By the time Richard texted me that he was on his way over, I had a scribbled notepad full of figures and a full head of steam. Jace was asleep, his door firmly closed. I camped out in the entryway, ready to unlock the door so I could let Richard in quietly. I felt vaguely bad about not telling Jace that his father would be stopping by, but given that the two of us would be fighting within five minutes of his arrival, it had seemed like the best approach.
Soundproofing... hadn't been a major selling point of my apartment. Footsteps thudded in the hallway outside, clearly audible through the closed door. I pressed an eye to the peephole just in time for Richard to walk into range of the fisheye lens. Before he could knock, I slid the deadbolt back and let him in, pressing a finger to my lips for quiet and urging him inside with a jerk of my chin.
He nodded warily as he brushed past me, heading for the kitchen as I twisted the lock on the doorknob and re-engaged the deadbolt. I straightened my shoulders and followed him, intent on finally ending this mess for good.
Once we were both in the kitchen, I took a moment to study the father of my child. He’d always been attractive, which was a big part of what had gotten me in trouble in the first place. Soulful brown eyes, high cheekbones, hair so black that it shone blue where the light hit it. He was slender and only a couple of inches taller than me, but he kept himself fit by lifting weights and jogging. These days, however, there was an edge of gauntness to his features, as though his decade-plus of bad life choices was finally starting to make a dent.
That gauntness was more pronounced than usual tonight, as he gave me the same kind of scrutiny I was giving him.
“I should’ve asked last night,” he said, in a voice low enough not to carry through the thin walls. “Are you okay?”
I pinned him with a hard gaze. “No, Richard,” I replied in the same low tone. “I’m not okay. Two guys broke into my car to lie in wait for me, and I didn’t know if they were going to beat me up, or rape me, or kill me... or what. All because you owe their boss money, and they figured out that I’m a better bet for getting it back than you are.”
He winced. “Vonnie...”
“No,” I hissed. “You shut up and listen to me for once in your damned life. I’ve been working as a phone sex operator, Richard. I nearly ended up selling my body for money, all because you wouldn’t take the hint when no reputable bank or lender would touch you. But, no—you had to get money so you could chase your latest shiny object, never mind who else got caught up in the mess. It stops. Tomorrow. And then you are never putting your family—your son— at risk again.”
Richard looked pained, running a hand through his hair in a nervous gesture. “Von... look. I don’t have the money to pay the guy right now. The shop—it’ll be profitable soon, I just know it. But today, I just don’t have it. I never thought they’d try to come after you for it—”
“That’s just it! You never think!” I was whisper-shouting now, barely hanging onto my temper. I swallowed, dragging myself back on course. “But lucky for you, I do. Starting first thing in the morning, we’re getting the money together to pay this asshole off.”
He frowned in confusion. “How? You already said it—no bank is going to lend either one of us that kind of money.”
I snatched the notebook from the counter and slapped it down in front of him. “Like this,” I said, pointing at each item in turn as I went down the list. “We’re both getting car title loans, and I’m getting the biggest payday loan they’ll give me. You auction off all of your shop’s inventory, along with the store fittings. I cash out my 401k. Then, once we get the money to this creep, we declare bankruptcy and start over.”
Richard gaped at me. “Car title loans? You want me to give up the Mustang? That car was my dad’s!”
My right fist ached with the desire to hit him.
“You look me in eye right now, Richard Sheng, and tell me you care more about your damned car than you do about your son’s future,” I ground out, shaking with righteous fury.
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he said, “No, of course I don’t! But if we do this, we’ll lose everything!”
“Do you think we’re not about to lose everything now?” I shot back in disbelief. “And that’s another thing. I think Jace should stay with my parents until all of this is done. We’re not safe here.”
The scuff of a footstep alerted me a moment before a sleep-softened voice from the hallway said, “Mom? Dad, what are you doing here? What’s going on? What do you mean, we’re not safe?”
My stomach sank. I glared daggers at Richard, even though I should have known better than to try and have this conversation inside the apartment.
He cleared his throat. “It’s just... you know. Adult stuff. Nothing to worry about.”
But the bottle had already been opened, and it was too late to stuff the genie back inside. Jace’s eyes narrowed.
“Mom wants to shuffle me off to Gran’s because ‘we’re not safe,’ and that’s nothing for me to worry about? What the hell, Dad?”
There was no point in trying to shut him down with platitudes, or even parental bullying. I took a deep, steadying breath through my nose. At least he hadn’t heard me talking about sex work—small mercies.
“We owe some people money,” I told him evenly, ignoring the burn of unfairness I felt over using the word ‘we.’ “We’ve got a plan to pay them, and after that, everything will be fine. But I think it would be better for you to hang out at Gran and Gramps’ place for a few days while we take care of it.”
Jace looked equal parts worried and shocked. “What kind of people?” His gaze landed on Richard, accusing in its intensity. “Dad, what did you do?”
I tried not to take vicious satisfaction in the fact that he obviously knew which one of his parents had screwed up.
“Son... it’s not—” Richard began, only to be interrupted by a scritching noise coming from the front door.
We all turned to look as the disturbance was followed by a soft thunk, and the sound of low voices outside in the hall. The door rattled against its hinges.
“Damn thing’s got a deadbolt.” The words filtered through to us, just clear enough to make out the sense of them. “Gimme a sec.”
My blood ran cold.
“Jace,” I said, in an eerily calm voice. “Take my phone and go down the fire escape. Get someplace you can’t be seen, and call the police. Tell them someone’s breaking into the apartment. Stay hidden, babe. Don’t trust anyone.”
SIXTEEN
JACE LOOKED BETWEEN us, the blood draining from his face. “Mom, no—”
I shoved the phone into his hand, trying not to think about the fact that I was sending my child into the late winter night wearing only pajamas and house slippers. Another ominous thunk came from the front door.
The fear in his eyes broke something inside me. It fractured a little further when he said, “Come with me! We can all leave together!”
I lunged for my bag and rummaged inside, coming up with my pepper spray. “No, sweetheart,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm. If the apartment was empty when the goons broke in, it would take them about ten seconds to figure out we’d gone down the fire escape. “Don’t worry—we’ll be armed. We’ll get them as they try to come in, and have them waiting for the police when they show up. Richard, there’s a baseball bat in the hall closet. Get it now.”
Jace looked torn. Richard stood frozen.
“Move!” I hissed at both of them, when the door rattled again.
Jace was the first to break free of his paralysis. Clutching my phone, he gave me a last terrified look and sprinted toward the bedroom with the fire escape. Richard blinked at me stupidly for another beat before he stumbled into the hallway to get the bat.
The front door crashed open with the sound of wood splintering. Would any of my neighbors call 911? I liked to think they would, but that assumed they weren’t either drunk, passed out, or too scared of mob retribution to take
action. I charged toward the entrance, pepper spray held out in front of me with the safety off. My focus narrowed to a single imperative—keep my body between whoever came through that door and my child.
A tall, broad-shouldered form squeezed past the broken door, the entryway light glinting off the barrel of a gun. I didn’t think, I just ran toward him and started spraying at head height. The pepper spray didn’t reach as far as I expected it to—splattering on the floor before moving up the man’s dark clothing, and finally hitting his face when I got close enough.
He flinched back, his hands flying to his face, though he didn’t immediately drop the gun. “Fuckin’... shit!” he cursed.
A second man shoved past him. He grabbed for my neck, getting a grip on my necklace and using it to jerk me toward him before I could get the spray pointed at his eyes. My face met his fist, the noise of the impact echoing through my skull. I staggered, the necklace chain snapping as light and dark blotches exploded in my vision. The plastic pepper spray canister clattered to the cheap tile floor.
“Vonnie!” Richard called from somewhere behind me.
I whirled, my back hitting the entryway wall and my vision tilting crazily. Richard ran into the living room, the aluminum baseball bat held poised in both hands.
“Hold it right there, asshole,” said a chillingly familiar gravelly voice.
I hadn’t seen the faces of the men in my car, but that voice had etched itself into my brain. As my equilibrium returned by degrees, I took in the scene. There were now three men in the apartment. The one I’d pepper sprayed was crouched on one knee, still cursing and groaning. The one who’d hit me now held a gun pointed at my chest, and the one with the gravelly voice had a gun pointed at Richard. Richard slowly let the baseball bat slide out of his grip to fall on the floor. His eyes were wide and terrified.
“Check the apartment,” ordered the one covering Richard. He gestured at me with the muzzle of the weapon. “You—get over there with your boyfriend, bitch.”
I pushed away from the wall and walked unsteadily to stand next to Richard. The second guy gave me a sneer as he disappeared deeper into the apartment. My heart galloped—had I delayed them long enough for Jace to get away?
The leader gave the guy on his knees a sharp nudge with his toe. “Jesus. Get yourself together, you useless prick.”
“It fuckin’ burns!” the pepper-sprayed goon whined.
“So go get some goddamn milk outta the fridge and pour it on your face, you pathetic piece of shit.”
The guy staggered to his feet and wove past Richard like a drunkard. Just then, the other goon returned from searching the apartment.
“The place is empty, but there’s a kid’s room in the back,” he reported, sending my heart into my throat. “Bedroom window’s open, too. There’s a fire escape.”
The leader shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We ain’t here to fuck up no kid. Get these two zip-tied so we can leave.”
I tried not to sag with relief. “You told me you’d pass on my deal to your boss,” I said, knowing it was probably futile. “Double payment, right? I just need a bit more time!”
“Boss ain’t interested, bitch,” he said. “That’s not how this game works.”
The second goon jerked my arms behind me. I stared down the muzzle of the gun pointed at me as something thin and sharp tightened around my wrists, biting into the skin. A few moments later, Richard got the same treatment. I chanced a quick glance at his profile. He looked lost. Dazed. Like he had no idea what to do, and had just given up.
It was clear I wouldn’t be getting any help from that quarter. Maybe that was an unfair thing to think, though. He was outnumbered and bound with a gun pointing at his face, same as me. Silently, I begged the police to get here... and for them not to be creepy, Fae-controlled puppets.
It suddenly struck me as desperately unfair that I’d learned all of these crazy things about the world, and yet I still had to contend with this blatantly human, ten-o’clock news bullshit.
The third goon wandered back in, patting milk off his face with one of my dishtowels. He shot me an evil look through puffy, bloodshot eyes. “I’m gonna enjoy the rest of tonight,” he said with relish. “Are we going now?”
“Yeah,” said the leader. “Listen up, you two. We’re leaving, and if either of you tries to yell for help, you’ll get a bullet in you. The cops ain’t here, and people in this part of town are too scared of us to do anything. So keep your traps shut and don’t try to cause trouble.”
I swallowed convulsively, at a loss as to what we could possibly do other than go with them and hope for the best. They wanted their money back, I tried to tell myself. That meant this was probably just a ploy to scare us into paying up faster.
The two who hadn’t been pepper sprayed grabbed us and marched us past the broken door. I couldn’t feel the hard press of a gun barrel jamming into my back, but I didn’t doubt it was there—perhaps held hidden beneath my captor’s coat, ready to fire. The other apartment doors on my floor remained firmly closed, killing my hopes of help from that quarter.
Rather than use the elevator, our captors dragged us down the poorly lit stairwell. Like Jace, I only had on a ratty old pair of house slippers, and it was all I could do not to lose them as I stumbled down the steps. The alarm on the emergency exit at the bottom had been broken for months, so no warnings blared as the goons shoved it open and pushed us through.
A big, dark blue sedan was parked in the alley nearby, and I experienced a shiver of dread that had nothing to do with the winter chill hitting me. Richard let his guard shove him into the back seat, his expression still blank with shock.
They just want the money, I repeated like a mantra as I got the same treatment, flopping clumsily onto the stained upholstery with my hands trapped behind me. The door slammed, and the leader got into the driver’s seat while pepper-spray guy took the passenger seat. The third goon entered the other back door and closed it behind him before pointing his gun at Richard.
The engine rumbled to life, and the car drove away, weaving through the narrow roads until we got to the highway. Distantly, I was surprised that they hadn’t blindfolded us or put bags over our heads or something, so we wouldn’t be able to see where they were taking us. Weren’t they worried that we’d be able to tell the police afterward?
A deeper sense of foreboding crept over me as reasons why they might not care about afterward tumbled through my brain. No, I reminded myself firmly. They want money. They can’t get it if we’re not around to give it to them.
Even so, I eyed the car door with longing when we exited the highway in the old factory district and slowed down. If only my wrists weren’t trapped, I could wrench it open and jump for it...
But my wrists were trapped, and I was jammed between Richard’s body and the door with no room to maneuver. All I could do was stare fixedly out the window, trying to keep a running tally of the twists and turns as we wended our way deeper into the ghost town of abandoned buildings.
The eeriness of the place wasn’t lost on me. Half of the roads didn’t have street signs, and the huge structures stared down at us with empty eye sockets where windows had once been. Ahead, I could make out multiple pairs of car headlights in an overgrown parking lot.
Richard started to rock forward and back with tiny, rhythmic movements. “God no,” he whispered, “God no... god, no... I didn’t mean for this to happen...”
I wanted to yell at him to shut up. I wanted to shake him and scream at him that if he didn’t want this to happen, he should have stayed the hell away from dirty loan money and tried to carve out a damned living like the rest of us.
Instead, I swallowed it back the same way I always swallowed it back, and tried to shape my voice into something reassuring. “Hey. Just breathe, okay? They want their money, that’s all—and we’re going to get it for them. Right?”
The guy in the back seat with us snorted. “Fuckin’ pair of losers.”
“We’ll get
it!” I insisted. “That’s what we were talking about when you broke down my freaking door! Taking out loans... a 401k... if you’d just given me a few days like I asked, we would’ve had all of your money!”
The car pulled into the abandoned lot, slowing to a stop in the glare of the parked vehicles’ lights. The leader craned around to glare at us.
“It’s not us you need to convince, bitch,” he said, before turning to our guard. “Get ’em out.”
The goon opened the door and hefted himself out of the car, gesturing at Richard with the gun until he followed. When he was out, the guard shoved him toward Pepper Spray guy, who grabbed him by the arm. With no other options available, I followed him out, shuffling awkwardly across the back seat until the guard reached in and dragged me through the door. One of my slippers caught on the lip of the car and slid off, my bare foot landing on the freezing grit of the pavement.
Our captors pulled us forward until we were standing in the crisscrossed headlight beams, squinting into the glare. A portly figure in a suit strode into the light with us, silhouetted from behind as he regarded us.
“Ivan,” Richard croaked. “Look... this is all a big misunderstanding—we’ll get your money, honest...”
“Keep them quiet,” Ivan said in a strong Russian accent. “Someone else is joining us. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
The goons exchanged a look, but they backed us up until our legs hit the hood of the car and let us go, guns still pointing at us. “Stay,” said the leader, like he was talking to a dog.
I splayed my bound hands against the hood of the car, trying to use the engine heat to combat the chill prickling at my skin and making my bare foot ache. Richard had been dressed for the weather to come to my apartment, but I’d just been wearing a t-shirt and yoga pants. It was close to the freezing mark tonight, my uneven breath billowing in white clouds in front of my face. The belching smokestacks of the few factories still running in the area tainted the air with a chemical tang.
Vampire Bound: Book One Page 12
