Cruel Paradise (Beautifully Cruel Book 2)

by J. T. Geissinger

  I refuse to break eye contact with this arrogant bastard, though I’m pretty sure I’m going to have PTSD if I somehow make it out of this cab alive.

  Liam Black is the kind of violent jolt to the system that takes years of psychotherapy to unwind.

  I say, “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I’m not. And stop playing with that knife in your pocket. If you stab me, you’ll only succeed in making me mad.”

  I stare at him for a long moment, debating whether or not to go ahead and pull the knife out and lunge at him like I’d been planning.

  He presses his lips together. I suspect it’s to stop from laughing out loud.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I’m curious: why donate what you stole from me?”

  “I didn’t steal it from you. I stole it from a warehouse.”

  “I own the warehouse.”

  “No, a shell corporation owns the warehouse.”

  “I own the shell corporation.”

  I say drily, “One of many.”

  “Aye. Too many to keep track. To be honest, I didn’t even know about it before you pulled that stunt.”

  “Your minions set it up for you, huh? Just one more way to wash your dirty money?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, in case you’re wondering, you’ve got ninety-six of them.”

  “Diaper factories?”

  “Shell corporations.”

  He pauses, examining my expression. His own reflects deepening interest and what I’d think was a glimmer of respect, if I didn’t know better.

  “Have you been studying up on me, little thief?”

  “Something like that.”

  Ignoring how I threw his own words back at him, he says, “Why?”

  “As a general rule, I do my homework before a job.”

  He studies me with the same ferocious focus I felt at the restaurant. His attention is like a physical force. A whisper of electricity zinging along my nerve endings. A finger reaching out to tap me on the shoulder.

  A sledgehammer crashing into my chest.

  He says, “What else did you discover about me in your studies?”

  My temper—short even under the best of circumstances—snaps. “I’ll tell you what I didn’t discover.”

  “Which is?”

  “That you’re so annoyingly chatty. Are you gonna kill me or what? I’ve got better things to do with my time than talk to the likes of you.”

  Oh, god, that feels good. Watching the expression of astonishment cross his evil, chiseled features is sweet, sweet, sweet.

  I bet he can’t remember the last time someone disrespected him.

  Especially a girl.

  Score one for womankind.

  My sense of satisfaction comes to an abrupt end when he grabs me by both arms and hauls me across the seat onto his lap.

  I gasp as his arms close hard around me.

  He’s huge and impossibly strong, holding me easily even as I thrash and struggle. When I scream and kick out at the door, the cab driver squawks in panic.

  “Hey! No rough stuff! I’ll pull over and throw you both out!”

  Liam says calmly, “Pull over and you’ll get a bullet in your skull, mate. Keep driving.”

  When the sputtering driver turns the wheel and slows, headed to the side of the road, my captor adds, “I’m Liam Black.”

  Thirty seconds later, trapped and seething in his arms as the cab drives straight down the street at top speed, I say through gritted teeth, “Boy, that must really come in handy.”

  “It has its uses.” He gazes down at me, helpless in the cage of his arms. “Answer my question.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Judging by his tone, he can’t decide if he’s frustrated or amused by my flat refusal. He stares at my profile for a moment, then says suddenly, “You’re not afraid of me.”

  He says it like he just discovered the lost city of Atlantis. With surprise and wonder and—weirdly—a touch of pride.

  “Let’s just say I have a healthy respect for your ability to make people dead. Now let me go.”

  “So you can break into another unsuspecting victim’s business and steal infant care products?”

  “So I can jab my thumbs into your eyeballs.”

  He clucks. “So violent.”

  “I’m not the one who just threatened the driver’s life.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Especially not you, the guy who’s about to sink my feet into cement blocks and throw me into the Charles River.”

  He bends his head to my ear. His voice drops to a husky whisper. “It would be the reservoir, not the river. But you already know I’m not going to hurt you. Now answer my goddamn question about why you donated what you took from me before I turn you over on my lap and give you something to really be snippy about. Which, let’s be honest, both of us would enjoy.”

  Then he inhales deeply against my neck and makes a low sound of pleasure in the back of his throat.

  I’m speechless.

  My face is flaming, and my heart is pounding, and I can’t get my mouth to form words.

  Me, the girl who can talk straight through anything from a root canal to a funeral, cannot find the ability to speak, simply because a cold-blooded killer sniffed my throat.

  There must be some kind of mind-altering agent in his cologne.

  “I…I…”

  He skims the tip of his nose against my earlobe, causing my entire body to break out in gooseflesh.

  “Hmm?”

  My voice choked, I say, “Stop that.”

  “Stop what?”

  He’s all feigned innocence, the heartless SOB. “Let me go!”

  “If you answer my question, I’ll let you go.”

  That surprises me. He doesn’t seem reasonable that way. “Really?”

  His chuckle is low and full of self-satisfaction. “No.”

  At times like these, I really wish I had super powers. It would be so lovely to manifest a pair of poisonous barbed tentacles to wrap around his thick, smug neck.

  “So in addition to being a general, all-around bad guy, you’re a liar, too.”

  “Aye. Comes with the territory. But people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, my mouthy little thief.”

  His lips move over the sensitive skin beneath my earlobe as he speaks, raising the hair on the back of my neck and sending my pulse haywire.

  Then I realize he said “my” thief, and my heart stops altogether.

  Because there are far, far worse things he could do to me than throw me into the Charles River. Catching the attention of a man like Liam Black doesn’t have to end in blood.

  If he decides he likes me, it could end in something worse than death.

  “Easy,” he says gruffly, pulling back to look at me. “What just happened?”

  I can’t look at him. My face is on fire, I’m as stiff as a board in his arms, and I can’t risk looking into those dark, burning eyes, because I’m afraid of what I might see reflected back at me.

  “Take a breath. Then unsheathe your fingernails from my arm. Then tell me why you’re freaking out.”

  I blurt, “Because you’re the most dangerous man in Boston—”

  “In the world,” he interrupts mildly.

  “—and I’m about to die—”

  “We’ve already been over this. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “—and you admitted you’re a liar—”

  “Hmm. There is that.”

  “—and you’re holding me in your lap and sniffing my neck and…and…”

  “And?”

  I swallow hard, still not able to look at him, my pulse flying at a breakneck speed.

  Then his body tenses.

  He deposits me back onto my side of the seat with an expression like he just smelled something rotten and barks at the cab driver, “Pull over.”

  The taxi screeches to a stop at the curb.
Liam turns his head and pins me in his burning, unblinking gaze.

  He growls something in a language I don’t understand, then continues to glare at me.

  I say, “Um…”

  “Get out.”

  My mouth drops open. “You’re letting me go?”

  “No. I’m throwing you out.”

  Reaching around me, he opens the door and pushes on it, so it swings wide on its hinges. Then he retreats to his side of the car and stares straight ahead, his jaw hard and his energy that of barely controlled thermonuclear rage.

  I have no idea what’s happening.

  But this isn’t the time to wonder about a notorious gangster’s unexpected mood swings.

  This is the time to run the hell away.

  I launch myself out of the cab and do just that, disappearing into the night as if it swallowed me.

  5

  Jules

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either, Fin, but I’m telling you, that’s what happened.”

  “He had you and then he just…let you go?”

  “Yep.”

  Her brow crinkles. Seated next to Max on the baroque blue velvet love seat tucked into the corner of our favorite murder-mystery-themed dive bar, the Poison Pen, she’s chewing her lip and frowning, white knuckling another bourbon as she watches me pace back and forth in front of the wooden coffee table separating us.

  Max is watching me, too. But it’s more of a “you’re a bonehead” look than Fin’s worried one.

  She mutters, “You should’ve stabbed that fucker in the eye when you had the chance.”

  “I didn’t have the chance, Max, that’s what I’m saying!”

  She’s clearly dubious. “I dunno, Jules, it sounds like you two had quite the long talk. There must’ve been one second in between all that yammering when you could’ve shivved that son of a goat herder and made the world a whole lot better in the process.”

  She pauses to give me an accusing stare. “I mean…Liam Black?”

  I turn and pace the other direction, wringing my hands distractedly. “We agreed it would be best if I kept the identity of the marks a secret. I pick the targets and research the job, you handle electronics and surveillance, Fin handles logistics and transportation. The details of each of our tasks we keep to ourselves in case one of us gets caught.”

  Max snorts. “Yeah, I know the rules. I just assumed our whole ‘steal from the rich and give to the poor’ girl gang ethos was about fat old billionaires who beat their kids and cheat on their taxes, not leaders of mafia syndicates.”

  Sipping her bourbon, Fin says absently, “Super-hot leaders of mafia syndicates.”

  “His hotness is irrelevant,” says Max.

  To which Fin replies, “It was relevant when you were ogling him at the bar and your panties were curling off you like burning paper.”

  “I didn’t know who he was then. I’d never seen a picture of him.”

  “As if it would’ve mattered.”

  Max sniffs. “Excuse me, but I’d like to think I’m a little more discerning than that.”

  “Maybe you are, but your coochie has a mind of her own. Let’s not forget that cute musician who couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag.”

  “He was harmless!”

  “He was clueless.”

  “An air-brained guitarist is not the same thing as the head of a multinational criminal empire!”

  “My point is that when it comes to hot men, your vadge can’t be trusted. If Satan had tats and a strong jaw, you’d fuck him.”

  Max says flatly, “This from the woman who falls in love with every leggy redhead who knows how to bat her lashes. No matter how conniving.”

  Bristling, Fin says, “Tess wasn’t conniving. She was…clever!”

  Max mutters, “Clever enough to make off with all the money in your bank account.”

  I have to stop this little spat before it can devolve into all-out war. “Girls! Please! Can we focus for a minute on the situation?”

  Max huffs, Fin scowls, and I swing around and pace back the other direction. “Okay. First things first. How did he find us?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Max says defensively. “The cameras at the warehouse and all around the drop zone were out. I did my job.”

  “What about around the field where we offloaded the truck?”

  “Yes,” she says with exaggerated patience, as if speaking to a child. “Those were out, too.”

  Fin says, “My side of the house is buttoned-up, too. I took all the usual precautions.”

  “There has to be a leak somewhere. A hole we didn’t plug. Maybe someone saw us break into the warehouse and followed us from there?”

  “Doubtful,” says Fin. “There were no headlights behind us until we got on the highway, and that was ten miles from the warehouse. Besides, if someone saw us breaking in, they’d have called the police, not tailed us.”

  “Could the apartment be under surveillance?”

  Max makes a face. “If the cops were watching us, they would’ve showed up at the restaurant, not him.”

  “Maybe they’re on his payroll.”

  “Well, yeah, they probably are. My point is that we’d already be arrested. Instead we’re sitting here, shitting our pants, wondering how soon it’ll be before we get a bullet in our skulls.”

  I stop pacing to look at them. “That’s the thing, though. He could’ve snapped my neck in the taxi if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He let me go.” I think for a moment. “Actually, that’s not technically correct. He threw me out.”

  Fin sits up straighter. “Wait. What?”

  I drop into the overstuffed leather chair across from the sofa and stare morosely at my feet. “Yeah. It was so strange. He was being weirdly pleasant and not killing me, then he went all Conan the Barbarian and threw me out of the cab.”

  Max and Fin gaze at me in loaded silence, until Max says, “What did you say to make him do that?”

  My hackles go up at the way it sounds like an accusation. “Why does it have to be something I said?”

  Fin says gently, “You do have a way of exasperating men, hun.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  With none of Fin’s tact, Max says, “It means your mouth makes men crazy. And not in a good way.”

  Fin nods. “Like not in the wow-you-give-a-great-blowjob way.”

  I lift my chin and look down my nose at them. “I’ll have you know I give an excellent blowjob.”

  Max snorts. “Really? When was the last time you gave someone a blowjob? And dreams don’t count!”

  I open my mouth to make a smart retort, but have to close it again when I realize I have no idea when the last time was that I performed that particular sexual act, in dreams or otherwise.

  Best not to think about it. I’ve got more important things to be depressed about.

  “Getting back to the subject at hand: Liam Black has our home address.”

  That hangs in the air ominously for a while, until Fin says, “I think the real subject at hand is what specifically you said to make him throw you out of the cab.”

  “I agree,” says Max, nodding.

  “How is that important?”

  “If it was important enough to stop him from murdering you, it’s important enough to consider.” She motions to the waiter for another round of drinks, then turns her attention back to me. “So, what was it?”

  I already know it’s useless to try to divert Max from this line of conversation. She’ll hound me until I answer. She’s as stubborn as a Rottweiler. So I slouch lower in the chair, close my eyes, and think.

  After several moments, it hits me. “Oh.” I open my eyes and think some more, frowning. “No. That can’t be right.”

  Fin and Max lean forward, all ears. They say in unison, “What?”

  Still frowning, I look up into their eager faces. “I think…it’s possible I might have insulted him.”

  After a beat, Fin turns to
Max. “She thinks she insulted him.”

  Max turns to Fin. “The head of the Irish mafia.”

  “She insulted the head of the Irish mafia so badly, he forgot to kill her.”

  They turn back to me and stare at me in accusing silence.

  “Jeez, you guys. Thanks for the support.”

  The waiter—a cute young guy with a man bun and a tattoo of Betty Boop on his forearm—returns with our drinks. He sets them on the coffee table, takes the empty glasses, and grins at Max. “You need anything else?”

  One brow quirked, Max looks him up and down. When she opens her mouth, Fin elbows her in the ribcage.

  Max sighs. “We’re good, thanks.”

  He leaves with a wistful smile in her direction.

  Fin watches him go with a curled lip. “Unbelievable. We’re being hunted by the mob king as we speak, and you’re flirting with hipsters.”

  “We’re not being hunted by the mob king. He already found us, and Devil Tongue here”—Max gestures to me—“scared him away.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say loudly, grabbing my second shot of vodka.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” says Fin, grabbing her own drink. “The reality is that Liam Black is probably plotting our deaths at this very moment. Our violent, hideous, painful deaths, which he’ll take great pleasure in, considering we not only stole from him, but insulted him as well. To his face. For a man who can make grown men cry by the mere mention of his name, that’s probably worse.”

  Aggravated, I shoot the vodka, wincing as it sears a path down my throat. “I said I think I might have insulted him, not that I was sure!”

  Fin pushes a lock of hair behind her ear and sits forward. “Just tell us the words you spoke, and we’ll go from there.”

  Sighing heavily, I shrug. “I just…he was sort of…sniffing my throat—”

  “Sniffing your throat?” she interrupts, wide-eyed.

  It sounds even worse out loud. “Um. Yes. I was on his lap and he was sniffing—”

  “On his lap?” they say together.

  I glance around in irritation. “Can you please keep your voices down?”

  Max stares at me in open astonishment. “Your priorities right now are so out of whack, I don’t even know where to start. Who cares what anybody in this bar thinks? You were sitting on Liam Black’s lap and he was sniffing your throat? Shut the front door!”