Wicked Mafia Mistake (Red Letter Syndicate #5)

Chapter 1

One

Sloane

Twenty-six looks exactly like twenty-five, except lonelier.

The candles on the cupcake Onyx dropped off this morning have melted into the buttercream, two little pink wax puddles sinking into vanilla frosting that now tastes like birthday wishes nobody granted.

The cupcake sits on my kitchen counter next to a bottle of pinot noir that started full three hours ago and is hovering at the halfway mark, the dark liquid catching the amber glow of the string lights I draped across my living room windows last winter and never took down.

My apartment smells like Chanel No. 5 and the vanilla candle burning on the steamer trunk I use as a coffee table.

Warm, pretty, curated within an inch of its life.

Crown molding traces the ceiling in thick, graceful arches that sold me on this place the second the landlord unlocked the door.

The emerald sofa faces the windows where Chicago's evening skyline glitters below.

My record player spins Patsy Cline on low because nothing pairs with self-pity quite like a dead woman singing about falling to pieces.

Fitting. Morbid. But fitting.

"Please. Somebody come and put me out of my misery." I grab the bottle of pinot and refill my glass.

My phone has been buzzing all day. Happy birthdays from people who remembered because social media told them to, a string of heart emojis from my assistant manager at the boutique, three separate invitations to go out tonight from friends who mean well and don't understand why I keep saying no.

I said no because the one person I wanted to hear from hasn't called.

The bastard never calls. Then again, he has no reason to call.

Massimo Santoro does not sit around thinking about Harrison Whitmore's daughter on her birthday or any other day, because to him I am the ugly wallpaper.

I'm nothing more than background noise at family dinners.

The friend's kid who grew up when he wasn't paying attention and stayed invisible even after she sprouted boobs and pretty legs.

I knock back a mouthful of pinot and sweet baby Jesus that is good stuff.

The tannins coat my tongue, dry and warm.

The heat of it spreads through my chest, loosening the knot that's been sitting behind my sternum since I woke up this morning to an empty apartment and a single cupcake with a note that said Happy Birthday, babe.

You deserve the world. Stop settling for crumbs. Love, Onyx.

Onyx knows me too well. The woman survived a kidnapping, a virgin auction, and falling in love with a six-foot-four Russian who grows roses on his roof, and she still finds time to worry about my pathetic love life.

My phone buzzes again. Oh, it's a FaceTime. Speak of the devil.

I grab it off the sofa cushion and swipe to answer, already arranging my face into something that passes for festive.

Onyx fills the screen, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, the scar along her hairline visible because she never hides it anymore.

Behind her, The Foundry's kitchen glows warm, all exposed brick and copper pans.

And somewhere off-camera the low rumble of Kon's voice rolls through with him saying something in Russian that makes Onyx's mouth twitch into a half grin.

Lucky duck.

"Tell me you're not sitting on your couch alone with wine and Patsy Cline."

I pull the throw blanket higher over my legs and take a long sip before answering. "I'm sitting on the couch alone with wine and Patsy Cline."

"Sloane Whitmore." Her blue eyes narrow through the screen and her chin drops, that look she gives me when I'm testing the limits of her patience and she wants me to know it.

"It is your birthday. Get off the couch.

Put on something with a dangerous neckline.

Go to Scarlet Thorn and find a man who doesn't ghost you after three dates. "

I press my lips together and blow out a breath that fogs the rim of my wine glass.

"Onyx, the last man I found at Scarlet Thorn had a wife in Naperville and a girlfriend in Lincoln Park.

" I shift against the cushions and tuck my feet beneath me tighter, balancing the phone against my knee.

"I was the side piece to the side piece.

My love life has layers of failure that scientists haven't classified yet. "

Her laugh crackles through the phone speaker. "Okay, fair. But Marco before him was pretty solid."

"Marco had the hands of an angel and the commitment issues of a feral cat. He's currently in Bali finding himself, which is code for sleeping with Australian backpackers and pretending tattoo artistry is a spiritual calling."

"You really know how to pick them."

"I do. I have a gift. An actual, quantifiable gift for choosing men who are fun for exactly long enough to get comfortable and then vanish like they were made of dreams and smoke.

" I swirl the wine in my glass and watch droplets slide down the inside, slow and crimson.

"I'm starting to think I do it on purpose. "

The silence on her end tells me she agrees but loves me too much to say so.

"What about Ramen Guy?" she offers, her voice softer now. "He was sweet."

"Ramen Guy dumped me because I have, and I quote, 'an intimidating personal aesthetic.' The man was scared of my eyeliner, Onyx. My eyeliner. He even told me he could hook me up for classes with his mom who is a make-up artist."

"His loss. You know who wouldn't be scared of your eyeliner?" My best friend pauses, and something mischievous and knowing moves through her expression. "A man who's actually built for a woman with your level of intensity. Someone older. Someone who doesn't flinch."

My throat tightens. The wine glass stills in my hand.

She doesn't mean Massimo. She can't mean Massimo because I have never said his name out loud in that context, have never let the syllables form in connection with the word want where anyone could hear them.

But Onyx reads people the way other women read horoscopes, with terrifying accuracy and zero regard for privacy, and the way her blue eyes hold mine through the screen makes me wonder how much she's already figured out.

"What I need," I say, steering hard away from the cliff she just walked me toward, "is to stop dating entirely and invest in a high-quality vibrator and a subscription to a streaming service that doesn't judge me and my tastes."

"Tragic. Truly tragic." She grins, letting me have the redirect, and I love her for it. "Come over. Kon's making that stew you love. He already set a place for you."

My heart tugs me toward The Foundry and the warm kitchen, the man who would feed me without asking me why I'm dateless on my birthday.

He'd just shovel more food at me and good wine.

Kon shows love through food and silence, and both sound better than Patsy Cline right now.

But three is a crowd when two of the three are disgustingly in love and one of the three is mainlining self-pity on her birthday.

"I'm good here. Really. Wine, music, my couch. The holy trinity of coping."

"Sloane."

"You're right. I need ice cream. I'll make a call to the grocery store. I love you for asking. Rain check?"

Her sigh carries the specific frustration of a best friend who knows pushing will only make me dig in harder. "Fine. But I'm calling you tomorrow and you better have done something fun tonight, even if that something is ordering overpriced sushi and watching trash television."

Oh. Not a bad idea. "Deal."

"Happy birthday, babe. You deserve all the happiness in the world."

"So you keep telling me."

"Because it's true. And one day you're going to believe me." Her voice drops, warm and fierce and full of the stubborn love that makes Onyx the best person I know. "Goodnight, Sloane."

"Goodnight."

The screen goes dark and the apartment swallows me back into its pretty, curated silence.

Patsy finishes her song. The needle lifts and settles into the runoff groove, a soft rhythmic clicking that fills the gap between tracks.

My wine glass is almost empty again and the buzz has moved from my chest into my limbs, making everything feel warmer and softer and just blurred enough to make me believe I'm happy right where I am.

I grab my wine, forget about the glass and chug back a few swallows.

Who's gonna see me, right? I pick up my phone and tap open my contacts list. "Hello booty call.

Or is it dick call for women? Who cares?

" I thumb through names I should erase and a few that make me cringe.

I squint at the screen when I get to the M section and hit pause on the doom scrolling.

Maximus.

Err...I shouldn't. But I wouldn't mind either. We almost had a good thing. Maybe he would be open...

He's my most recent disaster. Personal trainer with forearms that could bench-press a Honda and a vocabulary that topped out around forty words, most of them gym-related.

He dumped me six weeks ago via text message, which tells you everything about the depth of our connection.

The sex never happened because I panicked every time things progressed past second base and he took my hesitation as rejection instead of what it actually was, which is complicated and rooted in things I don't discuss with men who communicate primarily through protein shake emojis.

But his muscles were a glorious thing to behold.

My thumb hovers over his name.

I should not text my ex on my birthday. This is a rule. A universal, ironclad, carved-in-stone rule that every woman learns in high school. Some sooner. But me, fuck. I don't know. I mean, who the hell is going to tell me what I can and can't do on my birthday?

I take another swallow of my birthday wine. My fingers move before my brain can intervene, tapping out words that spill from somewhere deeper than wine-drunk recklessness.