Hell's Kitchen (9 page)

Which is why the fact someone has just tried to kidnap me is utterly ridiculous. I know exactly who they are,
Jerry
and
Gareth
, those smug assholes who thought they could just take Gracie and I captive as easily as that. Theodore and Salvatore. I should have recognized them the second I slid my ass into that car. I’m an idiot! They’re the reason I can’t live in my own fucking town. They’re the reason my life is the way it is. I don’t care how irresistible they are, how much I want to have them both fuck me at the same time. I’m going to take great pleasure in wiping those two Barbieri brothers off the face of the earth.

But first, I need to get out of dodge. I need to get to a safe place before somebody sees me and plants a slug in my pretty blonde head. That chick back at the diner gave me her address and a key, and I’m really, really surprised that she did. But so she should have. If she hadn’t, I would have told my father to cut her head off. People should know their place in this city.

People should fucking bow down to me.

But they don’t, because it’s 2015 and nobody fucking bows, and because I’m never here. Plus they’re too scared. Pathetic, frightened creatures that walk along these streets like sheep, milling about in their meaningless lives, trying to pretend that this city isn’t run by us.
 

It’s so fucking hot I feel like I’m going to melt into the pavement and disappear before I can get to where I’m going. That chick’s directions weren’t too shoddy, and eventually I find myself standing in front of a crumbling apartment building that looks like it should be somewhere to shoot up or store dead bodies. It looks decrepit.

Well, beggars can’t be choosers. I’m going to go inside, find this apartment, and find a phone to call my father to come get me out of this mess. And kill Gracie. And kill Theo and Sal. Probably not in that order, but it’s close.

I scan the yellowed directory in the lobby that has each floor printed on it in fading letters. Looks like apartment six is on the sixth floor. Huh. It must be a floor per apartment. This place might be better than it looks if you get a whole floor to yourself.

I press the button for the lift, and wait. And wait. And wait. The front door to the building creaks open and I freak, rushing over to the stairs and taking them two at a time. I’m fit, I work out, I can take these stairs. More importantly, I don’t need anyone to see me.
 

I really wish I had a fucking weapon right now.

On the sixth floor stairwell, I yank the heavy fire escape door open and enter a small landing, barely big enough for me to stand in, another door in front of me marked with a six. Weird-ass old buildings. I shove the key the diner girl gave me into the lock and turn it, but nothing happens. Fuck. This is apartment six, and this is the right address. I’m certain I haven’t misunderstood anything.

I try to pull the key back out. It’s stuck.

Jesus Christ. This day is going from bad to worse. When I’m done here, I’m going to burn down Cucino Diavola , snort a whole bunch of coke, and probably fuck Ray in the back of his limo while I watch the flames devour the Barbieriss.

One can only hope.

I’m trying to jiggle the key in the lock when the door flies open, and I stumble, letting go of the key as it’s wrenched away. I’m immediately suspicious, but this is the right apartment –apartment six, like the key says—and this guy looks harmless enough.

I still wish I had a gun right about now, but Gracie always fucking takes mine away when we’re flying. Says I’m too eager to shoot somebody to be trusted on a plane with a loaded weapon. She kind of has a point. I still fucking hate her, though.

The guy looks about thirty, six foot, his brown eyes intense and kind of weird-looking, like he’s permanently squinting, even when he’s not. He’s wearing a checked shirt and sporting three days worth of facial hair – which is a shame, because if he tidied himself up, he’d be fucking hot, even with the serious-frowny-eyes thing he’s got going on. But right now, he just looks… below average. I guess above average people don’t live in falling-down, piece of shit apartment buildings like this.
 

I plaster on a smile as I look past him to the apartment within. The chick never mentioned someone being in her apartment, but I’m not worried. The years Gracie has spent teaching me self defense are something I always keep in my back pocket, and besides, this guy looks like an average Joe.

“Can I help you, sweetheart?” he asks, leaning one shoulder against the door frame as he looks me up and down in a similar fashion.

“I’m a friend of Scarlett’s,” I say, thankful I remembered the bitch’s name. “She said I could hang here until she gets back.”

Something flashes in the dude’s eyes. Lust, pure and simple. I smirk at him. I tend to have that effect on men.

“Well come in,” he says. “Any friend of Scarlett’s is a friend of mine.”

I step into the apartment, feeling relieved as the door shuts behind me.
 

Ten minutes later, I’m sitting at a small table that’s designed for playing cards, wedged in the middle of a very small kitchen. This place is practically a fucking postage stamp, and I’m starting to itch, like I need some wide open space, but I need to wait.

I’ve since learned that the guy who answered the door, the one now sitting across from me, is called Jimmy, and the one to my right is his younger brother, Dave. Jimmy’s a building super, he tells me, and works part-time at a hospital. Dave, who is basically just a baby-faced, clean-shaven version of his brother, also works at the hospital. Oh, and he’s a magician in his spare time.

A.Fucking.Magician.

“Do you mind if I borrow your cell phone?” I ask Jimmy, fluttering my eyelashes at him as Dave shuffles a deck of cards beside me. I’m well aware that I need to get the fuck out of dodge, but I also need to be polite. I hate people – I’d rather just fucking do what I want to do – but there are social rules I need to follow in order to get what I want. I’ve finally learned this, after eighteen years of being a loose fucking cannon. I can’t afford to be like that if I want to come back to New York on a permanent basis. Discretion and bullshit artistry are my new lucky charms, my way of getting ahead in this family business of mine before someone like Gracie comes along and steals my fucking spoils.

“It’s charging,” Jimmy says. “Give it a couple minutes and it should have enough juice to make a call.”

“Thanks,” I say, dazzling him with a smile full of my perfect teeth.
All the better to eat you with,
I think as I tilt my head to the side, studying Jimmy openly. He’s kind of hot in a lazy way, and I’m fucking horny. I finish my evaluation as I’m thrumming my long red nails against the plastic card table.
Nah. Not fuckable enough for Kaitlin McLaughlin. Sorry, buddy.

“So how’d you say you knew Scarlett again?” Jimmy asks, as he cuts a lime into segments and wedges one piece into his bottle of beer. He repeats the action with two more beers, sliding one in front of his brother and the other over to me. I take the beer with a smile of thanks, popping the lime inside the bottle with my index finger and taking a gulp. A slow smile spreads across Jimmy’s face as he watches me swallow, and I can tell he wants to get into my pants. Or my mouth. Or both.

“We’re just friends,” I shrug, feeling irritated that I have to explain myself to these guys. Why the fuck should I have to?
 

“And she told you to come to Jimmy’s apartment?” Dave chimes in, laughing. “That’s hilarious. I thought for sure that Scar fucking hated Jimmy.” He punches his brother in the arm, but Jimmy doesn’t move. He’s not smiling at all now, his tongue sliding over his teeth as he stares at me with zero expression.

I look down at the key in front of me, sitting innocently next to the beer bottle. There used to be a line on top of the six, but it’s mostly faded away. And it’s then I realize. The number written on the card isn’t a six.

It’s a nine.
 

It used to be underlined so you could tell the difference, but it’s so scuffed and faded, you could easily read it as either a six or a nine.

Dave sees me glance at the key tag, his lips stretching into a grin that bares his teeth. He’s not dangerous looking, not really. Neither of them is. But it doesn’t matter. They’re wolves, just like me. I see this now. I see it all; the way they’ve positioned themselves, in between me and the front door. The casual way Jimmy keeps his hand on his knife.
This is the wrong apartment.

Dave picks the key up, his deck of cards forgotten. I glance over at Jimmy, whose eyes are looking rather psychotic right now. I don’t move as he takes the knife and points it at me across the tiny card table, pressing the sharp tip against the bare flesh between my tits. I’m having a hard time staying still, though; I’m suddenly dizzy, and this tiny room feels like it’s about to crush me. I take a deep breath, looking at the bottle of beer in front me, my vision doubling as it becomes two bottles.
Fuck.
 

“You drugged me,” I slur, fighting to hold onto the table, but I’m slipping.

“You should really replace these keys, bro,” Dave says, taking the key tag between his thumb and forefinger and turning it upside down – no, turning it the right way – so it says 9. Apartment nine. Fuck.
I’ve been in the wrong apartment this entire time.
I lose my balance, Jimmy’s knife nicking my skin as I slide off my chair and hit the kitchen floor with a solid whack. I see stars for a moment, rolling onto my back as I take rapid breaths of air into my lungs. There’s a blackness that wants to descend upon me, and my body wants to let it smother me to sleep. No. Fuck that.
Stay awake, Kaitlin
. Stay the fuck awake.

Jimmy stands over me so he’s got one foot on either side of my waist. He looks down at me, sporting a grave expression as he cocks his head to one side.

My eyes flutter rapidly, trying to stay open despite the drug that’s filtering through my bloodstream right now. I should have known. It was all too fucking easy. “You… work for Barbieri?” I ask nobody in particular, my tongue feeling like it’s filling my entire mouth.

Dave appears in my vision, standing next to his brother, his face crumpled up in confusion. “Who the fuck is Barbieri? We don’t work for nobody, sweetheart. We just know a good opportunity when we see one.”

I see the tug of a smile at the side of Jimmy’s hard-set mouth, and then I’m fucking
gone
.

EIGHT

JASE

We’re running.

Julz sits across from me, fixing her long brown hair up in a messy top-knot. She sees me looking at her and gives me a tight smile, a smile that says she’s freaking out as much as I am.

We weren’t in Colorado a year before the cartel caught up with us. The cartel run by my father’s family in his absence, the absence created when Juliette shot him dead. It’s strange how naïve we were back then, how we thought that killing my father would solve everything.
 

And now, sitting in the back of a limo we hailed at the airport, an hour after we’ve touched down in New York, it’s starting to sink in just how much danger we’re still in.

The limo pulls into the curb and glides to a halt, the sound of the bustling city outside almost too much for me to handle. I’m fucking angry that we’re here, fucking angry that we’ve had to leave our home, fucking angry that we’ve had to leave our daughter’s grave behind. The thought of the Cartel or the Gypsy Brothers defacing her headstone fills my veins with so much hate, it’s a wonder my blood doesn’t run black.

“We’re here,” Julz says somberly, peering through the heavily-tinted limo window at the apartment building Elliot’s directed us to. We’re here in a holding pattern, waiting for new fake passports and bank accounts to come through before we find a more permanent bolt-hole. We thought we’d wait it out in Colorado, figured we’d have enough time up our sleeve before they found us.

We were wrong.

I pay the driver and grab our bags out of the trunk. There isn’t much, because there was no time to pack much before the warning call came through. A motorcade of slick black cars, flanked by motorcycles, speeding towards us as we slept. Motherfuckers didn’t even try to be subtle about it.
 

A chartered flight was waiting for us at the airport thanks to generous friends, and Elliot’s arranged somewhere for us to crash for the night, although I doubt I’ll do any sleeping. There’s every chance those motherfuckers followed us, and we can never be too careful. It’s become the way we live. It’s fraught with tension.
 

It’s exhausting.

At least we’re not dead, I reason to myself. Almost on cue, a painful twinge sparks in my chest, a reminder that some things can never be truly forgotten. When Dornan Ross, my own fucking father, shot me in the chest, I was almost dead. I pulled through, and I’m fine now, but the doctors tell me they’ll never be able to pull all the tiny fragments of the shattered bullet from my chest, no matter how many times they try. So now I carry them with me, a lasting mark of his hate, the same way Juliette carries her own scars from him.
 

The pain’s not necessarily a bad thing for me, though. It’s a reminder. We won. We fucking won, and I got my girl back. My Juliette.

My chest hurts a little less at that thought.

We enter the apartment building we’ve been directed to and head up the stairs to the ninth floor, automatically bypassing the lift. Sure, we could get cornered in a stairwell just as easily as a lift, but the stairs feel safer. There’s a key shoved in a dying pot plant by the door, very subtle.
 

Once we’re in the apartment, I dump our bags in the middle of the floor and take my gun from my waistband, making sure the space is clear. It takes me all of five seconds. The place is a studio apartment, and for a moment I wonder where we’re going to sleep. Maybe the chick who lives here is staying somewhere else at Elliot‘s request. I make a mental note to call him and find out what the deal is, but first, I need to chill for a minute, regroup. It all happened so quickly last night, the harried phone call telling us to get out, the frantic packing of the few things truly valuable to us. We don’t have much, because we’ve never had much, but we have a couple bags full of cash, plenty of credit cards in false names, and most importantly,
we have each other
. After I’m satisfied nobody is lurking in the closet or the bathroom, the only two places a person could reasonably hide, I tuck my gun back into my jeans and automatically reach for Julz. She’s gained a few pounds, looks much healthier now. There was a time when I was terrified she was going to fade away into nothing, into skin and bone. But she’s back. My Juliette is back, more beautiful than ever.