by Meghan March
“Who told you?”
His laugh crackles, like the connection isn’t very good, and again, I wonder where the fuck they’re holding Summer. My guess is they’re somewhere in Northern Africa, but they could be next door for all I know.
“You think I don’t know every move you make, Ms. Baptiste? Let that be a reminder to you. If you think about going to the police or Interpol, I won’t even bother to sell your pretty sister. I’ll send her back to you in a box for you to reassemble for burial. Then we’ll come for you and Mrs. Clark.”
Alanna slaps a hand over her mouth, muffling her groan.
“Ah, Mrs. Clark. Good that you hear my warning, so I don’t repeat myself. Maybe you can remind India exactly how much time she has left.”
“Six days. I know exactly how much time. I’ll get you your fucking money.”
“Yes, you will. Because you don’t want to think about what is going to happen to Summer if you do not. Don’t lose again, Indy. We’re waiting.”
The call ends, and Alanna’s bottom lip trembles as tears slide down her cheeks.
“We have to get the money. We have to.” She drags in two more deep breaths. “I’m selling my flat. I’ll call the agency tomorrow.”
I shake my head. “It’ll take too long. We can’t risk waiting. I’ll find another way. I promise. I won’t let you down again.”
Her wiry arms wrap around me. “You didn’t let me down, Indy. You’re human. An incredible human. You’ll find a way. I know it. In the meantime, I’m going to start the process to sell my flat. I can’t do nothing. That’s not the way I’m built.”
I meet her blue gaze, and even though the thought makes my stomach churn like the waves crashing along the shore, I tell her, “Give me a few days. I might have another option. Just . . . I need some time to figure out the details. Okay?”
13
Forge
“I hope you enjoyed yourself tonight, Forge, because that’s the last fucking time you’re ever getting near Indy.”
I pause midstride in the casino lobby as de Vere brushes off a brunette standing next to him near the door. Goliath stiffens beside me, on the verge of hulking out at his taunt.
Just seeing de Vere’s face makes me want to rip the bottle of booze out of his clenched fist and beat him with it. Hot, fiery rage races through me, and it takes years of self-imposed iron control to lock it down and not show a shred of emotion.
You will have your vengeance, Isaac. I swear it.
“Care to make a bet on that, de Vere? I’m happy to take more of your money tonight, especially since I already had her.”
His nostrils flare, and a vein throbs in his forehead. He hasn’t learned to school himself. Not surprising.
De Vere is a spoiled little bitch riding through life like it’s one big party while he tries to spend all of Mummy and Daddy’s money. He’s the epitome of everything I hate, even if he hadn’t killed the only person who meant a damn thing to me in this entire world. While he was fucking drunk.
“You didn’t have her. She told me,” he says with a condescending chin lift, and my fists clench at the thought of him cornering her after Goliath intruded. Not happening again. “You can try to take every fucking thing from me, Forge, but you won’t get her. Not unless it’s over my fucking dead body.”
The predictable answer would be that can be arranged, but I take another avenue. One that will piss him off even more.
“How long’s it been since she spread those long, tanned legs for you? Because I could swear I saw God tonight.”
De Vere lurches toward me, liquor spilling onto the marble floor from the open bottle. “Go fuck yourself, Forge. You ever talk like that about her again, and I’ll shove the words back down your throat with my fucking fist.”
He sways on his feet, and I wonder if he’s defending her honor because he’s drunk or if he’s really this hung up on her. No woman I’ve taken from him over the years in my effort to make him miserable has seemed to care much about him, nor him about them. They’ve all been quick fucks, party favors, or toys. He’s never given a damn when he saw them on my arm or they stopped taking his calls.
But India Baptiste is different. That’s the only reason he’s kept his interest in her so quiet for so long. He’s kept her off my radar on purpose.
Not any longer.
“You care about her, don’t you, de Vere? She’s not like the others.”
He bares his teeth. “She’s mine, Forge. I’m not fucking letting you have her.”
My chest shakes before I unleash a few waves of laughter. “You don’t let me do anything.” I take a step closer to him. “You should’ve kept your secret under tighter wraps. Now you’ve got something to lose that actually matters, and all you’ll be able to do is dread the day I take my final revenge. You won’t see it coming, but you’re going to spend every minute until then wondering when it will happen.” I flash a smile at him as his lips flatten into a thin, hard line.
“Try and take her. I’ll kill you myself.”
I glance up to one of the bubbles in the ornate gold-leaf ceiling, concealing the casino’s surveillance. “I’ve got your death threat on film now. I’ll add that to my compilation of everything that’ll have you rotting in prison if anything ever happens to me.”
“Fuck you, Forge.”
I shake my head. “I’d much prefer to fuck India Baptiste. And I will. Repeatedly. Maybe I’ll even keep her. Make her my mistress.” I jerk my chin toward Goliath. “Get the car. I’m done with him.” Goliath strides ahead of me, and I turn to follow.
“She won’t fucking touch you. We’re getting married.”
I spin around and take in the smug, almost victorious expression crossing de Vere’s features. What the fuck?
But I say nothing. I study him to look for tells that he’s bluffing. None are apparent.
His smirk widens. “No answer? That’s what I thought. Check and mate, Forge. Check and mate.”
I reach out a hand and clasp his shoulder, settling my thumb just over his windpipe, and then I squeeze hard until he coughs.
“You don’t understand how this works, de Vere. Check and mate means one of us is dead.”
He coughs again, his fingers wrapping around my hand. To the cameras watching us, it looks like we’re having a friendly moment, which is exactly what I intend.
“India Baptiste would be better off as my whore than your wife. In fact, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
14
India
I don’t sleep at all, and I know Alanna doesn’t either because I hear her tossing and turning all night in my spare room. By the time the sun rises, I’ve replayed everything that happened last night dozens of times.
My sum total of new ideas to get the money to sit the game in Monaco? Zero.
I’m not taking it from Bastien . . . if I can come up with any other solution.
Right now, those solutions include loan sharks, bank robbery, and cat burglary—none of which I have any experience with, but I’m not going to rule them out just yet.
I unearth an espresso capsule from my hidden stash and prepare to brew some coffee so I can find the necessary energy to go back to the hotel and collect my things from the room. I still can’t believe Forge threw me out.
Lucky, Indy. That was luck. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t feel lucky at the time, and the sting still hasn’t completely faded.
The Nespresso machine finishes heating when Alanna enters the kitchen, wearing her same clothes from the night before. The dark shadows under her eyes tell me that I was right about her not getting any sleep.
I’m so sorry, Alanna, I think. I wish I could have come home with better news.
“Good morning.” I inject a cheery note into my voice that I certainly don’t feel, but it’s the best I can do.
Instead of responding in kind, Alanna looks at me with her lips trembling like she’s on the verge of sobbing. “I emailed the agency this morning. They’r
e closed until tomorrow, but I’m going to sell the flat. You can’t talk me out of it.”
“Alanna . . .” I rush over and throw my arms around her. “Please, just give me some more time. I’ll find a way.”
Tears tip over her lids. “It’s just a place to live. That’s nothing compared to Summer’s life.”
It won’t help to remind her that a half million in cash in a couple of months won’t do anything to save Summer, so I nod and try to change the subject.
“How about poached eggs for breakfast? I can even make hollandaise.”
Alanna straightens her shoulders and wipes away the tears. “That sounds lovely, dear.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m blending the sauce when someone knocks on the door. My spine stiffens, and Alanna and I stare at each other.
Is it them? Are they coming to collect early?
The fear I see on her face is no doubt reflected on mine. I silence the blender and move toward the door, but the nimble older woman beats me to it.
“Alanna!”
She peers through the peephole and gasps.
Sweet fucking Christ. No.
I run toward her, not giving a single damn that the eggs are going to be ruined.
“What?” I ask, skidding to a halt beside her.
Alanna pulls back from the peephole, her eyes wide. “There’s a giant at the door.”
“A giant?”
She points to her head. “With dreadlocks.”
A giant with dreadlocks. I need exactly one guess to know who fits that description—the man who interrupted Forge and me last night.
What the hell is he doing here?
I peer through the round hole, and he stares into it like he can see inside and knows I’m watching him. He reaches out with a beefy arm and knocks again. A small black duffel bag dangles from his other fist.
My stuff?
“Do you know who he is?” Alanna asks.
“Yes,” I tell her. “It’s okay. Just . . . check the eggs, please. I’ll handle this.”
I know she doesn’t want to move from my side, but thankfully, Alanna backs away toward the kitchen.
I take a steadying breath before opening the bolt. I might be making a huge mistake, but if he brought my things, I’m not letting pride or fear stop me from taking them. Given the fact that I went from millionaire to broke overnight, I don’t exactly have many other options.
Just in case, I open the door with the chain still attached and peek out. The giant’s attention locks onto my face, and he holds up the bag in front of him.
“Your things, Ms. Baptiste.”
The bag is too large to push through the gap between the door and the doorjamb, so I hold up a finger before shutting the door in his face. When I open it the second time, he’s still standing there, expressionless.
I reach out to take the bag from him, but he doesn’t release it.
Oh no, I’m not playing this game. I yank on the handle of the bag, but his beast-like grip is impossible to break.
“I have a message for you from Mr. Forge.”
“Don’t care.”
“You would be wise to listen, Ms. Baptiste.”
I tug harder. “Still don’t care. Shockingly enough, I have bigger problems to deal with than your boss. Now, give me my shit and I’ll thank you, and we can both pretend like none of this ever happened and move on with our lives.”
He lets go abruptly and I stumble backward, nearly landing on my ass on the tile floor.
“The message is in the bag. I suggest you read it, or you’ll be unprepared for when he comes for you.”
When he comes for me? Um . . . Hell. No.
I right myself and stare at the dreadlocked giant. “Listen to me carefully, whatever-your-name-is, because you’re going to want to tell your boss what I said—I don’t owe him a goddamned thing, and if he thinks I do, he can go fuck himself.”
Digging into my deep well of attitude, I salute him with two fingers before flipping him off and slamming the door.
That felt pretty damn good. I just hope I’m not going to regret it.
I stare down at the bag and debate whether I should dig for the note.
Nah. I don’t think so.
Hopefully, I don’t regret that too.
The eggs turn out less than ideal, but since we both push them around our plates in a show of eating instead of actually consuming them, it doesn’t matter.
Alanna and I talk about the weather, tourists, the weather, and tourists some more, but before we can go through another round of saying the same things to each other, there’s another knock on my door. She and I both jerk our gazes toward the open slider that leads from the tiny patio of my flat to the door.
“Do you think it’s him again?” Her voice shakes as she squeezes her hand into a fist around her butter knife, holding it like a dagger.
I lay my fork on the small table and slowly rise.
“I don’t think you should answer it, Indy. Please. It can’t be good.”
She’s probably right. The only visitors I usually have who arrive unannounced are Alanna and Summer. Obviously, they’re both out of the running.
“Stay here. I’ll handle this.”
“Indy . . .”
I squeeze her shoulder and smile. “I’m sure it’s fine. Nothing happened last time.”
She gives me a small nod but doesn’t lay down her knife. If there’s a threat outside that door, I wouldn’t put it past her to use it.
As I take measured steps through the open-floor-plan flat, I flip through the short list of people who could be outside the door.
Forge’s man.
Forge himself.
Bastien.
Someone delivering a threat about the money I need to pay to save Summer.
Basically, no one I’m interested in seeing for the rest of my life.
Whoever it is pounds on the door again. “Indy? You in there?”
The sound of the building manager’s voice coming through the door triggers a wave of relief. Thank you, Jesus. I stop in front of the door and remove the chains, then slide the bolts before pulling the door open a few inches.
“Miguel? Is something wrong?”
Miguel Herrera, a retired football player from the age before they made bajillions of dollars, greets me with a tight smile on his tanned face. “I don’t know, but I thought you could tell me if there was.”
“What do you mean?”
“There were men here a few minutes ago, asking questions about you. I told them they had the wrong address and I’d never heard of you.”
“A large man with dreadlocks?”
Miguel’s brow creases with confusion as he shakes his head. “Dreadlocks? No. No dreadlocks.”
The apprehension that drained away when I heard his voice comes back with a vengeance. It had to be the men who have Summer. They said I had ten days, and I have six days left. Did they lie?
Of course they would lie.
Now, more than ever, I’m glad I had the presence of mind to be concerned about my privacy when I joined the poker tour. My lease is in the name of a company I used for the sole purpose of renting the flat, and there’s no label on my buzzer. But that didn’t stop them from finding me.
“Did they give names? Any information at all?” My brain is going wild, thinking of how I could possibly use the information to track down where Summer is being held, and maybe get her back without paying a ransom if I can somehow morph into Liam Neeson in Taken.
“No. But they were Russian. Mafioso, I think.”
“Ru-Russian?” I choke out the question because the man who calls me about Summer is definitely not Russian. “Are you sure?”
Miguel nods. “When I played in Russia, we went to a club one night, and there was a group of them from the Bratva. Scary sons of bitches. These men sounded just like them. These are not good guys, Indy. Have you gotten into something . . . bad?”
Jesus fucking Christ. Russian mafia? My breathing picks up,
along with my heart rate.
“How many men, Miguel? Tell me every detail.”
He grips the back of his neck as he looks up. “Two. One who asked questions, and one who stood there like a pit bull. He had tattoos on his hand. Prison tattoos, I think.”
Fucking hell.
“What did they say, exactly?”
“They said they were looking for a blonde with blue eyes who goes by the name of India.”
Goes by the name of India? Like I made that shit up?
I make a split-second decision, if for no other reason than I don’t know what the hell else to do. “If they come back, call the police.”
Miguel’s dark tanned skin pales. “I don’t think you understand, Indy. The police can’t do anything about men like that.”
“Indy? Is everything okay?”
Alanna calls my name from behind me, and I give Miguel a nod, because there’s nothing left for him to tell me.
“Thank you for the warning. If you see or hear anything else suspicious, please let me know. Be safe.”
I close the door, but Miguel presses a hand to it to stop me.
“Maybe it’s time for you to take a break from the island, Indy. You don’t want people like that sniffing around your flat. They looked dangerous.”
“Thank you for warning me. I’ll talk to you later, Miguel.”
He releases his grip on the door, and I close, bolt, and chain every last lock before I turn to face Alanna.
“What now?”
“Miguel says there were Russians looking for me.”
Any remaining color in her face disappears. “Why on earth would Russians be looking for you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe it has to do with Summer?”
“But . . . you said you couldn’t place his accent. You would know a Russian accent.”
“Maybe they’re working with Russians? I don’t know.”
“Why would they come, though? We have more time. They can’t take you too. I won’t let them.” Her tone borders on shrill as it rises an octave.
