Kage refused to let me go to LaGuardia to pick up Sloane. He wouldn’t go, either. He said it was too dangerous. Said everything was too volatile right now, and until it all settled down, I wasn’t leaving his sight.
I put up a fight, of course. She’s my best friend, I said. She needs me.
He said the only thing Sloane needs is a container big enough to keep all the broken hearts she collects.
Then I realized it could be a trap. Declan has already killed off every other mafia boss Stateside over the last few weeks. Drawing Kage out into the open would be the perfect way to get the last one standing.
I only agreed not to go because of that. Because the thought of losing Kage is as terrifying to me as the thought of losing Sloane.
He finally had to delete the security video of her abduction from the parking garage. I watched it so many times, I nearly wore out my tear ducts.
By the time Kage’s driver calls to say he’s en route from the airport with Sloane, I’m having a panic attack.
“Did he say how long it would be?” I demand, wringing my hands as I pace back and forth in front of the big executive chair in the office.
“Take it easy, baby,” he says softly, watching me with those sharp dark eyes that never miss anything. “Come sit on my lap.”
“I can’t sit. I’m freaking out. What if she’s hurt?”
“She’s not hurt.”
“But how do you know?”
“Because she’s indestructible, like Styrofoam peanuts.”
“Or your ego.”
His eyes grow heated. “Is that sass I hear?”
“Don’t act like you don’t love it.”
In a throaty voice, he says, “Come here and let me show you how much.”
Sighing, I turn and pace the other direction. “Later. Sorry. I’m too distracted. This is the longest I’ve gone without talking to her since I was five years old, and I feel like I’m missing a limb. She sounded okay when we talked on the phone—like her usual self—but that feels like a million years ago. And what if it was an act? What if he was forcing her to sound happy? What if—”
Kage reaches out, pulls me down onto his lap, and wraps his hand around my jaw. Gazing into my eyes, he says, “She’s fine, baby.”
He kisses me deeply. I instantly relax, melting against his big hard body, loving the feel of his mouth.
“Better?” he whispers when we come up for air.
I hide my face in his neck. “Better. If he hurt her, will you please kill him?”
He exhales. “I can see there won’t be any peace around here if I don’t.”
On his desk, his cell phone rings. My heart starts pounding. I jump off his lap and stare at the phone with my hands on either side of my face, biting my lip.
Shaking his head, Kage swings the chair around and reaches for it. He answers without saying anything, which is a weird thing he does, then listens for a moment. Then he hangs up and looks at me.
“She’s on her way up.”
I make a little noise of joy and terror and tear out of the room to the elevator landing.
The front door is a bank of elevators. We’re on the top floor of a high-rise building.
From his position sprawled on the living room floor, Mojo lifts his head and looks at me. He woofs in solidarity, then promptly falls back asleep.
I hold my breath as the elevator slows to a stop. The doors slide open, and there she is.
Looking like she’s returning from a yoga retreat in hell.
It isn’t her outfit, which is a beautiful cream cashmere sweater, designer skinny jeans, and sky-high heels, or her face, which is as pretty as ever. Though maybe thinner.
It’s her eyes.
Her normally clear green eyes—her normally dry clear green eyes—are welling with some kind of strange watery substance that if I didn’t know her better would think is tears.
My heart flip-flops. I say hesitantly, “Sloane?”
Her face crumples. She drops the bag she’s carrying. She hiccups, says loudly, “How the fuck are you, sis?” and throws her arms around me.
I smell alcohol and am swamped with relief.
She’s only drunk, not crying. Crying would mean it’s the end of the world.
I blurt, “I’m good, I was so worried, I can’t believe that bastard took you, Kage will kill him if he hurt you, oh my god, I missed you so much, are you okay?”
“Great. I’m great, babe, simply marvelous.” She laughs. It sounds crazed.
I pull away and hold her at arm’s length. Inspecting her expression, I say, “You’re giving me the willies.”
“Girl,” she hiccups, “same.”
Frantic again, I look her up and down. “Sloane, talk to me! Are you hurt?”
She nods vigorously. “It feels like all my skin has been peeled off, and I’ve been thrown into boiling water, and there’s a live wire in there, too, so I’m getting electrocuted while I’m being boiled alive. No. No, no, that’s not it. It feels like I’m being suffocated and roasted over hot coals and pushed off a very tall building, all at the same time. It’s awful. It’s the worst! How the hell do you deal with it?”
Now I’m totally confused. “Deal with what, honey? What the heck are you talking about?”
From behind me, Kage says, “Sounds to me like she’s talking about being in love.”
We both look at him. Then we look at each other. Then Sloane says wearily, “Oh, fuck.”
I shout, “Shut the front door! You’re in love with your kidnapper?”
She makes a face. “I mean…maybe? How do you know if it’s really love?”
Kage folds his arms over his chest. “It’s only love if you’re willing to die for him.”
Her moan is faint, miserable, and even more alarming than the almost-but-not tears.
“Oh, no. Sloane, you don’t have feelings for him. This is a thing that happens to kidnapped people sometimes. They develop sympathy for their captors. It’s called Stockholm Syndrome, and it’s… Why are you laughing?”
“Long story. Can someone please get me a drink? I think I’d like to spend the next several days in a coma.”
She walks past me into the living room and throws herself facedown onto the sofa. I look helplessly at Kage, who somehow doesn’t seem surprised by this turn of events.
“Better look after that,” he says with a chin jerk in her direction. “I’ll get you girls some whiskeys. Look like you could use it.”
He kisses me on the forehead, then ambles off toward the kitchen. I hurry over to Sloane, kneel beside her on the floor next to the sofa, and pet her hair.
She turns her head and looks at me. She sniffles. “You know what the worst part is?”
“What?”
“I like him. He’s smart. And funny. Oh my god, that dry sense of humor. It’s exactly like mine! And he’s as stubborn as me, too. More. You wouldn’t believe how stubborn the man is. He’s practically a mule.”
Her face screws up again. She whimpers. “Like one of those mules they take tourists to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on.”
I’m not sure what’s happening, but there’s no way she’s in love with her kidnapper. She doesn’t fall in love. It’s simply not something she does. And not with him.
I wonder if this is some kind of decompression thing that happens after a traumatic event? I have no idea what to say, so I just make a soothing noise and continue petting her hair.
She rolls onto her back and flings an arm over her eyes. “And he smells good. When he’s not smoking, that is. And he’s generous. God, you should’ve seen the jewelry! Here, look at this.”
She thrusts her arm at me, displaying a fat diamond tennis bracelet I wouldn’t wear outside for fear of being mugged.
“He bought you that?”
“Yes. And clothes. So many clothes. La Perla lingerie. Cashmere sweaters in every color. Thirteen-hundred-dollar jeans, for fuck’s sake. Who does that for their captive? And he protected me from MS-13! He saved my life!” She groans. “And when I was in the hospital—”
“Hospital?” I repeat, alarmed. She ignores me.
“—he stayed with me and told me a bedtime story, and even though he said I looked like a camel, he didn’t really mean it. And when the nurse said I was pregnant—”
“Pregnant?”
“—he called Stavros to come get me. He didn’t want to, but he did, because he thought Stavros was the baby daddy and it was the right thing to do, but when he found out Stavros wasn’t the baby daddy, he kidnapped me again!”
I shout, “Who’s the baby daddy?”
She bypasses that and continues nonstop with the litany of Declan’s positive attributes until she exhausts herself—it takes a while—and falls silent.
I sit there stunned.
A lot has happened since she’s been gone.
And, quite clearly, she’s been having sex with Declan. Emotional sex.
The kind she never has.
“Holy shit,” I say quietly. “You are in love with him.”
After a thoughtful moment, she becomes completely calm. “Yes. How awful. Do you have any cyanide in the house, by chance? If this is what love feels like, I’d like to kill myself immediately.”
I wave that off because she’s only being dramatic, and drama is her middle name. “But, if you’re in love with him…why are you here?”
Her silence seems oddly fraught. “What did Kage tell you?”
“Only that Declan called and said he was bringing you back. I was too busy having a mental breakdown to get into the particulars. Why?”
She sits up abruptly and looks at me. “You know I love you, right?”
I blink. “Okay, you’re really starting to freak me out now.”
She takes my hands and squeezes them. “Just listen for a sec.” She draws a breath, releases it slowly, closes her eyes. “This thing…” She pauses for a hiccup, then starts over. “This thing with me and Declan is complicated. His life is complicated.”
I say drily, “Tell me about it. Loving a criminal isn’t exactly a walk in the park. The amount of gunfire you have to get used to is ridiculous.”
Sloane opens her eyes and gives me the strangest look. One I’ve never seen before, like she’s trying to decide what to say.
Or what not to say.
“No matter what happens, I want you to know that you’re my best friend, and I love you. No one and nothing will ever come between us.”
I wrinkle my forehead. “Is this about the baby?”
“There’s no baby.”
“You’re not pregnant?”
“No.”
“I’m very confused.”
“I’m here because Declan needed to take care of some business, and it wasn’t safe for me to be around him while he did.”
With a deep sense of surprise, I realize what she’s saying. “But he thought you’d be safe with Kage?”
“Yes. Well, sort of.” She winces. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“So uncomplicate it for me.”
She exhales a slow breath, then murmurs regretfully, “I can’t.”
Now I’m even more confused. “Did he give you an ultimatum? Like it was him or me or something?”
“No. He said he’d never make me choose.” She looks down at our hands. Her voice softens. “But he thought you might.”
I say vehemently, “No way.”
When she glances up at me, I insist, “No damn way, Sloane. I don’t care if it’s Hitler’s dick you’re sucking, you’ll always be my best friend.”
After a beat of silence, she drops her head to our joined hands and dissolves into laughter.
I make a face at the top of her head. “I’m glad one of us thinks this is funny.”
She raises her head and grins at me. “If I didn’t laugh, babe, I’d have to shoot myself.”
Kage returns from the kitchen with two tumblers of whiskey. When he hands them to us, I say, “Honey, what did Declan tell you when he called you about why he was bringing Sloane back?”
He answers without hesitation. “That he had to take care of some business, and it wasn’t safe for her to be around.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“You were already climbing the walls with worry. Wasn’t gonna add to that.”
I glance at Sloane, who looks oddly guilty, then back at Kage. “What else did he say that you didn’t you tell me?”
He folds his arms over his massive chest and says in a disapproving tone, “That your Styrofoam peanut girlfriend is the love of his life.”
My mouth drops open. “Wait. Are you guys friends now?”
“No. But he did me a huge favor, so we agreed on a truce for the time being.”
“What?” I leap to my feet, dropping the glass of whiskey. “You’re not at war anymore?”
“Not for the moment. We’ll see how long that lasts.” With a dark look in Sloane’s direction, he says, “He’s a wily one, that Irish bugger. Got lots of tricks up his sleeves.”
The smile that lifts Sloane’s lips is small and mysterious.
Aghast, I look back and forth between them. “You guys are keeping secrets from me!”
Kage pulls me into his arms. “I don’t keep secrets from you, baby. You want me to tell you exactly what he said, I’ll repeat it word for word.”
“You’re damn straight you will,” I say forcefully, winding my arms around his neck. Even when I’m mad at him, he’s irresistible.
He kisses me softly, but it quickly turns passionate. I stand on my tiptoes to get closer. He reaches down and grips my ass with his big hands, pulling me against his crotch. A growl of pleasure rumbles through his chest.
Sloane says drily, “I’m still here, kids. Just so you know.”
I break away from Kage, grinning, and look at her. “That reminds me. What do you think of blush for the color of your maid of honor dress?”
Sloane’s mouth drops open. Her eyes go wide. “You’re getting married?”
Kage frowns. “You didn’t notice the rock? I told you it was too small, baby.”
“It’s ten carats, honey. Any more and I’d need a wrist brace.”
Sloane rises from the sofa, grabs my hand, and gapes at my platinum-and-diamond engagement ring. She says loudly, “I thought it was a fucking cocktail ring!”
“That’s it,” says Kage, bristling. “I’m getting you something bigger.”
Sloane is still staring in shock at my hand. She looks up at me, eyes wide.
“Speaking of complicated…my plus-one for the wedding might present a small problem for the rest of your guests.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll make everyone check their guns at the door.”
Sloane’s eyes shine. “I love you, sis.”
“I love you, too. Now let’s sit back down. I want you to tell me everything that’s happened since you’ve been gone, including what the hell the deal is with this baby of yours.”
Kage says loudly, “Baby? What baby?”
Sloane and I look at each other and smile.
