I wonder what Lauren’s doing right now, I thought.
It had been too long since I’d seen her, too long since I’d watched a couple of strangers fuck right in front of me, too long since I’d felt her pussy contracting around my fingers as she came, and I was starving for more. I’d been busy as hell since then, knee-deep in sniffing out a rat in our organization, but thoughts of Lauren and the voyeur room from Velvet kept sneaking in to distract me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to think straight until I got her in my arms again.
Across from me, someone farted.
I yanked my shirt over my nose and kicked out at the middle-aged Italian man who’d done it. Everyone else around us chimed in with their own kicks, punches, and fuck yous. Van etiquette 101 clearly stated there was no ripping it in the back, because it wasn’t like we could ventilate this space. It was the middle of the goddamn night, and it’d look suspicious as fuck if the rear door of an unmarked van parked on the side of the road suddenly cracked open and a bunch of green-faced men spilled out.
“Jesus, Vinny,” the guy sitting next to him moaned. “Did you eat gluten again?”
Vinny gave us an apologetic shrug. “We went to my Ma’s house for dinner. What was I supposed to do? Tell her I couldn’t eat her food?”
The van was divided. On the one hand, we were all suffering the consequences of Vinny’s actions. On the other, not eating the food an Italian woman set in front of you was an egregious insult.
It took five minutes for the smell to clear—or for us to get used to it (shudder)—and by that time we’d all settled back down. I hated stakeouts. Especially if I spent them stuck in the back with the goons. It was boring as fuck, smelly, and hot, especially in the summer. By the time I got away, I’d be ready to scour my skin off in the shower.
But this was the job. I couldn’t trust these idiots to get shit done themselves, and even though most of them were older than me, I still had to babysit them. It made me understand Dad a little better, especially his reason for trusting so few people to carry out his orders.
A shoulder bumped against mine, and Alec, trapped in this hellhole with me, leaned in. “You’re quiet tonight.”
“I got shit on my mind.”
“Lau—”
I elbowed him to keep him from speaking her name in front of everyone else. People loved to claim that women were the worst gossips, but they didn’t hold a candle to middle-aged Italian men, who’d turned shit-talking into a fine art.
“Girl related?” Alec corrected, rubbing his ribs.
“No,” I lied.
“Did you see her again?”
“No.”
“And how did it go?” he pressed. Fuck, he couldn’t take a hint.
“It didn’t.”
“Oooh,” Vinny said across from us. “Junior’s in trouble with his old lady?”
“What?” someone from the far end of my side asked. “Junior’s got himself a new woman?”
The entire van turned my way, and I suddenly found myself the center of their unwanted attention. Goddamn nosy busybodies.
Alec and I spoke at the same time.
“No.”
“Yes.”
I shot my traitor brother a warning look.
“It’s still new,” he said.
I was going to kick his ass as soon as I had enough room to swing on him.
“And it’s not going well?” someone asked.
“I told you it’s not going at all,” I bit out. “There’s nothing to talk about, so everyone can shut up now.”
Vinny sniffed. “You must have really messed up.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Beside him, Jimmy sat forward. “I agree.”
Nods all around.
“I’m not discussing this with you assholes,” I said.
Vinny and Jimmy shared offended looks. “Why not? Between the two of us, we’ve been married twice as long as you’ve been alive.”
“To six different women,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” Alec said. “But that means they know what not to do.”
The two men nodded sagely.
“We’re not having this discussion,” I said.
“You plan to apologize, right?” Jimmy asked, ignoring me.
“It’s important to do that, even if you don’t think you did anything wrong,” Vinny added.
“Fuck apologizing,” Enzo, one of the big dudes by the door, said. “Alphas never apologize.”
I eyed him. “Alpha, huh? Is that a furry thing?”
Alec choked.
No one else seemed to pick up on the joke, and I sighed, lamenting the fact that most of the people I hung out with were too old to get my humor.
“You could buy her flowers,” Jimmy said.
“Or chocolates,” someone else chimed in.
How had I lost control of this situation so fast?
“Personally, I’m a fan of the grand gesture,” another man added.
Vinny looked impressed. “Good idea. Take her out to her favorite place and propose.”
“Propose?” I said. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“What? Proposals have gotten me out of all sorts of trouble.”
“Yeah,” Jimmy chimed in. “They’re like the universal get-out–of-jail-free card.”
Alec started shaking with silent laughter. Kicking his ass wasn’t good enough. I was going to take him out in the woods and bury him alive in our graveyard of oddities for this.
Suddenly, the walkie-talkie in my hand crackled to life. One thing I could say about these idiots: They knew when it was really time to shut the fuck up.
My brother Stefan’s voice came over the line. “His car is pulling into the neighborhood.”
“Get ready,” I said.
Around me, everyone began pulling on balaclavas and checking their weapons.
“You know the drill,” I told them. “We hit him before he gets to the door. And you better not fucking fire on him unless it’s to save your own ass. Lorenzo wants him alive.”
The walkie-talkie crackled again. “He’s rounding the corner.”
Enzo grabbed the door handles, ready to throw them open.
I hit the talk button. “Tell us when.”
We all shifted forward on the benches, ready and waiting. Anticipation coursed through my body. Our target didn’t know he’d been made, but taking him by surprise like this didn’t come without risks. Most men in our line of work carried at least one weapon on them at all times. And rats tended to be more paranoid than most—we’d likely face some resistance. Stefan had been in position for hours, scouting out the rat’s house. No one else had come or gone in that time, but it didn’t mean the man didn’t have allies hiding inside, ready to jump to his defense.
It was so quiet inside the van, you could hear a pin drop.
“Go,” Stefan said.
Enzo threw open the doors, and we swarmed into the night.
Hours later, Alec and I were back at our parents’ house. Stefan had arrived well before us, his part of the operation ending when ours began. Greg was who the fuck knew where. These days, he spent more time around dead bodies than live ones, and Dad had him doing all sorts of weird shit with them I didn’t want to know about.
I’d showered, changed, and was heading down to the basement incinerator with my bloodstained clothes from earlier when Dad stopped me at the bottom of the stairs. His nickname growing up was the Crooner because he bore a striking resemblance to Sinatra, minus the baby blues. His eyes were cold, dark, and hostile, and I could tell from the look on his face that he wanted to ream me out for staying away for so long. My shoulders stiffened as I braced for an argument.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“Cakewalk,” I told him. “He didn’t even get a shot off. We were in and out of there in less than ten minutes.”
Dad’s gaze dropped to my bloody clothes in question.
“I said he didn’t get a shot off, not that he didn’t put up a fight.”
Dad scoffed. “And you couldn’t get him under control without ending up covered in evidence?” He shook his head. “Just when I think you’re ready for the big leagues, you prove you’re still an amateur.”
A sarcastic response was on the tip of my tongue, but heroically, I kept it in, knowing it would only make this situation worse. Instead, I stood there in silence, fuming, because I didn’t trust myself to speak. No matter what I did, it would never be good enough for him. There would always be a criticism or an insult.
“I’m going to bed,” he said. “You better still be here for breakfast in the morning. Your mother has overnight French toast in the fridge.”
I turned and went to burn my clothes, staring at the flames as I mulled over my options. I couldn’t keep doing this. Just being here, in this fucking house, set me on edge. Dad only responded to strength and threats, and I was beginning to think that I might end up having to blackmail him into letting me go. God knew I had more than enough dirt on him. I couldn’t threaten to go to the cops or the Feds with it—that would be a death sentence if anyone else found out. But maybe I could threaten to tell one of Dad’s rivals about one of the many times he had smiled to their face while secretly stabbing them in the back.
I’d need to have everything else lying flat first, though, a way to make my own money, clean money. I had some saved up, but if I had any chance of offering Lauren the kind of pampered lifestyle she deserved, I needed more, some steady stream of income so I didn’t spend the rest of my life draining my savings and stock accounts.
Back in my room, I locked the door behind me and lifted the edge of the area rug closest to my closet. Beneath it was a section of floorboard that I’d pried loose back in high school, the only hiding spot my nosy brothers still hadn’t discovered. I pulled the floorboard up and breathed a sigh of relief to see my stash still there. A small floral-patterned notebook was hidden at the very bottom of the pile, and I lifted it out and brushed the dust off before replacing the floorboard and rug.
It was Lauren’s diary from high school. I’d stolen it from Kelly’s room the night I planted drugs on her. At the time, I’d been worried that fucking turncoat would post more of Lauren’s writing online. Once a traitor, always a traitor.
I hadn’t looked at it in years, but Jimmy and Vinny’s stupid comments about grand gestures had gotten stuck in my head, and an idea was starting form because of them. This diary contained all the things Lauren and I had done together, all the things she’d still wanted to do with me. They were written just for her and me, her most secret fantasies. And what had I done? Pretended they were lies. Of course a normal apology wasn’t enough to soften her to me. But what if I gave her something else?
I flipped the journal open and riffled through it until I landed on the night of the fireworks. Reading the sequence of events from Lauren’s perspective had been eye-opening all those years ago, and still brought me up short today. I’d known she had a thing for me before that night, but I had no idea just how deep her crush ran until the first time I’d read these pages.
My eyes skimmed over the next entry. It was from the day after the fair. I felt guilty all over again while reading it, seeing how excited she had been, wondering whether or not I was as into her as she was me. Knowing I’d give her a few weeks of bliss only to turn around and crush her made me feel ten times worse than what I’d just done to that rat.
I flipped ahead to her final “fan fiction” about us, the one we’d never gotten to play out. In Lauren’s fantasy, we met at the corner arcade in our old neighborhood and she sucked me off in the photo booth while the camera snapped pictures of us together.
I shook my head. Even back then, she’d had a thing for camwork.
My plan began solidifying as I started reading the entry over from the beginning. Vinny was right; flowers and chocolates weren’t going to cut it. I needed a grand gesture if I was going to convince Lauren to forgive me, and this journal was the key to redeeming myself. Her memories about it were probably bad because of what happened afterward, but what if we reclaimed them, turned them into good memories instead?
A ping sounded from my pocket. I pulled my phone out to see another Me4U photo message from Lauren. In it, she sat spread eagle on her bed, naked, her hands barely covering herself.
Feeling slutty tonight, her message read.
I tapped the “tip now” option and sent her twenty bucks, and another message came through almost immediately. Her hands were still there, but instead of blocking some of the best parts of her from sight, one was on a breast, her nipple pinched between two fingers, and the other was between her spread legs.
Wish these were your hands on me instead, the new message read.
If I got my way, my hands would soon be all over her.
