Chapter 2 #2
I'm scanning the room for Sloane when a blonde tornado in a red dress spots me from across the lounge and starts pushing through the crowd.
"Jesus Christ, Onyx." Sloane grabs my arm and pulls me into a booth in the corner, and the movement sends pain radiating through muscles I didn't even know I had.
She's five feet of blonde bombshell in a red swing dress and matching lipstick, her vintage rockabilly aesthetic completely at odds with the modern sleekness of this club.
But that's Sloane. She walks into any room looking like a 1950s pin-up girl who got lost on her way to a car show, and somehow makes everyone else look like they're the ones who dressed wrong.
My body is a symphony of complaints. Shoulders screaming from the climb.
Thighs burning from the sprint through the woods.
Feet aching from the walk to the highway.
The scratches on my arms pulse with heat, and somewhere beneath my ribs, my heart still hasn't figured out that I'm not running anymore.
I collapse into the velvet booth and my body practically groans with relief. The cushion is soft, impossibly soft after concrete and tree bark and the cracked vinyl seat of a stranger's truck. For one dangerous moment I want to curl up right here and let the exhaustion drag me under.
"You look like you've been dragged through a hedge fund manager's nightmare and out the other side."
I huff out a laugh. “Something like that.”
Sloane leans forward, eyes narrowed, her winged liner sharp enough to cut glass.
She's the kind of woman who never leaves the house without looking like she stepped off a vintage Coca-Cola ad, and right now those baby blues are fixed on me like I'm a problem she's determined to solve. "What the hell happened?"
She slides in across from me and fixes me with a look I've seen her use on lying exes and contractors who try to overcharge her. "Talk."
"I can't tell you everything."
"Then tell me something, because you show up looking like a raccoon who lost a fight with a lawnmower, you won't let me send a car, and your eyes are jumping to every shadow that moves.
" She leans forward, her blue eyes sharp despite the drinks she's clearly already had. "What the hell happened, Onyx?"
I weigh my options while a waitress glides past our table, her tray balanced perfectly on manicured fingertips.
Sloane doesn't know what my family really is.
She thinks my dad is some boring finance guy with a nice house in the suburbs and my uncle is his slightly uptight business partner.
I've kept it that way on purpose. Plausible deniability. Protection for her.
But right now, I need help more than I need to protect her from the ugly truth of where I come from.
"My family isn't what I told you they were."
"Okay..."
Her eyes wide a fraction when she raises her brows, expecting me to continue.
"They're criminals, Sloane. Like, actual blood-on-their-hands criminals. The kind with body counts and offshore accounts and half the Chicago PD on the payroll."
Sloane's eyebrows finish shooting up toward her hairline, but she doesn't look as shocked as I expected her to. "I mean, I kind of figured there was something going on. Nobody's that paranoid about their phone and their coffee shop choices unless they're hiding something big."
I force myself to sit up straight. "Yeah, well.
I've been investigating them for the past six months.
Building a case. Trying to expose everything they've done so the whole rotten empire comes crashing down into a pile of ash and ruin.
" I swallow hard against the lump forming in my throat.
"They found out about it tonight. And now my uncle wants to sell me. "
I didn’t mean to just dump info and then drop a bomb on top of the shit pile that is my life, but that was surprisingly easy to say.
"Sell you?" Her voice pitches up in disbelief. "What do you mean, sell you? Like, sell you sell you?"
"Is there any other kind of selling option? I mean, there's an auction. Saturday night. For—" I suddenly can't say it. The words choose this moment to stick in my throat like shards of broken glass, cutting deeper every time I try to force them out.
Shit.
I grab her drink and swallow a mouthful of appletini.
Gross.
I wince through a bit of too much sweetness before I answer her question. "It doesn't matter what for. The point is, I have five days before I become someone's property, and I can't go to the cops because my uncle owns half of them and the other half are too scared to cross him."
Sloane stares at me, her perfectly glossed lips parted in shock. For a long moment, she doesn't say anything, and I watch her process it, watching the wheels turn behind her eyes as she recalculates everything she thought she knew about me.
Then she grabs my hand across the table and squeezes hard enough that I feel her rings dig into my fingers.
"Okay. Okay, we're going to figure this out.
" She glances around the club, her gaze lingering on the VIP section hidden in the back corner, and something in her expression shifts from shock to calculation.
"Actually... this might be exactly the right place for you to be.
" She purses her lips like she is rerunning her whole thought process just to double check.
"What do you mean?" I press.
She bites at her cherry-colored lip. "Have you ever heard of the Red Letter wishes?"
My pulse kicks up a notch, thudding against the base of my throat. "I've heard rumors when I was doing my research on the families. Some kind of wish-granting thing. Urban legend stuff that kept popping up but I could never verify."
"Err.. Well, it's not a legend." Sloane leans closer, dropping her voice low enough that I have to strain to hear her over the music.
"There's a room somewhere past the VIP area, behind all the security.
You write your wish on paper, put it in a red envelope, and drop it in a box.
These powerful men, the ones who run this place, they read the wishes and pick the ones they want to grant. "
"In exchange for what?"
"Depends on the wish and what you have to offer.
Money. Favors. Information. Connections.
" She shrugs one elegant shoulder. "They're not cheap, and they're sure as hell not saints.
But they help women. That's kind of their thing, their calling card.
Women in bad situations who can't go through normal channels, who can't go to the cops or the courts and expect any kind of justice. Like you, right?"
I nod. “Like me.”
My brain starts clicking pieces together like a puzzle I've been staring at for months finally coming into focus.
The Red Letter Syndicate. The wish-granting rumors I could never pin down to a solid source.
The pattern I noticed in my research, how certain women connected to powerful men suddenly got out of horrific situations without any explanation that made sense on paper.
"The men who run this place," I say slowly, the realization settling into my bones. "They're the Syndicate who grant these wishes."
Sloane's eyes widen slightly. "Now you’re getting it, yes. You know about them?"
"I didn’t realize they were the wish granters.
But I know about their reputation and that they own this building.
This club." I know they're my father's enemies, have been for as long as I can remember.
I know they've been at war with the Malone organization for years, a cold conflict fought through shell companies and shifting alliances and the occasional body that surfaces in the river.
I know my uncle hates Rafael Milano with the kind of seething, bitter hatred that only comes from losing, over and over again.
The enemy of my enemy might be more useful than I thought.
"Onyx." Sloane grips my hand tighter, her nails digging little half-moons into my skin. "Whatever you're thinking right now, think carefully. These aren't guys you mess around with. They're dangerous in ways that make your uncle look like a playground bully."
"More dangerous than the man who's planning to sell me to the highest bidder in five days?"
She doesn't have an answer for that. Nobody would.
I slide out of the booth, my legs steadier than I expected them to be. "Where's the room? The one with the box."
"Now that I’ve had a rethink, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe a wish isn’t the right thing here. Onyx—"
"Sloane. In five days, I'm standing on an auction block while men bid on my virginity like I'm a prize to be bought and used.
" I hold her gaze, letting her see every ounce of the determination that's been building in my chest since I heard my father say fine.
"I don't have time to be careful. Careful is a luxury for people who aren't being hunted. Now, where's the room?"
She hesitates, chewing on her bottom lip in a way that tells me she's fighting with herself. Then she sighs and points toward a black curtain at the far end of the lounge, barely visible in the shadows beyond the dance floor.
"Through there. That's the VIP area. The wish room is somewhere past it, behind a red door. I've never been back there myself, but that's what I've heard."
I squeeze her shoulder as I pass, trying to put everything I can't say into the touch. "Thank you. For everything tonight. For believing me."
I grab my laptop bag and swing the strap over my shoulder.
"Just... be smart about what you wish for." Her voice follows me as I step away from the booth. "They take their deals seriously around here. Whatever you offer, you better be ready to deliver."
I weave through the crowd, dodging wandering hands and avoiding eye contact with men who look at me like I'm something to be sampled. The black curtain looms ahead, heavy velvet that swallows light, and I pause at the threshold with my pulse hammering against my ribs.