Suckered

by Gina LaManna

  “Looking for me, I guarantee it. And you better hope she doesn’t find me while you’re still around.”

  I moved forward again. Two steps away.

  “Where are you going?” He watched. “You can’t help her.”

  “Let me check for a pulse,” I said. “Please. She’s not involved in any way.”

  “Then what is she doing here?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  He frowned.

  “I don’t know who she is, or what she wants,” I said. “She showed up here and said she was going to help me, but that’s it. Let her go.”

  “Turn around. Hands behind your back.”

  I listened to him, though I took my time following instructions.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m going to approach you. Any sudden movements and I’m putting you to sleep again.”

  “First tell me why,” I said. “I know you’re going to put me to sleep either way.”

  He sauntered over, his footsteps sinking into the rickety floor. He stopped a few paces away, his excitement palpable. “I am so close to this, you don’t understand. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment.”

  “For this necklace?”

  “The Violet Society.”

  I kept my shoulders straight, feigning naiveté. “What society are you talking about?”

  “Only the most elite ring of thieves in the world. The classiest, most elegant…their heists are works of art.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t understand. The way I look at it, you don’t seem to fit in with a society like that, seeing how you butchered these jewel heists.”

  “Shut up,” he said. “I got the job done, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t know. What was the job?”

  “Entry into The Violet Society costs a heist worth ten million dollars. Media attention. Impossible circumstances. They take one representative per country, and I’ve been waiting my entire life for America to open a seat. That time has come.”

  “I’m just not sure they’ll be impressed with…” I gestured to myself. “This.”

  “They will,” he said. “I’ve talked to their leader. Do you know how hard he is to find? Nobody in the regular world has spoken to him for years.”

  “Then why did he come to you?” I asked, my skepticism high. Sounded like The Chad had been suckered by a fraud, if you asked me.

  “If I deliver ten million dollars’ worth of stolen diamonds at their feet by tomorrow, the seat is mine.”

  I shifted, thinking this didn’t sound very elegant at all. Still, The Chad wasn’t lying—he was far too excited. But something wasn’t right.

  “How do you know they mean it?” I asked. “What if they just want the money? You might drop it off, and then they’ll get rid of you.”

  “Because I met with the boss.”

  “How do you know he was the boss?”

  “Because—” he stopped talking abruptly. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

  Carlos’s words came back to me with resounding clarity. The Chad was in this game for fame and glory. It had been the reason for his attempt at the initiation, and it would be his downfall. Maybe not now, but eventually.

  “You don’t need to explain yourself to me.” I kept my hands behind my back, but I looked over my shoulder. “I’m just asking questions you probably should have asked months ago.”

  “They won’t reject me.” His confidence was overshadowed by the crack in his voice. “I’ve worked my whole life for this.”

  “I bet a lot of people want in, and the competition is high. What if you’re not the only one trying for a spot?”

  “Speak for yourself, Luzzi. At least I go after my dreams. What are yours? Flouncing around with some jewels on your neck? Falling into the arms of your fiancé? With whom, I might add, you haven’t even set a wedding date?”

  “What is with this dang wedding date?!” I cried. “It’s not a big deal! It’s no reflection on whether or not we love each other.”

  “Don’t tell me I won’t succeed when you can’t even marry the man who put a ring on your finger,” The Chad said. “At least I’m willing to try.”

  His words sucker-punched me in the stomach. If I died now, if The Chad threw me out the window and left me broken, Anthony would never know I was ready to get married on any date. The thought made me ill. All because I’d been procrastinating, for what? Because I didn’t want to pick out a cake?

  “It sucks to hear the truth, doesn’t it?” The Chad took one step closer, his voice softening. “My dad told me I’d never make anything of myself, and look at me now. I might not be working on Wall Street, but I’ll have the most prestigious position in all of America after tonight.”

  “I don’t think so,” I murmured. My fingers rose to the gems around my neck. There were probably just a few minutes left before midnight. “You stole from innocent people, took dreams from real designers. Maybe I’m not reaching for the stars, but they are, and I’m not letting you ruin it.”

  Without waiting for the clock to strike midnight, I yanked the clasp hard against my neck, twisting it. It popped off my neck at once and without waiting for a breath, I threw it hard across the room.

  It clinked, hitting The Chad in the face.

  Then it fell to the floor, mostly intact. And definitely not exploded.

  “Oh, crap,” I said.

  Internally I cursed Clay up and down for either lying to me, or for making a defective bomb the one time I wanted something to detonate. Whatever the reason, there was no time to worry about it.

  I lunged for the necklace. It might not have exploded, but the jewels had hit The Chad in the eyes, which gave me an extra second to react as he winced in pain, hands grasping at his face.

  Tumbling across the floor, I took him out with me. I dragged myself on top of him, holding his shoulders down as I ran through ways to lock him in place until I could get someone bigger than me to haul him to the police.

  “What is going on here?” An all-new male voice spoke from the doorway. It came from someone big, someone loud, someone I hadn’t yet met. He took one look at me, then one look at the man squished below me. “Chad? What are you doing?”

  “The Chad,” he croaked from beneath me.

  I couldn’t stop staring at the behemoth of a man in the door. His teeth were crooked. A splotch of gold took up one tooth space, gaping black holes taking up several others. When he smiled, it sent slimy shivers across my skin.

  “And who are you?” he asked. “You’re too pretty of a thing to be playing with Chad.”

  I swallowed. “Are you here to help me?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll either be your best friend or your worst enemy. I’ll let you decide.”

  I opened my mouth ready to bribe him into friendship when I felt the familiar stick of a needle in my arm. Dang, I thought, as the cocktail of sleeping solution hit my bloodstream. The Chad had kept extra on him, maybe I’d underestimated…

  I made a weak attempt at fighting The Chad off, but he had depressed the syringe quickly and deeply, then shoved me off him, my body hitting the floor like Raggedy Ann. He pushed off, kicking my already injured knee as he swiped the necklace from my hands.

  The large man at the door didn’t say anything. Not even when I called for help.

  So much for a best friend, I thought. And then I went to sleep.

  Chapter 41

  “This sucks, huh?” Alessandra said, all too happy for someone with an egg protruding from her forehead. Somehow, she was still pretty. “At least I have good company this time.”

  “This time?” The two of us were tied to one another. I looked down at our wrists. “You find yourself in situations like this a lot?”

  She grinned. “You’d be surprised.”

  “Must be some crazy parties.”

  “Nothing like that,” she said. “What about you?”

  “I’d have to say ditto.”

  “I knew I liked you. Now, t
his is going to sound weird. Can you reach my left butt cheek?”

  I hesitated. “That does sound weird.”

  “If you can get your hand in my back pocket you’ll find a Swiss army knife and a lock picking set.”

  I wriggled closer to her. She smelled nice, like expensive roses and sugar. If only I smelled so nice after falling in a fountain, passing out twice, and sitting on the grimy floor of a dirty apartment. “Are you planning on telling me why you carry a lock picking set?”

  “I suppose I did promise you some answers.”

  “I think I can reach,” I said, scooting close. As I scooted, I realized something. My neck was bare. “Wait a second, the necklace! It’s gone!”

  “Focus, Lacey.”

  “But the necklace—”

  “I will help you recover it, but first we need to get ourselves free. Can you find my pocket?”

  I took a deep breath and reached for the knife. It was challenging, and I let out a grunt. “Please ignore my sound effects. My elbow is at a really weird angle, and I can’t quite grasp it.”

  She gestured for me to lean further, twisting my arms in line with the rope. “I’ve been obsessed with The Violet Society for most of my life.”

  “How old were you when you found out about them?”

  “Young,” she said. “Too young to understand. All I knew was a name—that’s it. Rumors, lots of rumors, but nothing concrete. Everything was a complete dead end.”

  “You must have had a breakthrough somewhere,” I said, having a breakthrough of my own as my fingers found the pocket of her jeans. “Excuse my intrusive reach.”

  “Dig away,” she said. “The faster the better. I want to have the use of my hands when the goons come back. I heard them moving around downstairs while you were out. They’re talking about something, probably what to do with us.”

  “There.” I tossed the lock picks to the floor.

  Alessandra scooched over enough to pick them up. Two more seconds of her fiddling, and we were free.

  “Wow, that’s impressive,” I said. “You should be teaching self-defense.”

  She grinned. “Come on, let’s move.”

  “But I want to hear your story! Why are you helping me?”

  “Now?” She glanced at the door. “Maybe there’s a better time to talk.”

  I bit my bottom lip. “I’m afraid that if you help me escape, I’ll never see you again.”

  Her chocolate-colored eyes crinkled. “Of course not. Want to be friends?”

  “You saved my life,” I said. “I’d love to be your friend.”

  She blew out a sigh. “Here’s the short story. I’m adopted. I don’t know who my birth parents are—I was a baby the last time I saw them, but I do know they were Italian,” she said. “My adopted parents put some pieces of the puzzle together, and they believe I came over from Italy. It makes sense. I mean, look at me.”

  I looked. She was as Mediterranean as they came. “Where’d you grow up?”

  “Minnesota,” she smiled. “That’s how I found you. Not in the cities, though. I spent my childhood in the sticks. Middle of nowhere. I was adopted when I was seven.”

  “Hold on, you were adopted when you were seven, but you don’t remember your birth family?”

  “I was in foster care for a long time before that. It’s a complicated history. I don’t remember much from those years, and it’s better that way.” This time the curve of her lips into a smile was forced. “My last name is now Miller, the name of my adoptive family. Alessandra Miller is my real name, despite what you might think. My parents were…” She cleared her throat. “They are nice. They’re the only people I’ve ever called family. They call me Allie. In fact, I prefer Allie.”

  “Where does The Violet Society fit in?”

  “Someone left me this,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulders as she exposed her collarbone. A dainty necklace sat across her dark skin, and at the very end hung a teensy, tiny key. “For a long time, I thought it was just…well, any old necklace that my mom or someone had strapped on me as a kid.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “I can see why she wanted you to have it.”

  Alessandra shook her head. “I don’t think it’s just a pretty necklace. I looked deeper, I researched. This key is unique—after years of digging, I discovered that it’s a symbol. This key, the key with four prongs, is the insignia for a long-lost ring of thieves called—”

  “The Violet Society,” I finished. I looked closer. It resembled the symbol on the note I’d found on my door. Beckett?

  “They’re extremely well hidden,” she said. “I have been searching for a single member for years. I obsessed, I traveled, I lost sleep over it. I even took a job in the crime field to—”

  “What is your job?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Different story. Look, we’re running out of time. They’ll be back any second.”

  I gestured for her to finish up quickly as we moved toward the window.

  “I believe whoever gave me this necklace belonged to The Society.” Alessandra fingered the small key. “It’s a clue to my past, it has to be.”

  The way she spoke twisted my heart. I could see it in her eyes that she’d hinged her whole life on this single clue. I swallowed, then looked down. “I’m sorry you don’t have more answers. I know how hard that can be.”

  Her eyes softened. “I know about your mother, your situation…Meg. I’m really sorry you had to go through all of that.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “Why would you know those things?”

  “I told you I was obsessed with crime,” she said. “It’d be a rookie mistake for me to not look into the Luzzi Family. Y’all were close to home. Your grandfather is a powerful man. He made for an interesting study. Don’t worry, I didn’t look far beyond Carlos. I don’t know every detail of your life.”

  I groaned. “Just most of them.”

  She laughed softly. “No, really. It was Carlos I was concerned with, but I gave up following his movements a long time ago. He’s not involved much in the criminal world these days, not unless he has to be.”

  I murmured in some sort of agreement.

  “So, I turned my attentions elsewhere. Moved to California. I keep tabs now and again to check on my favorite Family…” she winked. “That’s all.”

  “All these years, you’ve been following the heists connected to The Violet Society, hoping to find the identity of one of the members,” I said. “That’s why you’re here in Milan.”

  “This is the closest I’ve ever come to meeting someone from The Society,” she said. “Chad might not be a member yet, but he knows how to get in touch. If he really is going through the trials. I’m going to help you get away if you’d like, but I have to stay. I have to see this through.”

  “Do you have a phone?”

  “For what?”

  “I was thinking of calling my boyfriend,” I said. “He’s better at this capturing people thing than I am. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s his size.”

  “We can’t capture these men, we have to follow them.”

  “Aless—um, Allie, I know how important this is to you,” I said. “But it’s too risky. I won’t risk you getting hurt.”

  “You think this is a wild goose chase.” Her eyes darkened. “You think I’m crazy, just like my brothers.” She rested a hand on her hip, shook her head—her long hair swinging over her shoulders. “Who knows? Maybe I am.”

  “You’re not crazy,” I said. “But you are emotional. We have to think smarter than these guys. Following them is risky. What we need to do is get them to talk. They didn’t leave us alone the entire time we had the necklace—don’t you see? We have to get the diamonds. Then they’ll drop right into our laps.”

  Her clear, intelligent eyes sized me up for a long while. “Fine,” she said eventually. “I like my idea better, but I think yours will work.”

  “Great.” I paused. “For the record, I
don’t know what I’m doing. I just make stuff up.”

  “You do a good job of it,” she said. “Let’s go. I don’t carry phones when I work, but I do have an extra pepper spray. And here’s the rope they used on us.”

  “One more question,” I said. “Why were you and Beckett running toward Anthony during the fashion show?”

  “Beckett?”

  “You really don’t know him?”

  She shook her head. “I was running toward you. You had your eyes fixed on someone in the audience, someone you seemed to recognize.”

  “Yeah, my fiancé.”

  She shrugged. “Well, you can’t blame me for being on the alert. The Miranda was obviously the most popular target at the show…if someone was going to snatch you—or the necklace—I wanted front row seats. I imagine there were others who had the same idea.”

  “Oh, that’s really considerate.”

  She laughed. “I came to rescue you, didn’t I?” Before I answered, she handed me the supplies. I took them, and together, we turned around—landing face to face with another visitor.

  “Not so fast, ladies,” the new guy said. “I’d like to join the party, too.”

  Chapter 42

  I glanced between Beckett and Alessandra, sizing both up to see if they knew each other. There were no obvious signs of recognition, which surprised me. Maybe Alessandra really was telling the truth.

  “Beckett, what are you doing here?” I asked him. “I’m wondering how you found me, but I’m not sure I want to know the details.”

  His blue eyes twinkled. “I told you I’d protect you, sweetheart.”

  Alessandra was suspiciously quiet this whole time, watching the exchange.

  “Do you two know each other?” I asked finally. The tension was unbearable.

  “No,” they both said in sync. And a little too quickly.

  I narrowed my eyes at Beckett first. “She just saved my life, so I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt. What’s going on here?”

  “Come,” he said, his voice a whisper. “I’d explain, but it’s probably more entertaining to watch.”

  The three of us crept out of the room, moving as slow as molasses to avoid inadvertent floor squeaks. We were all on our hands and knees, even though my knee was killing me. I pushed through the pain, gritting my teeth against some angry words.