose out because my girls like to be free.” Emma looked out the window again. “That sounds like motorcycles, not trucks. And a lot of them.”
“There are a lot of gangs in this area,” Gage said. “We might wind up in the middle of a turf war.”
“One step at a time.” Jack kissed me lightly on the forehead when the cuffs opened before taking the makeshift key over to Cristian. Five minutes later, we were all free, the sound of our movements swallowed by the bone-jarring rumble that was growing louder by the minute.
“We don’t know who is going to come through the door or what weapons they’re going to have.” Jack flipped the bed on edge. “Gage and I will stand on either side of the door. Everyone else get behind the bed.”
I heard a thud, a crash, and then a loud voice shouting what sounded like Emma’s name. The sound of gunfire echoed through the house, and we hit the ground behind the bed, staying close to the wall in the hopes of dodging any stray bullets. As the metallic taste of fear coated my tongue, I shared a glance with Chloe, our eyes reflecting the shared terror that coursed through our veins. Time seemed to slow as I clung to her hand, our bodies pressed against the cold wooden floor.
“Emma!” The door slammed open and the man from the red sedan burst into the room. He was wearing a black leather biker vest, and he held an enormous pistol in his four-fingered hand.
“Axel!?” Emma pushed to her feet and smoothed her hair, something I’d never seen her do. Then she gave a casual shrug. “What’s up?”
“?‘What’s up?’?” Chloe whispered beside me. “?‘What’s up?’ And how does she know his name?”
“I think the bigger question is how does he know her name? She said she would only tell him if he got the privilege of her tramp stamp.”
Chloe swallowed hard. “He’s a biker.”
“Not just a biker.” I studied the Hell’s Fury Motorcycle Club patch, along with the President rocker on his vest. “He’s the president of an outlaw motorcycle club. I learned the meaning of that one-percenter badge on his arm from Sons of Anarchy .”
“Jack decided to get friendly with outlaw bikers?” Chloe sucked in a sharp breath. “And then we dropped a canoe on their car? Between them and the Mafia, I’ll be shocked if we get out of here alive.”
“You okay, babe?” Axel took Emma’s hands and inspected her wrists while three of his biker buddies blocked the door. “Did they hurt you?”
“Just some scratches on my wrists from trying to get out of the ropes. Maybe a bruise or two from trying to fight my way free when they grabbed us. No big deal.”
“Fucking bastards.” He turned and made a curt gesture for his buddies to follow him out the door. Moments later, I heard multiple shots, and we dove for the floor again. Born and raised in Chicago, we all knew how to deal with gunfire.
He returned with his face and vest splattered with blood, and gently kissed each of her wrists. “They’re not gonna bother you anymore.”
“Excuse me…Axel?” I raised my hands as I emerged from my bed shield. “Um…are they all…dead?”
His gaze slid to me, narrowed. “As doornails. Shot ’em all a second time for hurting my girl.”
“When did you become ‘his girl’?” I asked Emma.
For the first time since I’d met Emma, she actually blushed. “He gave me the name of his garage when we were on the mountain. I looked it up and got in touch with him while we were on the road. We chatted and I told him we were heading back to Chicago. He got here before us, and we hooked up last night.”
I shot a frantic look at Jack and then back to Axel. “We’re sorry about your vehicles…”
Axel shrugged. “No big deal. They were stolen. And we got a free canoe.”
He said “free canoe” in a way that made it clear the canoe wouldn’t be returned. I called that a win.
Still, I felt the need to explain. “We thought you were after us for not good reasons.”
“I’d just found my woman,” he said. “I wasn’t about to let her go that easy, and after I watched her drive the hell out of that piece of shit truck—”
“You should see me on a bike.” Emma grinned. “I didn’t get my tramp stamp for sitting pretty.”
“Fuck me.” Axel pulled her against his blood-splattered chest and kissed her hard.
I took a peek out into the hallway and counted five dead Mafia guys and about six bikers going through their pockets.
“I’m a bit concerned that Angelini might take offense when he finds out five of his guys got whacked.” I glanced over at Jack to see if he was also concerned about the mass murder in the hallway, but he was busy staring at his phone.
Axel looked over at me like I’d said something nonsensical. “They kidnapped my woman.”
“Right. Okay. But she wasn’t hurt, so the quintuple homicide seems disproportionate to the crime. Not to me, of course. But if I were a Mafia boss…”
Axel’s face darkened, and his fierce expression made my blood run cold. “They. Kidnapped. My. Woman.”
I swallowed hard and took an involuntary step back. “Are you saying that in the organized crime apex predator hierarchy, one percenters are higher than the Mafia?”
Axel grunted. “Mob’s gone soft.”
“Angelini’s henchman threatened to gut us like fish.”
“Fucking waste of time,” Axel said. “I could blow off fifteen faces in the time it would take them to turn you into sushi.”
“That’s an interesting image I never wanted in my head.” I stepped over the first two bodies. “Could you leave a calling card or something to let Angelini know that this was your work?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he assured me. “He’ll know.”
I wasn’t sure what Angelini would think when he found out his leverage was gone, but with only two days left to find the necklace, I had a feeling he wouldn’t care.