According to Tyler, McKinney liked to tell people he lived in the penthouse apartment of his nicest building, which sounded extravagant but in reality was much more mundane. His nicest building was only six stories tall, narrow, and sandwiched between a parking garage and a row of new-build apartments that were still undergoing construction.
The security was abysmal. It had one of those older-model buzzer systems, and I didn’t even see a speaker on the panel. I lifted a hand and pressed it against the top row of apartment buttons, slowly dragging downward over them, ringing every single one because there had to be someone waiting for a delivery or a friend or—
The door chimed. I turned and pulled it open. Inside, the foyer was surprisingly decent, the terrazzo tile in good condition, considering its age. A wall of mailboxes stood to my right, the art deco–style bronze detailing on them harkening back to a time gone by.
The elevator was dead ahead, but I decided to take the stairs to get a better look at the place. I kept my eyes peeled, but I didn’t see a single security camera. McKinney was either too cheap for them, or too lazy. He was also stupid, because a lot of insurance companies required them these days and wouldn’t pay out unless you had video proof to show that you weren’t personally responsible for the damage. Too many slumlords had fucked up their own property hoping to cash in, and the adjusters in the city had cracked down on everyone else as a result.
I reached the sixth floor and stopped on the landing, looking left and right. There wasn’t one door up here, but three, so either McKinney had been lying about having the penthouse, or these doors all led to the same apartment. The numbers on them were different, though, and Tyler told me McKinney’s was 600. Guess that meant 601 and 602 belonged to other people.
I rapped my knuckles on the door with the 600.
It swung open a few seconds later, no “who are you?” or “what are you doing here?” to precede it. In front of me stood a short, balding white man dressed in slacks and a button-down. He looked clean and put together, but I could smell the alcohol on him even before he opened his mouth.
“Can I help you?” he asked, looking me over.
I had worn my best suit, the starched white collar of my shirt hiding my neck tattoos, hands shoved in my pockets for the same reason. Like this, with my hair slicked back, I could have passed as Tyler’s fellow finance bro. “Are you Patrick McKinney?”
He frowned. “Yeah, who’s asking?”
In answer, I surged forward, shoving him into the apartment and slamming the door behind us. A punch to his gut aborted his shout of surprise. I kicked his knee out, stepped behind him, and twisted his arm behind his back, much like I had that drunk man at Velvet, only this time, there was no one to stop me as I dug a pair of pliers out of my pocket and fit them to McKinney’s pinkie.
“Scream, and I’ll take it off,” I told him.
He wheezed, cheek pressed to the carpet, trying to regain his breath. “What do you want?”
“You owe Mr. Strickland two million dollars and you’re late with your monthly payment again.” Why Tyler had chosen that name for a cover, I hadn’t asked, nor did I really care. As far as aliases went, I’d heard much worse.
“I can pay,” McKinney hissed, trying to squirm away from me.
I squeezed the pliers hard enough to pinch. “Stop moving. Mr. Strickland has given you more than enough chances.”
“Wait!” he said. “I can pay! I’m just waiting for a check to clear from a bunch of dirty perverts who rent one of my units.”
That almost made me laugh, thinking back to the other night and Taylor calling me a dirty little slut as I said goodbye to Lauren.
“It’s too late,” I said, dropping my voice to cover my amusement. “I own your debt now.”
McKinney’s breath wheezed out of him as he tried to get a better look at me. “Who are you?”
“People call me Junior, but all you need to know is that instead of owing a bookie, you now owe the mob.”
He made a distressed sound that made me think he’d finally realized just how fucked he was. “What do you want?”
“That building full of dirty perverts.”
“What?” he said, still trying to crane his head up.
I put my boot on his cheek and held him in place, twisting his arm a little harder, squeezing the pliers a little tighter. “The deed.”
McKinney started to struggle. “You can’t be serious!”
“Keep your voice down,” I said, my own deadly calm. “I won’t tell you again.”
A well of blood bubbled up around the plier jaws.
Beneath me, McKinney whimpered. “That building’s worth three million dollars, not two.”
“So?” I said. “Would you rather lose a million dollars and live? Or die? The choice is up to you.”
He went still. “You won’t do it. You won’t kill me. If I die, you don’t get anything.”
He sounded so sure, so smug.
Some people just had to be taught the hard way.
I clipped his finger off.
Before he could register the pain, I had an arm around his face, muffling the delayed screaming, the spurting hand held out wide to keep from getting blood on my suit.
“No,” I said, close enough for him to hear the menace in my voice, “I won’t get anything if you’re dead, but there are a lot of body parts to carve off in the meantime. You’re going to sign the building over to me, and you’re going to drop the rent on all your other tenants, or you and I are going to be seeing a lot more of each other.”
Eventually, his shouts turned to a pathetic mewling, and I fought back an unwelcome wave of guilt. This was my chance to go legit, and I wasn’t going to lose it because my conscience was trying to make a reappearance after lying dormant for a decade. If everything went to plan, McKinney might be the last person I had to hurt. The last ugly memory I might ever make. And if he wasn’t stopped now, it would only get worse. He’d keep targeting Lauren and Velvet and all his other tenants who were slowly being squeezed to death because of his addictions.
What little remorse I had evaporated at the thought. I’d take every fucking one of his fingers if I had to and then start in on his toes before making good on my threat and working my way up the rest of his body, inch by bloody inch. I had to get free, would help as many other people in the process as I could. And while I knew that it didn’t make up for all the pain and heartache I’d caused in my life, it was as good a place to start as any.
“There’s still time to get the finger reattached,” I told McKinney. “If you make the right decision. Otherwise, I’m putting it in my pocket and leaving with it, and tomorrow, I’ll be back for another one.”
He nodded, and I slowly pulled my arm away.
It was late by the time I finally headed back to my apartment. McKinney might have seen reason pretty quickly, but the way he’d dragged his feet afterward, begging and pleading for mercy I didn’t have, took up so much time that day had bled into night, and I was fucking exhausted from being around that emotional leech for so long. In the end, the only thing that had gotten him to sign on the dotted line was shaking the baggie of ice I’d put his finger in and reminding him that if he waited too long, it’d be too late to get it reattached.
At one point, I’d gotten so sick of his complaining that I ended up lecturing him like he was a child instead of a man old enough to be my father, telling him to look at the bright side: His debts were cleared, and he still had income properties that he was going to drop the rents on back to city standards. If he stopped losing his ass in gambling dens, he could comfortably live out the rest of his days in peace.
I could tell from the way he’d bitched and moaned about how it wasn’t his fault he’d lost so much that there was no way he’d get his shit together and do what I said, so I would definitely be paying him another visit. But for now, I had what I wanted: freedom, or at least the means to achieve it. Tomorrow, I would start the arduous process of assessing the building I’d acquired, going over the income history with a fine-tooth comb, and figuring out just how many repairs and renovations were needed to turn Velvet into the safest, most profitable play club in the country, because if I was going to do this, I was going to fucking do it. Full send.
I called Tyler on the way back to my apartment, his voice loud in my helmet as I raced across the city’s most iconic bridge.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“I got us the building.”
He was quiet for so long that I wondered if we had a bad connection. “Already? Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He didn’t need to know the gruesome details. “Tell me we’re not going to lose our asses on it.”
“We won’t,” he said. “I looked into McKinney’s financials months ago. I do it with every high roller to make sure I can recoup their losses if they can’t pay their debts.”
Thank fuck for that. “I got him to drop the rents on all his other tenants, too.”
“How the fuck did you do that?” Tyler asked.
“You really want to know?”
He fell silent again, so I filled the gap by telling him a watered-down version of my visit with McKinney.
“What a fucking pain in the ass,” he said when I was done. “I’m glad to be rid of him.”
“Oh, he’ll be back. He’s too stupid or sick to stay away.”
“He’s not coming back to my games. I banned him for not paying his debts.”
“Good,” I said. When word of the ban got out, other bookies would be less likely to spot McKinney money, slowing down his debt accrual. “I’m going to start digging into everything tomorrow, and I’ll let you know if anything major crops up.”
“In that case, I hope I don’t hear from you,” he said.
Despite myself, I grinned.
We said goodbye and got off the phone, and I spent the rest of the ride trying to think about all the shit I needed to do, but my brain kept chucking thoughts of Lauren at me. How she’d felt riding my face. The evil little grin that took over her expression whenever she had a particularly diabolical thought. How happy she’d be when she found out Velvet was no longer at risk.
I was entering my neighborhood when I hit a red light. Did I even need to go home, or could I go see what Lauren was up to? I’d been careful not to get blood on me, so it wasn’t like I needed to change. But she’d mentioned that her filming schedule was all over the place in a previous sexting session, so I didn’t want to just drop in unannounced. Plus, she might not even be home.
The light was still red, so I tugged off a glove and unlocked my phone, where it sat in its holder. I went straight to the tracking software Josh had installed on her cell for me and frowned when the map popped up. Lauren wasn’t at her apartment across town. She was at mine. How? She’d never been there before, but she was smart enough that I wasn’t all that surprised she’d figured out where I lived.
Was she planning to surprise me or something? Oh, I liked that thought.
I tugged my glove back on, slapped my visor down, and took a sharp left, gunning it down a side street because I was suddenly too impatient to sit in traffic. My heart pounded as I wove through cars, lane splitting, tailgating, even swerving over the line into oncoming traffic because I had just enough room to pass the idiot slowing me down.
I cut the engine as I approached my apartment, not wanting to alert Lauren of my arrival. As excited as she probably was to surprise me, I was much more excited to get the drop on her instead. The thought of sneaking up on her and pouncing before she knew I was there was far too appealing to pass up, and after what she’d revealed about wanting to get hunted down, I thought she’d appreciate the turn of events just as much as I would.
Instead of parking out front, I rolled into a spot half a block away and hoofed it back on foot, careful to stay close to the buildings so she wouldn’t see me coming. I looked for her on the sidewalk and didn’t see her, so I pulled up the map again. Oh, shit. She was in my apartment. That sly little vixen. How the hell had she pulled this off without a key?
I took the stairs up to my place, careful to avoid those that creaked. I even kept my keys cradled in my hand so they wouldn’t jiggle as I slid the one to my door into the lock. A heartbeat late, I was turning the knob, slowly pushing the door open, stepping inside, and—
Searing pain stabbed into my lower back. I spun on instinct, knocking the weapon away, grabbing my assailant by the throat and slamming them against the wall beside the door. My fist was two inches from Lauren’s face before I realized it was her, and I barely swung wide in time to keep from knocking her out. Instead, I punched through the drywall half an inch away, my knuckles screaming in pain.
“Fuck!” I roared, pulling free and releasing my hold on her.
She sank to the ground, gasping, hands clutching her throat.
I kicked the door shut and dropped to my knees. “Lauren, shit, are you okay?”
I reached for her, but she lashed out at me and half fell trying to get away.
“What are you doing?” I said, following after her. “Let me see your neck. You could be hurt.” Goddamn it, I’d grabbed her so hard.
“Don’t,” she wheezed, scrambling backward, one hand holding her throat. “I’ll scream.”
I went still. “What? It was an accident, Lo. I didn’t know it was you who’d . . .” I trailed off, belatedly realizing that she’d attacked me.
My gaze dropped to the discarded taser on my floor. That she’d just shoved into my back.
What the fuck?
I lifted my eyes to see her sandwiched in the corner as far away from me as she could get. “Listen, I know this is still new and we haven’t really dug into all our shared fantasies, but I feel like I should tell you, getting jolted with electricity? Not one of my turn-ons.”
“Are you cracking jokes right now?” she rasped, eyes flashing.
“No?” I said, growing increasingly confused about what was going on here.
“My dad,” she said, and it felt like she’d dumped a bucket of ice over my head.
Oh, she’d attacked me for real.
I schooled my face, wondering how much she knew. “What about him?”
“He goes missing, and suddenly you show back up?”
“I wanted to see how you were doing,” I said, which was the truth. Or at least part of it.
“So it’s just a coincidence then?” she demanded. “You had nothing to do with his disappearance?”
No more lies, she’d said, and I’d stupidly agreed. Fuck.
“Lauren . . .”
“I knew it,” she said, drawing her knees to her chest like she was trying to protect herself from me. Like she was scared. I shuffled forward, and she put her hands up to ward me off. “Don’t come any closer.”
Her voice was coming back, gaining volume, and despite the fear on her face, I was relieved. Maybe I hadn’t hurt her too badly after all. I wasn’t about to take any chances, though.
I whipped my phone out. “I’m calling Aly to come look at you.”
She lunged forward and slapped it out of my hand.
“I’m trying to help you, Lauren.”
“Bullshit. You were going to call your father for backup, weren’t you?”
I opened my mouth to tell her that wasn’t something I would ever do, but she tried to scramble past me toward the taser, and nope, not getting jolted again, thank you very much. I reached out and grabbed her, pulling her off-balance, and with a twist, I had her seated on my lap. She flailed, trying to get away, but I wrapped my arms around her and held on tight, letting her tire herself out. As soon as she calmed down and we got this Tommy discussion out of the way, we were going to talk about how easy it was to restrain her. Aly took self-defense classes somewhere downtown. Maybe I could ask her about bringing Lauren along to teach her the basics.
Better yet, I’d just never let Lauren out of my sight again, would follow her around the city like her own private security detail.
“Are you done?” I asked.
Instead of cursing me or screaming, she burst into tears.
Oh, shit.
I loosened my arms, and suddenly the woman I’d been holding morphed into a wildcat, all tooth and claw. There was a slap to my face, nails dragging down my arm, a foot in my gut, and then she was standing several feet away again, her expression contorted with anger even as tears streaked down her face.
Maybe she didn’t need self-defense lessons after all.
“You killed him, didn’t you?” she said.
I slowly got to my feet. “Lauren, wait. I—”
“My sister said that’s what you do! That you and your family are Lorenzo’s cleanup crew!”
I fought back a snarl. Fucking Kristen Marchetti. She’d been an asshole in high school, the epitome of a mean girl, and from everything I’d heard, she was still an asshole today. Her goddamn husband must have been saying shit to her that he shouldn’t have, and somehow, she’d passed it on to Lauren. I hadn’t seen this coming, couldn’t have anticipated it. The sisters weren’t even close. How the hell had this happened?
“Go ahead,” Lauren snapped. “Break your word to me. Lie to my face, Junior.”
Hearing her use that name again felt like another slap, and my temper flared. “Is that how little you think of me? That I would kill a man and then go after his daughter?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You said it yourself. I have no idea what you’ve done in your life, what you’re capable of. You’ve already stalked me. You’ve already hurt people who made my life difficult.”
“Which is why it’s stupid of you to think that I’d suddenly become the one to make your life difficult!”
“The only stupid thing I’ve done lately is believe I could trust you!” she spat.
“You can trust me!”
“Then prove it,” she said, voice shaking. “Tell me you had nothing to do with my father’s disappearance.”
I clamped my jaw shut, chest heaving, realizing I’d walked right into this one and had no way out. Tears continued to stream down her face while she waited for me to answer, and the sight wrecked me. I hated that she was in pain, hated that I was the one hurting her. I wanted nothing more than to pull her into my arms and beg for forgiveness, but I could tell she wouldn’t let me. Hell, she shouldn’t let me. She was right; I’d been lying to her all this time.
“You can’t say it, can you?” Her voice broke on the last word.
“Lauren, you don’t understand. Let me just explain.”
She stumbled back, hand rising to cover her mouth. “Oh my god. You killed him.”
“Yes!” I roared, losing the battle with my temper. “Is that what you want to hear? I killed that old bastard and then decided to spit on his grave by fucking his daughter.”
A sob wracked her body, horror filling her eyes.
My stomach dropped. What had I just done? All these weeks I’d been worried the explosion was coming, and now it was happening at the worst possible time, with the worst possible person.
“Lauren, wait,” I said, stepping toward her.
She leaped sideways. “Stay away from me!”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she cried. “Why would you think I’d ever believe you after that?”
I took a step back, and then another, putting space between us, trying to make it clear I wasn’t a threat. She was right. How could I ask her to hear me out now?
Because you love her, I realized. And if you don’t say something, you might lose her forever.
“I didn’t kill him,” I said.
She took a step toward the door, snatching her purse from the floor and clutching it to her chest like a shield. “You just told me you did.”
I dragged in a breath, cursing myself for potentially ruining the only good thing in my life. “I know, and I’m sorry. I was angry that you thought I could have done something like that.”
She took another step, bending to scoop up her taser, immediately flicking it back on. “How do I know that’s the truth? How do I know you’re not just lying to me again to get me to drop my guard?”
I held my hands up to show I was unarmed and retreated even farther. “Because I’m about to let you walk out of that door without trying to stop you.”
She brandished the taser at me. “Don’t try to follow me.”
“I won’t,” I told her. “I know you don’t want to trust me right now, and I don’t blame you for that, Lo, but I would never hurt you. Never.”
She pointed to her neck. “You just hurt me. You’re hurting me even more, right now.” She dashed the tears away from her cheeks, but they continued to fall.
Fuck, she was right. “Lo, I need you to keep what you learned today to yourself. My father might do worse if he finds out you know what we do for Lorenzo.”
The blood drained from her face, turning her tan skin ashen as she reached for the door.
Panic swirled in my gut. She was leaving, and after how I’d handled this situation, she’d probably never want to see me again. “I’m sorry, Lauren,” I repeated. “Just . . .” I raked my hands through my hair, fighting back the urge to grab her, trap her here until she agreed to hear me out. But I’d already done one unforgivable thing today, and I didn’t know if she and I could survive another.
“Don’t,” she interrupted, gripping the doorknob. “I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say. Ever.”
“Lauren, please. Give me another chance.”
She laughed, an ugly, humorless sound. “I’ve already given you more chances than you deserve. I’m not letting the man who killed my father feed me any more lies.”
With a tug, she had the door open.
And then she walked out of my life.
