CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Put it on me.”
I RETURN TO CONSCIOUSNESS with an arid mouth, a bitter tongue, and my arms tied behind my back.
Needling pain shoots through my right arm like a fusillade of tiny pins. With the position they left me tossed in, my entire weight is rested on one arm.
To alleviate the pressure, I try to shift onto my belly, and the next thing I know I’m tumbling off the edge of—a bed…?
No, a couch.
An involuntary “oof” leaves me as my body hits the floor and I eat a mouthful of carpet. Hang on, this zebra-print carpet looks mighty familiar…
Lifting my head, I take in my surroundings. And…sonofabitch. I know exactly where I am.
“Hijo de puta!” I scream.
In seconds, the door opens and one of the men who kidnapped me plods in. Now I know why he’d looked familiar to me. “Finally,” he grumbles. “You’re awake. Was startin’ to wonder if we put you in a coma.”
“You tell that twig-legs, piece-of-shit boss of yours to get in here and untie me right the fuck now!”
The henchman grunts, almost humorously, and hauls me up by my arm. The motherfreaking pained arm!
In an effort to show no weakness, I clamp down on my bottom lip and eat the pain. He drags me from the room and out to the main area of the penthouse.
The penthouse that sits at the highest floor of the W casino and hotel in Las freaking Vegas.
And this point, I’m not even scared anymore. I’m pissed.
Over by the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the strip, the toothpick-thin, English-language-butchering cuntface mumbles into his phone as he paces back and forth. “Okay, yes okay.” … “No, only one of them I have.” … “No, we search car. Her car. Nothing, there was in it nothing.” … “What, now?” … “No, please just give me time and let me—” … “Stefano, just let me—”… “Hello?”
He drops the phone from his ear and grits out, “Fuck!”
“Slim, you scum of the earth,” I half-shout. “I’m gonna need you to explain this shit to me.”
Slim turns from the window face to us, and the sheer terror on his face frightens me. See, Slim is not a gangster. Not even remotely. He’s a slimeball who loves the finer things in life, so he cheats and employs unfair methods to get it. He’ll join whatever organization he needs to for worldwide protection and has a handful of henchmen on the payroll, but kidnapping and hardcore crime are not his MO. I know that. It’s why I stopped being afraid once I realized where I was.
Slim is a cheater, not a fighter. But that unhidden fear emblazoned on his face right now is enough to have me petrified again. If he’s scared, then that means I ought to be, too.
He crosses the room to me, cocks his head to the side, and in a quiet voice, asks, “Where is it, Lexi?”
“Where’s what?”
I don’t see it coming. My head snaps to the side and my cheekbone throbs as pain spreads across my face.
“THE MONEY!” he bellows, his strange accent the heaviest I’ve ever heard it. “WHERE THE FUCK IS THE MONEY?”
Water springs to my eyes as an instant effect of the perforating pain from the backhand he gave me. “What-what money, Slim?”
“Lexi, stop it. Stop play games with me. There is no time for it,” he grits out, though there’s a slight shake to his voice. “The money. The five million you and Ellie rob of me.”
“Ellie? What…” I trail off and shake my head, confused as all hell. “Slim, I haven’t seen Ellie since I left Vegas over four months ago to pay off a debt she put me in.”
Searching my face with restless eyes, he spits, “You lie.” He withdraws a cell phone from his pocket. “It is here. All texts of you tell her what to do. Bitch dumb forgot her phone.”
I’ve never been more bewildered than right now. It’s like I went to sleep and woke up in an alternate universe. The laugh that I emit is humorless and ephemeral. “You have texts of me telling her what to do? You mean, like her boss?”
His glare is like granite as he taps around the phone screen a few times before lifting it for me to see. A thread of text messages spanning over three weeks between “Lexi” and Ellie, plotting how to break into Slim’s safe. There’s even one of “Lexi” giving her the code to the safe. The last exchange was: “Got the cash. Where should I meet you?”
To which “Lexi” replied with the address of the house in Pasadena.
“That bitch…” I curse under my breath. She completely set me up. Someone who, mere months ago, I put my life and freedom on the line to save. What on earth did I ever do to her to make her do this to me?
With a defeating sigh, I hang my head in disbelief. “Ellie didn’t ‘forget’ her phone, Slim. She left it on purpose. To lead you straight to me so she would have enough time to get away.”
The color drains from Slim’s face. “What is it are you saying, Lexi?”
“Did you look at the number under ‘Lexi?’” I ask him. “Did you try calling it?”
His features crinkle into a frown as he taps around on the screen a few times. And then his eyes squeeze shut as he mutters, “Fuck.”
“Boss?” the henchman behind me prompts.
Slim throws him the cellphone, and I glance over my shoulder to see the henchman frown at the screen, before his bushy eyebrows shot up. “This is Alvin’s number.”
“It is,” Slim says. “So, I guess this mean we know now he will not be come back to work from visit to his ‘sick aunt,’ yes?”
Yeesh. This man seriously needs to work on his English.
“Are we talking about your bookkeeper Alvin?” I ask him.
When he begins pacing wildly, I take it as confirmation.
The Alvin I remember was quiet and unassuming. A glasses and corduroy pants numbers geek. Not at all someone who would be dumb enough to do something like this. Either we all misread and underestimated him, or Ellie seduced him and sank her manipulative claws into him. My bet is on the latter.
“We are dead, Lexi,” Slim says, pacing like a lunatic. “All of us. We all are dead.”
“W-what do you mean?” I ask.
“Not mine, that money that is gone. It is the Castellos.” He stops pacing and laces his fingers behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. “And they on the way to here now.”
A chilling shiver creeps down my spine. Dear God, no. The Castellos? The same people Trent saved us from months ago?
I can’t believe this. How am I back here again? One more day and I would have been in Washington. Just one more day. I can’t believe that after everything—everything I’ve done for her, that Ellie would do this to me.
With a resigned sigh, I turn to the henchman. “Can I at least get a drink of water before I die?”
His mean stare flicks over my head to Slim before he grunts and hoofs his oversized ass off to the kitchen. Why is he even still here? His boss looks like he’s about to shit his pants and he doesn’t even seem the least bit concerned. Is he not afraid of the Castellos? Or do paid henchmen get spared in these scenarios?
Twisting my wrists against the restraints, I shuffle to the S-shaped sofa and plop down as comfortably as my tied hands will allow. “I’ve always underestimated just how greedy for money Ellie is,” I say to no one in particular. “Always crossing the line, pushing the limits, disregarding the rules.”
Slim glances at me with helpless eyes and urges, “If you have idea, any idea where she has gone, you can tell me now, yes? My contacts in Florida visit her address in Florida. It is bogus. There is a family there, they live there all their lives and do not know an Ellie.”
I sigh. Not at all surprised she lied about that, too. Ellie is that friend—the one you know but don’t know. “Trust me, if I knew anything I would’ve sang like a canary the minute you mentioned the Castellos,” I tell him. “Those are not people I would’ve ever wanted to piss off again.”
The henchman returns with a glass of water. He holds it to my mouth, and I drink down to the last drop.
Then, I await my fate.
~
THE ELEVATOR PINGS and Slim shoots up from his chair like a boomerang. He runs his hand over his scalp and straightens his jacket like a groom whose bride is about to walk down the aisle.
Footsteps.
A lot of them.
Death sounds like a protest march.
Soon, six suavely suited Italians saunter into the main area.
I sit up as straight as my bound hands allow. I’d say I recognize the two darkly handsome, hot-as-hades men at the front of the pack, but I know it’s just the one. Stefano Castellos.
However, the man beside him has identical facial features, same height and stature, except with a brawnier build.
Twins?
Both are distinguishable, though. Where Stefano’s raven-dark hair is short and styled, the other man’s hair is shoulder-length with streaks of copper at the front. And where Stefano has an air of mischievousness about him, the other man’s entire demeanor is menacing, mean, unapproachable—a walking threat.
As the men come to stop into the main area, the henchman disappears, as if wanting no part of what’s about to go down.
Stefano’s lookalike strolls over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, giving everyone his back.
“Stefa—” Slim starts but is abruptly cut off when Stefano smoothly pulls out his gun and points it straight at my head.
I stop breathing.
Squeeze my eyes shut.
Drag my shoulders up to my ears.
My heart hammers.
ThudThudThudThud
They say the first thing you see when you’re about to die is the face of the one you love.
I’ve spent my whole life believing that the love of my life was Mama, but the face I see right now isn’t hers.
It’s Trenton Garza’s.
ThudThudThudThud
I smell him. I hear him. I feel him.
ThudThudThudThud
In my heart, under my skin, in my veins.
ThudThudThudThud
And, like an old film, random childhood memories dance across my mind’s eyes….