On The Ropes: Tapped Out Book 3

by Quinn, Cari

  “Pendejo, shut your face.” Vanity didn’t seem up for answering questions. She had some of her own to ask, however. “Who does she think she is, sleeping with every guy in this place?”

  “Who you calling a cuntcake?” I stepped forward. I might spend most of my time wearing an apron, but I could fucking throw down if I had to.

  Plus, I still had that pepper spray in my purse, and I’d blast the shit out of this chick.

  “You, punta, you! You and your cheap tramp sister.”

  “You need to be quiet. Now.” Fox grabbed her flailing arms and pinned them behind her back, immobilizing her faster than I would’ve given him credit for. Maybe it was good he’d gone on steroids, if only because he could calm this lunatic down without much bloodshed. “I asked you a question, and I’m still waiting for an answer. What were you doing in my office?”

  Vanity smirked. “Why don’t you go see for yourself? Stupid pussywhipped bastard.”

  Fox pushed his way into his office, still maintaining his hold on a struggling Vanity, and I followed, making sure to keep my distance from her kicking legs. I’d never liked her, and it wasn’t only because she had obvious contempt for my sister. Her brief thing with Giovanni had nailed that coffin shut.

  Now apparently she’d added breaking and entering and vandalism to her list of attractive qualities. And once again, the target of her frustrations was the newly replaced heavy bag in the corner, spilling out its guts like a chewed up scarecrow.

  “Christ almighty, woman, what is wrong with you?” Fox nudged her none too gently over the desk. I half expected him to whip out the cuffs. “Call the police,” he said over his shoulder to me, indicating the phone on the desk.

  I blinked at it. I didn’t even realize they had a phone in here. With cell phones, landlines were harder to find. But I wasn’t going to look a handy horse in the mouth. I picked it up and started to dial, then glanced back at the sound of footsteps. A guy with super short dark hair and shrewd blue eyes appeared in the doorway, his toothpaste-commercial smile disappearing as he took in the scene before him. “Hey, Fox, sorry I had to—what the hell’s going on in here?” He rushed forward to help Fox restrain Vanity.

  “We need the cops,” Fox managed through gritted teeth, trying unsuccessfully to pin Vanity in place.

  “I’ve got her,” the other guy said, pulling her to a standing position and shooting me a distracted smile. “Hey. I’m Emerson.”

  “Hi.” I tried to smile. Normally, I’d be all up in my flirt game with him, because he was super cute. Now that I’d been infected with the love plague, men equaled nothing but trouble. “I’m calling the cops.”

  He reached out and put the phone receiver down.

  Okay, then. Guess we aren’t calling the cops.

  “What happened?” he asked gently, still helping Fox while he spoke to me. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

  Maybe they were all on steroids in this joint.

  “Take a look at the bag in the corner,” Fox panted, twisting Vanity’s wrists up to the center of her back and yet again bending her over the desk with his knee against her ass. Bent over like that was the only safe position for her.

  Heat rushed into my cheeks. The same position I’d been in on Saturday night, for much different reasons.

  “Holy shit,” Emerson said under his breath. “You did that, Van?”

  Breathing hard, she craned her neck to look back at him. “Who wants to know?”

  “Me. And I think we’ll go have a little chat, you and me, if you want to avoid the cops. Because you do want to avoid the cops, right?”

  “I don’t think we should avoid anything,” Fox began. “She has a history of hassling Mia, and she needs to be stopped.”

  “Tell her to stop fucking with my man, and I will stop.”

  “What man?” Fox and I asked at the same time.

  Then the duh stick smacked me in the forehead.

  She was doing all this because of Giovanni and his penis. And I hated that we both knew the wonders of it, and the resulting madness that arose when denied.

  Not that all my madness had to do with sex. As if. He’d made me fall for him, all the while holding back the truth from me. Claiming he cared, that he wanted me safe, then ditching me the second I asked him for anything more complicated than wheat flour.

  Tears sprang into my eyes, and I turned away, wishing I’d never come here. Yeah, at least we’d found out the office vandalism culprit was Vanity rather than Olivia, who might very well have led a path right back to Giovanni’s cohorts.

  One more chance for him to show that he put me and my sister’s welfare last.

  I will never choose you. Never.

  “I’ll handle this.” Emerson got a hold on Vanity and muscled her to the door. “If we need to bring in the cops, I’ll take care of it.” His voice dipped and I figured he’d gotten a good look at my face. In a minute, I’d be blotchier than a chicken pox sufferer. Damn red hair. “You take care of things here,” he added to Fox.

  The door shut on Vanity’s threats a moment later.

  I paced to the window near the violated heavy bag and drew up the blinds to let the gloomy afternoon light into the room. The small desk lamp offered the only other illumination, but I still felt exposed. I might as well have been standing under a spotlight.

  I heard Fox drop into the chair behind the desk. Pictured him raking a hand through his sweaty, spiky blond hair. “I suppose we know now who’s been screwing with Mia, huh?” He sighed. “Jesus, what if Slater was right? What if Olivia wasn’t fully batshit, only partially?”

  It made me laugh, and bury my face in my hands. The tears came before I could check them, spilling out through my clenched fingers. In a second, my face was soaked.

  Guess tears denied only multiplied.

  “Hey, hey,” Fox said, coming up behind me.

  “I’m sorry.” I turned into his embrace. If I’d ever needed to be held more than this, I didn’t remember it. “I’m sorry I’m crying…and I’m sorry I’m here, and I’m sorry…I have to…tell you. And I’m sorry I thought you were on steroids, because you’re clearly…not.”

  “Um, okay, thanks. I think. And tell me what?” His tender strokes on my back slowed. “Is this about your sister? Is she upset? Oh, God. She’s miserable. She doesn’t want it—”

  “I don’t know if she’ll want it, but it’s not her choice, it’s mine. I have to make it.” I blubbered into his shirt, dampening it thoroughly. “And God, I’m not ready.”

  “Why would you have to…” He trailed off and tipped up my chin. “I think you better start from the beginning, because I’m pretty sure something got lost in the translation.”

  I didn’t want to say the words. I couldn’t. If I said them, they’d become true, and I’d have to stop swimming up the denial river and face the reality of my choices.

  “Carly?”

  I scrubbed my cheeks with the heels of my hands and cast a fearful glance at the door. I had more than the usual reasons to be concerned if word got out that I might be knocked up.

  Emilia had been gunned down while pregnant. Whether her pregnancy had anything to do with that unfortunate fact or not, I wasn’t looking to repeat history any more than it had already been repeated.

  Jesus, I was a statistic. Or I might end up one, if I didn’t make sure the number of people who found out about this possible baby numbered exactly two.

  The only two I would trust with my life—my sister and Fox.

  “Can you lock that door?” I asked, moving to the desk to flip on the old school radio Fox kept there. I would’ve preferred soundproofed walls and earplugs for everyone who passed by the office, but it would do.

  Though Fox shot me a puzzled look, he did as I asked and flipped the lock in the doorknob.

  He returned and eased a hip on the edge of the desk, staring down at me with a mixture of confusion and somehow fatherly concern. It made me smile in the midst of everything. “You’re going to be a
great dad someday,” I said, and watched his brows snap down. “Oh, crap,” I said, hitting the heel of my hand against the side of my head. “You thought I meant Mia was…Christ, I’m a moron. I’m sorry. She’s not pregnant. Or if she is, I don’t know about it.”

  One unplanned Anderson baby per year, please.

  “Yeah, I sort of came around to that recently. As in the last two minutes or so. Before that…” He rubbed his hand over his heart. “You gave me a scare, kiddo.”

  “Sorry.” I cocked my head. “A good scare or a bad one?”

  He didn’t answer right away, instead staring out into the murky haze behind the window. November in New York was a crapshoot on the best of days, and today hadn’t come up crazy eights. “For me, it’d be good. That’s the path I’d like someday. For your sister, eh, it’s hard to say if her path quite lines up with mine.”

  “It does,” I said quickly. “She’s the best mother I’ve ever known. Who do you think kept me on the straight and narrow all these years?” I frowned. “Well, until I fell off it, but that wasn’t her fault. She did a damn good job with me, when she was no more than a baby herself.”

  “Mia and I are fine. Our timeline is progressing just like it should.” He tucked my hair behind my ears and nearly made me bawl again. “Let’s talk about you, huh?”

  “You can’t tell anyone. You have to promise me. It’s really important.”

  Possibly life or death. And that was no exaggeration.

  “Clarify anyone. Because if this involves secret-keeping from my better half, I may have to step off the bus here.”

  “Your better half scares me shitless, but yeah, I’ll tell her too.” I sucked in a breath and huffed it out. “So, ah, I may be just a little bit…um, knocked up. Possibly.”

  He sat back and linked his hands in his lap.

  “Well?” I demanded, scanning his expressionless face. “Say something.”

  He opened his mouth, started to speak, then fell silent and shook his head.

  “Really, don’t babble on so. It’s so tiring.” I shoved my hands through my hair and moved back to the window. I pressed my hand to the glass, just to feel the coolness against my burning skin. “I’m so scared, Fox,” I whispered.

  He came up behind me and took my shoulders in his hands, holding me that way until I could drag in enough air to say the rest. “I’m not sure yet. I haven’t taken a test.”

  “Then that’s the first thing we need to do.”

  The way he made it we when it was truly just me made me shut my eyes in gratitude. The world was shitty in so many ways, but there were still good people in it. Still good men, and my sister had found one of the best.

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Sure you can.” He swiveled me around to face him. “You buy one of those box deals, pee on the stick and you’re done. Even I know that much.”

  It felt good, normal, to roll my eyes at him. “Don’t mean the actual process, Foxy, I mean I’m not ready to know.”

  “So you’d rather worry needlessly without finding out for sure?”

  I frowned. “Stop being so logical. You’re giving me a headache.”

  He smiled and looped his arm around me, guiding me to the door. “We’ll just go to the drugstore and then go back to the apartment where you can do your business.”

  “And? If it says I am, then what?”

  “Then we’ll wait for your sister to get out of work, and the three of us will sit down and figure things out. Like a family.”

  The tears were back, even worse than before. “God, if I’m not knocked up, I think my tear ducts are broken.”

  “No shame in crying. That’s how you know it really matters.”

  All the way to the drugstore and back home to take the test, I thought about what he’d said. Could I feel something for a child I hadn’t planned and hadn’t even considered being a possibility a few hours ago? Or was I just crying for myself, and the dreams I feared were about to shatter?

  More lost dreams. I was racking them up.

  Biting my nails, I studied the test lying innocuously on the sink.

  Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. If you don’t look, you won’t know.

  I could just toss it out and go watch TV like it was any other night. Nothing had to change. I could keep sleeping on the floor in the bedroom while Mrs. Knox looked for a new apartment, and I could still keep up my two jobs until the one at the club ended in a little over a week and a half. I could keep fighting with my sister about drinking all the milk, and using her hair ties and not putting them back.

  Oh, God, I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I wasn’t even ready to be an adult myself. Obviously, judging from the clusterfuck of bad choices I’d made over the last six months.

  “Carly Ann, if you don’t look at that test, I’m coming in there myself,” Fox called through the door, surprising a laugh out of me.

  And somehow I was able to reach for the stick with a steady hand. To read the results, and then calmly wrap up the test in about six plastic bags, so it could be buried in the trash and never unearthed again.

  Calmly, I washed my hands and my face and went out to face the music. Except there wasn’t any. The hallway was silent, and as soon as my gaze connected with Fox’s, he knew.

  He moved forward and wrapped me in a hug, and I held on because it felt like the earth was tilting under my feet. I still looked the same on the outside, but I wasn’t.

  Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Twenty

  I met with Marco and Lorenzo and a few other lesser associates in one of the VIP rooms of the club on Wednesday as scheduled. It wasn’t the same room that they’d brought me and Carly to but a bigger one, more glitzed out. Today’s drink of choice was whiskey, and our lunch was catered by the usual assortment of waitresses.

  But this meal was different from all the others. I could feel the subtle charge in the air, and the smiles the men flashed each other seemed particularly sly.

  Today, the plan was moving forward, and I was ready. Whatever they brought to me, I’d turn back around on them. The fight was nine days away, and I needed to make my move soon.

  Now that I had even less to lose.

  Lorenzo leaned back in his chair and smoothed his tie. “Giovanni, how is training coming?”

  It was getting harder and harder to sit there and smile, to pretend as if I actually liked these people. As if I didn’t resent them for ruining everything good in my life, not once but twice.

  Fucking twice.

  “Good. I’m putting in long hours at the gym, which is why I was surprised to get the word about a midday meeting.” I wiped my mouth with my napkin and set it aside. I didn’t have much appetite today anyway. “But Marco said it was important, and I knew it must be if you were taking time from your busy schedule.”

  “Indeed.” Lorenzo leaned forward and motioned to one of the servers waiting at the ready. She hustled over to pour him a fresh whiskey, and obligingly allowed him to feel up her ass as she turned away from the table. “And winning, it is assured?”

  “Of course.” That was the one thing I didn’t have to think about. I was no better than a robot, created to fight. I did it well, because I had no other purpose.

  “Buono, buono. That’s what I hoped to hear.” He glanced at Marco, and a silent signal passed between them. Marco snapped his fingers, and the servers in the room scattered like cockroaches under the glare of an overhead light. The door closed behind them.

  Under the table, the fingers I’d been tapping against my thigh stilled.

  “Giovanni, what we’d like to discuss with you is extremely privileged information. We are entrusting you with this mission because we feel you’re capable of more. A low level man of honor position doesn’t befit you, son.” Lorenzo’s smile was kindly, but his eyes were like coal black daggers. The one that rested against my heart had a duller blade. “We’d like to see you advance, faster than some might consider average. But then a w
orld class fighter should be accorded certain benefits, should he not?”

  Marco set his bulky forearms on the table and shifted forward, taking up the spiel. “You are full-blooded Italian, and an asset to our organization. If you are willing to show one last proof of your loyalty, and assuming you pull it off successfully, we’d like you to step up.”

  I’d been waiting for this. I knew either they’d proffer some speech about how quickly I could ascend the ranks, or they’d insist I demonstrate my loyalty on a grander scale than what had happened with Carly. Either way, they’d ask me to do something that would dirty my hands to the point that there wouldn’t be a way to walk away clean.

  Thus far, I’d stayed firmly in the gray zone. I’d roughed up some guys on their command, ones that had skipped out on debts or pinched more product than they were allotted. I’d shaken down another couple guys, taking their cash and turning it over to Marco, the caporegime. Enough to send me up if I got nabbed, but not enough that I’d do more than three to five. That was about to change, if they got their way.

  I was going to make sure they didn’t.

  “You know I’ll do whatever is asked of me. Haven’t I so far?”

  “You have, but some of your tasks have been less…arduous than others.” He exchanged a smile with Lorenzo that let me know they were thinking about Carly.

  The other two associates at the table tittered, proving our night in the back room had been well discussed. For all I knew, the bastards had even taped it for their further amusement.

  I fought to calm the muscle in my jaw that always ticked when I was pissed. My emotions were one of the few things I could control.

  Rash emotions led to sloppy thoughts, and sloppy thoughts led to getting blown out behind the wheel of your truck. I’d seen that happen to enough of the guys around the old neighborhood.

  Not that Emilia had even been given that courtesy. Her death hadn’t been so quick.

  I’d give Roberto one more bullet to the brain for that alone.

  Under the table, my hands fisted. “Whatever the task, I’ve completed it as requested.”