Olivia
Why was I so upset? I’d been telling myself this was going to happen since we met. I’d told him he was mistaken from the very beginning, practically the very first words I ever said to him. I knew something was going to go wrong. Knew it.
Wulf was too good to be true. Too… everything. I was not his type. Gorgeous warrior gods did not go for women like me. Maybe for a fling, to empty their balls, but as something real?
No. They went with women like her. Ruth. While she wasn’t model small, she was exactly the big Amazon woman Wulf needed. This also included expensive perfume, designer clothes, lip injections, expensive spike heels and breast implants. In other words, gorgeous.
The only thing real about that woman had been the triumph in her eyes after she’d climbed up in Wulf’s lap and kissed him. She couldn’t have been any more obvious, and the cameras ate it up. On top of that, Wulf had asked for the cuffs. Supposedly my cuffs. Chet had retrieved them so Wulf could put them on her. His real mate. His perfect match from the Interstellar Brides Program. His true mate. The perfect woman for him.
I couldn’t compete with not only the perfect female specimen but the actual bride test. It had chosen her for him. The test didn’t lie. Wulf deserved to be with the perfect woman. After what he’d survived? Not some overweight makeup artist who had inherited two kids from a deadbeat brother and struggled to pay the mortgage every month.
The taxi pulled to a stop in front of the hotel, and I handed him my money in silence, not trusting my voice. The doorman opened the door of the car, and I ducked my head, practically running past him as the tears welled up. I would not cry in the hotel lobby. Would not. I had some dignity left. Some pride. I was not broken.
I had survived worse than Warlord Wulf of Atlan. That was for damn sure. It was amazing how much I hurt over a guy I’d only known for two days. Two days and I was a complete wreck!
The elevator was a welcome reprieve from too curious eyes, and I leaned back, letting my head hit the hard, cool surface on the way up to the twenty-first floor. Lucy would be there, with that knowing look in her eyes. Hopefully she’d turned the television off when things went sideways. If Tanner and Emma had seen Wulf kiss that horrible woman… Well, I didn’t know what I would do about that or what Wulf did when he’d found me gone. No, he wouldn’t go all beast again because his mate had been straddling his lap and sucking the tonsils from his throat.
The ride was over too soon—thankfully no one had gotten on—and I stood before my hotel room door, the Do Not Disturb sign clearly displayed. I expected to hear the sounds of Tanner and Emma even out here in the hallway. Instead an odd quiet made my skin chill.
Unlocking the door with the key card I’d gotten from the front desk, I walked in to find the room silent and dark, the blackout curtains completely closed. The television was off. The lights were off. The room was empty.
What the hell?
I flipped on the switch, and one sad little side lamp lit up next to the bed. “Lucy?”
Alarmed now, I hurried to find another light switch and flipped it on. The bed was a mess where the kids had probably played. The connecting door to the suite I shared with Wulf was closed. Maybe they were in the other room?
I walked toward the door but stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of two feet sticking out of the bathroom door. Lucy’s favorite slipper socks, a pair of fuzzy panda faces staring up at me from the floor. I blinked, then gasped, my brain finally catching up to my eyes.
“Lucy?” Shock slowed my movements as I stepped into the open doorframe to see Lucy bound, gagged and unconscious, lying on the bathroom floor. “Oh my God! Lucy!”
Kneeling beside her, I tore at the duct tape that circled her wrists, but I’d need a knife to cut through. My movements stirred her, and she tried to speak. I pulled the tape from her mouth, and she worked to spit one of Tanner’s dinosaur socks out. I yanked the green and yellow sock free.
“What happened? Are you all right? Where are Tanner and Emma? Where are they?”
Her green eyes were blurry, and she winced, clearly not one hundred percent. “You tell me. Who is Jimmy Steel?”
I felt the blood drain from my face, and I dropped down onto the cold tile, trying once again to get her hands free. “No. Impossible.”
Lucy moaned in pain as she tried to sit up, and I hurried to help her. “Call the cops,” she slurred. “He took them. He took Tanner and Emma.”
My hands, which had been tearing at the duct tape around her wrists, froze. “What? What did you say?”
Tears welled in her eyes, and she lifted her bound hands to the back of her head. “He took them, Liv. He took them. He left you a box.”
Panic filled me. Hot. Intense. Frantic. Tanner and Emma weren’t here. They weren’t safe. I had no idea where they were, but I did know they were with a very bad man. Hurting innocent children would be something he’d do and not think twice.
No!
Shit. Shit. Shit. This was not happening. I yanked at the heavy silver tape around her ankles as she twisted her wrists free. “God. No. This is wrong. This isn’t happening.”
“Who is Jimmy Steel?” she repeated.
It wasn’t like I could keep this secret from her any longer. She’d been hurt by him. Bound and gagged. “He’s… he’s a guy Greg owed money. When he died, Jimmy came to me and made me take over the debt. Those errands I ran were drug runs.”
“Oh my God, Liv,” she said, eyes wide with panic. “Where’s Wulf? Turn him loose on this Jimmy guy. He’ll rip him and his asshole goons in half. Literally.”
I shook my head. “Wulf is out of the picture.”
She stared at me with wide eyes. “What?”
“You didn’t see the show?”
She huffed. “I was a little busy with some bad guys, and then I was on the bathroom floor. Not much opportunity.”
I pursed my lips. While I knew her words were laced with heavy sarcasm, I felt guilty for getting her into this mess. I couldn’t imagine how she’d felt when the kids were taken from her.
I pulled Lucy carefully to her feet, then had to wrap my arm around her waist as she swayed, unstable. I helped her to the main room and settled her in a chair, and I sank to my knees in front of her, holding her hands.
“Call the cops. Do it. Then tell me what happened to Wulf because we could sure use him right now.”
I got up and paced. I couldn’t call the cops. Jimmy had been very clear in his threats to me. First he’d hurt Tanner and Emma. Then Lucy. Then my seventy-seven-year-old grandmother in an assisted living facility. She might not remember me, but she was still family. My cousins. We never spoke, their dubious life choices not meshing with mine, but they were blood. My blood. Greg’s blood. They didn’t deserve to be hurt or killed by Jimmy Steel.
Thanks to my dead brother and his big mouth, Jimmy had a ready-made list of every living, breathing person on the planet that I cared about. At all. Every. Single. One.
Fuck.
Shaking my head, I met her pain-filled eyes. “I can’t call the cops.”
“Why not?” Lucy was rubbing her temples like she had a bitch of a headache. She probably did.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“No. I’ll be fine. Where’s Wulf?”
“Ruth Sanchez,” I muttered. “That’s what happened. His perfect matched mate showed up. He had a bride, apparently. An Interstellar Bride who didn’t stay with him when they were first matched a few years ago. She showed up, said she made a mistake, that she wants him back. She sat in his lap and kissed him on live TV, Luce. He had his hands all over her, and then he asked Chet to give him his cuffs.”
“Oh, sweetie. No.”
“He didn’t even look at me. So I left. I couldn’t watch him put them on her wrists. I couldn’t do it.”
“I’m so sorry. You fell in love with him, didn’t you?”
I couldn’t speak, so I nodded. As dumb as it was, I had fallen for him. Hard. “I don’t care about Wulf right now. I need to find the kids.”
She wobbled, but she stood and came to wrap me in a hug. We were both shaken up, and we clung to each other like frightened children. “What are we going to do? I knew something was wrong every time you asked me to babysit. You should have told me about this Jimmy guy.”
I sighed. “He was Greg’s loan shark who dabbles in all kinds of stuff. Drugs, prostitution and more,” I repeated. “When Greg died, he owed Jimmy a lot of money. He came to me to collect, threatened Tanner and Emma”—and you, I thought, but I didn’t say it out loud—“if I didn’t cooperate. We made a deal. I did a few drops for him ’cause I look more like a soccer mom than a drug mule, paid him some cash and returned all the money owed. The other night, when you watched the kids?”
“Yeah?”
“That was my last drop. I left the show, made the drop, came home. It was supposed to be over. I kept my end of the deal. I did what he wanted.”
She shook her head but winced. “It’s never enough, not for guys like that. Not when they know they can use you over and over. The kids are leverage.”
I sank onto the couch. “Now he has Tanner and Emma. If I call the cops, he’ll hurt them. I know him, Lucy. He’ll hurt them.” I broke down then, the tears streaming down my cheeks as I fought to hold in the out-of-control, racking sobs I knew were right behind them if I didn’t at least try to hold myself together.
“Then we take him down.”
I looked up at her determined face. “How?”
“I don’t know.”
I popped back up, paced. “I need a gun. Where can I buy a gun in New York?”
“That’s crazy talk.”
“Is it?” I wiped my cheeks and took a deep breath. I would cry later, when it was over. I’d think about Wulf and Ruth and what a mess my life was later. Right now I had to get Tanner and Emma home safe. That was the only thing that mattered. “What did Jimmy say? What does he want?”
Lucy pointed and dread made my heart heavy as I approached the table nearest the window. Sitting in the center was a rather large box, black, tied with a pretty bow.
Hand shaking, I untied the black satin bow from the box and lifted the lid.
“What is it?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know.” A cream-colored envelope lay atop a layer of black tissue paper, my name written in a scrawl I recognized all too well. Jimmy Steel’s handwriting.
The envelope was not sealed, and the paper felt like soft fabric as I pulled out a single card, finer than anything I’d ever touched before. The invitation was handwritten, in ink, the calligraphy elegantly curved and beautiful. Ironic that something so beautiful felt like holding death in my hands.
I read aloud. “Your presence is requested at the New York Gala Event for the I-I-M-A-A. The International, Interplanetary and Multicultural Arts Alliance.” I glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “Oh God. It started fifteen minutes ago.”
I didn’t read Jimmy’s handwritten note aloud. Lucy had been through enough.
Embarrass me and Emma dies first.
Embarrass him? What if I wasn’t there, what was Jimmy going to do to the kids? To Lucy the next time his goons got his hands on her? To everyone I knew? This was a nightmare, and I missed Wulf so much I felt like a barbed dagger was being shoved—one agonizing bit at a time—right into my heart. I turned away from Lucy so she wouldn’t see me clutching at my chest. That was all I needed right now, a heart attack.
“I have never even heard of this Arts Alliance. Why does he want you to go?” Lucy was rubbing her temple now, and I was grateful she remained in the chair with her head down so she wouldn’t see me shaking. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.” I placed the invitation on the side table and pulled back the tissue paper. “Holy shit.”